Fact or Fiction? mindURbrain

When It Comes to Intelligence, Does Brain Size Matter?

What does brain size say about a creature's mental abilities?

By Kayt Sukel | April 14, 2009 | 13


brain model SIZE DOESN'T MATTER?: It may not be the size of the brain but its organization that matters when it comes to cognitive function.

Research has shown that lead kills neurons (nerve cells), resulting in smaller brains. It has long been hypothesized that such changes in the brain caused by childhood lead exposure may be behind a higher incidence of poor cognitive performance and criminal behavior. And although it is difficult to disentangle the confounding effects of race, class and economics, a recent study by Kim Dietrich, a professor of environmental health at the University of Cincinnati , found that individuals who suffered from the highest lead exposure as children had the smallest brain sizes—as well as the most arrests.

"That early lead exposure was associated with smaller volumes of cortical gray matter [the parts of the brain rich in neural cell bodies and synapses] in the prefrontal area," he says. "And the fact that we saw both criminal behavior and volume loss in this critical area for executive function is probably more than just a coincidence."

That may be so, however, new scientific studies across several animal species, including humans, are challenging the notion that brain size alone is a measure of intelligence. Rather, scientists now argue, it is a brain's underlying organization and molecular activity at its synapses (the communication junctions between neurons through which nerve impulses pass) that dictate intelligence.

Two years ago, Paul Manger, a professor of health sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, caused quite a stir when he referred to the beloved bottlenose dolphin, owner of a large, nearly human-size brain, as "dumber than a goldfish."

"When you look at cetaceans, they have big brains, absolutely," Manger says. "But if you look at the actual structure of the brain, it's not very complex. And brain size only matters if the rest of the brain is organized properly to facilitate information processing."

He argues that the systems within the brain—how neurons or nerve cells and synapses are organized—are the keys to determining information-processing capacity. Manger speculates that cetacean brains are large not because of intelligence but instead due to an abundance of fatty glial cells (non-nerve cells serving as a supporting tissue), which may be present to provide warmth in cold waters for the information-processing neurons in the brain's interior.

Mark Uhen, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Alabama Museum of Natural History, and Lori Marino, a biologist who studies brain evolution of cetaceans and primates at Emory University's Yerkes National Primate Research Center, disagree. Marino says that Manger's theories discount years of behavioral evidence that show dolphins to be complex thinkers. What's more, she says, the mammals have an unusual brain structure with a different functional map and therefore cannot be compared with other species.

Marino believes that the dolphin's unique brain organization may represent an alternate evolutionary route to complex intelligence—and that molecules released in synapses may provide that alternative path.

A study recently published in Nature Neuroscience by Seth Grant, a neuroscientist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, along with Richard Emes, a professor in Bioinformatics at Keele University School of Medicine in North Staffordshire, both in England, suggests that all species have the same basic proteins that act in the synapses.

"If you look at us and fish, we have very different cognitive abilities," Emes says. "But we have roughly the same number of these synaptic proteins. It is the number of interactions and gene duplications of these proteins that provide the brain building blocks for higher level cognitive function.”

Emes, Grant and colleagues agree with Marino and Uhenthat intelligence and differences between species are due to molecular complexity at the synaptic level. "The basic dogma says that the computational properties of the brain are based on the number of neurons and synapses," Grant says. "But we modify that by saying that the molecular complexity within those synapses is also important."

Grant and Emes looked at where approximately 150 synaptic proteins were released in the nervous systems of yeast, fruit flies and mice. They found that a variation in production and distribution patterns was linked to higher-level brain organization.

"The proteins that you find in yeast are the sort of proteins that are far more likely to be found expressed throughout the brain in uniform quantities," Grant says. "They laid a foundation to make more diverse and different regions of the brain using different combinations and expressions of other, more innovative proteins." He likens these molecular proteins to implements in a toolbox that help to build specialized brain regions. He goes on to say that the different interactions, duplications or deletions of these proteins resulted over time in the evolutionary development of regions like the prefrontal cortex in humans which is involved in higher executive function like planning and goal-directed behavior

Grant says that this finding offers scientists a new way to approach the study of brain evolution and intelligence and, perhaps more importantly, suggests that looking at sheer brain size has very little to offer in understanding cognitive abilities.

"It's clear now that there are wonderful mental abilities in birds even with their relatively small brains, nerve cells and neural connections. But they have complex molecular synapses," says Grant. "My sense is in the next 10 to 20 years our perspectives about the mental capacities of different species will change quite radically."

But the idea that a big brain equals big smarts is not going to go away anytime soon. Though Manger discounts the role of glial cells in intelligence, a posthumous anatomical study of Albert Einstein's brain showed that the scientific genius's brain differed from the brains of other dead scientists only with its greater ratio of glial cells to neurons. But a study of Einstein's brain organization and synaptic molecule configuration still remains to be completed.

happiness!?

“The greatest degree of inner tranquility comes from the cultivation of love and compassion. The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being.” ~ Dalai Lama

The Wisdom of Einstein. 1879 to 1955

“Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.”

“Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.”

"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.”

HOW COOL.This could lead to locating brain regions for consciousness. SCIENCE ROCKS.

Real-Time Video: First Look at a Brain Losing Consciousness Under Anesthesia
By Maia Szalavitz Wednesday, June 15, 2011

What happens to your brain as it slips into unconsciousness? A new technique allows researchers to view real-time 3-D images of a patient undergoing anesthesia using the drug propofol, and the findings show that consciousness isn't suddenly switched off, but rather fades as though a dimmer is being dialed down.

The research also suggests that consciousness resides in the connections between multiple parts of the brain, not in any single region. The images show that changes in the anesthetized brain start in the midbrain, where certain receptors for a neurotransmitter called GABA are plentiful.

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/06/15/real-time-video-first-look-at-a-brain-becoming-unconscious-under-anesthesia/#ixzz1PNADA33g

Introducing your brain.

The modern brain is an energy hog. The organ accounts for about 2 percent of body weight, but it uses about 20 percent of the oxygen in our blood and 25 percent of the glucose (sugars) circulating in our bloodstream, according to the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology.

let's use video games to reward loving compassion not aggression! A NO BRAINER

(May 26, 2011) —
"Neural Desensitization to Violence Predicts Increased Aggression Following Violent Video Game Exposure"
Scientists have known for years that playing violent video games causes players to become more aggressive. The findings of a new University of Missouri (MU) study provide one explanation for why this occurs: the brains of violent video game players become less responsive to violence, and this diminished brain response predicts an increase in aggression.

"Many researchers have believed that becoming desensitized to violence leads to increased human aggression. Until our study, however, this causal association had never been demonstrated experimentally," said Bruce Bartholow, associate professor of psychology in the MU College of Arts and Science.

During the study, 70 young adult participants were randomly assigned to play either a nonviolent or a violent video game for 25 minutes. Immediately afterwards, the researchers measured brain responses as participants viewed a series of neutral photos, such as a man on a bike, and violent photos, such as a man holding a gun in another man's mouth. Finally, participants competed against an opponent in a task that allowed them to give their opponent a controllable blast of loud noise. The level of noise blast the participants set for their opponent was the measure of aggression.

The researchers found that participants who played one of several popular violent games, such as "Call of Duty," "Hitman," "Killzone" and "Grand Theft Auto," set louder noise blasts for their opponents during the competitive task -- that is, they were more aggressive -- than participants who played a nonviolent game. In addition, for participants that had not played many violent video games before completing the study, playing a violent game in the lab caused a reduced brain response to the photos of violence -- an indicator of desensitization. Moreover, this reduced brain response predicted participants' aggression levels: the smaller the brain response to violent photos, the more aggressive participants were. Participants who had already spent a lot of time playing violent video games before the study showed small brain response to the violent photos, regardless of which type of game they played in the lab.

"The fact that video game exposure did not affect the brain activity of participants who already had been highly exposed to violent games is interesting and suggests a number of possibilities," Bartholow said. "It could be that those individuals are already so desensitized to violence from habitually playing violent video games that an additional exposure in the lab has very little effect on their brain responses. There also could be an unmeasured factor that causes both a preference for violent video games and a smaller brain response to violence. In either case, there are additional measures to consider."

Bartholow said that future research should focus on ways to moderate media violence effects, especially among individuals who are habitually exposed. He cites surveys that indicate that the average elementary school child spends more than 40 hours a week playing video games -- more than any other activity besides sleeping. As young children spend more time with video games than any other forms of media, the researchers say children could become accustomed to violent behavior as their brains are forming.

"More than any other media, these video games encourage active participation in violence," said Bartholow. "From a psychological perspective, video games are excellent teaching tools because they reward players for engaging in certain types of behavior. Unfortunately, in many popular video games, the behavior is violence."

Other authors in the study include Christopher Engelhardt, graduate student in the MU Department of Psychological Sciences, and researchers from The Ohio State University and VU University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The journal article, "This Is Your Brain on Violent Video Games: Neural Desensitization to Violence Predicts Increased Aggression Following Violent Video Game Exposure," will be published in a forthcoming edition of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
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Relax, your body is perfect, it is your brain, a visual glitch, just a technical malfunction. OUR BRAIN ROCKS.

Distorted Self-Image In Body Image Disorder Due To Visual Brain Glitch, Study Suggests

ScienceDaily (Dec. 12) — Although they look normal, people suffering from body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) perceive themselves as ugly and disfigured. New imaging research reveals that the brains of people with BDD look normal, but function abnormally when processing visual details. The UCLA findings are the first to demonstrate a biological reason for patients' distorted body image.

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"Our discovery suggests that the BDD brain's hardware is fine, but there's a glitch in the operating software that prevents patients from seeing themselves as others do," explained Dr. Jamie Feusner, principal investigator and assistant professor of psychiatry at UCLA's Semel Institute. "Now that we've identified a possible physical cause, down the road we may be able to pinpoint ways that patients' brains can be retrained to perceive faces more accurately."
Individuals with BDD fixate on an imagined flaw in appearance or a slight physical abnormality. To fix their "problem," they tend to pursue plastic surgery -- sometimes repeatedly. They often feel ashamed, depressed and anxious, increasing their risk of suicide.
Affecting an estimated two percent of the population, BDD tends to run in families and is especially common in persons with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Thirty percent of people with BDD suffer from eating disorders, which are also linked to a distorted self-image.
Feusner's team compared the BDD patients' responses to 12 control subjects matched by age, gender, education and handedness. What the scientists observed surprised them.
"We saw a clear difference in how the right and left sides of the brain worked in people with BDD versus those without the disorder," noted Feusner.
BDD patients more often used their brain's left side -- the analytic side attuned to complex detail -- even when processing the less intricate, low-frequency images. In contrast, the left sides of the control subjects' brains activated only to interpret the more detailed high-frequency information. Their brains processed the untouched and low-frequency images on the right side, which is geared toward seeing things in their entirety.
"We don't know why BDD patients analyze all faces as if they are high frequency," said Feusner. "The findings suggest that BDD brains are programmed to extract details -- or fill them in where they don't exist. It's possible they are thinking of their own face even when they are looking at others."
Feusner also recently discovered that the more severe the BDD patient's symptoms, the more strongly the brain's left side activates during visual processing. He is currently studying how BDD patients process their own faces in order to explore how emotional arousal may influence visual processing.
"All of these findings indicate that BDD has a biological link and can no longer be attributed solely to our society's focus on appearance," he concluded.
This research was reported in the December edition of the Archives of General Psychiatry.
The study was supported by the Saban Family Foundation, the Neysa Jane BDD Fund and National Institute of Mental Health. Feusner's coauthors included Dr. Susan Bookheimer, Dr. Alexander Bystritsky and Jennifer Townsend, all of UCLA's Semel Institute.

Do you SEE what I SEE?

HOUSTON -- (May 9, 2011) -- In the wild, mammals survive because they can see and evade predators lurking in the shadowy bushes.That ability translates to the human world.We get out of the house every morning because we find our car keys on that cluttered shelf next to the door.
This ability to recognize target objects surrounded by distracters is one of the remarkable functions of our nervous system.

"Visual search is an important task for the brain. Surprisingly, even in a complex task like detecting an object in a scene with distracters, we find that people's performance is near optimal. That means that the brain manages to do the best possible job given the available information," said Dr. Wei Ji Ma, assistant professor of neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine.

"We found that even in this complex task, people came close to being optimal in detecting the target," he said. "That means that humans can in a split second integrate information across space while taking into account the reliability of that information. That is important in our daily lives."

"The visual system is automatically and subconsciously doing complex tasks," said Ma. "People see objects and how they relate to one another. We don't just see with our eyes. We see with our brains. Our eyes are the camera, but the process of interpreting the image in our brains is seeing."

Somebody please tell these guys........? REALLY?

Mr. Schwartzenaegger and Mr. Straus-Kahn:
Have you not learned anything from Berlusconi, Clinton, The Bishop of Bruge, Kim Jong, John Edwards and hundreds of others who abused their power to feed their insatiable egos? How could you give yourselves the right to manage others lives while clearly incompetent to manage your most primitive, infantile aggressive urges. 

Mr. Schwartzenaegger please stop reapeating "this happened over a decade ago," as if that makes it less of a digusting betrayal of your wife and children's trust. 

Mr. Strauss-Kahn please remember you tore off shirts, forcefully unhooked bras,
ripped panty hoses, grabbed, gropped and forced yourself on three or more  women
before the Sofitel incident.  The conspiracy theory does not apply.

Still wonder why you should mindurbrain?

Over 1,000,000 million children have severe attachment disorders.

An estimated 2.7 million children and adolescents suffer from serious emotional or behavioral difficulties

Depression affects about 10 percent of Americans over the age of 18 each year.

Up to 40 Billion. The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that about 2.3 million American adults have Bipolar Disorder

A staggering 5 to 15 percent of Americans—14.5 to 43.5 million children and adults—have dyslexia.

Migraine is a disabling condition that affects some 30 million Americans.

One in three people experiences insomnia at some point in their life.

About 400,000 Americans have multiple sclerosis. Every week, an estimated 200 more are diagnosed.

OCD affects 3.3 million American adults and is equally common in men and women

Conservatively, an estimated 50 million Americans suffer from some persistent type of pain.

The cost of violence reached more than $158 billion in 2000, according to the U.S. Department of Justice

Phobia, a disabling type of anxiety disorder, affects more than 14 million adults in the United States.

Approximately 36 percent of the nation’s fourth graders cannot read at a basic level.

More than 5 million injured American men, women, and children are living with a TBI-related disability today.

Tourette's (TS) symptoms usually first appear in children between the ages of 7 and 10 years.

Schizophrenia affects about 2 million Americans. Annual costs total about $32.5 billion.

Some 5.2 million Americans 18 to 54 have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) every year.

About 20 million Americans live with the disorder, which often causes severe and crippling pain.

An estimated 1 million people are living with Parkinson’s in the United States.

Between 750,000 to 1 million people in the United States are addicted to heroin.

5.3 Million, 570 Billion. Alzheimer's disease eventually causes substantial memory loss and then death, with no known cure.

What is Sleep? SCIENCE ROCKS

Human sleep is typically monitored by recording brain activity using a few electrodes placed on the scalp. A new study simultaneously recorded neuronal activity in a dozen different brain regions in neurosurgical patients, and found that regions of the human brain often go silent at different times through the night, reflecting a form of 'piecemeal sleep'.

HFSP Long-Term Fellow Yuval Nir and colleagues
We usually think of sleep as a global phenomenon. Since sleep is defined as a state of unresponsiveness, it seems natural to assume that our brain is either "awake" or "asleep" as a whole. But a new study finds that regions of the human brain typically go silent at different times, giving humans something in common with dolphins, which are known to sleep with one part of their brain while the other part controls swimming to the surface for air.
In a collaborative study carried out jointly by scientists at the University of Wisconsin and the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA), Dr. Yuval Nir and colleagues examined the sleep of a unique group of 13 epilepsy patients who had electrodes implanted deep into their brains to monitor the sources of their seizures. Usually sleep is studied either in animal models or in sleep labs by recording human brain waves sensed through the surface of the skull via scalp encephalogram (EEG). This study provided a rare opportunity to simultaneously record neuronal activity from a dozen different brain regions in the human brain. Despite their epilepsy, it was found that the sleep in the patients resembled normal sleep in healthy individuals. In addition, bursts of activity associated with epilepsy were removed from the analysis to make sure that results could be generalized to the entire population.
Researchers found that both slow waves and oscillating spindles, which are electrical markers for sleep, were mostly restricted to local regions of the brain. Towards the end of sleep such "local" sleep waves became more and more frequent. Interestingly, even when sleep waves were observed across several brain regions, they did not take place at the exact same time, but tended to propagate along typical paths. Overall, the study shows that electrical activity in sleep is highly complex - both in space and in time, and only some of this action can be picked up by non-invasive measures such as EEG. The findings raise the intriguing possibility that when we are awake but sleep deprived, such local sleep waves may invade our brain activity so that some circuits go offline independently.

Impact of everyday Stress on Teen brain function !

Stressed Out: Teens and Adults Respond Differently


UCLA neuroscientist Adriana Galván studies the impact of normal, everyday stress and associated stress hormones on adolescents' brain function and decision making

"Data suggest that the greatest sources of stress for teens are parents, while for adults stress tends to come from work or schoolwork."

Stress can be compared with the pressure that a sculptor places on a piece of marble: the right pressure and it becomes a masterpiece, but too much pressure and the marble breaks into pieces.
The right amount of stress helps us to meet our goals and do good work. Too much stress can produce serious damage to the heart, the vascular system and the immune system, and it also causes changes in some areas of the brain.

With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Adriana Galván, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), is studying the effect of stress on brain function in adolescents and adults.
"Studies on stress and cognition across development have mostly focused on chronic, severe and, often, traumatic stress, such as child abuse or neglect," Galván said.
"In our new research, we will determine what normative, daily stress, and associated stress hormones, do to decision making during adolescence."

When we are exposed to stress, the brain interprets the event as a threatening situation. The hypothalamus secrets adrenocorticotrophic releasing hormone (ARH), which stimulates the pituitary gland to produce adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH). ACTH stimulates the adrenal gland, located on top of the kidneys, to produce adrenaline and cortisol, increasing blood pressure and heart rate. When the stressful situation is over, the hippocampus (in the brain) stops the production of these hormones so the body can return to its normal state.

Studies in animals show that chronic stress produces a decrease in the size of the neurons in some parts of the brain, such as the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex, which are involved in memory and attention.

Chronic stress also produces an increase in the size of the neurons in the amygdala, the part of the brain involved in aggression, fear and anxiety. These changes in the brain can influence one's ability to make decisions.

Other studies have shown that the decision-making process, in situations that involve choosing between a risky versus a safe response, produces high activation of the insula (in the brain) and that chronic stress can decrease the activity of the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, weakening memory and attention.

The way an individual responds to stress can be very different based on previous experiences. Normally, a stressor factor, such as a project for school, turns on the stress circuit, and it is turned off again when the stressor factor disappears. This can change for different reasons such as repeated stressors, failure of an individual to adapt to the stressor factor or defects that prevent the circuit from turning off.

Galván monitors the level of stress in her study participants four times per day. When an individual records high or low levels of stress, he or she immediately comes to the lab for evaluation.
Data suggest that the greatest sources of stress for teens are parents, while for adults stress tends to come from work or schoolwork.

There are also differences based on the time of day. While adults are most stressed in the morning, teens are most stressed in the early evening. Data also suggest that teens show greater cognitive impairment when stressed than adults.

According to Galván, "We anticipate greater ventral striatal and ventral prefrontal cortex activation during risky choices in the adolescent group, compared to adults. In adults, we expect greater insular cortex activity during non-risky (safe) choices. These effects will be exacerbated during times of high stress. In addition, we expect that adolescents will show greater recruitment of the amgydala during high versus low stress conditions."

The researchers predict that these findings will have a broad social impact. They will provide information to a broad range of specialists, including those in public policy, psychiatry, psychology, human development and education.
The study also provides evidence about how an individual's own stress influences his/her cognition and brain function versus previous studies that had induced stress in a laboratory setting. And it will show if adolescents are more susceptible to environmental stressors, potentially leading to new interventions and preventions that aim to reduce stress in clinically disordered populations.
September 3, 2010

Pink Floyd on the brain...... SCIENCE ROCKS

NPR   Mind Reading: Technology Turns Thought Into Action

by Jon Hamilton

Watching The Brain Listen To Music
In theory, researchers could receive signals from hundreds or even thousands of electrodes. So far, they haven't gone beyond dozens, yet the results have been spectacular.
Schalk shows some of what ECoG can do in his lab. There aren't any animals or test tubes here, but there are plenty of computers, including one playing Pink Floyd's album The Wall.
Schalk is showing me the results of experiments he did using ECoG to monitor people listening to The Wall. He points toward two waveforms on the computer screen. One shows the mountains and valleys that represent changes in the music volume; the second waveform looks very similar, but it represents the electrical signals generated by the brain in response to the music.
"There's a very close correlation between the actual loudness in the music that is just playing right now and the intensity of the music that we're decoding or inferring from the person's brain," Schalk says. "Isn't that pretty awesome?"

A Brain On 'The Wall'

In this experiment, researchers compared the volume of Pink Floyd music played to a patient (music power) with the data gathered from the brain listening to that music (decoded music power). Notice how the shapes of the waveforms are similar.

 

The brain signal is so distinctive you could almost recognize the music from the waveform alone, Schalk says.

In the second part of the music experiment, volunteers listened to Pink Floyd for about 10 seconds, then the music was interrupted by about a second of complete silence.
The experiment shows that while it may have been silent in the room during the test, it was not silent in the volunteers' brains.
Schalk's computer screen shows that even when the music stops, the waveform from the brain continues as if the music were still playing. What we're seeing is the brain's attempt to fill in the missing sounds, Schalk says.
"The brain basically tells us a lot of information about the music in the times when there is really no music," he says.
It's a vivid illustration of something neuroscientists have been studying for many years, Schalk says. Whether it's musical phrases or strings of words or scenery we look at, our brains are always filling in missing information.

WHAT if I knew what you are thinking!!!!!!!!!!!!! SCIENCE ROCKS

Eavesdropping On Your Inner Monologue?
ECoG is also revealing things about how the brain creates speech.
Schalk and other researchers are using the technology to watch the brains of people as they speak out loud and also as they say the words silently to themselves.
"One of the surprising initial findings coming out of that research was that actual and imagined speech [are] very, very different," Schalk says.
When your brain wants you to say a word out loud, it produces two sets of signals. One has to do with moving the muscles controlling the mouth and vocal tract. The second set involves signals in the brain's auditory system.
But when a person simply thinks of a word instead of saying it, there are no muscle signals — just the activity in the parts of the brain involved in listening.
"That seems to suggest that what imagined speech actually really is, it's more like internally listening to your own voice," Schalk says.
So, he says, it should be possible to use ECoG to eavesdrop on that inner voice and decode what we're thinking.
Schalk says he hasn't quite done that yet. But he's close. In one experiment, he says, the ECoG system tried to recognize several dozen unspoken words in the minds of volunteers. It was right about half the time.

Rat whiskers will explain Touch!? SCIENCE ROCKS

Virtual whiskers have the touch

BW Quist and R Faruqi / Northwestern University

This is a view of the model whisker array built to explore how sensory and motor data are combined in the brain to create a perception.

By John Roach ( a contributing writer for msnbc.com)

A virtual model of rat whiskers may help scientists unlock the mystery of how our brains turn the mechanics of touch into perceptions.
"Our sense of touch is very mysterious. You can reach into your pocket or your purse and without even looking, you can identify your keys, a coin, or a paperclip," Mirta Hartmann, who studies sensory and neural systems engineering at Northwestern University

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Her lab is using rat whiskers to understand how the brain goes from the mechanics of touch to a perception. "In the same way that we use our hands to go out and actively explore different objects, rats use their whiskers," Hartmann said.
Whiskers are less complicated to study than the human hand, which has sensors all over. The response of the sensors depend on the viscoelasticity of the skin.
Rat whiskers, by contrast, have senors only at the base. In addition, "rats cannot grasp with their whiskers, they can only explore. Our hand movements are complicated because we can grasp and manipulate objects, as well as tactually explore," Hartmann noted.
Whisker model
She can colleagues studied the structure of the rat head and whisker array — 30 on each side of the face arranged in a regular pattern — to create their virtual model.
Rats use these whiskers to whisk objects 5 to 25 times per second. This is different than cats or dogs, which also have whiskers but aren't able to "move them back and forth that much," Hartmann noted.
The model allows the researchers to simulate the rat whisking against different objects and predict the full pattern of inputs into the whisker system as a rat encounters an object. These simulations can then be compared against real rat behavior.
"It allows us to start to simulate what's going to happen as the rat comes up to an object and explores it with its whiskers," she said.
Human touch
This information, in turn, should lead to insights to what's going on in the human brain as the hand fishes around a pocket or purse.
"There's just electricity in your brain and there's just mechanical signals on your hand. And somehow your brain is able to turn that contact pattern into electricity that generates a perception," Hartmann said. "That whole process is very mysterious. We need basic research to try and figure out how that happens."
In addition, the research is being used to create robots with whiskers, which can use the motion of the whiskers to generate three-dimensional spatial representations of the environment. The technology could be used, for example, on robots designed to explore dark places.
A paper describing the research was published Thursday online in Public Library of Science Computational Biology.

The best 55 million ever spent.... Allen Institute Rocks

3D Brain Explorer Maps Anatomy and Gene Expression

Posted on April 12, 2011 by Dalma Boros

Scientists have unveiled a $55 million dollar project of the Allen Institute for Brain Science that is an interactive atlas of the human brain. It is called Brain Explorer, and it is the first of its kind because it not only maps the anatomy of the brain, but localized gene expression as well. Understanding the underlying biochemistry of brain regions is critical for the comprehension of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease and depression. That is why 4000 scientists are already using Brain Explorer as a research tool.

The atlas combines brain image data collected through several imaging techniques into one 3D archive that maps anatomy and gene expression. Brain Explorer is offered as a free download through the Allen Institute for Brain Science website, and is compatible with Windows and Mac OS X.

A world of possibilities.... Neuroscience Rocks

Mirror Neuron System in Autism: Broken or Just Slowly Developing?

ScienceDaily (May 3, 2011) — Developmental abnormalities in the mirror neuron system may contribute to social deficits in autism.

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The mirror neuron system is a brain circuit that enables us to better understand and anticipate the actions of others. These circuits activate in similar ways when we perform actions or watch other people perform the same actions.
Now, a new study published in Biological Psychiatry reports that the mirror system in individuals with autism is not actually broken, but simply delayed.
Dr. Christian Keysers, lead author on the project, detailed their findings, "While most of us have their strongest mirror activity while they are young, autistic individuals seem to have a weak mirror system in their youth, but their mirror activity increases with age, is normal by about age 30 and unusually high thereafter."
This increase in function of mirror neuron systems may be related to increased capacity for social function or responsiveness to rehabilitative treatments among individuals with autism.
"The finding of late developing circuit functions could be very important. One wonders whether the recent breakthroughs in the genetics of autism could help to identify causes for the developmental delays. This type of bridge might help to identify novel treatment mechanisms for autism," said Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry.
One of the next steps in this line of research will be for researchers to examine how individuals with autism accomplish this improvement over time, and how therapeutic interventions targeting the same mechanism can help to support this important process.

E.S.P. mindbrain rocks

E.S.P. : Top 10 Amazing Science Studies : Science Channel

meditation=increased positivity....SCIENCE rocks

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
Written By: James Shreeve
Photo: Cary Wolinsky

SPIRITUAL STATE

http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/089/cache/mind-brain-electrodes_8903_600x450.jpg

For 2,500 years Buddhists have employed strict training techniques to guide their mental state away from destructive emotions and toward a more compassionate, happier frame of being. Spurred by the cascade of new evidence for the brain's plasticity, Western neuroscientists have taken a keen interest. Can meditation literally change the mind?

For the past several years Richard Davidson and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been studying brain activity in Tibetan monks, both in meditative and non-meditative states. Davidson's group had shown earlier that people who are inclined to fall prey to negative emotions displayed a pattern of persistent activity in regions of their right prefrontal cortex. In those with more positive temperaments the activity occurred in the left prefrontal cortex instead. When Davidson ran the experiment on a senior Tibetan lama skilled in meditation, the lama's baseline of activity proved to be much farther to the left of anyone previously tested. Judging from this one study, at least, he was quantifiably the happiest man in the world.

Davidson recently tested the prefrontal activity in some volunteers from a high-tech company in Wisconsin. One group of volunteers then received eight weeks of training in meditation, while a control group did not. All the participants also received flu shots.

By the end of the study, those who had meditated showed a pronounced shift in brain activity toward the left, "happier," frontal cortex. The meditators also showed a healthier immune response to the flu shot, suggesting that the training affected the body's health as well as the mind's.

"You don't have to become a Buddhist," says the Dalai Lama himself, who is closely folowing the work of Western cognitive scientists like Davidson. "Everybody has the potential to lead a peaceful, meaningful life."

Dr. Ramachandran ... Time's 100 most influential people... SCIENCE rocks

http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,912832862001_2066607,00.html

Empathy? Let's yawn together! NEUROSCIENCE Rocks

Chimpanzees' Contagious Yawning Evidence of Empathy, Not Just Sleepiness, Study Shows
ScienceDaily (Apr. 7, 2011) — Contagious yawning is not just a marker of sleepiness or boredom. For chimpanzees, it may actually be a sign of a social connection
New research at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, may help scientists understand empathy, the mechanism thought to underlie contagious yawning, in both chimpanzees and humans. The research also may help show how social biases strengthen or weaken empathy.
Scientists at Yerkes discovered chimpanzees yawn more after watching familiar chimpanzees yawn than after watching strangers yawn. The Public Library of Science One (PLoS ONE) is publishing the study online on April 6, 2011.
Yerkes researchers Matthew Campbell, PhD, and Frans de Waal, PhD, propose that when yawning spreads between chimpanzees, it reflects an underlying empathy between them.
"The idea is that yawns are contagious for the same reason that smiles, frowns and other facial expressions are contagious," they write. "Our results support the idea that contagious yawning can be used as a measure of empathy, because the biases we observed were similar to empathy biases previously seen in humans."
Campbell is a FIRST postdoctoral fellow at Yerkes and Emory (Fellowship in Research and Science Teaching). De Waal is director of the Living Links Center at Yerkes and C.H. Candler Professor of Psychology at Emory.
They studied 23 adult chimpanzees that were housed in two separate groups. The chimpanzees viewed several nine-second video clips of other chimpanzees, in both groups, either yawning or doing something else. They yawned 50 percent more frequently in response to seeing members of their group yawn compared to seeing others yawn.
In humans, scientists have identified certain parts of the brain that are activated both when someone experiences pain and when they see someone else experiencing pain. In these experiments, people tend to show more sensitivity for members of the same social group.
The results raise the question of whether contagious yawning among humans shows the same biases: favoring members of the same social group over different social groups.
The authors note one complication: chimpanzees live in small communities where unfamiliar individuals are by definition seen as members of a separate social group. In contrast, humans do not necessarily see strangers as belonging to an "outgroup." For this reason, the in-group/out-group distinction may be more absolute in chimpanzees than in humans. Chimpanzees in the wild are known to be extremely hostile to external groups, which probably adds to the effects found in this study.
The authors say that contagious yawning could be a window into social and emotional connections between individuals, and suggest that insight into barriers to chimpanzee empathy may help break down those barriers for humans.

Anorexia and Spring birth date? SCIENCE rocks at Oxford

Dr Lahiru Handunnetthi and team gathered data including birth dates of 1,293 individuals who had been diagnosed with anorexia. They discovered that a disproportionately high number of patients (15% excess) were born between March and June, for every seven anorexia cases expected, there were eight. They also found fewer-than-expected births in September/October (20% deficit).

The researchers explain that previous studies had indicated a risk between developing an eating disorder and when the person is born. However, they were small studies involving few people - making it difficult to come to any conclusions.

Dr Handunnetthi said:

"We meta-analysed four cohorts of anorexia nervosa patients from the UK, making this the largest ever study to assess the presence of a season of birth effect in anorexia. We found that susceptibility to anorexia nervosa is significantly influenced by a person's season of birth, being higher in those people born in the spring and lower in those born in the autumn.

A number of previous studies have found that mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression are more common among those born in the spring - so this finding in anorexia is perhaps not surprising. However, our study only provides evidence of an association. Now we need more research to identify which factors are putting people at particular risk."


The scientists say that perhaps environmental factors which are present when conception occurs, or during fetal development in the uterus, may have an impact.

Dr Handunnetthi said:

"Seasonal changes in temperature, sunlight exposure and vitamin D levels, maternal nutrition and exposure to infections are all possible risk factors. Identifying these risk factors is important in helping us understand and maybe even prevent illness in future."

Too big a price for Beauty!

Botox Can Dull Ability To Read Emotion In Others

What Else is New?

Men Tend to Leap to Judgement Where Women See More Shades of Grey, Research Shows

Science Daily (Apr. 18, 2011) — An experiment by researchers at the University of Warwick has found the first real evidence that men tend to make black-or-white judgements when women are more prone to see shades of grey in choices and decisions.

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The research paper, entitled Sex Differences in Semantic Categorization, is about to be published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. Authors Vickie Pasterski, Karolina Zwierzynska, and Zachary Estes are all from the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick.
The researchers asked 113 people whether each of 50 objects fitted partially, fully, or not at all into certain categories. The 50 objects were ones likely to stimulate debate or disagreement about which category they fitted into. For instance: Is a tomato a fruit? Is paint a tool?
The researchers found that men were more likely to make absolute category judgments (e.g., a tomato is either a fruit or not), whereas women made less certain category judgments (e.g., a tomato can "sort of" belong in the fruit category). The women surveyed tended to be much more nuanced in their responses and were 23% more likely to assign an object to the "partial" category.
While it has been a popular belief that such a male/female split exists, as far as the researchers are aware, this is the first time such a sex difference in categorization has been shown experimentally.
University of Warwick psychologist Dr Zachary Estes says:
"Of course, simply because we have found a significant sex difference in how men and women categorize does not mean that one method is intrinsically better than the other. For instance, male doctors may be more likely to quickly and confidently diagnose a set of symptoms as a disease. Although this brings great advantages in treating diseases early, it obviously has massive disadvantages if the diagnosis is actually wrong. In many cases, a more open approach to categorizing or diagnosing would be more effective."

amazing

http://www.scientificamerican.com/video.cfm?id=820057168001

My Gut Hurts When I read This! Science Rocks

The Neuroscience of the Gut

Strange but true: the brain is shaped by bacteria in the digestive tract

By Robert Martone  | April 19, 2011 | 3

Researchers track the gut-brain connection Image: dyoma

People may advise you to listen to your gut instincts: now research suggests that your gut may have more impact on your thoughts than you ever realized. Scientists from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and the Genome Institute of Singapore led by Sven Pettersson recently reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that normal gut flora, the bacteria that inhabit our intestines, have a significant impact on brain development and subsequent adult behavior.
We human beings may think of ourselves as a highly evolved species of conscious individuals, but we are all far less human than most of us appreciate. Scientists have long recognized that the bacterial cells inhabiting our skin and gut outnumber human cells by ten-to-one. Indeed, Princeton University scientist Bonnie Bassler compared the approximately 30,000 human genes found in the average human to the more than 3 million bacterial genes inhabiting us, concluding that we are at most one percent human. We are only beginning to understand the sort of impact our bacterial passengers have on our daily lives.
Moreover, these bacteria have been implicated in the development of neurological and behavioral disorders. For example, gut bacteria may have an influence on the body’s use of vitamin B6, which in turn has profound effects on the health of nerve and muscle cells. They modulate immune tolerance and, because of this, they may have an influence on autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis. They have been shown to influence anxiety-related behavior, although there is controversy regarding whether gut bacteria exacerbate or ameliorate stress related anxiety responses. In autism and other pervasive developmental disorders, there are reports that the specific bacterial species present in the gut are altered and that gastrointestinal problems exacerbate behavioral symptoms. A newly developed biochemical test for autism is based, in part, upon the end products of bacterial metabolism.
But this new study is the first to extensively evaluate the influence of gut bacteria on the biochemistry and development of the brain. The scientists raised mice lacking normal gut microflora, then compared their behavior, brain chemistry and brain development to mice having normal gut bacteria. The microbe-free animals were more active and, in specific behavioral tests, were less anxious than microbe-colonized mice. In one test of anxiety, animals were given the choice of staying in the relative safety of a dark box, or of venturing into a lighted box. Bacteria-free animals spent significantly more time in the light box than their bacterially colonized littermates. Similarly, in another test of anxiety, animals were given the choice of venturing out on an elevated and unprotected bar to explore their environment, or remain in the relative safety of a similar bar protected by enclosing walls. Once again, the microbe-free animals proved themselves bolder than their colonized kin.
Pettersson’s team next asked whether the influence of gut microbes on the brain was reversible and, since the gut is colonized by microbes soon after birth, whether there was evidence that gut microbes influenced the development of the brain. They found that colonizing an adult germ-free animal with normal gut bacteria had no effect on their behavior. However, if germ free animals were colonized early in life, these effects could be reversed. This suggests that there is a critical period in the development of the brain when the bacteria are influential.

Consistent with these behavioral findings, two genes implicated in anxiety -- nerve growth factor-inducible clone A (NGF1-A) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) -- were found to be down-regulated in multiple brain regions in the germ-free animals. These changes in behavior were also accompanied by changes in the levels of several neurotransmitters, chemicals which are responsible for signal transmission between nerve cells. The neurotransmitters dopamine, serotonin and noradrenaline were elevated in a specific region of the brain, the striatum, which is associated with the planning and coordination of movement and which is activated by novel stimuli, while there were there were no such effects on neurotransmitters in other brain regions, such as those involved in memory (the hippocampus) or executive function (the frontal cortex).

When Pettersson’s team performed a comprehensive gene expression analysis of five different brain regions, they found nearly 40 genes that were affected by the presence of gut bacteria. Not only were these primitive microbes able to influence signaling between nerve cells while sequestered far away in the gut, they had the astonishing ability to influence whether brain cells turn on or off specific genes.  
How, then, do these single-celled intestinal denizens exert their influence on a complex multicellular organ such as the brain? Although the answer is unclear, there are several possibilities: the Vagus nerve, for example, connects the gut to the brain, and it’s known that infection with the Salmonella bacteria stimulates the expression of certain genes in the brain, which is blocked when the Vagus nerve is severed. This nerve may be stimulated as well by normal gut microbes, and serve as the link between them and the brain. Alternatively, those microbes may modulate the release of chemical signals by the gut into the bloodstream which ultimately reach the brain. These gut microbes, for example, are known to modulate stress hormones which may in turn influence the expression of genes in the brain.
Regardless of how these intestinal “guests” exert their influence, these studies suggest that brain-directed behaviors, which influence the manner in which animals interact with the external world, may be deeply influenced by that animal’s relationship with the microbial organisms living in its gut. And the discovery that gut bacteria exert their influence on the brain within a discrete developmental stage may have important implications for developmental brain disorders.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Robert Martone is the Neuroscience therapeutic area lead for The Covance Biomarker Center of Excellence located in Greenfield, Indiana. He is a research scientist with extensive experience in drug discovery for neurodegenerative diseases.

It is not your fault

Genetic Link to Attempted Suicide Identified

ScienceDaily (Mar. 28, 2011) — A study of thousands of people with bipolar disorder suggests that genetic risk factors may influence the decision to attempt suicide.

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Johns Hopkins scientists, reporting in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, have identified a small region on chromosome 2 that is associated with increased risk for attempted suicide. This small region contains four genes, including the ACP1 gene, and the researchers found more than normal levels of the ACP1 protein in the brains of people who had committed suicide. This protein is thought to influence the same biological pathway as lithium, a medication known to reduce the rate of suicidal behavior.
The researchers say the findings could lead to better suicide prevention efforts by providing new directions for research and drug development.
"We have long believed that genes play a role in what makes the difference between thinking about suicide and actually doing it," says study leader Virginia L. Willour, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Willour and her colleagues studied DNA samples from nearly 2,700 adults with bipolar disorder, 1,201 of them with a history of suicide attempts and 1,497 without. They found that those with one copy of a genetic variant in the region of chromosome 2 where ACP1 is located were 1.4 times more likely to have attempted suicide, and those with two copies were almost three times as likely.
Willour and her colleagues were able to replicate their findings in another group of samples: This one comprised DNA from more than 3,000 people with bipolar disorder. By using only DNA from people with bipolar disorder, the researchers say they were able to control for mental illness and narrow in on what may cause one group to attempt suicide and another to control those urges.
Suicide is estimated to kill 1.4 percent of the U.S. population, and roughly 4.6 percent of the population has attempted suicide at least once, Willour says. Among people with bipolar disorder, 47 percent think about killing themselves while 25 percent actually try to do it, she says.
Willour says the next steps are to replicate these findings and to determine the exact biological mechanisms through which these genetic risk factors increase the risk for suicidal behavior.
"What's promising are the implications of this work for learning more about the biology of suicide and the medications used to treat patients who may be at risk," Willour says. "Not everyone with bipolar disorder can take lithium because of its side effects. If we could give them another option, that would be fantastic."
The study was funded by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
Other Hopkins researchers who participated in the study are Fayaz Seifuddin, M.S.; Pamela B. Mahon, Ph.D.; Dubravka Jancic, Ph.D.; Mehdi Pirooznia, M.D., Ph.D.; Barbara Schweizer, R.N., B.S.; Fernando S. Goes, M.D.; Francis Mondimore, M.D.; Dean F. MacKinnon, M.D.; J. Raymond DePaulo Jr., M.D.; Peter P. Zandi, Ph.D.; and James B. Potash, M.D., M.P.H.

Not all can verbalize their pain away

Patients' own cells yield new insights into the biology of schizophrenia

Underwater Sculpture Park!

Pictures: "Bodies" Fill Underwater Sculpture Park

Is everything Neurobiology?

Neurological basis for embarrassment described

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. Mark Twain

It is ok to be Weird or Weirder!

 Scientific American Mind » May 2011

Brain  Mind

The Unleashed Mind: Why Creative People Are Eccentric

Highly creative people often seem weirder than the rest of us. Now researchers know why

By Shelley Carson  | April 14, 2011 |

People who score high for creative achievement in the arts are more likely to believe in telepathic communication, dreams that foretell the future, and past lives. Image: GETTY IMAGES

In Brief

• People who are highly creative often have odd thoughts and behaviors—and vice versa.
• Both creativity and eccentricity may be the result of genetic variations that increase cognitive disinhibition—the brain’s failure to filter out extraneous information.
• When unfiltered information reaches conscious awareness in the brains of people who are highly intelligent and can process this information without being overwhelmed, it may lead to exceptional insights and sensations.

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  He is one of the world’s best known and most successful entrepreneurs, with hundreds of patents to his name—including the Segway scooter. But you will never see Dean Kamen in a suit and tie: the eccentric inventor dresses almost exclusively in denim. He spent five years in college before dropping out, does not take vacations and has never married. Kamen presides (along with his Ministers of Ice Cream, Brunch and Nepotism) over the Connecticut island kingdom of North Dumpling, which has “seceded” from the U.S. and dispenses its own currency in units of pi. Visitors are issued a visa form that includes spaces on which to note identifying marks on both their face and buttocks.

Kamen, who works tirelessly at inspiring kids to pursue careers in science and engineering, is one of many highly creative people whose personal behavior sometimes strikes others as odd. Albert Einstein picked up cigarette butts off the street to get tobacco for his pipe; Howard Hughes spent entire days on a chair in the middle of the supposedly germ-free zone of his Beverly Hills Hotel suite; the composer Robert Schumann believed that his musical compositions were dictated to him by Beethoven and other deceased luminaries from their tombs; and Charles Dickens is said to have fended off imaginary urchins with his umbrella as he walked the streets of London. More recently, we have seen Michael Jackson’s preoccupation with rhinoplasty, Salvador Dalí’s affection for dangerous pets and the Icelandic singer Björk dressed for the Oscars as a swan.