Controlling Individual Cortical Nerve Cells By Human Thought
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Epilepsy is common in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). A new study indicates their epilepsy is surprisingly photosensitive as well. Since photosensitive epilepsies can be triggered by flickering lights, the self-stimulatory behavior of ASD children, such as hand flapping in front of the face, has the potential to dramatically increase the risk of inducing photosensitive seizures.
Before she could seek to convince the world that her computer model of a key brain circuit explains a fundamental, 80-year-old mystery of neuroscience with potential relevance to Parkinson’s disease, Stephanie Jones sought to convince Christopher Moore. The new Brown neuroscience professors are now close collaborators, but when they first started talking about the beta oscillations of the cortex, Moore thought Jones was plain wrong, if not a bit nuts.
During sleep, our perception of the environment decreases. However the extent to which the human brain responds to surrounding noises during sleep remains unclear. In a study published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers from University of Liège (Belgium) used brain imaging to study responses to sounds during sleep. In this study, the research team led by Dr Thanh Dang-Vu and Prof. Pierre Maquet (Cyclotron Research Center, University of Liège) shows that brain activity induced by sounds during sleep closely depends on brain waves that constitute our sleep.
Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have discovered in mice a molecular trigger that initiates myelination, the process by which brain cell networks are reinforced with an insulating material called myelin that speeds their ability to transmit messages. The myelination process is an essential part of brain development. Myelin formation is necessary for brain cells to communicate and it may contribute to development of skills and learning.
German researchers have used drivers’ brain signals, for the first time, to assist in braking, providing much quicker reaction times and a potential solution to the thousands of car accidents that are caused by human error. Using electroencephalography (EEG) – a technique that attaches electrodes to the scalp – the researchers demonstrated that the mind-reading system, accompanied with modern traffic sensors, could detect a driver’s intention to break 130 milliseconds faster than a normal brake pedal response. The publishers made the original article available for free for 30 days (registration required; check the end of this report for a download link). Included in this report is a really cool video demonstration of an actual participant hooked up to the brainwave monitoring system and driving simulator.
A random-assignment controlled study published today in Mind & Brain, The Journal of Psychiatry found improved brain functioning and decreased symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, ADHD, in students practicing the Transcendental Meditation® (TM) technique. The paper, “ADHD, Brain Functioning, and Transcendental Meditation Practice,” is the second published study demonstrating Transcendental Meditation’s ability to help students with attention-related difficulties. Included in this report is a link to a free digital version of this journal that includes the referenced study.
Every day we have to make decisions that involve evaluating or choosing between options, often without much information to go on. So how we do it? How do we prevent analysis paralysis? Psychological theory suggests that we often rely on the recognition heuristic, choosing the option that we recognize over the one we do not. So, as psychological scientist Christian Frings points out, if we have to predict whether Roger Federer or Michael Berrer will win a tennis match, we will probably stick with Federer because he is a well-known name.
The assumption that we human beings can control and intentionally forget unwanted memories has been controversial ever since Freud asserted it at the beginning of the 20th century. Now, psychology researcher Gerd Thomas Waldhauser has shown in neuroimaging studies that Freud was correct in his assumptions: in the same way as we can control our motor impulses (we can, for example, rapidly instruct the brain not to catch a cactus which is falling from a table), we can control our memory.
In the late 1990s, Jane Anderson was working as a landscape architect. That meant she did not work much in the winter, and she struggled with seasonal affective disorder in the dreary Minnesota winter months. She decided to try meditation and noticed a change within a month. Her experience inspired a new study which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, which finds changes in brain activity after only five weeks of meditation training.
Researchers are now discovering that children as young as 3 years of age can meet the clinical criteria for major depressive disorder (MDD). What is more, they demonstrate patterns of brain activation very similar to those seen in adults diagnosed with the disorder. Take for instance, Callie. From a distance, she appears to be a normal if quiet 5-year-old girl. But when faced with a toy that blows large soap bubbles — an activity that makes the vast majority of kindergarteners squeal and leap with delight — she is uninterested in popping the bubbles or taking a turn with the gun herself. When offered dolls or other toys, she is equally unmoved.
