Neuropsychology

Davidson's research created a stir among brain scientists when his results suggested that, in the course of meditating for tens of thousands of hours, the monks had actually altered the structure and function of their brains.

Lutz asked Ricard to meditate on "unconditional loving-kindness and compassion." He immediately noticed powerful gamma activity - brain waves oscillating at roughly 40 cycles per second -�indicating intensely focused thought. Gamma waves are usually weak and difficult to see. Those emanating from Ricard were easily visible, even in the raw EEG output. Moreover, oscillations from various parts of the cortex were synchronized - a phenomenon that sometimes occurs in patients under anesthesia.

The researchers had never seen anything like it. Worried that something might be wrong with their equipment or methods, they brought in more monks, as well as a control group of college students inexperienced in meditation. The monks produced gamma waves that were 30 times as strong as the students'. In addition, larger areas of the meditators' brains were active, particularly in the left prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for positive emotions.

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.

The left brain follows a completely different “way” and process of thinking from the right brain. The left brain sees things in an analytical, objective and logical manner. The right brain on the other hand is more symbol and metaphorically orientated.

In order to develop a particular brain, it is therefore necessary to focus on doing things which complement its attributes. For example, if I were to develop my left brain, i would embark on logical analysis and maths. If I were to exercise my right brain, i would indulge in art work.

do you see the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise? If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa.

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.

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.

A new study by researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital (The Neuro), McGill University and University of California, Los Angeles has captured an image for the first time of a mechanism, specifically protein translation, which underlies long-term memory formation. The finding provides the first visual evidence that when a new memory is formed new proteins are made locally at the synapse - the connection between nerve cells - increasing the strength of the synaptic connection and reinforcing the memory. The study published in Science, is important for understanding how memory traces are created and the ability to monitor it in real time will allow a detailed understanding of how memories are formed.

research has focused on synapses which are the main site of exchange and storage in the brain.

They form a vast but also constantly fluctuating network of connections whose ability to change and adapt, called synaptic plasticity, may be the fundamental basis of learning and memory.

Jay Giedd at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and his colleagues have followed the progress of nearly 400 children, scanning many of them every two years as they grew up. They found that adolescence brings waves of grey-matter pruning, with teens losing about 1 per cent of their grey matter every year until their early 20s (Nature Neuroscience, vol 2, p 861).

This cerebral pruning trims unused neural connections that were overproduced in the childhood growth spurt, starting with the more basic sensory and motor areas.

Among the last to mature is the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex at the very front of the frontal lobe. This area is involved in control of impulses, judgement and decision-making, which might explain some of the less-than-stellar decisions made by your average teen. This area also acts to control and process emotional information sent from the amygdala - the fight or flight centre of gut reactions - which may account for the mercurial tempers of adolescents.

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.

"Participants grouped by REM sleep, non-REM sleep and quiet rest were indistinguishable on measures of memory," said Cai. "Although the quiet rest and non-REM sleep groups received the same prior exposure to the task, they displayed no improvement on the RAT test. Strikingly, however, the REM sleep group improved by almost 40 percent over their morning performances."

The study by Sara Mednick, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego and the VA San Diego Healthcare System, and first author Denise Cai, graduate student in the UC San Diego Department of Psychology, shows that REM directly enhances creative processing more than any other sleep or wake state. Their findings will be published in the June 8th online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

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.