Nudity tunes up the brain

 
Amplitude of early visual brain responses ("N170" response) to different types of pictures showing human bodies. The bars represent how much stronger the responses evoked by body pictures were in comparison to control pictures showing cars.

Researchers at the University of Tampere and the Aalto University, Finland, have shown that the perception of nude bodies is boosted at an early stage of visual processing.

Most people like to look at pictures of nude or scantily clad human bodies. Looking at nude bodies is sexually arousing, and a nude human body is a classic subject in art. Advertising, too, has harnessed half-clothed models to evoke positive images about the products advertised. Brain imaging studies have localized areas in the brain which are specialized in detecting human bodies in the environment, but so far it has been unknown whether the brain processes nude and clothed bodies in different ways.

Researchers at the University of Tampere and the Aalto University, Finland, have now shown that the perception of nude bodies is boosted at an early stage of visual processing.

In the study, participants were shown pictures of men and women in which the models wore either normal everyday clothes or swimsuits, or were nude. At the same time, visual brain responses were recorded from the participants' electrical brain activity. This method allows researchers to investigate the early stages of visual information processing.

The results showed that, in less than 0.2 seconds, the brain processes pictures of nude bodies more efficiently than pictures of clothed bodies. In fact, the less clothing the models in the pictures were wearing, the more enhanced was the information processing: the brain responses were the strongest when the participants looked at pictures of nude bodies, the second strongest to bodies in swimsuits, and the weakest to fully clothed bodies. Male participants' brain responses were stronger to nude female than to nude male bodies, whereas the female participants' brain responses were not affected by the sex of the bodies.

The results show that the brain boosts the processing of sexually arousing signals. In addition to the brain responses, the participants' self-evaluations and measurements reflecting the activation of the autonomic nervous system were in line with expectations, showing that nude pictures were more arousing than the other types of pictures. Such fast processing of sexual signals may play a role in reproduction, and it ensures efficient perception of potential mating partners in the environment.

More information: Hietanen JK, Nummenmaa L, 2011 The Naked Truth: The Face and Body Sensitive N170 Response Is Enhanced for Nude Bodies. PLoS ONE 6(11): e24408. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0024408

 

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Brain study explores what makes colors and numbers collide

Someone with the condition known as grapheme-color synesthesia might experience the number 2 in turquoise or the letter S in magenta. Now, researchers reporting their findings online in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on November 17 have shown that those individuals also show heightened activity in a brain region responsible for vision.

The findings provide a novel way of looking at synesthesia as the product of regional hyperexcitability in the brain, the researchers say. They also provide a window into our understanding of individual differences in perception.

"Most of us tend to assume that we experience the world in the same way as everyone else, but synesthesia provides a clear example of a group that perceives the world in a fundamentally different way," says Devin Blair Terhune of the University of Oxford. "The majority of people do not have conscious experiences of color when they look at numbers, letters, and words, whereas synesthetes do. Studying these people can thus shed light on the brain mechanisms underlying conscious awareness."

Earlier studies had shown that synesthetes who experience color for numbers and letters also discriminate among colors better than those with other types of synesthesia. Those findings hinted that an overactive visual cortex might be in play.

Terhune's team, which is led by Roi Cohen Kadosh, found that average people do indeed require three times greater magnetic stimulation to their visual cortex than synesthetes do in order to experience phosphenes, transient flashes of light or other visual disturbances.

"We were surprised by the magnitude of the difference," Terhune said. "The synesthetes in our study displayed considerably greater levels of cortical excitability than our participants without synesthesia. These results point to a very large effect that may reflect a fundamental difference between the brains of those with and without synesthesia."

It's not that the enhanced excitability of the visual cortex is directly responsible for the experience of synesthesia, however. Further experiments showed that reducing the excitability of visual cortex in synesthetes actually increased their experience of colors with numbers. Meanwhile, increasing excitability in that brain region made the synesthesia more intense.

Terhune says they now suspect that the enhanced excitability of synesthetes' brains might be related to the development of the condition, but it doesn't produce the phenomenon in adults.

Ultimately, the findings might allow for treatments designed to reduce or eliminate the experience of synesthesia or to make it even more vivid, he says. The work also raises new questions in other fields that examine atypical perceptions, such as hallucinations, he says. "Might it be that the same principle is applying also there?"

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The brain's zoom button: Study describes how the brain handles spatial resolution

Everybody knows how to zoom in and out on an online map, to get the level of resolution you need to get you where you want to go. Now researchers have discovered a key mechanism that can act like a zoom button in the brain, by controlling the resolution of the brain's internal maps.

In this week's edition of Cell, Lisa Giocomo and colleagues at the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience at NTNU describe how they "knocked out", or disabled, ion channels in the grid cells of the mouse brain. Grid cells are equivalent to a longitude and latitude coordinate system in the brain, with the grid cell firing at the cross-point where the longitude and latitude lines meet. This network enables the brain to make internal maps. Ion channels mediate signals between the inside and the outside of the cells. When the researchers knocked out the ion channels, they found that the resolution of the maps created by the mouse brain became coarser, in that the area covered by each grid cell was larger.

"If grid cells are similar to a longitude and latitude coordinate system, what determines the distance between the coordinate points of this internal map?" Giocomo asks. "When we knocked out the HCN1 ion channel, the scale of the innate coordinate system increased. It's like losing longitude and latitude lines on a map. Suddenly you can't represent a spatial environment at a very fine scale."

In a normal brain, the ion channels function as they should, and the brain is able to generate the precise resolution for the map that it needs. But if the ion channels don't work – as was the case in the experimental set up – then the map isn't at the right resolution.

Future research will aim at determining what effect this might have on spatial memory and navigation. Giocomo says her findings could prove useful for future research on Alzheimer's and related diseases, "particularly because the area that is damaged in Alzheimer's is the area that we are investigating. Also, one of the first things to go wrong with Alzheimer's is that you suddenly start to lose your sense of direction. Of course, we don't know if there is any connection yet, but it might be worth looking into."

The article in Cell is being published simultaneously with a companion article in Neuron, authored by researchers at the Kavli Institute for Brain Science, at Columbia University in New York. The two Kavli Institutes decided to work cooperatively on the topic, says Edvard Moser, director of the Kavli Institute at NTNU.

"We believe that this is a great example of collaborative research instead of neck-and-neck competition. We got our knock-out mice from (Eric) Kandel's lab (at Columbia), and they sent a post-doc over here to work with us. We discussed and debated our findings of course, gave each other feedback and input," Moser says.

The collaborative approach enabled the two institutes to publish linked research data from two interconnected areas of the brain, the entorhinal cortex and the hippocampus. Both sets of data show the effect of removing ion channels in grid cells and place cells. Place cells are thought to base their spatial response based on the calculations of the grid cells, so finding this close correspondence in research results is "very rewarding," Moser says. "It's great that we can find two pieces of evidence that show how scale is represented in our brain, and that we can publish these results at the same time.

More information: DOI:10.1016/j.cell.2011.08.051

 

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Love Can Do Anything

Love Can Do Anything

 

It is a simple technique that combines the spiritual force of love with the power of visualization to miraculously transform any and all situations of life. And best of all it only takes few seconds to do it.  

 

 

 

-- 

Overactive Neurons May Tangle the Senses

by Elizabeth Norton 

 

Crossed wires. A woman with grapheme-color synesthesia views a number that appears a different color than it would to most people.

Credit: Devin Terhune/University of Oxford

A loud shirt. A gravelly voice. Purple prose. The merging of the senses, called synesthesia, is a literary device that makes for vivid imagery. But in a neurological condition with the same name, a single perception can involve a second, linked sense that most people would not experience. "Synesthetes" may taste chocolate when hearing a song or see numbers as colors. The reason, new research suggests, may be that the brain cells in the area responsible for the secondary, or extra, sense—for instance, the chocolate taste—are overly active. In addition to shedding light on an unusual mode of perception, the findings could lead to treatments for brain disorders—showing ways to reduce hallucinations, for example, or correcting various types of impaired perception that can follow a stroke.

Synesthesia can occur early in life due to the explosive growth of a young child's brain, explains neuroscientist Devin Terhune of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Normally, as the child grows older and brain circuits are refined, the linkages break up. But in synesthetes, for some reason, the secondary sense persists throughout life.

The simplest explanation, Terhune and his colleagues believe, is that neurons in the area responsible for the extra sense are more responsive, or "excitable," than usual, strengthening a sensory association that the person wouldn't normally be aware of. The investigators tested their hypothesis with a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation, which, as the name suggests, stimulates a specific part of the brain with a weak magnetic field applied to the scalp.

The researchers worked with six people who had "grapheme-color synesthesia,"—the most common form of the condition, in which letters or numbers are perceived in certain colors

 

 (the number 2 in turquoise or the letter S in magenta, for example)—and six "normal" controls. Each participant received stimulation on the scalp near an area called the primary visual cortex until they saw a flash of light known as a phosphene.

The investigators reasoned that if the synesthetes did have highly excitable neurons in the visual cortex, they would need less stimulation than the control subjects to see the phosphene. The suspicion proved correct: in fact, people without synesthesia required three times as much stimulation to reliably evoke the phosphene

 

, the team reports online today in Current Biology.

"The idea that synesthesia results from region-specific hyperexcitability is novel," Terhune says. "But it's consistent with the dominant view that synesthesia is due to cross-connectivity between different brain areas. One possibility is that these highly excitable neurons might help produce the extra connections."

In a second phase of the experiment, the investigators used varying amounts of electrical stimulation (called transcranial direct-current stimulation, or TDCS) to either lessen or increase the synesthetes' color experience. Terhune says that although the vast majority of synesthetes are happy with their condition, the ability to alter neuronal excitability might lead to treatments for unwanted hallucinations, such as those that occur with schizophrenia, or to turn up brain activity in patients who have suffered a stroke or have brain damage.

By targeting specific areas to enhance the synesthetes' perceptions, the finding adds to a growing amount of research that uses brain stimulation to improve mental performance in general. Study co-author Roi Cohen Kadosh, who heads up Terhune's lab at Oxford, has already shown that TDCS can boost math skills

 

 in adults for up to 6 months. "The long-term use of electrical stimulation releases brain chemicals involved in learning and memory," he says. "But it only enhances work that's already being done, like giving a runner an energy drink. You can't just zap your brain and become smart."

"This a great study. It's the first to use TDCS to enhance synesthetic experiences," says Peter Weiss-Blankenhorn of the Research Centre Jülich in Germany, via e-mail. He adds that future studies could combine TDCS with imaging techniques to confirm the authors' speculation that the cells' excitability helps build the networks that result in synesthesia. Such a study could change the activity level of key neurons, then use imaging techniques to see whether the synesthesia networks were affected, Weiss-Blankenhorn says.

Regarding the use of TDCS to improve mental performance, cognitive neuroscientist Michael Banissy of Goldsmiths, University of London, comments via e-mail: "It's an exciting avenue for future research, but caution is needed before we start using it for everyone to improve their performance. Brain stimulation needs to be done by people who are trained in using it appropriately."

Or as Cohen Kadosh puts it, "Don't try this at home."

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Neurons in youth

Have you ever wondered why infants can learn foreign languages easily, while older children and parents struggle? Or why your third-grader can fix your computer, but you can barely check your email? The answer, scientists have long known, lies in the way brains develop. All children experience what researchers call “critical periods” —windows early in life when the wiring in their brains is more flexible than that in adults, meaning they are more able to learn new skills.

Led by Takao Hensch, professor of neurology and molecular and cellular biology, and funded by a $9 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), a group of Harvard researchers from the Harvard Center for Brain Science (CBS) and the departments of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Chemistry and Chemical Biology is working to map how that brain wiring takes place in an effort to pinpoint the causes of — and potential treatments for — schizophrenia, autism, and a host of other disorders.

The work — aimed at giving scientists a first-of-its-kind look at how the brain’s wiring is created, how it may go awry, and how it might be corrected — will take advantage of Harvard’s wide range of specialists.

“I would not have pursued this work if it weren’t for the unique environment,” Hensch said. “I came to Harvard because I wanted to work with the exceptional investigators that are here. This research represents a dovetailing of our interests — an unusual opportunity where these cutting-edge methods are assembled in one place at one time — something that could only be found here.”

Although he’s been researching the role critical periods play in brain wiring for nearly two decades, Hensch said technology now exists that will allow scientists to answer a question that has thus far eluded them: Exactly what is happening in the brain during this re-wiring process?

To answer that question, Hensch will focus on a single type of cell, the parvalbumin (PV)-positive GABA neuron, in the brains of mice. Though relatively sparse, the neurons are believed to play a key role in triggering the start of critical periods early in life. Impairment of the normal development and function of these cells can contribute to a variety of mental disorders, including autism and schizophrenia.

To get the up-close-and-personal view of the neurons needed for deeper insight, Hensch will collaborate with a number of colleagues, including Catherine Dulac, chair of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Higgins Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology.

In earlier research, Dulac identified as many as 1,300 genes affected by “genomic imprinting” — the phenomenon of a gene having different levels of expression depending on whether it was inherited from the father or mother — many of which appear to be linked to autism and other mental disorders.

Understanding the precise role those imprinted genes play in brain development, however, is tricky. The brain contains dozens of cell types, including many different types of neurons. To study the entire brain, or even a single region, would require sifting through a vast amount of data in search of the few truly important results.  What was needed, Dulac said, was a focus on a single, critical cell type.

“As it turned out, Takao was working on this very interesting population of neurons, and he has demonstrated that the maturation of this cell type is particularly important, because abnormal development can lead to mental disorders,” Dulac said.

Using lab mice, Dulac will alter those imprinted genes and study how the changes affect brain development and the incidence of mental disorders.

To understand how those genetic changes alter the brain’s wiring, Hensch turned to Jeff Lichtman, Jeremy R. Knowles Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, and his “Brainbow” imaging technique. By tagging cells with fluorescent colors, the technique allows researchers to map the thousands of connections to and from each neuron. Lichtman is also developing a new electron microscopy method that will greatly speed the ability to draw detailed neuronal maps.

“What we are trying to do with this work is to better understand the way the central nervous system is organized,” Lichtman said. “We want to learn about the basic organization of these cells from a physiological, anatomical, and genetic perspective, and then compare normal and disordered brains to see if there is a difference.”

Also involved in the imaging is Xiaowei Zhuang, professor of physics and chemistry and chemical biology, who created STORM, a super high-resolution system of optical microscopy. Using the two imaging techniques, researchers will be able to study images of individual neurons, and see for the first time how the brain’s wiring changes in response to genetic alterations.

“We look forward to collaborating with Takao and applying new imaging capabilities to the study of parvalbumin-positive neurons and mental illnesses related to them,” Zhuang said. “This work provides an excellent opportunity for a number of exciting collaborations.”

Rounding out the team involved in the research is James Cuff, director of Research Computing for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, who will help oversee efforts to process the vast amounts of data that will emerge from the project.

The result of work to study the genetics of the cells, visualizing their connections, and ultimately capturing the functionality of individual neurons, Hensch said, should be an understanding of how brains become incorrectly wired, and the development of therapies to reverse the damage.

“It’s a bit down the road, but we are optimistic that focusing on these cells will have an immediate payoff,” he said. “If we know how a cell’s connectivity starts out, and how it is supposed to end up, we can look at the disease model and trace it back to see where things went awry and how we might fix it.”

The grant also requires that researchers make a commitment to training the next generation of mental health researchers by involving students at many levels — even high school students – in the project. Building awareness of mental illness throughout the community is another aspect of the grant, one Hensch fulfills through his work with Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child.

“I’ve been fortunate to be part of the center, which brings together people from all the Schools to look at early childhood as both a window of opportunity as well as vulnerability,” Hensch said.

“I am convinced, as Takao is, that the development of an animal is a critical time for its brain,” Lichtman said. “In humans, it’s even more critical, because more than any animal our behavior is related to what we’ve learned. It’s a pretty safe bet that the thing that is changed by experience is the wiring diagram.

“If these were simple problems, we would already have solutions to most of the abnormalities of the brain,” he continued. “The fact that we have solutions to virtually none of them suggests how difficult this is.”

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"Neurons in youth." November 18th, 2011. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-neurons-youth.html

 

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Scientists harness the power of electricity in the brain

(Medical Xpress) -- A paralyzed patient may someday be able to "think" a foot into flexing or a leg into moving, using technology that harnesses the power of electricity in the brain, and scientists at University of Michigan School of Kinesiology are now one big step closer.

Researchers at the school and colleagues from the Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego have developed technology that for the first time allows doctors and scientists to noninvasively isolate and measure electrical brain activity in moving people.

This technology is a key component of the kind of brain-computer interfaces that would allow a robotic exoskeleton controlled by a patient's thoughts to move that patient's limb, said Daniel Ferris, associate professor in the School of Kinesiology and author of a trio of papers detailing the research.

"Of course that is not going to happen soon but a step toward being able to do that is the ability to record brain waves while somebody is moving around," said Joe Gwin, first author on the papers and a graduate research fellow in the School of Kinesiology and the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Using this technology, scientists can show which parts of the brain are activated and precisely when they are activated as subjects move in a natural environment. For example, when we walk signals originate in specific parts of the brain as messages travel from the brain to the muscles. When scientists understand where in the brain impulses occur, they can use that geographic information for many different applications. Previously, scientists could only measure electrical brain activity on non-moving patients.

Ferris likens isolating this brain electrical activity to putting a microphone in the middle of a symphony to discern only certain instruments in certain areas, say the oboe in the first chair, or the violin. As in an orchestra, there are many noisemakers in the brain producing excess electrical activity, or noise. Even the electrode itself produces noise when it moves relative to its source.

Researchers identified the brain activity they wanted to measure by attaching dozens of sensors to a subject who was either walking or running on a treadmill. They then used an MRI-based model of the head to figure out where in the brain that electrical activity originated. In this way, scientists could localize the sources of the brain activity they were interested in and ignore the rest of the activity if it did not originate in the brain.

Ferris, who also has an appointment in biomedical engineering, said there are a couple reasons scientists can do this type of measuring now when it wasn't possible even a few years ago. Colleagues at the Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience devised the computational tools to do the measuring noninvasively in seated individuals, and without those tools the measuring would have been impossible. The two research groups then pushed farther and tried the measuring in walking and running subjects.

Also, electrodes have gotten more sensitive and have a better signal to noise ratio, he said.

The military is also interested in this type of technology, which could be used to optimize soldier performance by monitoring the brain activity of soldiers in the field to know when soldiers are performing at their peak. It could also help the military understand how information can be best presented and handled by soldiers.

In fact, any industry or organization interested in understanding how the brain and body interact could benefit from knowing how the brain functions during a given task.

"We could image the brains of patients with various different types of neurological disorders, and we could potentially target rehabilitation to subsets of patients that show similar symptoms," Gwin said. "If we could image the brain while going through some of this rehabilitation we could design the treatments better."

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Synaesthesia linked to a hyper-excitable brain

 
Applying tiny electric currents across the visual brain altered the experience of synaesthesia.

(Medical Xpress) -- ‘Hyper-excitability’ in regions of the brain may underlie synaesthesia, an unusual condition where some people experience a ‘blending of the senses’, Oxford University researchers suggest.

The neuroscientists used some of the latest brain stimulation techniques with people who ‘see’ colours when reading numbers or words, a common form of the condition called ‘grapheme-color synaesthesia’.

They investigated activity in the visual-processing part of their brain, and compared it against the brain activity seen in a control group of people without synaesthesia.

They found that people with this type of synaesthesia had a higher level of ‘excitability’ in their primary visual cortex. It took much less stimulation for neurons in this part of the brain to fire.

The researchers also showed that changing the excitability, making it harder or easier for the neurons to fire, could increase or lessen the effects of the synaesthesia.

"The hyperexcitability of the visual area may underlie synaesthesia in people who experience colours triggered by words or numbers," says Dr. Devin Terhune, first author on the Oxford University study. "This new finding challenges previous theories to explain the condition. The magnitude of the difference is extremely large. This is a fundamental difference in the brains of synaesthetes that may relate to the development of their synaesthesia," he adds.

The study is published in the journal Current Biology and was funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Cogito Foundation.

People experience synaesthesia in a variety of ways. Some people may ‘see’ sounds, in that hearing sounds triggers them to see particular colours at the same time. Others might experience colours while reading simple black text. Some estimates suggest that synaesthesia affects perhaps as much as 4% of the population.

This ‘blending of the senses’ is automatic and involuntary. Whether it is a sound, or number, or taste that triggers the experience of another sense, the connections are always the same. In the case of grapheme-colour synaesthesia, particular letters, numbers or words will always stimulate precisely the same colors.

"We tend to assume that we experience the world in the same way as everyone else. Synaesthesia is a compelling example of how some people perceive the world in a fundamentally different way," says Dr. Terhune.

Dr. Roi Cohen Kadosh of the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University, who headed the research group, added: "Studying synaesthesia can tell us about how the brain develops, how perceptions and cognitions become automatic. It gives us an insight into the brain processes underlying conscious awareness."

The research team used two brain stimulation techniques that are non-invasive, using devices placed on the outside of the head to apply either very weak magnetic fields or tiny electric currents to specific parts of the brain. They are research tools, known to be safe, and designed to be just strong enough to temporarily influence neural activity in that part of the brain and see what effect this has on brain processes.

The first test used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), in which a weak magnetic field was used to stimulate neurons to fire in the main visual-processing region of the brain, the primary visual cortex.

The researchers measured the stimulation necessary for the study volunteers to experience streaks of light in their vision, much like the after-images seen after looking at a bright light.

Every person has a different threshold necessary for neurons to fire. But the five people in the study with grapheme-colour synaesthesia only needed tiny amounts of stimulation in comparison to those without synaesthesia.

This result was only found in the visual area of the brain. The same test on the volunteers’ motor cortex showed no differences between those with synaesthesia and the control group.

"This propensity for the neurons to fire in the visual area of the brain shows this region may be more sensitive, more excitable in those with this form of synaesthesia," explains Dr. Terhune.

The researchers then used a second technique called transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS) to see whether this hyperexcitability was related to the experience of synaesthesia in the five volunteers.

The approach applies a very small electric current across regions of the brain to change the threshold for neurons to fire. Applying the current in one direction makes it harder for them to fire, while applying it in the other direction makes it easier.

The researchers found that turning the excitability up or down in the primary visual cortex led the five synaesthetes to have a stronger experience of colours connected with words or numbers, or would diminish or eliminate it entirely.

"It may be that we become aware of things because our neurons pass a certain threshold. In synaesthesia this appears to be the case. With a lower threshold for hyperexcitable neurons, it’s easier for neurons to fire and this accesses the conscious experience of color," says Dr. Cohen Kadosh.

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Is there a hidden bias against creativity?

CEOs, teachers, and leaders claim they want creative ideas to solve problems. But creative ideas are rejected all the time. A new study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that people have a hidden bias against creativity. We claim to like creativity, but when we’re feeling uncertain and anxious—just the way you might feel when you’re trying to come up with a creative solution to a problem—we cannot recognize the creative ideas we so desire.

Generally, people think creativity is good. Before starting this study, the researchers checked that with a group of college students. “Overwhelmingly, the data showed that students had positive implicit and explicit associations with creativity,” says Jennifer Mueller of the University of Pennsylvania. She carried out the new study with Shimul Melwani of the University of Pennsylvania and Jack A. Goncalo of Cornell University.

But in experiments, people’s perceptions changed. In one experiment, the researchers made some people think about uncertainty—by telling them they might get some extra money after the study based on a random lottery. Other participants went into the study without that priming. They were all given a test that shows how they group concepts together. The people who had been made to think about uncertainty were more likely to subconsciously associate words like “creative,” “inventive,” and “original” with bad concepts like “hell,” “rotten,” and “poison.” In the other condition people associated creativity words with things like “rainbow,” “cake,” and “sunshine.”

“If I ask you right now to estimate whether or not you can generate a creative idea to solve a problem, you’re not going to know,” Mueller says. That feeling of uncertainty might be the root of the problem. When you’re trying to come up with a creative solution to a problem, you worry that you can’t come up with a good idea, that what you do come up with might not be practical, or that your idea might make you look stupid. “It feels so bad sometimes trying to be creative in a social context,” Mueller says.

This uncertainty may make leaders reject creative ideas. “But sometimes we need creative ideas. If you’re a company that makes radios and suddenly nobody’s buying them anymore, you don’t have a choice,” Mueller says—you have to come up with something new. Her research suggests that rather than focusing on the process of coming up with ideas, companies may need to pay more attention to what makes them reject creative ideas.

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Retraining the brain -- All is not lost, despite aging, injuries, or mental illness

Adam Gazzaley, MD, PhD

(Medical Xpress) -- Our mature brains may not be so old and inflexible after all. Scientists are discovering that the human brain can improve its performance to counter the consequences of cognitive impairment and even the trauma of stroke-induced brain damage.

To help celebrate the first, Bay Area Science Festival, which concluded on Nov. 6, UCSF hosted lunchtime panel discussions on science topics, including a panel on “Retraining the Brain.”

UCSF neuroscientists described research that shows how even mature human brains can significantly adapt to counter aging, traumatic injury and even the disruptive impact of complex developmental diseases such as schizophrenia.

Using some the latest technologies for monitoring brain activity and signaling within neural circuitry, these UCSF researchers are demonstrating how brain activity changes with training exercises and learning games. They are discovering that the brain essentially alters the strength of its signaling within and across critical brain regions as we adapt to improve our functioning in response to new patterns of stimuli.

David Ewing Duncan, best-selling author and chief correspondent of the public radio program Biotech Nation, moderated the discussion, which included Adam Gazzaley, MD, PhD, the founding director of the Neuroscience Imaging Center at UCSF; Sri Nagarajan, PhD, a UCSF brain imaging researcher who study brain changes in disease and development; and Philip Sabes, PhD, who studies how the brain processes information to plan movements.

These scientists conceptualize and evaluate models to describe how the brain works, which helps them to move toward a better understanding. But modeling still cannot answer all the questions researchers have nor adequately explain the results of all the experiments they are conducting. In painting a picture of the brain, panelists said, researchers are at the “crayon and colored pencil” stage.

Better Artificial Limbs

Sabes ultimately wants to send coordinated signals into the neural circuitry within the brain to remodel the normal patterns of signaling that are impaired in people who have experienced traumatic injuries such as a major stroke or the loss of a limb. He is investigating signals that can be used to excite cells in the brain in the absence of their usual stimuli.

The propagation of electrical signals within a nerve cell depends on gated channels that open and close to control the flow of electrically charged, small molecules into and out of the cell. Experiments show that it is possible to introduce new genes into cells so that they make gated ion channels that respond to light. This is one strategy that Sabes and other neuroscientists are investigating as they explore how to get information sensed by engineered devices into the brain in a form that allows for normal processing and responses. “The potential is enormous, but right now this is all experimental,” Sabes said.

Most of us gauge where our body parts are at any moment not only by sight but also by feel — our sense of proprioception. But patterns of signaling and information processing in the brain not only are flexible, but also in some cases can be reshaped very quickly. Experiments in which people reach for objects while wearing prism glasses that distort the appearance of where objects are located in space show that the initially confused brain quickly adapts, so that the hand again touches the object as visual perception adjusts. “What we see is something that reflects a merging of what is actually out there in the world and what we expect to see,” Sabes said.

Sabes is able to track the activity of nerve cells on a very small scale across multiple brain structures. With new technologies researchers no longer are constrained to measure signaling from one neuron at a time. “Now we can record from 300 electrodes at one time,” Sabes said.

Memory and Cognition — Attention Matters, and Reliability Matters

If you want to perform a task well, multi-tasking might be the wrong approach, Gazzaley’s research seems to suggest. Especially among older adults — either because they are not as accustomed to multi-tasking, or because older, aging brains become worse at it, refocusing on the task at hand after shifting one’s attention is problematic. Gazzaley determined this experimentally by tracking participants’ errors in recalling information that was presented before the distractions occurred. Gazzaley is using functional magnetic resonance imaging to observe activity in different brain regions as research subjects of varying ages are presented with information and try to recall it after being interrupted.

Gazzaley thinks the distractibility and the faltering of our ability to recall information as we age may be analogous to the disruption of a clear signal by noise. He aims to improve the strength of the fundamental part of the signals traveling within the brain through training and practice. A system such as the brain, Gazzaley said, “might have noise in it at a very fundamental level. If you don’t get a great signal in, you’re not likely to remember well.”

Gazzaley is using cognitive training and video games in an effort to improve performance not only on game-related tasks but also to improve cognition more generally.

Schizophrenia — Improvements through Training Games

When it comes to retraining the brain, Nagarajan said, “There is a fine balance between stability and flexibility. Our world is stable, yet we are flexible.”

Nagarajan is studying the brain in schizophrenia in collaboration with San Francisco VA Medical Center psychiatrist and UCSF faculty member Sophia Vinogradov, MD. While other symptoms may be more apparent, people with schizophrenia also have diminished cognitive functioning, including a diminished ability to process verbal and other auditory information normally, Nagarajan said.

To try and improve cognitive performance and auditory processing among patients with stable, medically treated schizophrenia, Nagarajan and Vinogradov are using learning games made by Posit Science, a company co-founded by UCSF professor emeritus Michael Merzenich, a pioneer in studies of brain plasticity. Participants’ skills improved after eight weeks of training. In addition, Nagarajan side, specific cortical areas in their brains became more active, in a pattern more closely resembles the normal brain.

Provided by University of California, San Francisco

"Retraining the brain -- All is not lost, despite aging, injuries, or mental illness." November 18th, 2011. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-retraining-brain-lost-aging.html

 

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek