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David McGavock

About Neuroscience News - Neuroscience News - 0 views

  • In 2001, there was a need for a science website that was dedicated strictly to neuroscience research news, so NeuroscienceNews.com was started. To this day, the site is an independent science news website focusing mainly on neuroscience and other cognitive sciences.No funds have been taken from governments, grants, pharmaceutical companies, big businesses, banks, schools, or others with possibly conflicting interests, to help with this site at any time.We scour news sources from universities, labs, news agencies, scientists, science publishers, and other science departments. We post full articles, releases, abstracts, and sometimes full research journal papers on our site. We also take submissions from nearly anyone.We attempt to link to the original news releases in our posts. We try to include a link to the research papers discussed in the press release, or article, as well as other information that may be important to our readers. We try to include the full list of authors, journal names, research title and identifiers (doi) under the content of each post.
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    We scour news sources from universities, labs, news agencies, scientists, science publishers, and other science departments. We post full articles, releases, abstracts, and sometimes full research journal papers on our site. We also take submissions from nearly anyone.
Tero Toivanen

YouTube - Science Commons by Jesse Dylan (Español) - 0 views

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    It's time for Common Science. Open research and science.
Ruth Howard

You won't find consciousness in the brain - opinion - 07 January 2010 - New Scientist - 0 views

  • MOST neuroscientists, philosophers of the mind and science journalists feel the time is near when we will be able to explain the mystery of human consciousness in terms of the activity of the brain. There is, however, a vocal minority of neurosceptics who contest this orthodoxy.
  • This may well happen, but my argument is not about technical, probably temporary, limitations.
  • It is about the deep philosophical confusion embedded in the assumption that if you can correlate neural activity with consciousness, then you have demonstrated they are one and the same thing, and that a physical science such as neurophysiology is able to show what consciousness truly is.
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  • While neural activity of a certain kind is a necessary condition for every manifestation of consciousness, from the lightest sensation to the most exquisitely constructed sense of self, it is neither a sufficient condition of it, nor, still less, is it identical with it.
  • Many features of ordinary consciousness also resist neurological explanation.
  • There is nothing in the convergence or coherence of neural pathways that gives us this "merging without mushing", this ability to see things as both whole and separate.
  • This concerns the disjunction between the objects of science and the contents of consciousness. Science begins when we escape our subjective, first-person experiences into objective measurement, and reach towards a vantage point the philosopher Thomas Nagel called "the view from nowhere".
  • Thus measurement takes us further from experience and the phenomena of subjective consciousness to a realm where things are described in abstract but quantitative terms. To do its work, physical science has to discard "secondary qualities", such as colour, warmth or cold, taste - in short, the basic contents of consciousness. For the physicist then, light is not in itself bright or colourful, it is a mixture of vibrations in an electromagnetic field of different frequencies. The material world, far from being the noisy, colourful, smelly place we live in, is colourless, silent, full of odourless molecules, atoms, particles, whose nature and behaviour is best described mathematically. In short, physical science is about the marginalisation, or even the disappearance, of phenomenal appearance/qualia, the redness of red wine or the smell of a smelly dog.
  • Consciousness, on the other hand, is all about phenomenal appearances/qualia.
  • There is nothing in physical science that can explain why a physical object such as a brain should ascribe appearances/qualia to material objects that do not intrinsically have them.
  • Then their "appearings" will depend on the viewpoint of the conscious observer.
  • Material objects require consciousness in order to "appear".
  • Our failure to explain consciousness in terms of neural activity inside the brain inside the skull is not due to technical limitations which can be overcome. It is due to the self-contradictory nature of the task, of which the failure to explain "aboutness", the unity and multiplicity of our awareness, the explicit presence of the past, the initiation of actions, the construction of self are just symptoms.
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.” 
David McGavock

Scientific Understanding of Consciousness - 0 views

  • During the past 20 years or so, biological sciences have advanced to the point that scientists have begun researching biological mechanisms of brain function and suggesting some reasonably well-founded hypotheses for consciousness. Leading the way in these pioneering efforts, in my judgment, have been:   Gerald Edelman with his hypothesis of the Dynamic Core, Antonio Damasio with his concepts of  Protoself, Core Self, Autobiographical Self, Core Consciousness and Extended Consciousness, Joseph LeDoux and his emphasis on the intricacies of synapses and the emotional brain,
  • Rudolfo Llinás and his researches into ~40 Hz oscillations and synchronization, György Buzsáki with his discussion and exploration of neural mechanisms related to oscillation and synchronization in the neocortex and hippocampus for perception and memory, Joaquín Fuster, the world’s preeminent expert on the frontal lobes, and his concept of the "perception-action cycle," Susan Greenfield's notion of "neuronal gestalts" as a way of conceptualizing a highly variable aggregation of neurons that is temporarily recruited around a triggering epicenter. I use the neuronal gestalts idea in my way of visualizing the functionality of the dynamic core of the thalamocortical system, Eric Kandel who has explored short-term and long-term memory,
  • The late Francis Crick with his collaborator Christof Koch who have pursued the neural correlate of consciousness (NCC), Michael Gazzaniga with the concept of the left hemisphere ‘interpreter’ unifying consciousness experience, Edmund Rolls and Gustavo Deco with their mathematical models of brain function using information theory approaches for biologically plausible neurodynamical modeling of cognitive phenomena corroborated by brain imaging studies, David LaBerge with his discussion of the thalamocortical circuit and attention, Alan Baddeley who continues to refine his model for working memory, Philosopher John Searle who endorses the idea that consciousness is an emergent property of neural networks.
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    "My objective in this website has been to bring together salient features of these assorted interpretations by science experts into a synthesis of my own understanding of consciousness. I consider these statements and interpretations to be a framework on which to build a fuller understanding as further data, concepts and insights develop from ongoing research."
Tero Toivanen

Visual training to retain driving competence - and your independence! | On the Brain by... - 1 views

  • Today, Posit Science announced the release of a new computer-based visual training tool, DriveSharp, specifically designed to improve the performance abilities of adult automobile drivers to a degree that can be expected to very substantially impact their driving safety.
  • Again, with a few hours of intensive training, a youthful MOT performance level can be achieved for most individuals. The result: A still FURTHER increase of driving safety.
  • In our fast-moving world, losing control of one’s peripheral vision is a main cause of driving accidents.
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  • Ball and Roenker demonstrated that these losses are substantially reversible, through appropriate, intensive training, in almost all older drivers. UFOVs can be re-expanded to relatively youthful ability levels through only a few hours of exercise. The result: About 50% fewer driving accidents in the over-65 population.
  • Moreover, once your UFOV is opened up again, you use it!
  • You can use DriveSharp repeatedly, over the rest of your days, to keep yourself in fine driving fettle!
  • The second training program that is included in DriveSharp is designed to improve your ability to keep track of more than one thing happening at the same time. This fundamental visual skill — called “multiple object tracking” (MOT) — also dramatically declines as you get older.
  • As you get older, you progressively lose the ability to accurately detect and respond to visual events in your far visual periphery.
  • If you’ve reached your 50th birthday, DriveSharp training is especially important for upgrading and sustaining your driving competence. It’s all about maintaining your performance abilities in driving as in all other ways at the highest possible level, throughout the second half of life.
  • few other benefits demonstrated by published studies originating with the Ball/Roenker team (including University of South Florida scientist Sherri Willis and a University of Iowa scientist, Fred Wolinsky).
  • 1) You’re healthier after DriveSharp training! Five years after training, Physical indices of Quality of Life are more than 30% higher — maybe because you get out more.
  • Trainees are much more likely to have retained your driver’s license — and to have sustained their personal independence.
  • After DriveSharp, you are a more confident driver, as expressed by gains in the number of times you drive each week, by an increase in average driving distances, and by your driving more often at night, or in the rain or snow.
  • Try DriveSharp now: If you are a member of one of the participating AAA clubs, please visit your AAA club’s website for more information and a special offer on DriveSharp. If not, please visit www.DriveSharp.com or call (866)599-6463 to learn more.
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    Today, Posit Science announced the release of a new computer-based visual training tool, DriveSharp, specifically designed to improve the performance abilities of adult automobile drivers to a degree that can be expected to very substantially impact their driving safety.
Tero Toivanen

YouTube - Music and the Mind - 0 views

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    Aniruddh Patel's presentation about: What can music teach us about the brain? What can brain science teach us about music?
Tero Toivanen

Lab Notes : The Brains of Early Birds and Night Owls - 0 views

  • There was no real difference between the early birds and the night owls in their performance on the morning test. But the evening test was a different story: night owls were less sleepy and had faster reaction times than early birds.
  • So even though both groups were sleeping and waking according to their preferred schedule, night owls generally outlasted early birds in how long they could stay awake and mentally alert before becoming mentally fatigued. The fMRI supported the behavioral results: 10.5 hours after waking up, the early birds had lower activity in brain regions linked to attention and the circadian master clock, compared to night owls.
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    A new study, in the journal Science, reports some intriguing differences between the brain-activity patterns of the two types that underlie the behavioral differences.
Tero Toivanen

Tests find benefit of sleeping on job - Science, News - The Independent - 0 views

  • A type of dreamy sleep that occurs more frequently in the early morning is important for solving problems that cannot be easily answered during the day, a study has found.
  • The discovery could explain many anecdotal accounts of famous intellectuals who had wrestled with a problem only to find that they have solved it by the morning after a good night's sleep.
  • Scientists believe that a form of dreaming slumber called rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep, when the brain becomes relatively active and the eyes flicker from side to side under closed eyelids, plays a crucial role in subconscious problem solving.
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  • In a series of tests on nearly 80 people, the researchers found that REM sleep increases the chances of someone being able to successfully solve a new problem involving creative associations – finding an underlying pattern behind complex information.
  • Those people who had enjoyed REM sleep improved significantly, by about 40 per cent, while the other volunteers who had not had REM sleep showed little if any improvement, according to the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
  • The researchers suggest that it is not merely sleep itself, or the simple passage of time, that is important for the solving of a new problem, but the act of being able to fall into a state of REM sleep where the brain slips into a different kind of neural activity that encourages the formation of new nerve connections.
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    A type of dreamy sleep that occurs more frequently in the early morning is important for solving problems that cannot be easily answered during the day, a study has found.
Tero Toivanen

Eide Neurolearning Blog: Recess Essential for Improving Attention - 0 views

  • New research suggests that play and down time may be as important to a child’s academic experience as reading, science and math, and that regular recess, fitness or nature time can influence behavior, concentration and even grades.
  • Young children with sensory processing disorders are especially susceptible to behavioral and attention problems if they are not allowed to move and exercise throughout their day.
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    New research suggests that play and down time may be as important to a child's academic experience as reading, science and math, and that regular recess, fitness or nature time can influence behavior, concentration and even grades.
Tero Toivanen

A stroke can make half your world disappear - video | Science | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

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    "A stroke can sometimes leave people with a syndrome known as hemispatial neglect as a result of damage to the parietal lobe on the right or left side of their brain."
Tero Toivanen

Your Brain Scan Looks Different on Mac and PC - 2 views

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    "Science and medicine are supposedly based on rigor-a rigor where theories are only correct if you can replicate results. It turns out, though, that the software used to analyze medical images of your brain gives wildly different answers if it's run on Mac or PC."
Tero Toivanen

Basking in the Dopamine Glow : Neurotopia - 0 views

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    Gubernator et al. "Flourescent flase neurotransmitters visualize dopamine release from individual presynaptic terminals" Science, 2009.
Tero Toivanen

Growing evidence of the brain's plasticity could benefit stroke victims or those suffer... - 0 views

  • With the right training, scientists now know the brain can reshape itself to work around dead and damaged areas, often with dramatic benefits.
  • Therapies that exploit the brain's power to adapt have helped people overcome damage caused by strokes, depression, anxiety and learning disabilities, and may one day replace drugs for some of these conditions.
  • Children with language difficulties have been shown to make significant progress using computer training tools that are the equivalent of cerebral cross-training.
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  • Neuroplasticity does not see the different regions of the brain as completely versatile and certainly not interchangeable. But it recognises that if part of the brain is damaged, it can be possible to train other areas to take on, at least to some extent, the job of the lost brain matter.
  • Doidge says he is not anti-medication, but wonders if therapies that tap into neuro-plasticity will soon replace drug treatments for certain conditions. "We can change our brains by sensing, imagining and acting in the world. It's economical and mostly low-tech, and I'm very, very hopeful"
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    With the right training, scientists now know the brain can reshape itself to work around dead and damaged areas, often with dramatic benefits.
Tero Toivanen

Music and Intelligence | Boost Your IQ - 0 views

  • Studies indicate that early exposure to musical training helps a child’s brain reach its potential by generating neural connections utilized in abstract reasoning.
  • The reasoning skills required for a test in spatial reasoning are the same ones children use when they listen to music. Children use these reasoning skills to order the notes in their brain to form the melodies. Also, some concepts of math must be understood in order to understand music. Experts speculate that listening to music exercises the same parts of the brain that handle mathematics, logic, and higher level reasoning.
  • In 1997 a study involving three groups of preschoolers was conducted to determine the effect of music versus computer training on early childhood development.
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  • The group that received the piano/keyboard training scored 34% higher on tests measuring spatial-temporal ability than either of the other two groups. These results suggest that music enhances certain higher brain functions, particularly abstract reasoning skills, required in math and science.
  • The use of music in training four and five year old children yielded the highest improvement in the ability to name body parts.
  • Although the three experimental groups displayed an increase in their ability to name body parts the music group exhibited the highest degree of improvement.
  • First grade students received extensive Kodaly training for seven months.
  • At the end of seven months the experimental group had higher reading scores than the control group, which did not receive any special treatment. Not only did the seven month instruction increase reading scores, but continued musical training proved to be beneficial. The experimental group continued to show higher reading scores with continued training.
  • Students who were involved in arts education achieved higher SAT scores. The longer students were involved in arts education, the higher the increase in SAT scores. This study also correlated arts education with higher scores in standardized tests, reading, English, history, citizenship, and geography.
  • The results indicated that students with a relatively lower socioeconomic status, that were exposed to arts education, had an advantage over those students without any arts education which was proportionally equal to the students with a relatively higher socioeconomic status and exposure to arts education.
  • Music exposure affects older students as well. Three groups of college students were exposed to either Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos, K448, a relaxation tape, or silence. The group exposed to the Mozart piece was the only group to achieve an increase on the spatial IQ test. Further studies revealed that neither dance music nor taped short stories produced an increase in spatial IQ similar to the Mozart piece. The increase in spatial IQ appears to be related to some unique aspects of the Mozart piece rather than music in general.
  • Music may not only be related to intelligence by its stimulation of the brain, but it may also increase intelligence by the type of attitudes, interests, and discipline it fosters in children.
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    Studies indicate that early exposure to musical training helps a child's brain reach its potential by generating neural connections utilized in abstract reasoning.
Tero Toivanen

Jeff Hawkins on how brain science will change computing | Video on TED.com - 0 views

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    Treo creator Jeff Hawkins urges us to take a new look at the brain -- to see it not as a fast processor, but as a memory system that stores and plays back experiences to help us predict, intelligently, what will happen next.
Tero Toivanen

Hormone could heal brain damage - Science, News - The Independent - 0 views

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    A female sex hormone involved in pregnancy has been found to be so successful in repairing brain damage in both men and women that a large-scale clinical trial is scheduled to begin next month on more than 1,000 victims of severe head injuries.
Tero Toivanen

Mcgovern Institute video - 1 views

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    The McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT is led by a team of world-renowned neuroscientists committed to meeting two great challenges of modern science: understanding how the brain works and discovering new ways to prevent and treat brain disorders.
Tero Toivanen

Map of Synapse May Help Understand Basis of Many Diseases - NYTimes.com - 3 views

  • The research team, led by Seth Grant of the Sanger Institute near Cambridge, England, compiled the first exact inventory of all the protein components of the synaptic information-processing machinery. No fewer than 1,461 proteins are involved in this biological machinery, they report in the current issue of Nature Neuroscience.
  • Each neuron in the human brain makes an average 1,000 or so connections with other neurons. There are 100 billion neurons, so the brain probably contains 100 trillion synapses, its most critical working part.
  • The 1,461 genes that specify these synaptic proteins constitute more than 7 percent of the human genome’s 20,000 protein-coding genes, an indication of the synapse’s complexity and importance.
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  • Dr. Grant believes that the proteins are probably linked together to form several biological machines that process the information and change the physical properties of the neuron as a way of laying down a memory.
  • The new catalog of synaptic proteins “should open a major new window in mental disease,” said Jeffrey Noebels, an expert on the genetics of epilepsy at the Baylor College of Medicine. “We can go in there and systematically look for disease pathways and therefore druggable targets.”
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    The research team, led by Seth Grant of the Sanger Institute near Cambridge, England, compiled the first exact inventory of all the protein components of the synaptic information-processing machinery. No fewer than 1,461 proteins are involved in this biological machinery
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    Seeing mental health as a druggable target is psychotic...
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