Seeing Beyond the Visual Cortex

(Medical Xpress) -- It's a chilling thought--losing the sense of sight because of severe injury or damage to the brain's visual cortex. But, is it possible to train a damaged or injured brain to "see" again after such a catastrophic injury? Yes, according to Tony Ro, a neuroscientist at the City College of New York, who is artificially recreating a condition called blindsight in his lab.

"Blindsight is a condition that some patients experience after having damage to the primary visual cortex in the back of their brains. What happens in these patients is they go cortically blind, yet they can still discriminate visual information, albeit without any awareness." explains Ro.

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While no one is ever going to say blindsight is 20/20, Ro says it holds tantalizing clues to the architecture of the brain. "There are a lot of areas in the brain that are involved with processing visual information, but without any visual awareness." he points out. "These other parts of the brain receive input from the eyes, but they're not allowing us to access it consciously."

With support from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences, Ro is developing a clearer picture of how other parts of the brain, besides the visual cortex, respond to visual stimuli.

In order to recreate blindsight, Ro must find a volunteer who is willing to temporarily be blinded by having a powerful magnetic pulse shot right into their visual cortex. The magnetic blast disables the visual cortex and blinds the person for a split second. "That blindness occurs very shortly and very rapidly--on the order of one twentieth of a second or so," says Ro.

On the day of Science Nation's visit to Ro's lab in the Hamilton Heights section of Manhattan, volunteer Lei Ai is seated in a small booth in front of a computer with instructions to keep his eyes on the screen. A round device is placed on the back of Ai's head. Then, the booth is filled with the sound of consistent clicks, about two seconds apart. Each click is a magnetic pulse disrupting the activity in his visual cortex, blinding him. Just as the pulse blinds him, a shape, such as a diamond or a square, flashes onto a computer screen in front of him.

Ro says that 60 to nearly 100 percent of the time, test subjects report back the shape correctly. "They'll be significantly above chance levels at discriminating those shapes, even though they're unaware of them. Sometimes they're nearly perfect at it," he adds.

Ro observes what happens to other areas of Ai's brain during the instant he is blinded and a shape is flashed on the screen. While the blindness wears off immediately with no lasting effects, according to Ro, the findings are telling. "There are likely to be a lot of alternative visual pathways that go into the brain from our eyes that process information at unconscious levels," he says.

Ro believes understanding and mapping those alternative pathways might be the key to new rehabilitative therapies. "We have a lot of soldiers returning home who have a lot of brain damage to visual areas of the brain. We might be able to rehabilitate these patients," he says. And that's something worth looking into.

Provided by National Science Foundation

"Seeing Beyond the Visual Cortex." April 3rd, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-visual-cortex.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Soft drinks harm future health

THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

Scientists can already see damage in the eyes of children who have been drinking fizzy drinks and eating too many carbohydrates. In a world-first study, researchers from Westmead Millennium Institute for Medical Research, the University of Sydney, have found that 12-year-olds who drink one or more fizzy drinks or cordial a day had narrower arteries in the back of their eyes. This increases their chances of heart disease and high blood pressure in later life. By examining the back of the eyes researchers can see the health of a person's blood vessel system. The study looked at around two thousand 12-year-old children in 21 high schools in Sydney, and is an extension of a study that last year found similar damage to children who watch too much television. The damage does not affect their vision. "Children with a high consumption of soft drinks and carbohydrates had a more adverse microvascular profile compared to those who did not drink so many soft drinks or eat so many carbs," said Dr Bamini Gopinath, lead author and senior research fellow at the Centre for Vision Research at Westmead Millennium Institute. "We measured their total carbohydrate intake over the whole day from things like bread, rice and pasta." Retinal microvascular diameter is a potential marker for future cardiovascular disease and high blood pressure in adults, but this is the first study to show that the effect of carbohydrates and fizzy drinks in childhood is linked to a narrowing of the vessels in the retina. Dr Gopinath said she would be very interested to see whether the damage persisted, once data from the follow-up study on the same children at age 17 was analysed. Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.

Early life emotional trauma may stunt intellectual development

Early life emotional trauma may stunt intellectual development, indicates the first long term study of its kind, published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

The impact seems to be the most damaging during the first two years of a child's life, the findings suggest.

The US researchers tracked the development of 206 children from birth to the age of eight years, who were taking part in the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. This study, which started in 1975, looks at which factors influence individual development.

Every few months they assessed the participating families, using a mix of observing mother-child interactions at home and in the laboratory, interviews with the mother, and reviews of medical and child protection records.

From these data, they rated whether a child was abused physically, sexually or emotionally; endured neglect; or witnessed partner violence against his/her mother at specific time points up to the age of 5+ years.

The children's intellectual development was then assessed using validated scales at the ages of two years, 5+ years, and 8 years, and exposure to maltreatment or violence was categorised according to whether these occurred during infancy (0-24 months) or pre-school (24-64 months).

Around one in three of the children (36.5%) had been maltreated and/or witnessed violence against his/her mother by age 5+.

In just under one in 20 (4.8%) this occurred in infancy; in 13% this was during the pre-school period; and in around one in five (18.7%) this occurred during both periods.

Analysis of the data showed that children who had been exposed to maltreatment and/or violence against the mother had lower scores on the cognitive measures at all time points.

The results held true even after taking account of factors likely to influence IQ development, such as social and economic factors, mother's IQ, weight at birth, birth complications, quality of intellectual stimulation at home, and gender.

The effects were most noticeable for those children who had experienced this type of trauma during the first two years of their lives, the findings showed.

Their scores were an average of 7.25 points lower than those of children without early exposure, even after accounting for other risk factors.

"The results suggest that [maltreatment and witnessing domestic violence] in early childhood, particularly during the first two years, has significant and enduring effects on cognitive development, even after adjusting for [other risk factors]," write the authors.

They go on to say that their findings echo those of other researchers who have identified changes in brain circuitry and structure associated with trauma and adversity in early life.

The early years of a child's life are when the brain is developing most rapidly, they say, adding, "Because early brain organisation frames later neurological development, changes in early development may have lifelong consequences."

Provided by British Medical Journal

"Early life emotional trauma may stunt intellectual development." April 2nd, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-early-life-emotional-trauma-stunt.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Ultra-small laser developed

THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

This is the first time scientists have been able to create a laser that can pulse at very high and flexible repetition rates. Image: nelic/iStockphoto Computing and medicine are among the many fields which could be revolutionised by a new form of ultra-small laser. The innovation was created by an international team of scientists, including Dr David Moss, from the University of Sydney’s School of Physics. Featured on the front cover of the prestigious journal Nature Communications on 4 April, it is the first laser to be mode-locked making it highly precise, ultra-fast and ultra-small. “Our new laser opens up a whole field of possibilities in terms of high precision, ultra-small, integrated lasers,” said Dr Moss, who is based at CUDOS – the ARC Centre of Excellence for Ultrahigh Bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems – and the Institute of Photonics and Optical Science at the University of Sydney. “It’s the first time we’ve been able to use a micro-cavity resonator to lock the modes of a laser, which is how ultra-short pulsed lasers are created. Lasers that have their modes locked generate the shortest optical pulses of light,” explained Dr Moss. Making lasers that can pulse at very high and flexible repetition rates – much higher than those achieved with electronics – is a field that has been pursued by scientists around the world. Different research groups have proposed a variety of solutions to creating these lasers, but this is the first success.  “Our new laser achieves extremely stable operation at unprecedentedly high repetition rates of 200 Gigahertz, while maintaining very narrow linewidths, which leads to an extremely high quality pulsed emission,” said Dr Moss. The team Dr Moss worked with included scientists from Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique in Canada, the Istituto per i Processi Chimico-Fisici part of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche in Italy and Infinera Ltd in the USA. “As well as being ultra small this new laser is versatile, stable and efficient which offers many exciting applications in a huge range of areas.” “It will have applications in computing, measuring and diagnosing diseases, and processing materials – all areas where lasers are already used. It will also open up entirely new areas such as precision optical clocks for applications in metrology, ultra-high speed telecommunications, microchip-computing and many other areas.”  This work by Dr Moss on the new laser continues his success in computing innovation, for which he won the 2011 Australian Museum Eureka Prize for Innovation in Computer Science. Editor's Note: Original news release will be available here. The journal article is available here.

Brain nerves line up neatly

Imaging study finds neural connections form regular grid.

Helen Shen

 

 

A regular grid of nerve fibres could aid learning and repair in the brain.

MGH-UCLA Human Connectome Project

The nerves in a human brain form a three-dimensional grid of criss-crossing fibres, say researchers who have mapped them.

The regular pattern creates a scaffold to guide brain development and support more complex and variable brain structures, says Van Wedeen, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “The grid structure, by dint of its simplicity and symmetry under deformation, allows for continuous re-wiring,” he says.

The grid is part of the brain's white matter: bundles of nerve fibres, or axons, that allow different brain regions to communicate and coordinate with one another. It was a surprise to find that these bundles form a regular network, rather than a jumbled mass, says Wedeen.

The researchers imaged cubes of the brain a couple of millimetres across in living humans and half a millimetre across in dead animals from four other primate species. They used a technique called diffusion spectrum magnetic resonance imaging, which traces the path of axons by analysing the flow of water through the brain. The results are published in Science today¹.

In all the species studied, bundles of axons crossed the brain in a regular pattern. On a small scale, they run at right angles to one another, from front to back, left to right and top to bottom. On a larger scale, they form curved, meshed sheets.

Wedeen thinks that chemical signals guide axon growth during brain development, creating grids that bend into place as the brain matures and folds. The structure's regularity may aid learning and recovery from injury, he says.

The orthogonal arrangement of nerve fibres in the brain has been noticed before, comments Pratik Mukherjee, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco. “The contribution of this paper is that they looked at it more comprehensively and systematically,” he says.

Primitive pattern

The grids were most regular in deep brain structures, including neural pathways involved in emotion and memory. Wedeen speculates that this pattern represents a bare-bones wiring plan, which becomes more branched and convoluted in the overlying cortex of higher primates, associated with complex behaviours such as language and fine motor skills.

On a large scale, the brain probably is organized like this, agrees David Van Essen, a neurobiologist at Washington University in St. Louis. However, he thinks that the analysis probably underestimates the number of axon bundles that run at oblique angles to the grid, and which are outside the grid altogether.

Irregular wiring is probably especially common near the grey matter at the brain's surface, where the tissue wrinkles and folds. “The story is on more solid ground the deeper [into the brain] you get,” says Van Essen.

David Kleinfeld, a neurophysicist at the University of California, San Diego, says that the findings are an exciting first step. But he adds that the researchers need to verify the grid-like architecture through tissue staining and three-dimensional reconstructions of small brain samples.

Owing to technical limitations, the study was able to resolve a grid-like structure in only about one-quarter of the human brain, mostly in deep brain structures. Wedeen is currently using more sensitive imaging techniques to search for grids in the more geometrically complex regions of the human cortex, as part of the US National Institutes of Health's Human Connectome Project, which aims to map all the brain's wiring and its relation to mental health.

Eventually, imaging the development of the white-matter network in children could provide insight into neurological conditions thought to involve miswiring, such as autism.

“The functional significance of this is an open question,” says Wedeen, “but I find it hard to believe that it doesn’t have an answer.”

Nature

doi :10.1038/nature.2012.10357

References

1. Wedeen, V. J., et al. Science 355, 1628–1634 (2012).

Source: Nature
http://www.nature.com/news/brain-nerves-line-up-neatly-1.10357?WT.ec_id=NEWS-20120403

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Running Like a Child

“He is looking at the many mountains, vines, rivers and ponds on the way. As part of His childish play, He is running after birds and trying to stop deer.” (Janaki Mangala, 33) thgara tarū beli sarita sara bipula bilokahiṃ | dhāvahiṃ bāla subhāya bihaga mṛga rokahiṃ || Travelling in the forest, the young son of King Dasharatha is having a good time, as any child close to twelve years of age would want. Seeing the birds and tigers, He is trying to catch them, and gazing at the beautiful surroundings, the origin of all life and matter is appreciating His marvelous abilities. At the same time, the boy’s younger brother Lakshmana is accompanying Him, and they are guarded by Vishvamitra, the pious muni. This combination of characters makes for a delightful scene, one which can be contemplated upon again and again. Why was Lord Rama chasing after birds and trying to stop deer? As the father of the creation, all creatures come from Him. It is not that the intelligent species who can understand God slightly through the good fortune of meeting a spiritual master are the only candidates for the Lord’s mercy in the form of His personal association. Even the less intelligent deer, who run out into the road and get mesmerized by the headlights of an oncoming automobile, can delight in seeing Rama’s countenance. When God chases after them, tries to stop them, or shows any attention to them at all, how could they not feel pleasure? Animals have souls? They most certainly do. In fact, all forms of life have the same quality of spirit residing within them. The outer forms may not always have the same appearance, but the makeup of the spirit soul, the spark of life, in the individuals is not different. This shouldn’t be that difficult to understand. A spirit soul resides in a body so helpless that it requires diapers and then stays within that body until it is old enough to drive a car, go to work, and produce offspring. The soul is the constant; it does not move or change in quality. Take the same principle and apply it to every single species and you get the vision known as Brahman realization. Brahman is pure spirit. It is not affected by the changes to the external features. Just as when we might be angry one day and sad another our identity doesn’t change, just because one soul is in the body of a deer and another in the enlightened human being doesn’t mean that there is any distinction in the end. If you gather together every instance of spirit and put it into one collection for observational purposes, you get the concept of Brahman. Obviously, acquiring the Brahman vision is very difficult. The principles of a bona fide religion are meant to bring about the realization of Brahman. In the Vedas, the oldest system of spirituality in existence, strict austerity and dedicated sacrifice coupled with instruction from a spiritual master at a young age sets up the necessary conditions for attaining the enlightened vision of seeing all spirit souls as equal. Yet the vision doesn’t represent the end point, as was proven by Vishvamitra Muni. On the surface Vishvamitra, the son of Gadhi, was a brahmana practicing the principles of the Vedas aimed at seeing all living beings as equal. At the same time, he knew that there was one spiritual force which was superior, which was the source of Brahman. That singular entity, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, happened to appear in the pious Raghu dynasty as the son of King Dasharatha. Known by the name of Rama, this incarnation of the Supreme Lord was loved and adored by all the members of His family, including His three younger brothers: Bharata, Lakshmana and Shatrughna. It was Rama and Lakshmana playfully travelling with Vishvamitra in the forests because the sage was being harassed by night-rangers looking to disrupt the religious practices of the ascetics avowed to following their occupational duties. While all living entities are the same constitutionally, realization of that fact and the connection with the Supreme Lord can only take place through dedication in yoga. Yoga means to link up the individual soul with the Supreme Soul, God’s expansion residing within the heart. Yet not all kinds of yoga are the same, though unknowing mental speculators and unauthorized commentators may say otherwise. Through his dedicated practice of asceticism, Vishvamitra was also a yogi, following meditation and also the route of karma, or action, with detachment. Yet his real business was bhakti-yoga, or divine love. If this were not the case, Shri Rama would never have accompanied Him in the forest. To understand why, think of who the people are with whom you currently associate. Are they friends or enemies? Do you purposefully go out of your way to hang around people who hate you? Better yet, do you cherish the association of someone who pretends that you don’t even exist? With the paths of impersonal study of Vedanta, fruitive work with the results renounced, and meditational yoga, the Supreme Lord in His blissful features, the sach-chid-ananda vigraha, is not acknowledged. Therefore, by definition how can anyone following these paths bask in Rama’s company, gaining His divine vision? Not that these paths are illegitimate, for they are mentioned in shastra for a reason. It takes the conditioned soul many lifetimes just to attempt to adopt an authorized system of spirituality in earnest. Therefore those who don’t take to the path of bhakti are not shut out immediately; they are given the chance to progress through other, more difficult paths. Only in bhakti-yoga, the linking of the soul with God through acts of love, can one hear about and relish the activities of the Supreme Lord Rama travelling through the forests with Vishvamitra and Lakshmana. The impersonalist can hear the same above referenced passage from the Janaki Mangala and not get any delight from it. Using only mental speculation and knowledge limited by time, space and logic, the philosopher may think that Rama was foolish for chasing after birds and stopping deer. “Also, why did the mountains, lakes, rivers and vines need to be appreciated? These are all objects of maya, or illusion. The birds are just spirit souls, part of the Brahman energy, so why the need to pay them any attention? Shouldn’t Rama have just sat back and stayed renounced?” The Supreme Lord is always in ananda, or bliss. He derives this pleasure in whichever manner He sees fit, but at the core of any real pleasure is the exchange of emotion. In order for there to be an exchange, there must be more than one party. With the birds and deer, Shri Rama was having a good time with His parts and parcels, spirit souls who would appreciate His appearance. The animals enjoy God’s personal presence, at any time and at any place. It is said that the same Shri Rama, when appearing on earth as the preacher incarnation named Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, would get even the tigers to dance along to the chanting of the holy names, “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare”. Shri Rama as Govinda, one who gives pleasure to the cows and to the senses, was loved and adored by all the animals in Vrindavana. The lower species worship God in the mood of devotion called shanta-rasa, wherein they can’t directly offer obeisances. This mood is known as neutrality, but it is still part of devotion because love for God is present. Shri Rama always plays the part perfectly. Younger children are more energetic and difficult to restrain when let out into the open. A young child doesn’t require a television set or a video game console to be entertained. Simply by running in a field, seeing nature’s creation, a young child can find endless opportunities for excitement, avoiding boredom throughout. Shri Krishna and Balarama used to go out daily with their friends to play and they had such a good time that the dear mother Yashoda had to repeatedly call them to come home and eat. Shri Rama similarly enjoyed travelling through the forests with Lakshmana, staying under the care of Vishvamitra. Ironically enough, the guru had specifically requested Rama’s company for the purposes of protection. Rama and Lakshmana were trained from childhood to be military fighters, and due to their divine natures, they were already expert at fighting at a young age. The most hideous creatures had been attacking the sages in the forests, so Vishvamitra knew that Rama and Lakshmana were the only ones capable of defeating these enemies and eliminating their influence. As the Supreme Lord is Absolute, His fighting and His playing serve the same purpose. He fights with the enemies to protect the innocent and give them pleasure, and He plays with the deer and birds in the forest to enjoy their company. Thanks to the saints like Tulsidas who record these adventures in poetry format, any person can bask in the same sweetness by regularly hearing about the Lord’s activities. Vishvamitra certainly was delighted to have Rama with him, as was the entire population of creatures who called the remote wilderness their home. In Closing: The birds in the wilderness He did chase, Giving them chance to see His beautiful face. As part of His childish play, Rama tries to stop deer in their way. As the brothers with Vishvamitra move along, The rivers, mountains and ponds they gaze upon. Thinking of this scene for mind pleasurable, Rama’s play with His brother for sage delightful. Creatures of this world deserve God’s association, They are souls too, devotees by constitution.

"Shirdi Sai and Tirupati Balaji Earns CRORE" during Ram Navami-TV9

Stimulating the brain to improve speech, memory, numerical abilities

One of the most frustrating challenges for some stroke patients can be the inability to find and speak words even if they know what they want to say. Speech therapy is laborious and can take months. New research is seeking to cut that time significantly, with the help of non-invasive brain stimulation.

"Non-invasive brain stimulation can allow painless, inexpensive, and apparently safe method for cognitive improvement with with potential long term efficacy," says Roi Cohen Kadosh of the University of Oxford. Recent results, presented this week at a meeting of cognitive neuroscientists in Chicago, offer exciting possibilities for improving variety of abilities – from speech to memory to numerical proficiency.

A focus of many of these studies is tDCS – transcranial direct current stimulation. In tDCS, researchers apply weak electrical currents to the head via electrodes for a short period of time, for example 20 minutes. The currents pass through the skull and alter spontaneous neural activity. Some types of stimulation excite the neurons, while others suppress them. Subjects usually feel only a slight tingling for less than 30 seconds. The effects of tDCS can last for up to 12 months, Cohen Kadosh says, "most likely due to molecular and cellular changes that are important mechanisms implementing learning and memory."

Stimulating speech recovery

For Jenny Crinion of University College London, who is both a neuroscientist and clinical speech and language therapist, the interest in tDCS sprang from a desire to help stroke patients through their long recovery. While speech therapy works well at improving speech following aphasic stroke, it can be frustratingly slow. She hopes to pair brain-stimulation interventions with proven language-rehabilitation methods, Crinion says, "such that the same maximum recovery is ultimately achieved as with therapy alone but with fewer hours of rehab."

Crinion's current work focuses on understanding how tDCS affects the areas of the brain involved in speech production. She paired an fMRI picture-naming study with a 6-week-long tDCS and word-finding treatment study to see if brain stimulation could improve stroke patients' speech both immediately after treatment and three months later. In the picture-naming task, people were presented with pictures of simple, everyday words such as car and asked to name them as quickly and accurately as possible.

The results support other studies that tDCS can speed up word finding in both healthy older people and stroke patients, and are helping to identify which parts of the brain should be stimulated. "My work supports the idea that excitatory tDCS could be applied to the stroke hemisphere to optimize recovery," Crinion says. At the same time, she cautions, one type of treatment may not fit all patients, and further work will clarify whether some patients may also benefit from treatments targeted at the brain hemisphere not affected by stroke.

"What I've been most impressed by is how learning and, in the case of stroke patients, re-learning of language continues and the brain remains plastic, adapting and changing throughout our lifespan," Crinion says. "It is never too late to recover more and continue to improve with the right training."

Stimulating better memory

In a different set of experiments that look at the effects of brain stimulation on memory, Paulo Sérgio Boggio of Mackenzie Presbyterian University in São Paulo, Brazil, used tDCS to try to enhance the memory of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease patients. His work builds on research that showed that tDCS can enhance working memory in healthy subjects.

In his study of Alzheimer's patients, Boggio tested how many sessions of tDCS would lead to sustained improvements in memory and visual recognition. His team used five consecutive sessions of tDCS to excite two different areas of the brain involved in motor planning, organization, and regulation. Visual recognition increased by as much as 18% in the Alzheimer's patients, and the effects lasted a month. In a similar study with Parkinson's disease patients, tDCS improved memory by 20%.

"These studies demonstrate the potential of tDCS for memory improvement in elderly with Parkinson's or Alzheimer's disease and open a venue for future studies to examine the potential long-term effects," Boggio says. "It is important to understand that these tools are still on research level but at the same time are showing promising results with some advantages – low cost, simple to use, and reduced side-effects."

Stimulating numerical skills

Cohen Kadosh of the University of Oxford studied a very different application of tDCS – how to improve how people learn about numbers. Citing a recent study that found that approximately 20% of British adults have numeracy skills below the minimum requirement for being fully functional in the modern economy, Cohen Kadosh explains that there is currently no solution for low numerical abilities, aside from behavioral training. "I believe that this is an important problem with many implications for society," he says.

His studies have found that it is possible to enhance numerical abilities using tDCS applied to the part of the brain called the posterior parietal cortex. The observed improvements lasted up to 6 months after tDCS and were specific to the trained material.

Cohen Kadosh has also tested the effects of tDCS on people with low numerical abilities due to congenital factors – dyscalculia, the equivalent to dyslexia with numbers that affects about 5% of the population. For those individuals, tDCS was only effective if it targeted different regions of the brain than those in people without dyscalculia. "This suggests that people with dyscalculia recruit different brain areas for numerical processing, probably due to brain reorganization," he says.

Future studies are investigating the use of tDCS to improve mathematical learning in children with low numerical abilities. "Cumulatively, these experiments advance our understanding of how numerical abilities are sub-served in the typical and atypical brain, and provide a possible means to improve numerical cognition, thus having important implications for education, intervention, and rehabilitation."

The symposium "Using Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation to Enhance Cognitive and Motor Abilities in the Typical, Atypical, and Aging Brain" takes place on April 2, 2012, at the 19th annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS). More than 1400 scientists are attending the meeting in Chicago, IL, from March 31 to April 3, 2012.

Provided by Cognitive Neuroscience Society

"Stimulating the brain to improve speech, memory, numerical abilities." April 2nd, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-brain-speech-memory-numerical-abilities.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Carrier of the Holy Name

“Surely this Ashoka grove, which is filled with many trees, must be guarded by many Rakshasas, as it is carefully tended to and purified in every possible way. And the guards there must protect the trees, and the all-pervading deity, the wind, does not blow there.” (Hanuman, Valmiki Ramayana, Sundara Kand, 13.62-63) dhruvam tu rakṣo bahulā bhaviṣyati vana ākulā | aśoka vanikā cintyā sarva saṃskāra saṃskṛtā || rakṣiṇaḥ ca atra vihitā nūnam rakṣanti pādapān | bhagavān api sarva ātmā na atikṣobham pravāyati || Whether or not he did it intentionally, Ravana kept Sita Devi in a sacred place, one unlike any other inside of Lanka. While the rest of the town was adorned with gold, jewels and crystals, Sita’s surroundings were pristine, thoroughly cultivated, sacred and well-guarded. The trees were so aligned and protected that not even the wind could blow there violently. That being the case, how could the wind’s son, ShriHanuman, enter that place and find the most beautiful woman in the world, who was waiting for news of her husband, to know whether or not He was going to come and rescue her and whether He was feeling the pain of separation from her? Despite the impediments and the restriction placed on the wind, Rama’s messenger, Ramadutta, would find a crafty way to enter not only the Ashoka garden, but also Sita’s heart. Imagine being stuck in a place where you have nothing to do except count the seconds until the inevitable end of everything. Worse than being held in a prison, Sita was constantly harassed, day after day, by people ordered to make her stay in this grove a living hell. What had she done to deserve this? Up until this time she was respected by everyone. A man takes his pride from his manhood - his ability to protect his dependents, to brave through tough times and to show strength when it is difficult. A woman gets her standing from her chastity - the fact that she doesn’t give out her love easily. Take away a man’s manhood and you take away his essence, and take away a woman’s chastity and her reputation is ruined. Sita was known as the most chaste woman in the world; therefore she automatically earned the highest respect. Moreover, her husband was famous as the manliest fighter, a person capable of defending any person who sought His protection. He has actually maintained this characteristic since the beginning of time and still does to this day. The mere utterance of His name delivers countless more individuals than does His personal self. In fact, Sita’s ability to remain alive while held against her will in Lanka shows the power of the holy name. How does this work exactly? The Supreme Lord is known by His attributes; otherwise He is not distinguished from any other person. Since the entire creation falls under His purview, into the definition of “God”, it is tempting to think that God is attributeless. “He must be without a form because only those things which are subordinate to material nature undergo change. If God creates nature, He must not ever change. Therefore His form must be nonexistent, i.e. He must be formless.” This is surely one way to look at God. Take every single activity, motion of nature, event in life, and just abstract out to the largest scale and you get “the creation”. Since this giant neural network of cause and effect is guided by intelligence, there must be someone pushing the buttons, someone who is the source of that intelligence. Without knowing this person’s features, the abstract understanding remains the height of realization. The Vedas refer to the abstract, all-pervading Absolute Truth as Brahman. Brahman is everything. He is the living entities as well, who are struggling hard with the material nature. Even matter is from Brahman, but it is a different kind of energy, an inferior one to be more precise. The living entities that are Brahman are superior. The wise take to studying the scriptures that detail the differences between the two energies and make themselves familiar with Brahman in the process. Yet, just as the light of the sun does not give us the complete picture of the sun itself, the entire creation as a whole, the light of Brahman, does not provide the necessary insight into the fountainhead of all energies, the Supreme Lord. While Brahman is impersonal, the Lord takes on personal traits, spiritual qualities belonging to forms known as avataras, to show us what Brahman actually looks like. Brahman is actually subordinate to Parabrahman, which is the title reserved specifically for God. The spiritual attributes of the formed incarnations show that Parabrahman is the most renounced, the wealthiest, the strongest, the wisest, the most famous and the most beautiful. In His avatara as Lord Rama, God graced a select few individuals with His sweet smile, His dedication to piety, and His promise of protection. In the Vedic system the husband’s duty is to protect the wife, who operates under his direction. Rama was perfect in this regard, as Sita always felt safe in His company. Even when Rama was sent away from His kingdom of Ayodhya, Sita did not find the pleasure of life in the palaces preferable to Rama’s company in the forest. She felt safer with her husband by her side. Therefore it was a little disconcerting when Sita was taken away by Ravana, the Rakshasa king of Lanka. Not that Rama failed to defend against Ravana, the ogre didn’t even mount an attack against Rama. Rather, he took Sita away in secret, while Rama temporarily wasn’t by her side. Through the divine will, the need for bringing about Ravana’s end, Rama purposefully limited His display of opulence. The holy name, however, is never limited. Sita kept reciting it while in Lanka, so she was able to think of her husband, keeping Him by her side even though He was far, far away. Ravana tried to win her over but to no avail. She was not budging from her dedication to chastity. She would not even look at the vile creature who already had hundreds of the most beautiful princesses as queens. The holy name thus proved many thousands of years ago during Sita’s time to be most powerful, and it is just as powerful today. Shri Hanuman even used it to succeed in his mission to find Sita. Lord Rama, being the most knowledgeable, could have located Sita Himself, but the wiser thing to do was to allow those eager to serve Him the chance to take up the cause. The living entities are mini-gods, so they have some independence in their exercise of freedom. Brahman is transcendental to matter; hence there is no reason to be subjected to the threefold miseries. The pains inflicted by natural forces, the influence of other living entities, and the workings of the body and mind have no bearing on the qualities of Brahman. Nevertheless, the conditioned living entities struggle very hard with material nature; a fact we’re reminded of by Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad-gita. “The living entities in this conditioned world are My eternal, fragmental parts. Due to conditioned life, they are struggling very hard with the six senses, which include the mind.”  (Lord Krishna, Bhagavad-gita, 15.7) Krishna is the same Rama but in a different outward, spiritual manifestation. Lord Krishna is considered the original Personality of Godhead, the origin of Parabrahman. His face is full of sweetness, as are His words. The living entities struggle with material nature, but when they find their occupational duty of bhakti-yoga, or devotional service, the same material elements become favorable. This was quite evident with Shri Hanuman, who found himself placed smack dab in the middle of a supremely difficult mission. While a band of monkeys took up the task of finding Sita, only Hanuman from that group made it to Lanka, for no one else could leap across the massive ocean separating the island from the mainland. How did Ravana bring Sita back there then? He had an aerial car that previously belonged to his brother Kuvera. Ravana used it to fly around and terrorize people. Hanuman had to find Sita all by himself, without anyone around to help. After overcoming many obstacles, including a doubtful mind fearing the worst outcome, Hanuman was on the precipice of finding King Janaka’s daughter, though he didn’t know it. In the above referenced verse from the Ramayana, Hanuman is thinking over what he will find in the Ashoka wood, the one place in Lanka he had yet to search. Having mentally entered the area, he started surveying the scene and going over what he should expect. The place would be sacred and guarded by Rakshasas. It would be so well-protected that the wind wouldn’t blow there. Thus Hanuman would have to contract his form, something he was more than capable of doing. He did not want to get noticed by the Rakshasas, because that might jeopardize the success of the mission. The fact that the wind wasn’t blowing there violently was another impediment to deal with. On the strength of the wind Hanuman was able to leap across the ocean and make it to Lanka. The wind, or air, is actually the vital force to sustain life within all of us. One who can learn to control the vital breaths within the body can find good health and the ability to survive through duress. Therefore it shouldn’t surprise us that the ancient yoga practice of pranayama is very popular today. Hanuman, however, didn’t require violent wind to find Sita. He was determined to please Rama, to keep the smile on the face of the jewel of the Raghu dynasty no matter what. Using his keen intelligence, he would find his way into the woods unnoticed. He would meet with Sita and give her news about Rama. Along with regular chanting of the holy names, “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare”, hearing about God and His activities is the best medicine for the mind and the heart. In this respect, Hanuman gave tremendous transcendental healing satisfaction to Sita, who loved to hear about her husband and how He was doing. Hanuman would return later to Lanka, but this time with the full army of monkeys commanded by Sugriva. Rama and His younger brother Lakshmana would be there too, ready to rid the world of Ravana. Hanuman’s determination played a vital role in the eventual victory, and his presence continues to be felt today. Chanting the name of Rama brings with it the vision of Sita, Lakshmana and Hanuman. Rama may have personally defeated Ravana, but His name is what carried Hanuman into Lanka and helped him defeat the elements obstructing his path. Rama’s name helped Sita remain alive while in a perilous condition, and it continues to deliver the souls struggling with the pangs of Kali Yuga, the present age of quarrel and hypocrisy. Therefore the holy name and its many carriers are the only life raft for the souls looking for true enlightenment and lasting happiness. As Hanuman is one who cherishes the holy name and keeps it with him at all times, he is supremely worshipable. In Closing: Sita, in a tough situation she did find, Harassed by vile witches, troubled she was in mind. She did nothing wrong in life, her husband she missed, Repeating His holy name her only solace. Hanuman, Ashoka wood ready to enter, But first conditions in mind he did ponder. Trees to be guarded by Rakshasas full of sin, So aligned that to enter difficult for even the wind. Hanuman’s determination the Rakshasas to beat, In his heart, Sita, Rama and Lakshmana take their seat.