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Tero Toivanen

AK's Rambling Thoughts: Nerve Cells and Glial Cells: Redefining the Foundation of Intel... - 0 views

  • Glia are generally divided into two broad classes, microglia and macroglia. Microglia are part of the immune system, specialized macrophages, and probably don't participate in information handling. Macroglia are present in both the peripheral and central nervous systems, in different types.
  • Traditionally, there were four types of glia in the CNS: astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, ependymal cells, and radial glia. Of these, the one type that's most important to the developing revolution in our ideas are those cells called astrocytes.2 It turns out that there are at least two types of cell (at least) subsumed under this name.24, 25, 31, 32 One, which retains the name of astrocyte, takes up neurotransmitters released by neurons (and glial cells), aids in osmoregulation,10 controls circulation in the brain,1, 31 and generally appears to provide support for the neurons and other types of glia.
  • Although both NG2-glia and astrocytes extend processes to nodes of Ranvier in white matter ([refs]) and synapses in grey matter, their geometric relationship to these neuronal elements is different. Thus, although astrocytes and NG2-glia bear a superficial resemblance, they are distinguished by their different process arborizations. This will reflect fundamental differences in the way these two glial cell populations interact with other elements in the neural network.
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  • Both types of glia are closely integrated with the nervous system, receiving information from action potentials via synapses22 (which, only a few years ago were thought to be limited to neurons), and returning control of neuron activity through release of neurotransmitters and other modulators. Both, then, demonstrate the potential for considerable intelligent activity, contributing to the overall intelligence of the brain.
  • Astrocytes probably (IMO) are limited, or mostly so, to maintaining the supplies of energy and necessary metabolites. They receive action potentials,3, 6 which allows them to closely and quickly monitor general activity and increase circulation in response, even before the neurons and NG2-glia have reduced their supply of ATP.21 They appear to be linked in a network among themselves,2, 5 allowing them to communicate their needs without interfering with the higher-level calculations of the brain.
  • NG2-glia appear to have several functions, but one of the most exciting things about them is that they seem to be able to fire action potentials.33 Their cell membranes, like those of the dendrites of neurons, have all the necessary channels and receptors to perform real-time electrical calculations in the same way as neural dendrites. They have also demonstrated the ability to learn through long term potentiation.
  • Dividing NG2-glia also retain the ability to fire action potentials, as well as receiving synaptic inputs from neurons.23 Presumably, they continue to perform their full function, including retaining any elements of long term potentiation or depression contained in their synapses.
  • Oligodendrocytes are responsible for the insulation of the axons, wrapping around approximately 1 mm of each of up to 50 axons within their reach, and forming the myelin sheath.
  • Although the precise type of neuron formed by maturing cells hasn't been determined, the very fact that cells of this type can change into neurons is very important. We actually don't know whether the cells that do this maturation are the same as those that perform neuron-like activities, there appear to be two separate types of NG2-glia, spiking and non-spiking.26 It may very well be that the "spiking" type have actually differentiated, while the "non-spiking" type may be doing the maturing. Of course, very few differentiated cell types remain capable of division, as even the "spiking" type do.
  • What's important about both dendrites and NG2-glia isn't so much their ability to propagate action potentials, as that their entire cell membranes are capable of "intelligent" manipulation of the voltage across it.
  • While there are many ion channels involved in controlling the voltage across the cell membrane, the only type we really need to worry about for action potentials is voltage-gated sodium channels. These are channels that sometimes allow sodium ions to pass through the cell membrane, which they will do because the concentration of sodium ions outside the cell is very much higher than inside. When and how much they open depends, among other things, on the voltage across the membrane.
  • A normal neuron will have a voltage of around -60 to -80mV (millivolts), in a direction that tends to push the sodium ions (which are positive) into the cell (the same direction as the concentration is pushing). When the voltage falls to around -55mV, the primary type of gate will open for a millisecond or so, after which it will close and rest for several milliseconds. It won't be able to open again until the voltage is somewhere between -55 and around -10mV. Meanwhile, the sodium current has caused the voltage to swing past zero to around +20mV.
  • When one part of the cell membrane is "depolarized" in this fashion, the voltage near it is also depressed. Thus, if the voltage is at zero at one point, it might be at -20mV 10 microns (μm) away, and -40mV 20μm away, and -60mV 30μm, and so on. Notice that somewhere between 20μm and 30μm, it has passed the threshold for the ion channels, which means that they are open, allowing a current that drives the voltage further down. This will produce a wave of voltage drop along the membrane, which is what the action potential is.
  • After the action potential has passed, and the gates have closed (see above), the voltage is recovered by diffusion of ions towards and away from the membrane, the opening of other gates (primarily potassium), and a set of pumps that push the ions back to their resting state. These pumps are mostly powered by the sodium gradient, except for the sodium/potassium pump that maintains it, which is powered by ATP.
  • the vast majority of calculation that goes into human intelligence takes place at the level of the network of dendrites and NG2-glia, with the whole system of axons, dendrites, and action potentials only carrying a tiny subset of the total information over long distances. This is especially important considering that the human brain has a much higher proportion of glial matter than our relatives.
  • This, in turn, suggests that our overall approach to understanding the brain has been far too axon centric, there needs to be a shift to a more membrane-centric approach to understanding how the brain creates intelligence.
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    Our traditional idea of how the brain works is based on the neuron: it fires action potentials, which travel along the axon and, when the reach the synapses, the receiving neuron performs a calculation that results in the decision when (or whether) to fire its own action potential. Thus, the brain, from a thinking point of view, is viewed as a network of neurons each performing its own calculation. This view, which I'm going to call the axon-centric view, is simplistic in many ways, and two recent papers add to it, pointing up the ways in which the glial cells of the brain participate in ongoing calculation as well as performing their more traditional support functions.
David McGavock

How Did Consciousness Evolve? - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • consciousness, is rarely studied in the context of evolution.
  • What is the adaptive value of consciousness? When did it evolve and what animals have it?
  • Attention Schema Theory (AST),
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  • suggests that consciousness arises as a solution to one of the most fundamental problems facing any nervous system: Too much information constantly flows in to be fully processed. The brain evolved increasingly sophisticated mechanisms for deeply processing a few select signals at the expense of others,
  • The next evolutionary advance was a centralized controller for attention that could coordinate among all senses. In many animals, that central controller is a brain area called the tectum
  • It coordinates something called overt attention
  • The tectum is a beautiful piece of engineering. To control the head and the eyes efficiently, it constructs something called an internal model, a feature well known to engineers. An internal model is a simulation that keeps track of whatever is being controlled and allows for predictions and planning.
  • With the evolution of reptiles around 350 to 300 million years ago, a new brain structure began to emerge – the wulst
  • our version is usually called the cerebral cortex and has expanded enormously
  • The cortex is like an upgraded tectum
  • The most important difference between the cortex and the tectum may be the kind of attention they control
  • tectum is the master of overt attention—pointing the sensory apparatus toward anything important
  • cortex ups the ante with something called covert attention
  • Your cortex can shift covert attention from the text in front of you to a nearby person, to the sounds in your backyard, to a thought or a memory. Covert attention is the virtual movement of deep processing from one item to another.
  • the cortex must model something much more abstract.
  • it does so by constructing an attention schema
  • a constantly updated set of information that describes what covert attention is doing moment-by-moment and what its consequences are
  • The attention schema is therefore strategically vague. It depicts covert attention in a physically incoherent way, as a non-physical essence. And this, according to the theory, is the origin of consciousness. We say we have consciousness because deep in the brain, something quite primitive is computing that semi-magical self-description.
  • In the AST, the attention schema first evolved as a model of one’s own covert attention. But once the basic mechanism was in place, according to the theory, it was further adapted to model the attentional states of others, to allow for social prediction
  • theory of mind, the ability to understand the possible contents of someone else’s mind.
  • Language is perhaps the most recent big leap in the evolution of consciousness. Nobody knows when human language first evolved. Certainly we had it by 70 thousand years ago when people began to disperse around the world, since all dispersed groups have a sophisticated language.
  • Maybe partly because of language and culture, humans have a hair-trigger tendency to attribute consciousness to everything around us.
  • Justin Barrett called it the Hyperactive Agency Detection Device, or HADD
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    The Attention Schema Theory (AST), developed over the past five years, may be able to answer those questions. The theory suggests that consciousness arises as a solution to one of the most fundamental problems facing any nervous system: Too much information constantly flows in to be fully processed. The brain evolved increasingly sophisticated mechanisms for deeply processing a few select signals at the expense of others, and in the AST, consciousness is the ultimate result of that evolutionary sequence. If the theory is right-and that has yet to be determined-then consciousness evolved gradually over the past half billion years and is present in a range of vertebrate species.
Tero Toivanen

Low Pessimism Protects Against Stroke: The Health and Social Support (HeSSup) Prospecti... - 2 views

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    It's good for your life and health to be optimist.
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    It' s a slightly different perspective that I' m enjoying at this time but I appreciate it may only be true for some-I' ve just begun to understand what "faith" means tho I' m not religious-still! (I feel some empathy now as to why people are) I feel much more inclined to just sit still and connect inside with the Source of me-any meditation or spiritual practice can lead me there or creativity,music too,nature! But to deliberately connect to the part of us all that is connected and knows/is All. From that place I' ve understood that theres noone to be, nowhere to go, nothing to do as we are all there already as we are all IT! So of course daily I forget this but this insight has gifted me much more optimism as I can assume that whatever I really ask for/intend/desire is already in the big melting pot that we can Life/God. That is ' faith' Ive realised now- to ask and know intimately that it' s already a given and to STOP Worrying and completely ignore the naysayers etc. It' s really trusting that I' m connected to it all and I am not separate. I' m beginning to observe quite distinctly the thoughts that separate me from what I want/intend. Particularly in relation to my fellow beings! But then I turn to the place that is connected and I feel so good! and just thinking of the situation from that place and holding that good feeling in relation and giving it over (the problem) really helps! I know several spiritual teachers have said "give it over to me". I' m starting to understand it really is that simple. Trying hard and worrying just create such muck and mire! This may be part of the surrender letting go and letting God that others speak of also? I reckon it would be interesting to see where how people get there faith/trust in life that creates the underlying optimism. What gives that to them? I remember as a child I had it naturally I often got what I asked for and intended and there was an abundance of flow and optimism. No resistance. Fear and doubt come later
Tero Toivanen

Use It or Lose It: The Principles of Brain Plasticity - 3 views

  • You probably haven't realizd it, but as you acquire an ability – for example, the ability to read – you have actually created a system in the brain that does not exist, that's not in place, in the non-reader. It [the ability; the brain system that controls the ability] actually evolves in you as it has been acquired through experience or learning.
  • "There are some very useful exercises at www.BrainHQ.com that are free, and using them can give a person a better understanding of how exercising your brain can drive it in a rejuvenating direction. Using exercises at BrainHQ, most people, of any age, can drive sharp improvements in brain speed and accuracy, and thereby rewire the brain so that it again represents information in detail," he says.
  • Children operating in the 10th to 20th percentile of academic performance are commonly able to improve their scores to the middle or average level with 20-30 hours of intensive computer-based training. "That's a big difference for the child," he says. "It carries most children who are near the bottom of the class, on the average, to be somewhere in the middle or above average in the class. And that gives struggling children a chance to really succeed and in many cases excel in school."
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  • Careful controlled studies in seniors have also been reported in scientific journals. After 40 hours of computer-based training, the average improvement in cognitive performance across the board was 14 years. On average, if you were 70 years old when you underwent the training after 40 hours of brain training, your cognitive abilities operated like that of a 56-year old. Equally strong or even greater effects were seen in 40 to 50 year olds using the program. Individuals who worked on the BrainHQ exercises at home did just as well as those who completed training in a clinic or research center.
  • Ideally, it would be wise to invest at least 20 minutes a day. But no more than five to seven minutes is to be spent on a specific task. When you spend longer amounts of time on a task, the benefits weaken. According to Dr. Merzenich, the primary benefits occur in the first five or six minutes of the task.
  • Find ways to engage yourself in new learning
  • "When it matters to you, you are going to drive changes in your brain," he explains. "That's something always to keep in mind. If what you're doing seems senseless, meaningless, if it does not matter to you, then you're gaining less from it."
  • Get 15-30 minutes of physical exercise each day,
  • Spend about five minutes every day working on the refinement of a specific, small domain of your physical body.
  • You can typically improve yourself to the highest practical or possible level in anywhere between five to a dozen brief sessions of seven or eight minutes each. Again, having a sense of purpose is crucial.
  • Stay socially engaged.
  • Practice "mindfulness,"
  • Foods have an immense impact on your brain, and eating whole foods as described in my nutrition plan will best support your mental and physical health.
  • The medical literature is also showing that coconut oil can be of particular benefit for brain health, and anecdotal evidence suggests it could be very beneficial in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease.
  • Optimize your vitamin D levels
  • Take a high-quality animal-based omega-3 fat.
  • Avoid processed foods and sugars, especially fructose
  • Avoid grains
  • Avoid artificial sweeteners
  • Avoid soy
  • Men who ate tofu at least twice weekly had more cognitive impairment, compared with those who rarely or never ate the soybean curd, and their cognitive test results were about equivalent to what they would have been if they were five years older than their current age.
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    "It was once thought that any brain function lost was irretrievable. Today, research into what's referred to as "brain plasticity" has proven that this is not the case. On the contrary, your brain continues to make new neurons throughout life in response to mental activity."
Tero Toivanen

Adult Learning - Neuroscience - How to Train the Aging Brain - NYTimes.com - 1 views

  • One explanation for how this occurs comes from Deborah M. Burke, a professor of psychology at Pomona College in California. Dr. Burke has done research on “tots,” those tip-of-the-tongue times when you know something but can’t quite call it to mind. Dr. Burke’s research shows that such incidents increase in part because neural connections, which receive, process and transmit information, can weaken with disuse or age.
  • But she also finds that if you are primed with sounds that are close to those you’re trying to remember — say someone talks about cherry pits as you try to recall Brad Pitt’s name — suddenly the lost name will pop into mind. The similarity in sounds can jump-start a limp brain connection. (It also sometimes works to silently run through the alphabet until landing on the first letter of the wayward word.)
  • Recently, researchers have found even more positive news. The brain, as it traverses middle age, gets better at recognizing the central idea, the big picture. If kept in good shape, the brain can continue to build pathways that help its owner recognize patterns and, as a consequence, see significance and even solutions much faster than a young person can.
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  • The trick is finding ways to keep brain connections in good condition and to grow more of them.
  • Educators say that, for adults, one way to nudge neurons in the right direction is to challenge the very assumptions they have worked so hard to accumulate while young. With a brain already full of well-connected pathways, adult learners should “jiggle their synapses a bit” by confronting thoughts that are contrary to their own, says Dr. Taylor, who is 66.
  • Teaching new facts should not be the focus of adult education, she says. Instead, continued brain development and a richer form of learning may require that you “bump up against people and ideas” that are different. In a history class, that might mean reading multiple viewpoints, and then prying open brain networks by reflecting on how what was learned has changed your view of the world.
  • Such stretching is exactly what scientists say best keeps a brain in tune: get out of the comfort zone to push and nourish your brain. Do anything from learning a foreign language to taking a different route to work.
  • “As adults we have these well-trodden paths in our synapses,” Dr. Taylor says. “We have to crack the cognitive egg and scramble it up. And if you learn something this way, when you think of it again you’ll have an overlay of complexity you didn’t have before — and help your brain keep developing as well.”
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    Dr. Burke has done research on "tots," those tip-of-the-tongue times when you know something but can't quite call it to mind. Dr. Burke's research shows that such incidents increase in part because neural connections, which receive, process and transmit information, can weaken with disuse or age.
David McGavock

The Top 10 Challenges for Brain Science in 2013 - Forbes - 0 views

  • 1. Figure out what fMRI can truly tell us about our brains. 
  • There’s little question fMRI is valuable, but too many disparate forces are out there spinning brain scans in too many ways. Perhaps one solution, or start of a solution, is a summit hosted by a credible, well-respected institute or organization to gather the best of the best minds in the field to establish a game plan moving forward.
  • 2. Determine what role, if any, neuroscience should play in the courtroom.
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  • . Continue crafting a constructive consilience between disciplines.
  • Neuroscience, behavioral science, evolutionary biology, economics, engineering, and even the humanities have all come to the proverbial table in the last few years
  • Produce more applicable knowledge and less curious meanderings.
  • 7. Join forces with more public health sources to engender broader awareness of critical issues. 
  • Try to fight the urge to spin off more headline pablum like “Brain Porn.”
  • How about we spend more time trying to solve the problems and less time concocting clever catch phrases?
  • Shine the light on how far the forces of marketing have exploited brain science advances (this is a genuine public service).
  • I am an unwavering advocate of making sure people understand how the forces of marketing are using the field to sell more products.
  • Again, what is truly “solid applicable knowledge” is frequently debatable (see #1 above), but every year the field–and by that I mean the interdisciplinary field (#3)–has more to offer the public.
  • 8. Put the brakes on “building a brain” — we already have plenty of them.
  • in my opinion we have enough to do with respect to figuring our how our organic brain works without spending massive resources on trying to recreate one.
  • 9. Turn the corner from “what’s wrong with our brains” to “what we can really do about it.” 
Tero Toivanen

Brain Stimulant: Brain Chip to Restore Functioning from Damage - 1 views

  • The ReNaChip project is developing electronic biomimetic technology that could serve to replace damaged or missing brain tissue. This is basically neuromorphic engineering that seeks to mimic how neurons function. In the future this may be useful for people who have had injuries due to stroke or other illnesses.
  • The objective of this project is to develop a full biohybrid rehabilitation and substitution methodology; replacing the aged cerebellar brain circuit with a biomimetic chip bidirectionally interfaced to the inputs and outputs of the system. Information processing will interface with the cerebellum to actuate a normal, real-time functional behavioural recovery, providing a proof-of-concept test for the functional rehabilitation of more complex neuronal systems.
  • A sophisticated exocortex could potentially allow a two way communication between the external apparatus and the mind. The contraption could essentially scale up the amount of neurons in your brain by an artificial means. Most likely it would be used to improved the disabled first, with other applications being more speculative possibilities.
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    The ReNaChip project is developing electronic biomimetic technology that could serve to replace damaged or missing brain tissue. This is basically neuromorphic engineering that seeks to mimic how neurons function. In the future this may be useful for people who have had injuries due to stroke or other illnesses.
Tero Toivanen

First Evidence That Musical Training Affects Brain Development In Young Children - 0 views

  • The findings, published today (20 September 2006) in the online edition of the journal Brain [1], show that not only do the brains of musically-trained children respond to music in a different way to those of the untrained children, but also that the training improves their memory as well. After one year the musically trained children performed better in a memory test that is correlated with general intelligence skills such as literacy, verbal memory, visiospatial processing, mathematics and IQ.
  • Researchers have found the first evidence that young children who take music lessons show different brain development and improved memory over the course of a year compared to children who do not receive musical training.
  • While previous studies have shown that older children given music lessons had greater improvements in IQ scores than children given drama lessons, this is the first study to identify these effects in brain-based measurements in young children.
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  • The researchers chose children being trained by the Suzuki method for several reasons: it ensured the children were all trained in the same way, were not selected for training according to their initial musical talent and had similar support from their families. In addition, because there was no early training in reading music, the Suzuki method provided the researchers with a good model of how training in auditory, sensory and motor activities induces changes in the cortex of the brain.
  • Analysis of the MEG responses showed that across all children, larger responses were seen to the violin tones than to the white noise, indicating that more cortical resources were put to processing meaningful sounds. In addition, the time that it took for the brain to respond to the sounds (the latency of certain MEG components) decreased over the year. This means that as children matured, the electrical conduction between neurons in their brains worked faster.
  • Of most interest, the Suzuki children showed a greater change over the year in response to violin tones in an MEG component (N250m) related to attention and sound discrimination than did the children not taking music lessons.
  • Analysis of the music tasks showed greater improvement over the year in melody, harmony and rhythm processing in the children studying music compared to those not studying music. General memory capacity also improved more in the children studying music than in those not studying music.
  • The finding of very rapid maturation of the N250m component to violin sounds in children taking music lessons fits with their large improvement on the memory test. It suggests that musical training is having an effect on how the brain gets wired for general cognitive functioning related to memory and attention.
  • It is clear that music is good for children's cognitive development and that music should be part of the pre-school and primary school curriculum.
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    Researchers have found the first evidence that young children who take music lessons show different brain development and improved memory over the course of a year compared to children who do not receive musical training.
David McGavock

What is intelligence ? | BrainFacts.org Blog - 0 views

  • What do we mean when we say someone is intelligent and is there any scientific basis for defining intelligence? These questions have been at the center of a more than century-old debate in psychology.
  • Although it may be practical for people to think of intelligence as something that exists, whether science should consider intelligence and how it would define it remains very controversial.
  • A recent study published by Hampshire et al.1 from the University of Western Ontario has looked into the brain areas that are activated by tasks that are typically used to test for intelligence. In doing so they hoped to determine if brain areas related to cognitive demands are activated altogether as demands increase during intelligence tests of various kinds, or if some areas were activated during tests for a specific intelligence domain and not for others.
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  • The study is interesting because it provides three candidate intelligence factors (instead of 1) that have been built not from intuition about what tasks do but based on the set of brain areas that might contribute to those tasks. However don’t get too excited, the methods used have severe limitations and we are still only at the hypothesis level. We do not know how these areas contribute to performance in intelligence tests and we do not know why they are activated and how they interact together to create the behavior.
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    A recent study published by Hampshire et al.1 from the University of Western Ontario has looked into the brain areas that are activated by tasks that are typically used to test for intelligence. In doing so they hoped to determine if brain areas related to cognitive demands are activated altogether as demands increase during intelligence tests of various kinds, or if some areas were activated during tests for a specific intelligence domain and not for others.
Tero Toivanen

Does Vitamin D Improve Brain Function?: Scientific American - 0 views

  • And although vitamin D is well known for promoting bone health and regulating vital calcium levels—hence its addition to milk—it does more than that. Scientists have now linked this fat-soluble nutrient’s hormonelike activity to a number of functions throughout the body, including the workings of the brain.
  • We know there are receptors for vitamin D throughout the central nervous system and in the hippocampus
  • We also know vitamin D activates and deactivates enzymes in the brain and the cerebrospinal fluid that are involved in neurotransmitter synthesis and nerve growth.
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  • In addition, animal and laboratory studies suggest vitamin D protects neurons and reduces inflammation.
  • The scientists found that the lower the subjects’ vitamin D levels, the more negatively impacted was their perform­ance on a battery of mental tests. Compared with people with optimum vitamin D levels, those in the lowest quartile were more than twice as likely to be cognitively impaired.
  • The data show that those people with lower vitamin D levels exhibited slower information-processing speed. This correlation was particularly strong among men older than 60 years.
  • Although we now know that low levels of vitamin D are associated with cognitive impairment, we do not know if high or optimum levels will lessen cognitive losses. It is also unclear if giving vitamin D to those who lack it will help them regain some of these high-level functions.
  • So how much is enough vitamin D? Experts say 1,000 to 2,000 IU daily—about the amount your body will synthesize from 15 to 30 minutes of sun exposure two to three times a week—is the ideal range for almost all healthy adults. Keep in mind, however, that skin color, where you live and how much skin you have exposed all affect how much vitamin D you can produce.
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    And although vitamin D is well known for promoting bone health and regulating vital calcium levels-hence its addition to milk-it does more than that. Scientists have now linked this fat-soluble nutrient's hormonelike activity to a number of functions throughout the body, including the workings of the brain.
Matti Narkia

How to unleash your brain's inner genius - life - 03 June 2009 - New Scientist - 0 views

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    Savants - individuals with conditions that result in remarkable mathematical, artistic or musical talents - are extremely rare. But new findings about how their formidable brains work hint that we might all be able to develop similar abilities
Tero Toivanen

Brain Foundation - Healthy Brain - 0 views

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    The Healthy Brain Program, an initiative of the Brain Foundation, aims to assist Australians to keep their brains healthy into old age, through the provision of community education and research. The program aims to address issues such as: People are living longer, and the prevalence of degenerative brain disorders is increasing. There is little information available about how to keep the brain healthy compared to the wealth of information about a healthy body and heart. There is a need for a coordinated approach to education on key indicators and risk reduction strategies.
Tero Toivanen

Reading, E-Books and the Brain : The Frontal Cortex - 0 views

  • Although scientists had previously assumed that the dorsal route ceased to be active once we learned how to read, Deheane's research demonstrates that even literate adults still rely, in some situations, on the same patterns of brain activity as a first-grader, carefully sounding out the syllables.
  • This research suggests that the act of reading observes a gradient of fluency. Familiar sentences printed in Helvetica activate the ventral route, while difficult prose filled with jargon and fancy words and printed in an illegible font require us to use the slow dorsal route.
  • The larger point is that most complaints about E-Books and Kindle apps boil down to a single problem: they don't feel as "effortless" or "automatic" as old-fashioned books. But here's the wonderful thing about the human brain: give it a little time and practice and it can make just about anything automatic.
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     Although scientists had previously assumed that the dorsal route ceased to be active once we learned how to read, Deheane's research demonstrates that even literate adults still rely, in some situations, on the same patterns of brain activity as a first-grader, carefully sounding out the syllables.
Tero Toivanen

» Brain Plasticity: How learning changes your brain   « Brain Fitness Revolut... - 0 views

  • A surprising consequence of neuroplasticity is that the brain activity associated with a given function can move to a different location as a consequence of normal experience, brain damage or recovery.
  • The brain compensates for damage by reorganizing and forming new connections between intact neurons. In order to reconnect, the neurons need to be stimulated through activity.
  • Research has shown that in fact the brain never stops changing through learning. Plasticity IS the capacity of the brain to change with learning. Changes associated with learning occur mostly at the level of the connections between neurons. New connections can form and the internal structure of the existing synapses can change.
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  • It looks like learning a second language is possible through functional changes in the brain: the left inferior parietal cortex is larger in bilingual brains than in monolingual brains.
  • For instance, London taxi drivers have a larger hippocampus (in the posterior region) than London bus drivers (Maguire, Woollett, & Spiers, 2006)…. Why is that? It is because this region of the hippocampus is specialized in acquiring and using complex spatial information in order to navigate efficiently. Taxi drivers have to navigate around London whereas bus drivers follow a limited set of routes.
  • Did you know that when you become an expert in a specific domain, the areas in your brain that deal with this type of skill will grow?
  • Plastic changes also occur in musicians brains compared to non-musicians.
  • They found that gray matter (cortex) volume was highest in professional musicians, intermediate in amateur musicians, and lowest in non-musicians in several brain areas involved in playing music: motor regions, anterior superior parietal areas and inferior temporal areas.
  • Medical students’ brains showed learning-induced changes in regions of the parietal cortex as well as in the posterior hippocampus. These regions of the brains are known to be involved in memory retrieval and learning.
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    A surprising consequence of neuroplasticity is that the brain activity associated with a given function can move to a different location as a consequence of normal experience, brain damage or recovery.
Tero Toivanen

Eide Neurolearning Blog: Why Boys Need Alternatives with Reading and Writing - 0 views

  • If you give girls and boys language tasks, most girls will process the information in the same way (in a specialized language area)
  • help them with word storage and retrieval
  • But for boys, sensitivity to the modality of how words are presented means that an extra steps need to be taken to match words that are picked up by listening and words that are read on the printed page. No wonder dyslexia is much more common in boys - the separate system means that the sight and sound of words are learned as distinct processes.
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  • As a result, verbal competence may be strong in one domain (oral speech for instance), but be weak in another (reading).
  • because boys require two areas and a matching of visual-auditory inputs, impairment in one system may cause the whole language coordination process to fail.
  • The visual-auditory gap may also be why some boys may need to read word-for-word outloud or to themselves (i.e. not silently read) in order to fully comprehend or remember the story.
  • Some careful consideration needs to made of instructional implications for boys given some of these new discoveries. Learning by listening and learning by reading are not synonymous; route-congruent factors(listening - oral presentation, reading - written response) may need to be considered when a learning gap or frank underachievement is seen, and an insistence on the availability of auditory-visual supports (reading along with books-on-tape, detailed handouts for lecture courses) should be a requirement of every classroom.
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    Boys require two areas and a matching of visual-auditory inputs, impairment in one system may cause the whole language coordination process to fail.
Tero Toivanen

NIMH · Our brains are made of the same stuff, despite DNA differences - 0 views

  • “Having at our fingertips detailed information about when and where specific gene products are expressed in the brain brings new hope for understanding how this process can go awry in schizophrenia, autism and other brain disorders,” said NIMH Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D.
  • Among key findings in the prefrontal cortex:Individual genetic variations are profoundly linked to expression patterns. The most similarity across individuals is detected early in development and again as we approach the end of life.Different types of related genes are expressed during prenatal development, infancy, and childhood, so that each of these stages shows a relatively distinct transcriptional identity. Three-fourths of genes reverse their direction of expression after birth, with most switching from on to off.Expression of genes involved in cell division declines prenatally and in infancy, while expression of genes important for making synapses, or connections between brain cells, increases. In contrast, genes required for neuronal projections decline after birth – likely as unused connections are pruned.By the time we reach our 50s, overall gene expression begins to increase, mirroring the sharp reversal of fetal expression changes that occur in infancy.Genetic variation in the genome as a whole showed no effect on variation in the transcriptome as a whole, despite how genetically distant individuals might be. Hence, human cortexes have a consistent molecular architecture, despite our diversity.
  • Among key findings:Over 90 percent of the genes expressed in the brain are differentially regulated across brain regions and/or over developmental time periods. There are also widespread differences across region and time periods in the combination of a gene’s exons that are expressed.Timing and location are far more influential in regulating gene expression than gender, ethnicity or individual variation.Among 29 modules of co-expressed genes identified, each had distinct expression patterns and represented different biological processes. Genetic variation in some of the most well-connected genes in these modules, called hub genes, has previously been linked to mental disorders, including schizophrenia and depression.Telltale similarities in expression profiles with genes previously implicated in schizophrenia and autism are providing leads to discovery of other genes potentially involved in those disorders.Sex differences in the risk for certain mental disorders may be traceable to transcriptional mechanisms. More than three-fourths of 159 genes expressed differentially between the sexes were male-biased, most prenatally. Some genes found to have such sex-biased expression had previously been associated with disorders that affect males more than females, such as schizophrenia, Williams syndrome, and autism.
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  • Our brains are all made of the same stuff. Despite individual and ethnic genetic diversity, our prefrontal cortex shows a consistent molecular architecture.
  • Males show more sex-biased gene expression. More genes differentially expressed (DEX) between the sexes were found in males than females, especially prenatally. Some genes found to have such sex-biased expression had previously been associated with disorders that affect males more than females, such as schizophrenia, Williams syndrome, and autism.
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    Our brains are all made of the same stuff. Despite individual and ethnic genetic diversity, our prefrontal cortex shows a consistent molecular architecture. 
David McGavock

Wired for Success - 0 views

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    "The New Directions Institute's Wired for Success® program is a four-hour workshop for parents, caregivers and interested community members. This workshop is fun-filled, with hands-on experiences that show caregivers how critical their role can be in stimulating a child's development. Participants will explore brain development based on S.T.E.P.S.®, the NDI curriculum concentrating on Security, Touch, Eyes (vision), Play and Sound modules. Participants learn how to encourage a child's learning through parent-child interactions in these areas. "
Tero Toivanen

YouTube - Man without a memory - Clive Wearing [BBC - Time: Daytime] - 3 views

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    Man who don't have memory and is constantly living in the present moment.
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    I love that ' bump up against' people and ideas counter to those which we' ve previously aligned-that' s kind of how I see aging gracefully-being able to see many more and others viewpoints-otherwise aging can seem like becoming caricatures of ourselves-we so believe our own thoughts (beliefs are after all only our much/most repeated thoughts!) and there' s no room for anyone or anything else! Mmmmmm yeah but now to live it!
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    My mother had a stroke and now she has big problems to communicate. She understands allmost everything, but have great problems to express herself speaking. Aging is not easy thing if you have problems with your health.
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    Truly! It' s alot slower to align with our preferences for sure when sick. I sincerely recommend www.bruno-groening.org as a resource The Bruno Groning Circle of Friends-all volunteers!. It' s a type of Faith healing that I recognise as quite remarkable. It has strong old world Germanic Christian vibe and/but dont let that put you off the ' healing stream' which is very easy to teach to yourself/your mother and available to all regardless of religious affliations.
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    Thak you for the link : )
Tero Toivanen

Naps, Learning and REM : The Frontal Cortex - 0 views

  • Taking a nap without REM sleep also led to slightly better results. But a nap that included REM sleep resulted in nearly a 40 percent improvement over the pre-nap performance.
  • The study, published June 8 in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that those who had REM sleep took longer naps than those who napped without REM, but there was no correlation between total sleep time and improved performance. Only REM sleep helped.
  • Numerous studies have now demonstrated that REM sleep is an essential part of the learning process. Before you can know something, you have to dream about it.
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  • The breakthrough came in 1972, when psychologist Jonathan Winson came up with a simple theory: The rabbit brain exhibited the same pattern of activity when it was scared and when it was dreaming because it was dreaming about being scared. The theta rhythm of sleep was just the sound of the mind processing information, sorting through the day's experiences and looking for any new knowledge that might be important for future survival. They were learning while dreaming, solving problems in their sleep.
  • Wilson began his experiment by training rats to run through mazes. While a rat was running through one of these labyrinths, Wilson measured clusters of neurons in the hippocampus with multiple electrodes surgically implanted in its brain. As he'd hypothesized, Wilson found that each maze produced its own pattern of neural firing. To figure out how dreams relate to experience, Wilson recorded input from these same electrodes while the rats were sleeping. The results were astonishing. Of the 45 rat dreams recorded by Wilson, 20 contained an exact replica of the maze they had run earlier that day. The REM sleep was recapitulating experience, allowing the animals to consolidate memory and learn new things. Wilson's lab has since extended these results, demonstrating that "temporally structured replay" occurs in both the hippocampus and visual cortex.
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    Taking a nap without REM sleep also led to slightly better results. But a nap that included REM sleep resulted in nearly a 40 percent improvement over the pre-nap performance
Tero Toivanen

How Depression, Stress Trigger Loss of Brain Volume | Psych Central News - 1 views

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    "People who suffer from chronic stress or major depression tend to lose brain volume, and such loss can lead to both emotional and cognitive dysfunction."
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