Weekly Neuroscience Update

Brain and eye combined monitoring breakthrough could lead to fewer road accidents

An eye-tracking, brain monitoring experiment in progress. The infra-red camera is on the small black console on the desk in front of the main PC screen.

Latest advances in capturing data on brain activity and eye movement are being combined to open up a host of ‘mindreading’ possibilities for the future. These include the potential development of a system that can detect when drivers are in danger of falling asleep at the wheel.

Multimodal neuroimaging has confirmed that major depressive disorder is associated with a deregulation of brain regions.

Sensory processing disorders (SPD) are more prevalent in children than autism and as common as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, yet it receives far less attention partly because it’s never been recognized as a distinct disease. In a groundbreaking new study from UC San Francisco, researchers have found that children affected with SPD have quantifiable differences in brain structure, for the first time showing a biological basis for the disease that sets it apart from other neurodevelopmental disorders.

Neuroscientists have discovered that spontaneously emerging brain activity patterns preserve traces of previous cognitive activity.

When people sing in a choir their heart beats are synchronised, so that the pulse of choir members tends to increase and decrease in unison. This has been shown by a recent study from that examined the health effects for choir members.

Your Brain On Buzz. How Do Ideas Spread On The Internet?

Brain regions TPJ and DMPFC (Click for description) Psychologists report for the first time that the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) brain regions are associated with the successful spread of ideas, often called 'buzz.'

Psychologists report for the first time that the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) brain regions are associated with the successful spread of ideas, often called ‘buzz.’

How do ideas spread? What messages will go viral on social media, and can this be predicted?

UCLA psychologists have taken a significant step toward answering these questions, identifying for the first time the brain regionsassociated with the successful spread of ideas, often called “buzz.”

The research has a broad range of implications, the study authors say, and could lead to more effective public health campaigns, more persuasive advertisements and better ways for teachers to communicate with students.

“Our study suggests that people are regularly attuned to how the things they’re seeing will be useful and interesting, not just to themselves but to other people,” said the study’s senior author, Matthew Lieberman, a UCLA professor of psychology and of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences and author of the forthcoming book “Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect.”

We always seem to be on the lookout for who else will find this helpful, amusing or interesting, and our brain data are showing evidence of that. At the first encounter with information, people are already using the brain network involved in thinking about how this can be interesting to other people. We’re wired to want to share information with other people. I think that is a profound statement about the social nature of our minds.

The study findings are published in the online edition of the journal Psychological Science, with print publication to follow later this summer.
More information on the study can be found on the UCLA website.

Weekly Neuroscience Update

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Keeping mentally active by reading books or writing letters helps protect the brain in old age, a study suggests.

The rate and extent of damage to the spinal cord and brain following spinal cord injury have long been a mystery. Now new research has found evidence that patients already have irreversible tissue loss in the spinal cord within 40 days of injury. The study, published in the journal Lancet Neurology, used a new imaging , developed at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging (UCL). This enables the impact of therapeutic treatments and rehabilitative interventions to be determined more quickly and directly.

UCSF neuroscientists have found that by training on attention tests, people young and old can improve brain performance and multitasking skills.

Researchers are striving to understand the different genetic structures that underlie at least a subset of autism spectrum disorders. In cases where the genetic code is in error, did that happen anew in the patient, perhaps through mutation or copying error, or was it inherited? A new study in the American Journal of Human Genetics finds evidence that there may often be a recessive, inherited genetic contribution in autism with significant intellectual disability.

A specific brain disruption is present both in individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia and those with bipolar disorder, adding to evidence that many mental illnesses have biological similarities.

Inside The Emotional Brain

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Scientists have found a way to determine what emotions you’re feeling by looking at brain activity measured by imaging technology.

The findings, published in the journal PLOS ONE, are important to emotion research because they bring “a new method with potential to identify emotions without relying on people’s ability to self-report,” study researcher Karim Kassam, an assistant professor of social and decision sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, said in a statement.

“It could be used to assess an individual’s emotional response to almost any kind of stimulus, for example, a flag, a brand name or a political candidate.”

For the study, researchers used a combination of brain imaging — functional magnetic resonance imaging — and machine learning. They recruited 10 actors from the university’s drama school to act out different emotions, such as anger, happiness, pride and shame, while inside an fMRI scanner, for multiple times in random order.

To make sure that researchers were able to measure the actual emotions and not just the acting out of emotions, they had the study participants also look at emotion-eliciting images while undergoing FMRI brain scans.

“Despite manifest differences between people’s psychology, different people tend to neurally encode emotions in remarkably similar ways,” study researcher Amanda Markey, a graduate student in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences at the university, said in a statement.

Source: Huffington Post

Weekly Neuroscience Update

Feeling happy or sad? Researchers have measured brain signals to accurately read emotions in individuals. (Credit: Karim S. Kassam et al PLOS ONE 10.1371/journal.pone.0066032)

For the first time, scientists at Carnegie Mellon University have identified which emotion a person is experiencing based on brain activity.

Pre-treatment scans of brain activity predicted whether depressed patients would best achieve remission with an antidepressant medication or psychotherapy, in a new study.

People who experience any stroke symptoms—but do not have a stroke—may also be more likely to develop problems with memory and thinking, according to new research published in the June 19, 2013, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

And finally this week, a study, led by Royal Holloway University researcher Carolyn McGettigan, has identified the brain regions and interactions involved in impersonations and accents.

Mind-controlled artificial limb gives patients sense of touch again

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University used a flat interface nerve electrode (FINE) to demonstrate direct sensory feedback. By interfacing with residual nerves in the patient’s partial limb, some sense of touch by the fingers is restored. Other existing prosthetic limb control systems rely solely on visual feedback. Unlike visual feedback, direct sensory feedback allows patients to move a hand without keeping their eyes on it—enabling simple tasks, like rummaging through a bag for small items, not possible with today’s prosthetics.

This Case Western Reserve University video shows how direct sensory feedback makes some tasks easier. The FINE is one of many different types of nerve interfaces developed under the RE-NET program.

Full story at http://go.usa.gov/bbV4.

Why you shouldn’t cram your brain before an exam

Synapses

It’s well known that synapses in the brain, the connections between neurons and other cells that allow for the transmission of information, grow when they’re exposed to a stimulus. Now new research from the lab of Carnegie Mellon Associate Professor of Biological Sciences Alison L. Barth has shown that in the short term, synapses get even stronger than previously thought, but then quickly go through a transitional phase where they weaken.

“When you think of learning, you think that it’s cumulative. We thought that synapses started small and then got bigger and bigger. This isn’t the case,” said Barth. “Based on our data, it seems like synapses that have recently been strengthened are peculiarly vulnerable — more stimulation can actually wipe out the effects of learning.”

Psychologists know that for long-lasting memory, spaced training — like studying for your classes after very lecture, all semester long — is superior to cramming all night before the exam. This study shows why. Right after plasticity, synapses are almost fragile — more training during this labile phases is actually counterproductive.

Read this story in full

Weekly Neuroscience Update

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Scientists have shown that working as a piano tuner may lead to changes in the structure of the memory and navigation areas of the brain. The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, shows that these structural differences correlate with the number of years of experience a piano tuner has accumulated.

An unusual kind of circuit fine-tunes the brain’s control over movement and incoming sensory information, and without relying on conventional nerve pathways, according to a study published in the journal Neuron.

The reason we struggle to recall memories from our early childhood is down to high levels of neuron production during the first years of life, say Canadian researchers.

Researchers have identified mutations in several new genes that might be associated with the development of spontaneously occurring cases of the neurodegenerative disease known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. Also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, the progressive, fatal condition, in which the motor neurons that control movement and breathing gradually cease to function, has no cure.

The brains of people with depression show a reduced ability to adapt to their environment, a unique study shows.

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have found that a naturally occurring protein secreted only in discrete areas of the mammalian brain may act as a Valium-like brake on certain types of epileptic seizures.

photo credit: Chandra Marsono via photopin cc