amudu

Thursday, February 23, 2012

How Social Networks Improve Your Health

SUBMITTED BY MAYA BRAHMAM

My neighbour, who is 44, just suffered a heart attack and underwent triple bypass surgery. His wife, with two young children, was understandably in a state of shock. We rallied around with home-cooked heart-healthy meals and helped with exercise. My family stepped up because we knew that our neighbours, without close relatives locally, could use our help and support.

So, I felt a sense of connection when I read Mark Hyman’s recent article in the Huffington Post on how communities are often the best medicine for change. He pointed out that the secret of an effective model for treating drug-resistant TB and AIDS in Haiti lay not in new drugs or medical centres but in the community. He notes, “Recruiting and training over 11,000 community health workers across the world…proved that the sickest, poorest patients with the most difficult to treat diseases in the world could be successfully treated. The community was the treatment…”

Community healthcare programs are not a new idea, but people use this concept innovatively. For example, a post on Poverty Matters describes how training community workers to provide mental health support can make a huge difference in impoverished communities where primary health care is scarce. The Manas trial found that patients receiving such care showed a 30 per cent decrease in common mental disorders.

In fact, as Hyman notes, “Much can be done with a little help from your friends.” He says, “Facebook and Twitter can not only help facilitate a democratic revolution in countries like Egypt, but they can also link communities together in a common purpose to reclaim their health. Think ‘Occupy Health Care’ or ‘Wellness Spring.’”

Now, there’s a revolution that can bring about positive change.

The Employees First Effect

When faced with one of the toughest recessions in recent history, HCL Technologies turned its organization upside down and became one of the fastest growing companies in the world. At HCL, we call this movement Employees First -- and we believe that it is the only path to strong, sustainable growth in these turbulent times.

Visit HCLTechtube for more videos from HCL Technologies or visit www.hcltech.com to know more about Employees First.

Credits
Creative Agency: Wieden+Kennedy Delhi
Executive Creative Director: V Sunil
Creative: Akash Das and Sundar Iyer
Account Management: Tushar Mehta and Ankit Kumar
Director: Bharat Sikka
Production House: Flying Pigs Production

Full Script

It's 8 am.

Millions of employees show up each day, to put their names on a register. The world we see around us... countries and continents, have been built on the back of these signatures. The future too, will be written by these signatures - signatures of employees.

You are an employee

Your boss is an employee

The cable guy is an employee

The overworked... the unsung

The white collared... the blue collared

The Father of a nation

Fathers and mothers, sons and daughters

Healers and protectors

The girl you will fall in love with

The graveyard shift veterans

Even Chief Executives

...actors, spot boys

Master-chefs and waitresses

...truth is we are all employees, putting our names on ideas that shape our world.

Truth is... every employee is a hero.

Enough said. Let's go do what we all do best.

Let's go to work.

Heart Beats to the Rhythm of a Circadian Clock

Science Daily — Sudden cardiac death -catastrophic and unexpected fatal heart stoppage -- is more likely to occur shortly after waking in the morning and late at night.

In a report in the journal Nature, an international consortium of researchers that includes Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland and Baylor College of Medicine explains the molecular linkage between the circadian clock and the deadly heart rhythms that lead to sudden death.

The answer begins with a controller of the circadian clock -- krüppel-like factor 15 (Klf15), which has been a long-time target of the laboratory of Dr. Mukesh Jain of Case Western, said Dr. Xander Wehrens, professor of molecular physiology and biophysics and cardiology at BCM, also an author.

Klf15, in turn, controls the level of a potassium channel-interacting protein (KChIP2), which affects how potassium flows out of heart muscle cells called cardiac myocytes.

Changes affect potassium current.

Because the level of this KChIP2 protein fluctuates during the circadian or daily cycle, it can change the size of the potassium current in cardiac myocytes. Changes in this subunit or Klf15, can affect the potassium current that governs repolarization of the cardiac myocyte. Overall, this can shorten or lengthen the heart muscle has time to empty the heart's pumping chamber (ventricle) of blood. This time interval for repolarization is critical. Too much or too little can result in abnormal heart rhythms called arrhythmias. As the heart loses the regularity of the beat, it cannot pump blood efficiently.

Studies of mice that lacked Klf15 and mice with a genetic change that caused them to make more Klf15 than normal increased the risk of deadly arrhythmias.

This was a proof of principle, said Wehrens.

"It is the first example of a molecular mechanism for the circadian change in susceptibility to cardiac arrhythmias," he said.

"If there was too much Klf15 or none, the mice were at risk for developing the arrhythmias," he said.

Long QT or Short QT

Because Klf15 is regulated by the circadian "clock," the rate of flow through the potassium channel goes up and down and if disrupted, can lead to a change that results in one of two known heart problems linked to sudden death -- long QT or short QT syndrome. (QT refers to an interval measured from an electrocardiogram or ECG, which corresponds to the electrical recovery time of the heart.)

Wehrens credits Jain's laboratory with accomplishing much of the work. He said that his laboratory performed the electrophysiology experiments with the mice that lacked Klf15 and those who produced too much.

Much of the BCM work was done by Dr. Mark McCauley, a cardiology fellow who was a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory at the time, said Wehrens.

Others who took part in this work include first author Darwin Jeyaraj, Saptarsi Haldar, Xiapoing Wan, Yuan Lu, Betty Eapen, Nikunj Sharma, Eckhard Ficker, Michael Cutler, and David Rosenbaum, all of Case Western; Jurgen A. Ripperger and Urs Albrecht of University of Fribourg in Switzerland; Kun Hu and Steven A. Shea of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston; James Gulick, Atusushi Sanbe, and Jeffrey Robbins of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center; Sophie Demolombe of Universite de Nice Sophia Antipolis in Valbonne, France; and Roman Kondratov of Cleveland State University in Ohio.

Funding for this work came from the National Institutes of Health, the Heart Rhythm Society, the American Heart Association, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, and the Leducq Foundation.

FOR NATURE LOVERS

Tiny, Implantable Medical Device Can Propel Itself Through Bloodstream

Engineers at Stanford have developed a wirelessly powered, self-propelled medical device that can propel itself through the blood stream to deliver drugs, perform diagnostics or microsurgeries. (Credit: Illustration by Carlos Suarez, StrongBox3d) Science Daily — For 50 years, scientists had searched for the secret to making tiny implantable devices that could travel through the bloodstream. Engineers at Stanford have demonstrated a wirelessly powered device that just may make the dream a reality.

Someday, your doctor may turn to you and say, "Take two surgeons and call me in the morning." If that day arrives, you may just have Ada Poon to thank.

Yesterday, at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) before an audience of her peers, electrical engineer Poon demonstrated a tiny, wirelessly powered, self-propelled medical device capable of controlled motion through a fluid -- blood more specifically. The era of swallow-the-surgeon medical care may no longer be the stuff of science fiction.

Poon is an assistant professor at the Stanford School of Engineering. She is developing a new class of medical devices that can be implanted or injected into the human body and powered wirelessly using electromagnetic radio waves. No batteries to wear out. No cables to provide power.

"Such devices could revolutionize medical technology," said Poon. "Applications include everything from diagnostics to minimally invasive surgeries."

Certain of these new devices, like heart probes, chemical and pressure sensors, cochlear implants, pacemakers, and drug pumps, would be stationary within the body. Others, like Poon's most recent creations, could travel through the bloodstream to deliver drugs, perform analyses, and perhaps even zap blood clots or removing plaque from sclerotic arteries.

Challenged by power

The idea of implantable medical devices is not new, but most of today's implements are challenged by power, namely the size of their batteries, which are large, heavy and must be replaced periodically. Fully half the volume of most of these devices is consumed by battery.

"While we have gotten very good at shrinking electronic and mechanical components of implants, energy storage has lagged in the move to miniaturize," said co-author Teresa Meng, a professor of electrical engineering and of computer science at Stanford. "This hinders us in where we can place implants within the body, but also creates the risk of corrosion or broken wires, not to mention replacing aging batteries."

Poon's devices are different. They consist of a radio transmitter outside the body sending signals to an independent device inside the body that picks up the signal with an antenna of coiled wire. The transmitter and the antenna are magnetically coupled such that any change in current flow in the transmitter produces a voltage in the coiled wire -- or, more accurately, itinduces a voltage. The power is transferred wirelessly. The electricity runs electronics on the device and propels it through the bloodstream, if so desired.

Upending convention

It sounds easy, but it is not. Poon had to first upend some long-held assumptions about the delivery of wireless power inside the human body.

For fifty years, scientists have been working on wireless electromagnetic powering of implantable devices, but they ran up against mathematics. According to the models, high-frequency radio waves dissipate quickly in human tissue, fading exponentially the deeper they go.

Low-frequency signals, on the other hand, penetrate well, but require antennae a few centimeters in diameter to generate enough power for the device, far too large to fit through all but the biggest arteries. In essence, because the math said it could not be done, the engineers never tried.

Then a curious thing happened. Poon started to look more closely at the models. She realized that scientists were approaching the problem incorrectly. In their models, they assumed that human muscle, fat and bone were generally good conductors of electricity, and therefore governed by a specific subset of the mathematical principles known as Maxwell's equations -- the "quasi-static approximation" to be exact.

Poon took a different tack, choosing instead to model tissue as a dielectric -- a type of insulator. As it turns out human tissue is a poor conductor of electricity. But, radio waves can still move through them. In a dielectric, the signal is conveyed as waves of shifting polarization of atoms within cells. Even better, Poon also discovered that human tissue is a "low-loss" dielectric -- that is to say little of the signal gets lost along the way.

She recalculated and made a surprising find: Using new equations she learned high-frequency radio waves \ travel much farther in human tissue than originally thought.

Revelation

"When we extended things to higher frequencies using a simple model of tissue we realized that the optimal frequency for wireless powering is actually around one gigahertz," said Poon, "about 100 times higher than previously thought."

More significantly, however, her revelation meant that antennae inside the body could be 100 times smaller and yet deliver the same power.

Poon was not so much in search of a new technology; she was in search of a new math. The antenna on the device Poon demonstrated at the conference yesterday is just two millimeters square; small enough to travel through the bloodstream.

She has developed two types of self-propelled devices. One drives electrical current directly through the fluid to create a directional force that pushes the device forward. This type of device is capable of moving at just over half-a-centimeter per second. The second type switches current back-and-forth in a wire loop to produce swishing motion similar to the motion a kayaker makes to paddle upstream.

"There is considerable room for improvement and much work remains before these devices are ready for medical applications," said Poon. "But for the first time in decades the possibility seems closer than ever."

Stanford doctoral candidates Daniel Pivonka and Anatoly Yakovlev contributed to this research.

Ada Poon's research was made possible by the support of C2S2 Focus Center, Olympus Corporation, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.

Off Switch for Pain? Chemists Build Light-Controlled Neural Inhibitor

In a new study, researchers report they have now succeeded in inhibiting pain-sensitive neurons on demand, in the laboratory. (Credit: © Jule_Berlin / Fotolia) Science Daily — Pain? Just turn it off! It may sound like science fiction, but researchers based in Munich, Berkeley and Bordeaux have now succeeded in inhibiting pain-sensitive neurons on demand, in the laboratory. The crucial element in their strategy is a chemical sensor that acts as a light-sensitive switch.

The notion of a pain switch is an alluring idea, but is it realistic? Well, chemists at LMU Munich, in collaboration with colleagues in Berkeley and Bordeaux, have now shown in laboratory experiments that it is possible to inhibit the activity of pain-sensitive neurons using an agent that acts as a photosensitive switch. For the LMU researchers, the method primarily represents a valuable tool for probing the neurobiology of pain.

The system developed by the LMU team, led by Dirk Trauner, who is Professor of Chemical Biology and Genetics, is a chemical compound they call QAQ. The molecule is made up of two functional parts, each containing a quaternary ammonium, which are connected by a nitrogen double bond (N=N). This bridge forms the switch, as its conformation can be altered by light. Irradiation with light of a specific wavelength causes the molecule to flip from a bent to an extended form; exposure to light of a different color reverses the effect.

One half of QAQ closely resembles one of the active analogs of lidocaine, a well-known local anesthetic used by dentists. Lidocaine blocks the perception of pain by inhibiting the action of receptors found on specific nerve cells in the skin, which respond to painful stimuli and transmit signals to the spinal cord.

Neuroreceptors are proteins that span the outer membrane of nerve cells. They possess deformable pores that open in response to appropriate stimuli, and function as conduits that permit electrically charged ions to pass into or out of the cells. The ion channel targeted by the lidocaine-like end of QAQ responds to heat by allowing positively charged sodium ions to pass into the cells that express it. This alters the electrical potential across the membrane, which ultimately leads to transmission of the nerve impulse.

In their experiments, the researchers exploited the fact that QAQ can percolate through endogenous ion channels to get the molecule into nerve cells. This is a crucial step, because its site of action is located on the inner face of the targeted ion channel.

Furthermore, the lidocaine-like end of QAQ binds to this site only if the molecule is in an extended conformation. When the cells were irradiated with 380-nm light, which bends the bridge, signal transmission was reactivated within a matter of milliseconds. Exposure to light with a wavelength of 500 nm, on the other hand, reverts the molecule to the extended form and restores its inhibitory action. The analgesic effect of the switch was confirmed using an animal model.

Trauner's team has been working for some considerable time on techniques with which biologically critical molecular machines such as neuroreceptors can be controlled in living animals by means of light impulses. The researchers themselves regard the new method primarily as a tool for neurobiological studies, particularly for pain research. Therapeutic applications of the principle are "a long way off," says Timm Fehrentz, one of Dirk Trauner's PhD students and one of the two equal first authors on the new paper. For one thing, the monochromatic light used to isomerize the QAQ molecule cannot penetrate human skin sufficiently to reach the pain-sensitive neurons. The researchers hope to address that problem by looking for alternatives to QAQ that respond to red light of longer wavelength, which more readily passes through the skin.

Recharge Your Cell Phone With a Touch? New Nanotechnology Converts Body Heat Into Power

Graduate student Corey Hewitt works with a sample of thermoelectric fabric in the Nanotechnology lab. (Credit: Image courtesy of Wake Forest University) Science Daily — Never get stranded with a dead cell phone again. A promising new technology called Power Felt, a thermoelectric device that converts body heat into an electrical current, soon could create enough juice to make another call simply by touching it.

Their research appears in the current issue of Nano Letters, a leading journal in nanotechnology.Developed by researchers in the Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials at Wake Forest University, Power Felt is composed of tiny carbon nanotubes locked up in flexible plastic fibers and made to feel like fabric. The technology uses temperature differences -- room temperature versus body temperature, for instance -- to create a charge.

"We waste a lot of energy in the form of heat. For example, recapturing a car's energy waste could help improve fuel mileage and power the radio, air conditioning or navigation system," says researcher and Wake Forest graduate student Corey Hewitt. "Generally thermoelectrics are an underdeveloped technology for harvesting energy, yet there is so much opportunity."

Potential uses for Power Felt include lining automobile seats to boost battery power and service electrical needs, insulating pipes or collecting heat under roof tiles to lower gas or electric bills, lining clothing or sports equipment to monitor performance, or wrapping IV or wound sites to better track patients' medical needs.

"Imagine it in an emergency kit, wrapped around a flashlight, powering a weather radio, charging a prepaid cell phone," says David Carroll, director of the Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials. "Power Felt could provide relief during power outages or accidents."

Cost has prevented thermoelectrics from being used more widely in consumer products.

Standard thermoelectric devices use a much more efficient compound called bismuth telluride to turn heat into power in products including mobile refrigerators and CPU coolers, but researchers say it can cost $1,000 per kilogram. Like silicon, they liken Power Felt's affordability to demand in volume and think someday it could cost only $1 to add to a cell phone cover.

Currently, 72 stacked layers in the fabric yield about 140 nanowatts of power. The team is evaluating several ways to add more nanotube layers and make them even thinner to boost the power output.

Although there's more work to do before Power Felt is ready for market, Hewitt says, "I imagine being able to make a jacket with a completely thermoelectric inside liner that gathers warmth from body heat, while the exterior remains cold from the outside temperature. If the Power Felt is efficient enough, you could potentially power an iPod, which would be great for distance runners. It's definitely within reach."

Neuroscientists Identify How the Brain Works to Select What We (Want To) See

Science Daily — If you are looking for a particular object -- say a yellow pencil -- on a cluttered desk, how does your brain work to visually locate it?

For the first time, a team led by Carnegie Mellon University neuroscientists has identified how different neural regions communicate to determine what to visually pay attention to and what to ignore. This finding is a major discovery for visual cognition and will guide future research into visual and attention deficit disorders.

The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, used various brain imaging techniques to show exactly how the visual cortex and parietal cortex send direct information to each other through white matter connections to pick out the information that you want to see.

"We have demonstrated that attention is a process in which there is a one-to-one mapping between the first place visual information comes from the eyes into the brain and beyond to other parts of the brain," said Adam S. Greenberg, a postdoctoral fellow in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences' Department of Psychology and lead author of the study.

"With so much information in the visual world, it's dramatic to think that you have an entire system behind knowing what to pay attention to," said Marlene Behrmann, professor of psychology at CMU and an expert in using brain imaging to study the visual perception system. "The mechanisms show that you can actually drive the visual system -- you are guiding your own sensory system intelligently and smartly that helps facilitate your actions in the world."

The research team conducted two sets of experiments with five adults for the study. They first used several different functional brain scans to identify regions in the brain responsible for visual processing and attention. One task had the participants look at a dot in the centre of the screen while six stimuli danced around the dot. The second task asked the participants to respond to the stimuli one at a time. These scans determined the regions in both the visual and parietal cortices. The researchers could then look for connectivity between these regions.

The second part of the experiment collected anatomical data of the brain's white matter connectivity while the participants had their brains scanned without performing any tasks. Then, the researchers combined the results with those from the functional experiments to show how white matter fibers tracked from the regions determined previously, the visual cortex and the parietal cortex. The results demonstrated that the white matter connections are mapped systematically, meaning that direct connections exist between corresponding visual field locations in visual cortex and parietal cortex.

The researchers used a technique called "diffusion spectrum imaging," a new procedure pioneered at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh to generate the fiber tracts of the white matter connectivity. This method was combined with high-resolution tractography and provides scientists with better estimates of the hard-wired connections between brain regions and increased accuracy over conventional tractography methods, such as those typically used with diffusion tensor imaging.

"The work done in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh researchers exploits a very new, precise and cutting edge methodology," Behrmann said.

"Because we know that training can alter white matter, it might be possible, through training, that the ability to filter out irrelevant or unwanted information could be improved," Greenberg said.

Additional researchers on this study included Timothy Verstynen, a research associate in the University of Pittsburgh's Learning Research and Development Center; yu-chin Chiu, a post-doc in the University of California, San Diego's Department of Psychology, Steven Yantis, professor of psychological and brain sciences at the Johns Hopkins University and Walter Schneider, professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. Greenberg, Behrmann, Verstynen and Schneider are also members of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC), a joint project between Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh devoted to investigating neural mechanisms and their impact on human cognitive abilities.

Stratospheric Superbugs Offer New Source of Power

Scientists have engineered a new super biofilm, a key component of which is Bacillus stratospheric -- a microbe commonly found in high concentrations in Earth's stratosphere. Science Daily — Bacteria commonly found 30 kilometres above Earth have been identified as highly efficient electricity generators.

Bacillus stratospheric -- a microbe commonly found in high concentrations in the stratosphere -- is a key component of a new 'super' biofilm engineered by a team of scientists from Newcastle University.

Isolating 75 different species of bacteria from the Wear Estuary, Country Durham, UK, the team tested the power generation of each one using a microbial fuel cell (MFC).

By selecting the best species of bacteria, a kind of microbial "pick and mix," they created an artificial biofilm, doubling the electrical output of the MFC from 105 Watts per cubic metre to 200 Watts per cubic metre.

While still relatively low, this would be enough power to run an electric light and could provide a much-needed power source in parts of the world without electricity.

Among the 'superbugs was B. stratospheric, a microbe typically found in the atmosphere but brought down to Earth due to atmospheric cycling processes and isolated by the team from the bed of the River Wear.

Publishing their findings Feb. 21 in the American Chemical Society's Journal of Environmental Science and Technology,

Grant Burgess, Professor of Marine Biotechnology at Newcastle University, said the research demonstrated the "potential power of the technique."

"What we have done is deliberately manipulate the microbial mix to engineer a biofilm that is more efficient at generating electricity," he explains.

"This is the first time individual microbes have been studied and selected in this way. Finding B. stratosphericus was quite a surprise but what it demonstrates is the potential of this technique for the future. There are billions of microbes out there with the potential to generate power."

Microbes to generate electricity are not new and have been used in treating wastewater and sewage plants.

Microbial fuel cells, which work similarly to a battery, use bacteria to convert organic compounds directly into electricity through bio-catalytic oxidation.

A biofilm -- or 'slime' -- coats the carbon electrodes of the MFC and as the bacteria feed, they produce electrons which pass into the electrodes and generate electricity.

Until now, the biofilm has been allowed to grow unchecked but this new study shows for the first time that by manipulating the biofilm, you can significantly increase the electrical output of the fuel cell.

Funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the study identified several electricity-generating bacteria.

As well as B. stratospheric, other electricity-generating bugs in the mix were Bacillus altitudinis -- another bug from the upper atmosphere -- and a new member of the phylumBacteroidetes.

Map reveals cancer hotspots

THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

Image: alanphillips/iStockphoto

A new technique is helping researchers to pinpoint genetic information that contributes to cancer development.

A research team, led by Professor Thomas Preiss from the John Curtin School of Medical Research at The Australian National University, has used a new mapping technique to reveal tell-tale “sign posts” in DNA’s lesser-known relative, RNA – ribonucleic acid.

“RNA acts as a messenger, carrying genetic information to the parts of the cell in which proteins are made. Enzymes in the cell can modify RNA, leaving ‘sign posts’, known as m5C sites,” Professor Preiss said.

“The enzymes that modify RNA have proven connections to cancer and stem cell biology. Understanding the patterns of these modifications will help cancer researchers focus their attention on the contribution that RNA makes to cancer.”

In the study, researchers comprehensively mapped these modifications in RNA for the first time, identifying over ten thousand new sites. They found that the sites were much more prevalent than previously thought and were systematic, rather than random, occurring near genetic landmarks.

The research team comprised members from the John Curtin School of Medical Research (JCSMR) at The Australian National University and the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in Sydney. The research is published this month in the journal Nucleic Acids Research.

Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY Thursday, February 23, 2012

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

MEANING OF TRUE FRIEND'S.............................

The Brain....

“I am the right brain. I am creativity. A free spirit. I am passion. Yearning. Sensuality. I am the sound of roaring laughter. I am taste. The feeling of sand beneath bare feat. I am movement. Vivid colors. I am the urge to paint on an empty canvas. I am boundless imagination. Art. Poetry. I sense. I feel. I am everything I wanted to be.”

“I am the left brain. I am a scientist. A mathematician. I love the familiar. I categorize. I am accurate. Linear. Analytically. Strategic. I am practical. Always in control. A master of words and language. Realistic. I calculate equations and play with numbers. I am order. I am logic. I know exactly who I am.

Sai Vachan

Neuroscientists identify how the brain works to select what we (want to) see

The three colors demonstrate one-to-one mapping from the first place visual information comes from the eyes and its path to the parietal cortex.
Credit: Carnegie Mellon University

If you are looking for a particular object — say a yellow pencil — on a cluttered desk, how does your brain work to visually locate it?

The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, used various brain imaging techniques to show exactly how the visual cortex and parietal cortex send direct information to each other through white matter connections in order to specifically pick out the information that you want to see.

"We have demonstrated that attention is a process in which there is one-to-one mapping between the first place visual information comes from the eyes into the brain and beyond to other parts of the brain," said Adam S. Greenberg, postdoctoral fellow in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences' Department of Psychology and lead author of the study.

"With so much information in the visual world, it's dramatic to think that you have an entire system behind knowing what to pay attention to," said Marlene Behrmann, professor of psychology at CMU and a renowned expert in using brain imaging to study the visual perception system. "The mechanisms show that you can actually drive the visual system — you are guiding your own sensory system in an intelligent and smart fashion that helps facilitate your actions in the world."

For the study, the research team conducted two sets of experiments with five adults. They first used several different functional brain scans to identify regions in the brain responsible for visual processing and attention. One task had the participants look at a dot in the center of the screen while six stimuli danced around the dot. The second task asked the participants to respond to the stimuli one at a time. These scans determined the regions in both the visual and parietal cortices. The researchers could then look for connectivity between these regions.