Introducing: Body Maps and the Insular Cortex

I finished off The Body Has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Everything Better by Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee -- it's a teriffic read.

Here's a review from Amazon that summarizes the book expertly.

An Excellent introduction to a complex and fascinating topic
A review by M.  L. Lamendola, 2007

This is an excellent book. The authors have a gift for making a complex subject understandable.

Another plus is that, like the best of nonfiction authors, they stick to the subject and rely on facts rather than opinion. This book provides a wonderful introduction into an area of science formerly limited to neurologists and other highly-trained specialists.

Central theme
The central theme of this book is that the brain maps the body. In fact, different areas of the brain contain different kinds of body maps with different functions. These body maps in the brain determine such things as how you perceive reality and how you respond to that perception. One of the most fascinating aspects is the plasticity of these maps.

For example, have you ever noticed that you can "feel" with the end of a tool? You put a wrench on a nut, and you suddenly have several important bits of information about that nut.

This is because your body map extends to include the tool. And it's why mechanics can accurately work without actually seeing what their hands or tools are touching. Body maps extend from the rider to include the horse and from the horse to include the rider. Lovers share body maps, and the book explores what goes on there also.

This book explores the effects of dysfunctional body maps, too, shedding light on such things as eating disorders and out of body experiences. And it looks at the interplay between body maps and culture, language, music, emotions, pain, and even parenting.

The brain and the body are not separate entities, but are intertwined, interdependent, and interfunctional. Understanding this fact is essential to understanding how and why body maps work. This book explains that lucidly.

You may have heard of the "little man" theory, or the homunculus theory. If not, perhaps you recall the drawing of the skull being opened to reveal a little man operating control levers. That drawing represents the theory. We all know there's not an actual physical person of tiny stature pulling levers in our heads. But it's commonly thought that the "me" of us is a central entity that works like that little man. Another common analogy for this theory is the symphony conductor.Because of this theory, many early researchers of body maps looked for the master map. As it turns out, there isn't one. There is no "little man," no master homunculus, no conductor, no central authority. The brain is a collection of homunculi or body maps working together. If this doesn't sound possible, think of an ant colony. There is no master ant giving out directions.

Each ant does its part in a concert of ants with no conductor. The many body maps of the brain are similarly independent yet cooperative. The brain also contains body maps that facilitate the communication between these disparate parts and the various body maps those parts use.

Summary of contents
The Body Has a Mind of Its Own consists of ten chapters.

The first chapter gives the reader the background about body maps and how they are everywhere in the brain.

Chapter Two talks about the little man theory discussed earlier in this review.

Chapter Three talks about how body maps filter and change incoming information to conform to what the map expects to see. You've no doubt heard the expression "People hear what they want to hear." That is a basic aspect of our brain, which is a prediction machine. It's always looking for matches. Just as politicians change the data to match their statements, so quite often does the brain change or filter information so that it matches what the brain expects to see. This is the basis for illusions, and we all know those work.

Sometimes these illusions don't serve us very well. One example the book uses is the anorexic who feels fat. This prediction thing isn't all bad -- many self-help experts advise us to imagine ourselves as having already achieved something or to take on some other enabling attitude.

Chapter Four takes the concepts of Chapter Three a step further, and looks at why mental practice -- long used by martial artists -- is nearly as effective as physical practice and why when both are done you get a 2 + 2 = 5 effect.

Chapters Five and Six explore what happens when body maps blur or break. Some of the manifestations are bizarre.

Earlier, I mentioned that when you grasp a tool your body map extends to include that tool. Chapter Eight includes a discussion of this in the broader context of where body maps end. 

Chapter Seven also talks about where body maps end, but more in terms of how they seek to exclude things that are not part of the body.

Sales trainers talk about mimicking other people to win their agreement. In Chapter Nine, we see why this works.

Deep in the brain is a structure called the insula. Only mammals have one. In humans, it's massive compared to those of other species (relatively speaking--in whales, body parts are just plain bigger on an absolute scale). The consensus now is the insula is the seat of emotional awareness. Chapter Ten, in discussing the insula, is a fitting last chapter because it is, at least to me, the most profound part of the book.

The authors tie everything together in the Afterword, but also raise additional questions that are worth pondering as we search for meaning and purpose in life.

Descartes concluded that because he thinks he must exist. Has your human mind has ever contemplated itself, trying to answer the question, "Who am I? Or have you wondered about where in your body your mind actually resides? The Body Has a Mind of Its Own will help you bring some fascinating information to bear on those concepts and many others. Not only is this book thought-provoking, but it helps explain thought itself. How you perceive reality may not be as straightforward as you once thought. Or still think, depending on your body maps.

Position of the insular cortex in the human brain shown in red. The parts of the frontal, parietal and temporal lobe that usually cover the insula are removed. The green line indicates the position of the central sulcus of the insula, which separates the larger anterior insular cortex (AIC) from the smaller posterior insular cortex.

One of the most mysterious regions of the human brain is the insular cortex, buried in the depth of the lateral fissure, which separates the frontal and parietal lobes from the temporal lobe.

For a long while, the insular cortex recieved little attention from neuroscience research.

Recently this has dramatically changed: an increasing number of recent studies address the functional role of the insular lobe. A number of reports have connected the insula to important high-level cognitive functions such as error detection, including social norm violation, general task monitoring, language processing, self-awareness and even consciousness.

Furthermore, the insula might play a crucial role in neuropsychiatric disorders, such as drug addiction (see for instance the recent New York Times article 'A small part of the brain and its profound effects'). Other studies have proposed more basic functions that might be supported by the insular cortex, including basic auditory processing, experiencing pain, the senses of smell and taste, and simple motor functions.

Wray Herbert Blog: Is Depression an "Emotional Mush?"

I have a vivid memory of dropping my oldest son off at college, the first day of his freshman year, many years ago. He stood outside his dorm, waving as I drove away, and I was overcome by a complex mix of emotions. I was unquestionably sad -- the tears testified to that -- but I wasn't morose or agitated, and I kind of knew that this sadness would pass. In fact, I was in the same moment keenly aware of a range of powerful and positive emotions -- pride that my son had earned his way into a fine university, relief that he seemed well-adjusted and untroubled and had solid friends. He seemed to be landing OK, and the moment was bittersweet.

Bittersweet. It seems like a contradiction, but in truth our emotional states are rarely simple or tidy. We don't feel good this moment, bad the next. More discrete feelings like pride and excitement and frustration and shame spill over one another and mix, and it's up to us to differentiate the nuances. What I was doing in those minutes as I drove away from campus -- sorting out my welter of feelings and making sense of them -- is what most people do in some way every day.

If they're lucky, that is. Research has shown that people vary greatly in their ability to do this fine-grain emotional sorting, and the inability to do such emotional calibration may take a toll. Emotions are information to the human mind, and when we experience a discrete emotion like sadness, we try to process that emotion and conceptualize it in a meaningful way. In that way we can explain the feeling to ourselves in a reasonable way, and act appropriately. If on the other hand we experience an undifferentiated emotional mush, we're likely to misconstrue the causes, and act in ways that don't make sense and may indeed be harmful.

At least that's the theory, which has been pieced together in several labs over many years. It's also the departure point for new work by Emre Demiralp of the University of Michigan, who with several colleagues decided to investigate whether people who suffer from serious depression might experience a disability in this kind of emotional parsing. The idea makes sense theoretically, because depression has long been associated with impoverished perception and memory and thinking. The scientists wanted to see if depressed people's emotional states are also less rich and textured.

The problem with studying emotions is that they are very difficult to tap and measure. Feelings are subjective, so scientists can't simply ask people what they are feeling and expect an accurate and meaningful answer. To circumvent this problem, the scientists used what's called "experience sampling." They recruited a group of volunteers -- half healthy, half clinically depressed -- and gave them Palm Pilots to carry with them for a week. Over this time, the scientists beeped the volunteers at random times, and asked them to stop what they were doing and rate how much -- on a scale of zero to four -- they were experiencing eleven different emotions at the moment -- anxiety, disgust, guilt, alertness, happiness and so forth.

Demiralp and his colleagues wanted to assess the richness of the volunteers' emotional lives, and to do this they looked for patterns of correlation. For example, if a volunteer experienced fluctuations in anger over the week, and those fluctuations correspond closely with that volunteer's fluctuations in sadness, this would suggest that this person does not differentiate much between anger and sadness. They are linked together into a vague sense of feeling bad. The scientists predicted that the depressed volunteers would show such a pattern, while the healthy volunteers' emotions would not correlate closely. What's more, because depressed people have a bias toward negativity, the scientists expected that depressed volunteers would parse their positive emotions just as finely as healthy volunteers.

And that's exactly what they found. As reported in-line in the journal Psychological Science, the volunteers suffering from serious depression tended -- much more than healthy controls -- to lump all their bad feelings together; shame and frustration and sadness were all parts of a vague sense of feeling bad. They did not do this with positive feelings. Importantly, this inability to parse negative emotion works independently of emotional intensity or instability. In other words, it's a fundamental characteristic of the depressed mind.

The scientists believe that finely discriminated emotions are more adaptive for mental health, because they are less likely to be attributed to the wrong cause. People suffering from clinical depression often have distorted thinking, blaming themselves for situations they can't control, and it could be that mushy emotional states contribute to that harmful thinking. A vague undifferentiated unpleasantness is much harder to explain, and therefore much harder to regulate.

Hypno-Don

I would like you to make yourself comfortable... put your feet on the floor, rest your hands on your thighs... and half-close your eyes.

I would like you to be aware of your breathing... notice the shallow and uneven way you are breathing. I wonder if you can consciously make your breathing slower, and deeper?

So take a deep breath in, and let it out... you will notice that with each breath you take, your body is relaxing... inhale... exhale... take a deep breath, in and out. Let your body relax... and while you are breathing, you may notice that all the tension is going out of your body, and you are feeling more and more relaxed, comfortable, and at ease.

And as you continue to pay attention to your breathing... I would like you to imagine that you are hovering over an ocean. I would like you look down at the beautiful water... to look down at this vast boundless ocean... notice its color... pay attention to the emotions you feel when you look at it.

And as you continue to look at this ocean of stillness... allow your awareness to expand indefinitely... until it too becomes like a vast, deep ocean of calmness.

And I wonder if you can consciously allow this boundless ocean of calmness to expand even further. Knowing that every feeling thought and body sensation will allow you to go even deeper into a boundless and unlimited calmness. Knowing that every noise outside of this room, and inside of this room, will help you to relax even further.

Knowing that every noise is just a signal for you to relax.

Imagine that you at the very bottom of this vast, infinite ocean... and your every thought, feeling and body sensation drift on the surface... passing by unaware of your presence underneath.

And as you stay deep down, relaxed, you may become aware of how your body is comfortable and mind calm... how all the tension has gone... how your breathing becomes slower.

And in a few seconds time, I'm going to post another blog... but before I do, I'd like you to remember that you can bring back this feeling of relaxation any time you want. I would like you to know that these feelings of calmness and peace and love will stay with you for the rest of the day... and for all the days and nights that follow.

Every day, you will become more focused on whatever you are doing... consequently your memory will improve... allowing you to remember all the information you need to remember... so every day you will feel more confident... more confident about your knowledge... more confident about your ability to cope..........

Love Potion #1: "PEA The Hormone of Love" by Dario Nardi, Ph.D.





Ball-and-stick model of the phenethylamine molecule. Many of its derivatives are psychoactive drugs.

  

While a half-dozen hormones and neurotransmitters are involved in the experience of love, the hormone at the center of it all is Phenylethylamine (PEA).

PEA occurs naturally in the brain and acts as a natural amphetamine, promoting feelings of infatuation when we are in love. We might stay up all night interacting with someone new we find attractive.

When we start to fall in love, dopamine and norepinephrine levels also go up. These are the same hormones that rise when we win a prize, take drugs such as cocaine, or when we are frightened or angry.)

These hormones result in a infatuation -- high dopamine results in a feeling of addiction or obsession, while high norepinephrine results in an intense interaction with physical giddiness. The person feels aroused, many a little edgy, with a feeling of "butterflies" in the stomach.

There is also sleeplessness, loss of appetite, and a narrow focus on the mate and mating activity. PEA levels are also increased by high-intensity activities like skydiving, by eating large amounts of chocolate, and by taking certain drugs.

MDMA (also known as Ecstasy) is similar to PEA. MDMA dispels feelings of distrust, suspicion and jealousy, and replaces those with a general global sense of universal love. Most of the recreational drugs people indulge in work in one or more of the same ways that love happens in the brain.

Later, when love is serious, serotonin falls and the feeling of love begins to feel like madness.

We feel uncomfortable and obsessed when the other person is not around, while just being with them sharing the same space is enough. To avoid the negative feelings that come with low serotonin, we desire to spend all our time with the other person.

For better or worse, after a certain period of eighteen months to four years the body builds up a tolerance to the effects of PEA and related hormones. The hormones just don't deliver like they did before with the other person.

However, the brain still produces endorphins on a long-term basis in association with the person we are with. The endorphins provide a feeling of calmness and reduce anxiety and pain.

In fact, when a spouse dies or is away, some people experience "separation anxiety." This feeling could be considered a kind of chemical withdrawal. Oxytocin, a hormone produced by the pituitary gland, also plays a role in love, since physical touching promotes higher levels of this hormone. Variations in the levels of hormones related to love are an opportunity for people to exercise maturity in relationships instead of relying on chemistry alone to do the work for them.

PEA is documented to have severe cyclical highs and lows in some people, creating up-and-down experience of excitement, interest, arousal and obsession.

Silk Stockings - Cyd Charisse 's own voice - It's a Chemical Reaction

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p71V6HRP1IY

The New Brain: How the Modern Age Is Rewiring Your Mind

On the reading table: This is the second "clearance book" by neurologist and neuropsychiatrist Richard Restak M. D. I've read. I avoided reading his books earlier (I have five or six on tap) because since he's so prolific, and was featured on PBS, I feared he might be a super-shallow "book factory," but the two books I've read have proven to be rewarding and  thought-provoking. This thin tome promises to be a quick read, and it also features a recurring pet topic of mine, "neuroplasticity." Recommended.

The New Brain: How the Modern Age Is Rewiring Your Mind by Richard Restak 

Richard Restak explains, in layman's terms, how our brains are struggling to keep up with the world we've created. Computers, mobile phones, the Internet, violence on TV -- the modern world is causing the human brain to evolve in ways that may prove irrevocable. Offering scientific proof, the author shows how the world we live in has affected our ability to focus, concentrate and respond effectively to the multi-tasking demands of modern life. At the same time research on the brain has moved away from the old emphasis on disease and dysfunction to open up insights into every kind of mental activity. And, although this is not a self-help book, "The New Brain" shows how a lot of contemporary brain research has practical applications with consequences for our everyday lives.

From Publishers Weekly

Restak (Mozart's Brain), a neurologist and popular science writer on the brain, focuses on new technology for examining the physiology of the brain (such as MRI) and how it allows us to monitor and control a far wider range of activities than was formerly possible. Recent work holds the potential for, among other things, reducing the use of psychopharmacological drugs that have unpredictable side effects; substituting one sense (touch) for another (sight); and direct repair of brain and other neurological damage. Restak also demonstrates how the brain is modified the old-fashioned way, such as by practicing a skill. The negative aspects of recent work are invoked in more polemical than scientific prose, such as the specter of social control through "medicalization" of everything, and how the overstimulation of our brains by modern society is giving us all ADD. Hackles will rise the farthest over the author's proclamation that it is proven that TV violence affects our brains in ways that lead to violent behavior without even mentioning the word "censorship." A compact if sometimes oversimplified introduction to its subject, Restak's latest is best when it stays close to the data.

From Scientific American

Pity the poor neurologists of yesteryear, saddled as they were with their conviction that our brains are hardwired after childhood. Then celebrate today’s scientists, who are exploiting brain-imaging technologies to show that our brains are capable of profound and permanent alterations throughout our lives. Neurologist Richard Restak does just that in The New Brain: How the Modern Age Is Rewiring Your Mind, even as he argues that we are being negatively altered by the sound-bite, techno environment in which we live. Technology such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, Restak begins, can now demonstrate that as a musician practices for many hours, certain neural pathways are strengthened. He then moves to a profound implication, namely that all kinds of technological stimuli are forging brain circuits that may hurt us instead of helping us. For instance, he cites correlations between positron emission tomography scans of violent people and normal experimental subjects who are simply thinking about fighting, then asserts that repeated viewing of violence on television and in video games can set up brain circuits that make us more likely to initiate realworld fisticuffs. Unfortunately, such brain imaging may leave more questions than answers. As Restak himself points out, the technology does not provide "neurological explanations," just "important correlations." Yet he is whipped up enough to diagnose all of modern society with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, the probable result of brain changes we are initiating in our media-saturated world. He reminds us of the antidote, though: we are still in control of what we allow ourselves to see and hear. In the end, Restak fails to create a sense that scientists have revealed a new way of understanding the brain. And the images that inspire speculation in the book still await research that may finally reveal the mechanisms of such phenomena as memory and aggression. -- Chris Jozefowicz

Kluge: The Haphazard Evolution of the Human Mind

I polished off Connected (excellent), and now on the reading stand is Gary Marcus' Kluge. Seems like another bargain book winner.

Kluge: The Haphazard Evolution of the Human Mind by Gary Marcus

How is it that we can recognize photos from our high school yearbook decades later, but cannot remember what we ate for breakfast yesterday? And why are we inclined to buy more cans of soup if the sign says "LIMIT 12 PER CUSTOMER" rather than "LIMIT 4 PER CUSTOMER?" In Kluge, Gary Marcus argues convincingly that our minds are not as elegantly designed as we may believe. The imperfections result from a haphazard evolutionary process that often proceeds by piling new systems on top of old ones—and those systems don’t always work well together. The end product is a "kluge," a clumsy, cobbled-together contraption. Taking us on a tour of the essential areas of human experience—memory, belief, decision making, language, and happiness—Marcus unveils a fundamentally new way of looking at the evolution of the human mind and simultaneously sheds light on some of the most mysterious aspects of human nature.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Evolution seems a rushed process in which traits and attributes of humanity have been pieced together to make a functioning but far from perfect or rational being. Marcus explores the ways in which the human mind, while magnificent in its overall ability, still stumbles on several points. Focusing on areas such as memory, decision making and language, Marcus keenly identifies the makeshift devices humans have created in order to contend with what he describes as "evolutionary inertia."

From Booklist

A university psychology professor who periodically writes for mass media, Marcus here punctures the high regard humanity has for its species-distinctive qualities. Whether it’s memory, rationality, language, or free will, our noble human traits are hopelessly entangled with our baser drives, which have survived the dynamics of evolution. Blending discussion of experiments from cognitive psychology with speculation about why people are far less logical than they believe, Marcus latches onto the term kluge, which comes from the engineering world and is jargon for a fix that ain’t perfect but good enough. It’s a productive figure of speech for Marcus’ argument that deliberative thinking probably had an evolutionary advantage (save seeds to plant next season), but seems in permanent conflict with reflexive impulses having more ancient evolutionary advantage (eat seeds now). Carrying the point across a gamut of behaviors, from money to mental illnesses to talking, Marcus develops his idea of the klugelike mind, in which emotion perpetually besieges the intellect, with appealing clarity. -- Gilbert Taylor

"Marcus's emphasis on the peculiar quirks of our minds -- or odd decisions and weird interpretations -- makes for a fascinating, self-referential read -- Marcus's book makes "kluge" an indispensable term for explaining the human mind." (Seed )

"Invigorating fun...inspired, one of those unexpected analogies that help us look at everything afresh." (New York Times Book Review )

"A shot across the bow of intelligent design." (Kirkus Reviews )
About the Author
Gary Marcus is a professor of psychology at New York University and director of the NYU Infant Language Learning Center. Marcus received his Ph.D. at age twenty-three from MIT, where he was mentored by Steven Pinker. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Newsday, the Los Angeles Times, and other major publications. He lives in New York.

Have Yourself a Brainy Christmas

Would it be too creepy to ask for a plastic brain model this Christmas?

Why, yes, it would!

Yow! Tactless cartoonists give a new meaning to "brain drain" at Dexter's Laboratory!

Humans' Complex Social Skills Due to Larger Brains

Kate Ravilious for National Geographic News, September 6, 2007

The uniquely human abilities to build relationships with others, talk, and even gossip are all boons of a large brain, a new study says.

Researchers who put human toddlers and great apes through a series of physical and cognitive tests found that human social skills are superior to those of our closest genetic relatives, whose brains are smaller.

But whether we are better at putting our social skills to good use is still a matter of opinion.
"Compared [with] baboons we waste an awful lot of time gossiping about one another," said Joan Silk, an anthropologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the study.

Superior Social Skills

Esther Herrmann of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and colleagues put 106 chimpanzees, 32 orangutans, and 105 young German children through a series of complex tests.

The children were all about two-and-a-half years old and had been speaking for at least a year.
The apes had all been made accustomed to humans.

The researchers designed 16 different puzzles to tease out the differences in ability between humans and apes.

Some of the puzzles, such as tracking the position of a reward under a cup, involved only physical skills. Others, such as selecting the cup that the researcher pointed to, involved social skills such as communication.

The results found that chimpanzees, orangutans, and human children were all equally successful in the physical skills tests.

But the human children were significantly better at the social skills tests—scoring around 74 percent correct on the tests compared to scores of 33 percent from both groups of apes. (Related news: "Monkeys Deaf to Complex Communication, Study Says" [January 22, 2004].)

For instance, the toddlers outperformed the apes on "theory of mind" experiments—the ability to understand that other individuals have their own beliefs and intentions.

Bigger Brain Theories

There are two main theories as to why humans have evolved larger brains than their primate relatives. A huge brain is a serious investment— neural tissue guzzles a lot of energy.

The general intelligence hypothesis suggests that humans' bigger brains make us better and faster at all kinds of skills, such as memorizing, learning, and planning ahead.

The cultural intelligence hypothesis, bolstered by this recent study, says that bigger brains have specifically enabled us to develop more complex social skills.

"This [study] contradicts the general intelligence hypothesis," Herrmann said. "We would have expected to see a difference in physical skills as well if [that] hypothesis was right."

Aside from gossiping, these increased social skills appear to carry strong advantages, enabling humans to sustain relationships with others and help each other out in times of need.

"Our bigger brains enable us to cope with the complexities of social life," said Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom who was not involved in the study.

Migration Factor

No one really knows when or why humans started to develop these enhanced social skills, but there are one or two clues.

"It must have occurred later than one million years ago, as we don't see any increase in brain size before then," lead study author Herrmann said.

One theory is that social skills evolved in response to a more nomadic lifestyle, possibly dating back to when human ancestors began to migrate out of Africa.

"As people began to migrate more they needed to create good relationships with a wider range of people, so that they could beg favors over things like water, food, and access," the University of Liverpool's Dunbar said.

In particular language appears to have been a key development, enabling humans to communicate with others outside of their tribal groups.

Mind-Reading Monkeys

However, humans don't have a complete monopoly on social skills.
A related study published in Science today shows that primates are capable of reading emotions and understanding the intentions of others.

Harvard University's Justin Wood and colleagues tested the ability of cotton-top tamarins, rhesus macaques, and chimpanzees to understand the difference between a deliberate gesture and an accidental gesture.

All the primates showed much more interest when Wood deliberately selected a particular container than when his hand fell accidentally onto a container.

"Humans are not the only ones who can guess what others are thinking," Wood said.

For humans these enhanced social skills have enabled us to spread far and wide, settling in every corner of the world.

But this may have come with some hidden costs, said University of California's Silk.

"The human brain is a really complicated machine that goes wrong with some frequency," Silk said.
"
Mental illness may be the evolutionary cost of this complexity."

Give Yourself a $60,000 "Nap Raise"

In Train Your Brain to Get Happy, the chapter on “Sleep” first reminds the reader why sleep is important, including the same reasons we’ve all heard about -- reducing stress, slowing the aging process, and losing weight, but also adding this powerful new one:

“An extra hour of sleep per day — the equivalent of a nice, long nap — will give you a ‘happiness boost’ comparable to a $60,000 annual raise…” (p. 154). 

The chapter also explains how the different stages of sleep work to restore and rest the brain as well as the benefits of dreaming. 

In the News: A Carbon-Fiber Electrode For A Better Connection To The Brain

Technology Review  |  Posted: 11/12/2012

Connecting a human brain to a computer is as much a materials science problem as a biology one. What kind of interface is delicate enough not to damage nerve tissue, but resilient enough to last decades?

Researchers have come up with what they call a “stealthy neural interface” made from a single carbon fiber and coated with chemicals to make it resistant to proteins in the brain.

The new microthread electrode, designed to pick up signals from a single neuron as it fires, is only about seven micrometers in diameter. That is the thinnest yet developed, and about 100 times as thin as the conventional metal electrodes widely used to study animal brains.

“We wanted to see if we could radically change implant technology,” says Takashi Kozai, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh and the first author on the paper, published today in the journal Nature Materials. “We want to see an electrode that lasts 70 years.”

Researchers need long-lasting electrodes in order to improve brain-machine interfaces. These systems, in preliminary studies, have allowed paralyzed people to control robotic limbs or a computer mouse. By using electrodes to record the firing of individual brain cells, scientists have learned to decode these signals as representing the movement of a rat’s whiskers or a quadriplegic’s effort to move his arms (see “Monkey Thinks Robot into Action”).

“This was a nice demonstration that these fibers could be insulated [and] coated with an effective recording surface,” says Andrew Schwartz, another brain-machine interface researcher at the University of Pittsburgh who was not involved with the work. He cautions, however, that it could be difficult to insert such fine, flexible electrodes into brain tissue, and to secure them. Schwartz notes that recordings broke down in many of the animals studied.

Schwartz says it’s widely believed small fibers are “a good thing, because they seem to be ‘ignored’ by the brain.” Conventional electrodes stop recording after a couple of years as scar tissue builds around them. To improve the electrode’s performance, the researchers also coated its tip with a polymer that helps it pick up an electrical signal.

In experiments being carried out with human volunteers, Schwartz has used a 15-year-old technology called the Utah Array, a rigid array of around 100 metal electrodes that is about the size of the “Q” on a computer keyboard (see “New Brain Machine Interfaces”).

The latest work, done in the University of Michigan’s Neural Engineering lab, was led by Daryl Kipke, a researcher who is also CEO of a company, NeuroNexus, that sells neural recording equipment. Kipke said a patent application had been filed on the work.

Wiki: Attention

Credit: Nature Neuroscience. The figure, from an accompanying review by Hedden and Gabrieli indicates some of the cortical regions associated with focused and lapsed attention. The arrows indicate reciprocal functional connections between prefrontal and parietal regions, and top-down modulation of occipital sensory regions by the prefrontal cortex. IFG, right inferior frontal gyrus; TPJ, temporal-parietal junction.

Attention is the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring other things. Attention has also been referred to as the allocation of processing resources.

Attention is one of the most intensely studied topics within psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Attention remains a major area of investigation within education, psychology and neuroscience. Areas of active investigation involve determining the source of the signals that generate attention, the effects of these signals on the tuning properties of sensory neurons, and the relationship between attention and other cognitive processes like working memory and vigilance. A relatively new body of research is investigating the phenomenon of traumatic brain injuries and their effects on attention.

For more:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention

Sensory Motor Rhythm

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Wikipedia

 

 

SMR waves

The Sensory Motor Rhythm (SMR) is brain wave rhythm. It is an oscillatory idle rhythm of synchronized electromagnetic brain activity. It appears in spindles in recordings of EEG, MEG, and ECoG over the sensorimotor cortex. For most individuals, the frequency of the SMR is in the range of 12 to 15 Hz. The feline SMR has been noted as being analogous to the human mu rhythm.

Meaning

The meaning of SMR is not fully understood. Phenomenologically, a person is producing a stronger SMR amplitude when the corresponding sensory-motor areas are idle, e.g. during states of immobility. SMR typically decrease in amplitude when the corresponding sensory or motor areas are activated, e.g. during motor tasks and even during motor imagery.

Conceptually, SMR is sometimes mixed up with alpha waves of occipital origin, the strongest source of neural signals in the EEG. One reason might be, that without appropriate spatial filtering the SMR is very difficult to detect as it is usually superimposed by the stronger occipital alpha waves.

Relevance in research

Neurofeedback

Neurofeedback training can be used to gain control over the SMR activity. Neurofeedback practitioners believe—and have produced experimental evidence to back up their claims —that this feedback enables the subject to learn the regulation of their own SMR. People with learning difficulties, ADHD, epilepsy, and autism may benefit from an increase in SMR activity via neurofeedback. In the field of Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI), the deliberate modification of the SMR amplitude during motor imagery can be used to control external applications.

http://qeegsupport.com/

Meehan Crist: "Old Neurons, New Tricks" Scientific American

For decades researchers have known that our ability to remember everyday experiences depends on a slender belt of brain tissue called the hippocampus. Basic memory functions, such as forming new memories and recalling old ones, were thought to be performed along this belt by different sets of neurons. Now findings suggest that the same neurons in fact perform both these very different functions, changing from one role to another as they age.

The vast majority of these hippocampal neurons, called granule cells, develop when we are very young and remain in place throughout our lives. But about five percent develop in adulthood through the birth of new neurons, a process known as neurogenesis. Young granule cells help form new memories, but as they get older they switch roles to helping recall the past. Newer granule cells pick up the slack, taking on the role of helping to form new memories. Susumu Tonegawa of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his colleagues published the findings on March 30 in the journal Cell.

Tonegawa’s team tested the role of these adult-born cells by genetically engineering mice in which the old cells could be selectively turned off. They then put the mice through a series of mazes and fear-conditioning tests, which demonstrated that young granule cells are essential to forming separate memories of similar events, whereas old granule cells are essential to recalling past events based on small cues. This discovery suggests that memory impairments common in aging and in post-traumatic stress disorder may be connected to an imbalance of old and new cells. “If you don’t have a normal amount of young cells, you may have a problem distinguishing between two events that would be seen as different by healthy people,” Tonegawa says. At the same time, the presence of too many old cells would make it easier to recall traumatic past experiences based on current cues.

Previous research has shown that both traumatic experiences and natural aging can lead to fewer new neurons being produced in the hippocampus. But a cause-and-effect relation between impaired neurogenesis and memory disorders has yet to be established. If such a connection is found, this research will have opened the door to a novel class of treatments aimed at stimulating neurogenesis. Already it is changing the way we think memory works.

It Seems I'm Always Behind the Curve -- The Decade of the Brain 1990-2000

From 1990 to the end of 1999, the Library of Congress and the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health sponsored a unique interagency initiative to advance the goals set forth in a proclamation by President George Bush designating the 1990s as the Decade of the Brain: "to enhance public awareness of the benefits to be derived from brain research" through "appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities."

 To achieve this public recognition, the LC/NIMH Project on the Decade of the Brain sponsored a variety of activities including publications and programs aimed at introducing Members of Congress, their staffs, and the general public to cutting-edge research on the brain and encouraging public dialogue on the ethical, philosophical, and humanistic implications of these emerging discoveries.

Santiago Ramón y Cajal

Drawing of purkinje cells (A) and granule cells (B) from pigeon cerebellum by Santiago Ramón y Cajal, 1899. Instituto Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Madrid, Spain.

Russian Dolls of the Mind

In a chapter titled "Russian Dolls" from his 1995 book Receptors, neurologist Richard M. Restak M. D. uses the clever metaphor of these famous dolls to describe the "nested complexity" of the interaction between the mind's "seven levels."

"At each of these levels -- molecules, synapses, neurons, networks, maps, systems, and the brain as a whole -- information coding and decoding reflect information from all the other levels."

Receptors was a first-rate one-dollar popular neuroscience read. I blazed through it and still enjoyed it very much. Unfortunately, many of the bold claims made about upcoming and promising psychopharmocology breakthoughs (made 17 years ago, in 1995) still haven't materialized. Poo!

Receptors by Richard M. Restak M. D.

What if there were a pill that could change you from an introvert to the exuberant extrovert you always wanted to be?  A capsule to make you more assertive, creative, or intelligent?  What is you could "design" your own brain?  Who would you be? Only a few years ago such possibilities seemed the stuff of science fiction, but in today's laboratory remarkable new advances in brain research are making such transformations a reality.  In Receptors,  famed neuropsychiatrist Richard Restek leads us on an exhilarating--and sometimes disquieting--scientific adventure into this bold new frontier.

He shows us how break-through discoveries are enabling neuroscientists to decode the mysteries of the human brain, holding out the exciting possibility of relieving, and ultimately even curing, conditions such as memory loss, depression, schizophrenia, Parkinson's, and even Alzheimer's disease.  He documents the likelihood that in the very near future, it will be possible to alter our own brains, to choose the personality we want.  How we cope with such godlike power is one of the fascinating questions he poses in this challenging and thought-provoking book. From the levitating ointments of medieval "witches" to the magic mushrooms of southern Mexico, from the LSD of the psychedelic age to the latest discoveries of today's psychopharmacologists, Dr. Restak provides a vivid and lucid account of humanity's unceasing effort to understand and harness the powers of the mind--and the possibility that solutions to some of the brain's deepest mysteries may be close at hand.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Restak here gives new meaning to the term "designer drugs." A noted neurologist and author of The Brain and The Mind , he outlines advances in our understanding of the brain's chemical processes that, while holding great promise for the relief of mental illness, also suggest provocative possibilities for the refashioning of personality. Focusing on the role of neurotransmitters, which relay messages from neurons to receptors, he chronicles experiments and discoveries in the field of brain chemistry of the last half-century. Restak, who has long listened to Prozac and other mind-altering drugs, provides a lucid, balanced and helpful history of the steps leading us to this new frontier.
From Booklist

Although his informative book deals primarily with the receptors for neurotransmitters in the brain, Restak frequently makes the point that the brain functions and must be thought of as a whole. He lays clear groundwork for his technical subject with a discussion of the three levels of the brain and its fundamental physiology. Basic to his approach is the chemical relationship between many hallucinogenic plants and the neurotransmitters in the brain, and he makes his points lucidly, often through using helpful analogies. What with their work on the classification of narcotic and stimulating drugs, LSD, and lithium, such scientists as Louis Lewin, John Cade, and Albert Hofmann already appear as curious and imaginative human beings, but Restak shows how their specialty has been crucial to the study of neurotransmitters, as has been research (to which Restak devotes considerable space) into the two "most addictive" drugs--cocaine and amphetamines--for what it has shown investigators about the workings of the brain. Looking into the future, Restak sees more work along the lines that led to the characterization and localization of the receptor for marijuana. -- William Beatty

Thanks for the Memory Graphic

This chart gives a detailed overview of the term "memory" as used in various branches of academia

I'm enjoying reading Joshua Foer's Moonwalking with Einstein The Art and Science of Remembering Everything. It's a winner!

Kathleen Taylor: The Brain Supremacy

The colors indicate key parts of the brain activated by stimuli in five fMRI studies. The illustration shows activity in one hemisphere of the brain; most neural responses occur in both hemispheres.

Read more: Thought Police: How Brain Scans Could Invade Your Private Life - Popular Mechanics

Imagine if, once every century, a person was born who could travel forward one hundred years in time. For most of human history the learning curve faced by those intrepid travelers would have been manageably shallow. Not so the last few centuries. We live in a world transformed by science and technology. The rate of transfer from science fiction to science fact is amazing, and accelerating. Scientists can now probe individual atoms, see objects round corners, put a robot on Mars, and much else besides.

My examples come from physics. In our science-saturated world, however, the balance of power is shifting towards the life sciences, and especially brain research. With modern neuroimaging techniques like fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging), plus advances in genetics, and greater computer power, the study of human brains is at last becoming a fully-fledged science. Neuroscience has grown from a subdiscipline of biology to a field in its own right, with its own proliferating subdisciplines. In coming decades, it will rival and then surpass the influence of the older physical sciences. This is the era of the brain supremacy.

What neuroscientists can do is already astonishing. Brain cells can be activated or shut down using light. Proteins can be tagged and tracked. The cross-talk of many neurons can be recorded in real time at the level of individual cells. Researchers can detect genes switching on or off within a neuron. They can also analyze the epigenetic processes and complex regulatory networks which affect whether those genes are 'read' to make proteins.

The motive for much of this work is clinical. Neuroscience offers hope, at last, for some of our most feared diseases. Slowly but surely, the mechanisms of disorders like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's are being unpicked. The ability to decipher and alter brain function with unprecedented precision will open up even more startling possibilities. From decoding brain activity with scanners to thought-controlled wheelchairs, from neural implants for pain to selective memory erasure for post-traumatic stress, ancient fantasies of mind reading and mind control are taking shape as medical realities.

Yet the prospects offered extend far beyond the clinic. One day, among other things, we may be able to record and share dreams, buy artificial experiences -- 'mind movies' -- and take self-improvement to a new level by editing unwanted thoughts and desires. The age of physics has brought remarkable changes, but compared with what will happen as we turn the power of science on our minds, they were only a beginning.

There's a problem, though. The ethics developed by doctors, over centuries, to deal with human suffering, are different from those developed by scientists trying to understand how the world works. They're still more different from the ethics of businesses keen to cash in on the new technologies, for example by marketing fMRI 'lie-detectors.' And as the products of the brain supremacy have begun to move from clinic and lab to marketplace, the ethical principles don't necessarily move with them. Techniques created to heal can also be employed for other purposes, and the ability to get data from living brains is a holy grail for many interested parties other than neuroscientists and doctors.

Why the discrepancy? At base, our ethical instincts are of two kinds, depending on whether we grant the object in question some moral status or treat it as merely something to be used -- or sold. Until recently, Western science was mainly physical science, and the things it investigated were not of moral interest. Even in the special case of medicine there has always been tension between utilitarian impulses and the demands of human dignity, especially when resources are stretched.

The utilitarian model of user-versus-world was challenged, or rather reorganized, by the animal rights movement, which aimed to move animals into the 'ingroup' of moral entities. Wrongs done to people, like the human vivisections and mass killings of the second World War, also drove ethical advances which emphasized human dignity and rights. Yet the assumption that scientist X can study independent object Y without needing to consider Y's feelings on the matter still works for much of physics, chemistry and biology. Even a large part of animal research is done on bacteria, worms, flies, and other organisms whose feelings, if they have any, concern only the most committed activists.

When studying humans and their brains, however, the model fails, not only for ethical but for pragmatic scientific reasons. Human systems are always changed by their interactions with others, and in hard-to-calculate ways. What a volunteer says and does in a research lab may be altered not only by the lab environment or the phrasing of a question, but by who the experimenters are and how they behave. The human person thus needs to be considered.

Technologies which directly scan or manipulate brains cannot be neutral tools, as open to commercial exploitation as any new gadget. The brain supremacy offers chances to improve human dignity, but it also risks abuse.

Privacy is an example. What if the claims already being made for neuroimaging's ability to read minds can be extended to portable, covert surveillance? If we've already revealed ourselves on Facebook, would it matter if companies could scan our brains in real time, observe that we're hungry, and change their targeted marketing accordingly? Would those companies be obliged to tell us, or our insurers, if they found evidence of brain disease -- or of dubious beliefs? Would governments be justified in having ideologically hostile individuals 'adjusted' before they committed any terrorist act? And so on.

As the brain supremacy takes hold, neuroscience will affect us like never before. Ultimately, we may be able to manipulate brains -- ours and other people's -- as easily as we now manipulate electronic information. If we had time travel, jumping forward a century from now might land us in an almost unimaginable world.

We already live, as the old saying goes, in interesting times. The brain supremacy will make them more interesting still.

'The Brain Supremacy' is due to be published by Oxford University Press on 25 October.

Michael White: A Genome-Sized Media Failure

Visualizations of networked linkages between genetic components broadly across the human genome (right) and in a smaller, hierarchically arranged subset (left). Image: Gerstein et al./Nature

Last week, the large genome sciences consortium ENCODE (ENCyclopedia of DNA Elements) made a big splash by presenting its long-awaited results in a publishing extravaganza. This was a fantastic opportunity for scientists and science journalists to explain to the public some of the exciting and important research findings in genome biology that are changing how we think about health, disease, and our evolutionary past. But we blew it, in a big way.

If you read anything that emerged from the ENCODE media blitz, you were probably told some version of the "junk DNA is debunked" story. It goes like this: When scientists realized that classical, protein-encoding genes make up less than 2% of the human genome, they simply assumed, in a fit of hubris, that the rest of our DNA was useless junk. (You might have also heard this from your high school or college teacher. Your teacher was wrong.) Along came the ENCODE consortium, which found that, far from being useless, junk DNA is packed with functionality. And so everything scientists thought they knew about the genome was wrong, wrong wrong.

The Washington Post headline read, "'Junk DNA' concept debunked by new analysis of human genome." The New York Times wrote that "The human genome is packed with at least four million gene switches that reside in bits of DNA that once were dismissed as 'junk' but that turn out to play critical roles in controlling how cells, organs and other tissues behave."

Influenced by misleading press releases and statements by scientists, story after story suggested that debunking junk DNA was the main result of the ENCODE studies. These stories failed us all in three major ways: they distorted the science done before ENCODE, they obscured the real significance of the ENCODE project, and most crucially, they mislead the public on how science really works.

What you should really know about the concept of junk DNA is that, first, it was not based on what scientists didn't know, but rather on what they did know about the genome; and second, that concept has held up quite well, even in light of the ENCODE results. Among the reasons that scientists in the 1970s and '80s began to believe that much of the genome is non-functional was the observation that very similar species could have very different genome sizes. There is no reason to believe that similar species require dramatically different amounts of functional DNA, and thus something other than functional requirements must explain differences in genome size. Scientists also discovered that our genomes contain parasitic, virus-like elements called "transposons" that have the ability copy themselves within our cells. This DNA ecosystem makes our genomes more like a jungle than a precision machine. At the latest count, transposon-derived DNA makes up at least half of our genome. The transposon-derived sequences in our genomes do not have to be explained by invoking some useful function for it. There is no mystery here: this DNA is there because it can replicate.

The primary scientific task of the ENCODE group was to scope out the biochemical landscape of the genome, and put the resulting data out as a resource. The Human Genome Project gave us the text of our genome, but this text is essentially impossible to read without an interpretive guide of key biochemical landmarks. ENCODE, in what was a genuine, technological tour-de-force, measured dozens of different kinds of biochemical landmarks, which can be suggestive of important functions, but do not by themselves demonstrate that a region of the genome is doing something useful for us. This distinction was obscured by the press releases put out by ENCODE, and largely lost on most of the reporters who covered the story. Missing from press releases and news reports was a description of what non-functional DNA looks like: it carries many of the same biochemical landmarks as functional DNA. The widely reported claim of debunked junk DNA is simply wrong.

The media reports on ENCODE used the word 'breakthrough,' but it is too early to fully measure the success of ENCODE, despite the high quality of the data. Ten years out, the reference human genome sequence is a must-have tool for nearly all biomedical researchers. Will the ENCODE results become equally indispensable to our efforts to understand the connection between our genomes and our health? ENCODE's results are very big, but not comprehensive: they don't include every type of cell or class or regulatory protein that we're interested in. As our genome technology improves (which it is doing at a rate that might put the iPhone to shame), we may decide that we need to re-do much of the work done by ENCODE.

And many are worried that our funding agencies have become addicted to Big Science,
prioritizing massive data generation efforts over the more idea-driven work of smaller, individual labs.

The most damaging aspect of our massive failure to get the ENCODE story right was that readers were served up a terrible distortion of the scientific process. A rule of thumb you should apply whenever reading about supposed breakthroughs is this: past scientists weren't as dumb or credulous as they're made out to be. Scientists tend to be a cautious and skeptical lot, not given to cooking up new theories based on a blithe and arrogant dismissal of what they don't understand. They work hard to base their ideas on the best data available at the time, and then they work hard to come up with even better data.

Dr. Michael White is a systems biologist studying genes and their regulation, in the Department of Genetics and the Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He is co-founder of the online science pub The Finch and Pea.

Forbes: Five Surprises From Billionaire Paul Allen's Mind Map

 by Matthew Herper, Forbes Staff

 

Paul Allen at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle

Today the cover of Nature, the prestigious scientific journal, is dedicated to a paper that outlines the first findings of the map of the human brain being created by the Allen Institute For Brain Science, the neuroscience Manhattan project being funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

The new publication comes out of the Allen Institute’s effort to create a map of which genes are turned on and off in the human brain, a feat the Institute accomplished a half decade ago in the mouse. Already, the mouse map has become a standard tool for neuroscientists, and the hope is that the human brain atlas will be as well. (For more on the institute’s overall effort, see: Inside Paul Allen’s Quest To Reverse Engineer The Brain, from the current issue of Forbes magazine.)

 

 

An animal’s genes are contained in its DNA, locked in the center of its cells; to access the genetic code, the DNA must be transcribed into a related chemical called RNA, which can take messages to the parts of the cell that make the chemicals that comprise most of the body. The Allen Institute’s atlases are measures of what RNA transcripts are in the cell – this is a bit like monitoring what information is being read off the body’s hard disk.

The Nature paper unveils data from the first two human brains completely analyzed by the Allen Institute, with a bit of analysis from a third. There are several surprises – and it’s not clear what they all mean. “At the moment we’re making descriptions,” says Ed Lein, a neuroscientist who is one of the paper’s co-authors. “A key role for the neuroscience community is to understand how these differences relate to the unique properties of the human brain. ”

1. Cells in the “thinking” part of the brain look a lot more similar than scientists had expected. The thinking we do, including the experience we have of being us, is generated in the cortex, the most well-developed part of the brain. You might expect, then, that the cortex would be accessing the DNA code in all sorts of different ways. But the Allen Institute researchers found remarkably little difference between one neuron in the cortex and the next. In terms of how they use their genetic hard drives, these cells are very much the same.
2. Your left brain and right brain are using your DNA in the same way. Another surprising difference: the left and right sides of the brain tend to have different functions. But on the level of gene expression that the atlas measures, these are again hard to detect. The two hemispheres of the brain look very much alike.
3. The differences that do exist are important. There’s not a lot of genetic variation in the landscape of the brain, but what there is is apparently important. The Allen Institute researchers found that they could accurately predict where a neuron would be in the cortex by what genes it was expressing. So these tiny differences apparently matter. One interesting distinction: the neurons involved in getting sensory impressions, like sight, sound, and touch, are similar to one another and different from the rest of the brain.
4. The differences are not where you’d expect. When we think of a brain cell (if we think about brain cells at all), we think of neurons, the spindly nerve cells that transmit signals to each other and make up the circuits of our brains and bodies. But there’s another type of cell in the brain, called a glial cell, that creates the sheaths that protect neurons and the matrices in which they sit. And there is more variation in what genes are expressed in the glia than in the regular neurons. That could mean they are more important than we thought, accounting for the differences between people – or it could mean that variation in glial cells doesn’t matter much, so there’s a lot of it.
5. We are not mice, or monkeys. One of the most important uses of the Allen Atlas will be to figure out how the human brain is different from the brains of the experimental animals scientists can test in their labs. Big drug companies such as Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, and Pfizer have been struggling to create new medicines for diseases like schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s, largely without success, and the difference between lab mice and people may be one key reason. In one tantalizing clue, the Allen Institute researchers point to differences in a gene called CALB1, which is used to move around calcium ions, which are key chemical messengers for the nervous system. In rhesus macaques and mice, this gene is expressed throughout the hippocampus, the brain region that plays a key role in the creation of memories. But in humans, CALB1 is expressed only in the dentate gyrus, pointing to a potential difference between the brains of these other mammals and ours. It’s not known what this difference means.

One important result of the lack of variation between cells and between different brains is that the Allen Atlas will be completed with just six brains, not the 10 researchers thought they would need when the project started in 2008. The institute is moving on, with a new $300 million investment from Allen, to try to do new experiments to create circuit diagrams of the mouse visual cortex and to understand all the cell types that exist in the human brain.

Allen himself, when I met him this summer at the Allen Institute in Seattle, is prepared for this to be a long, hard slog. He told me that the brain is “hideously complex” and that it’s going to take “decades and decades” of more research to understand. “We are talking about dozens and dozens of Nobel Prizes,” he said, “that have yet to be won to understand how the brain works.” (For more, see Inside Paul Allen’s Quest To Reverse Engineer The Brain.)