Weekly Neuroscience Update
The salience network, highlighted here in two epilepsy patients, is thought to mediate our response to important internal or external signals, such as pain or the sound of a siren. Image: Parvizi et al. Neuron 2013
In a rare study involving direct brain stimulation researchers say they have uncovered direct evidence that a brain region known as the anterior midcingulate cortex and its surrounding network play a central role in motivation and a readiness to act.
Many studies suggest that pushing your brain to multitask—writing emails, for instance, while watching the day’s latest news and eating breakfast—leads to poorer performance and lower productivity. But for at least one everyday task—visual sampling (the act of picking up bits of visual information through short glances)—multitasking is not a problem for the brain. A collaboration between researchers at the UC Santa Barbara and the University of Bristol in the UK has shown that during visual sampling, the brain can handle various visual functions simultaneously.
Researchers report a detailed account of how speech sounds are identified by the human brain, offering an unprecedented insight into the basis of human language. The finding, they said, may add to our understanding of language disorders, including dyslexia.
A new study correlating brain activity with how people make decisions suggests that when individuals engage in risky behavior, it’s probably not because their brains’ desire systems are too active, but because their self-control systems are not active enough. This might have implications for how health experts treat mental illness and addiction or how the legal system assesses a criminal’s likelihood of committing another crime.
Pain sensitivity is controlled by a genetic “dimmer switch”, which can be re-set, UK scientists have discovered.
Amputee Feels in Real-Time with Bionic Hand
Dennis Aabo Sørensen is the first amputee in the world to feel sensory rich information — in real-time — with a prosthetic hand wired to nerves in his upper arm. Sørensen could grasp objects intuitively and identify what he was touching while blindfolded.
Sørensen participated in the clinical study for one month in early 2013. The results are published in Science Translational Medecine.
Read more on this:
http://bit.ly/201402EPFL_BionicHand
http://bit.ly/2014EPFLYoutube_BionicHand
http://stm.sciencemag.org/
Speech processing requires both sides of our brain
A new study by Cogan et al proposes that speech processes occur on both sides of the brain and are distinct from language, which occurs on one side, typically on the left. This suggests a revision to the standard model of how speech is linked to language with some processes going through a “bilateral sensory-motor interface”. Credit: Greg Cogan and Bijan Pesaran
A new study has found that we use both sides of our brain for speech, a finding that alters previous conceptions about neurological activity. The results, which appear in the journal Nature, also offer insights into addressing speech-related inhibitions caused by stroke or injury and lay the groundwork for better rehabilitation methods.
The study’s senior author, Bijan Pesaran, an associate professor in New York University’s Center for Neural Science, said:
Our findings upend what has been universally accepted in the scientific community—that we use only one side of our brains for speech. With this greater understanding of the speech process, we can retool rehabilitation methods in ways that isolate speech recovery and that don’t involve language.
Read more: Sensory–motor transformations for speech occur bilaterally
Weekly Neuroscience Update
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and other brain imaging technologies allow for the study of differences in brain activity in people diagnosed with schizophrenia. The image shows two levels of the brain, with areas that were more active in healthy controls than in schizophrenia patients shown in orange, during an fMRI study of working memory. Credit: Kim J, Matthews NL, Park S./PLoS One.
Researchers from the Broad Institute and several partnering institutions have taken a closer look at the human genome to learn more about the genetic underpinnings of schizophrenia. In two studies published in Nature, scientists analyzed the exomes, or protein-coding regions, of people with schizophrenia and their healthy counterparts, pinpointing the sites of mutations and identifying patterns that reveal clues about the biology underlying the disorder.
A new brain region that appears to help humans identify whether they have made bad decisions has been discovered by researchers.
New research finds that the brains of autistic children generate more information at rest – a 42% increase on average. The study offers a scientific explanation for the most typical characteristic of autism – withdrawal into one’s own inner world. The excess production of information may explain a child’s detachment from their environment.
The brain appears to synchronize the activity of different brain regions to make it possible for a person to pay attention or concentrate on a task, scientists have learned.
Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine are investigating the effects of repeated combat-related blast exposures on the brains of veterans. Mild traumatic brain injuries can cause problems with cognition, concentration, memory and emotional control. Scientists are using advanced MRI technology and psychological tests to investigate the structural and biological impact of repeated head injury and to assess how these injuries affect cognitive functions. Final results of the study have not yet been published, but researchers hope it will lead to more scientifically valid diagnostic techniques that could potentially allow for detection of both the underlying brain injury and its severity.
The Neuroscience of Stress: Two Ways Your Brain Responds to Stress
Sometimes it feels like our brain is wired to make stressful situations feel worse than they are. Here Rick Hanson, PhD talks about our three core needs and how these affect the brain.
Understanding ADHD and Learning Disability Part VIII
‘ADHD is an attention difference not an attention disorder.’
This inspiring video reinforces the view that we as a society must embrace cognitive diversity.
Related Reading
Part 1: Understanding ADHD and Learning Disability
Part 2: Understanding ADHD and Learning Disability
Part 3: Understanding ADHD and Learning Disability
Part 4: Understanding ADHD and Learning Disability
Part 5: Understanding ADHD and Learning Disability
Part 6: Understanding ADHD and Learning Disability
Part 7: Understanding ADHD and Learning Disability
Weekly Neuroscience Update
This cross-section of the hippocampus shows island cells (green) projecting to the CA1 region of the hippocampus. (Credit: Takashi Kitamura)
Neuroscientists have discovered how two neural circuits in the brain work together to control the formation of time-linked memories. This is a critical ability that helps the brain to determine when it needs to take action to defend against a potential threat.
Survivors of traumatic brain injuries (TBI) are three times more likely to die prematurely, often from suicide or fatal injuries, according to a study from Oxford University.
An international team of researchers has found that the cause of schizophrenia is even more complex than already believed, with rare gene mutations contributing to the disorder. In two studies published in the journal Nature, they show that schizophrenia arises from the combined effects of many genes.
Scientists have found that, to allow us to concentrate, we synchronize different regions of our brains in a process that the researchers describe as “roughly akin to tuning multiple walkie-talkies to the same frequency.”
Researchers have identified a protein in the brain that plays a critical role in the memory loss seen in Alzheimer’s patients, according to a study to be published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
Using a simple study of eye movements, scientists report evidence that people who are less patient tend to move their eyes with greater speed. The findings, the researchers say, suggest that the weight people give to the passage of time may be a trait consistently used throughout their brains, affecting the speed with which they make movements, as well as the way they make certain decisions.
Researchers have found that epileptic activity can spread through a part of the brain in a new way, suggesting a possible novel target for seizure-blocking medicines.
Inside The Sleeping Brain
Russell Foster, Professor of Circadian Neuroscience, studies sleep and its role in our lives, examining how our perception of light influences our sleep-wake rhythms. The research on light perception hits home as we age — faced with fading vision, we also risk disrupted sleep cycles, which have very serious consequences, including lack of concentration, depression and cognitive decline. The more we learn about how our eyes and bodies create our sleep cycles, the more seriously we can begin to take sleep as a therapy.
Weekly Neuroscience Update
The problem with diagnosing and treating pain is that it’s so subjective. But a new paper in Pain says that brain structure may hold some answers.
Adding cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) to the treatment of migraines in children and adolescents resulted in greater reductions in headache frequency and migraine-related disability compared with headache education, according to a new study.
Scientists have discovered how salt acts as a key regulator for drugs used to treat a variety of brain diseases including chronic pain, Parkinson’s disease, and depression.
Research focused on the amygdala can help identify children at risk for anxiety disorders and depression.
Whales, bats, and even praying mantises use ultrasound as a sensory guidance system – and now a new study has found that ultrasound can modulate brain activity to heighten sensory perception in humans.
Scientists have shown that there are widespread differences in how genes, the basic building blocks of the human body, are expressed in men and women’s brains.
A new study shows a leftward asymmetry of the choroid plexus in two-thirds of first-trimester human fetuses. This is the earliest brain asymmetry so far identified and may be a precursor to other asymmetries, including that of the temporal planum, which is evident from the 31st week of gestation.
Researchers have discovered the mechanism in the brain responsible for the motor and vocal tics found in Tourette Syndrome. The study, published in the British Psychological Society’s Journal of Neuropsychology, could at some point lead to new non-drug therapies.
A new study by neuroscientists is the first to directly compare brain responses to faces and objects with responses to colors.
A study begun in Mexico with the collaboration of university students has analysed the effect of weekend alcohol consumption on the lipids comprising cell membrane and its genetic material, i.e. DNA.
inside-the-brain.com 