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Mars Base

Practicing music for only few years in childhood helps improve adult brain: research - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...ars-childhood-adult-brain.html

scibyte60 music

shared by Mars Base on 22 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • A little music training in childhood goes a long way in improving how the brain function
  • researchers for the first time have directly examined what happens after children stop playing a musical instrument after only a few years
  • Compared to peers with no musical training, adults with one to five years of musical training as children had enhanced brain responses to complex sounds, making them more effective at pulling out the
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • lowest frequency in sound
  • crucial for speech and music perception, allowing recognition of sounds in complex and noisy auditory environments.
  • musical training as children makes better listeners later in life
  • the study suggests that short-term music lessons may enhance lifelong listening and learning
  • For the study, young adults with varying amounts of past musical training were tested by measuring electrical signals from the auditory brainstem in response to eight complex sounds ranging in pitch
  • Forty-five adults were grouped into three
  • matched groups based on histories of musical instruction
  • One group had no musical instruction
  • another had 1 to 5 years
  • the other had to 6 to 11 years
  • Both musically trained groups began instrumental practice around age 9
  • musical training during childhood led to more robust neural processing of sounds later in life
  • Prior research on highly trained musicians and early bilinguals revealed that enhanced brainstem responses to sound are associated with heightened auditory perception, executive function and auditory communication skills.
  • we infer that a few years of music lessons also confer advantages in how one perceives and attends to sounds in everyday communication situations, such as noisy restaurants
Mars Base

Demo of mind-controlled exoskeleton planned for World Cup - 0 views

phys.org/...led-exoskeleton-world-cup.html

scibyte130

shared by Mars Base on 11 May 14 - No Cached
  • The World Cup opening ceremony
  • June 12
  • a standout for athletes and their fans but yet another eye-opener may make the Sao Paulo stadium opener long remembered globally
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • a mind-controlled exoskeleton designed to enable a paralyzed person to walk is to make its debut.
  • BBC report provided the latest developments in the robotic suit. "If all goes as planned," wrote Alejandra Martins, "the robotic suit will spring to life in front of almost 70,000 spectators and a global audience of billions of people."
  • The exoskeleton was developed by an international team of scientists, part of the Walk Again Project, and described by the BBC report as a "culmination" of over 10 years of work
  • The goal is to show the brain-controlled exoskeleton during the opening ceremony of the 2014 FIFA World Cup.
  • The (DiVE) website talks about the day when "the first ceremonial kick in the World Cup game may be made "by a paralyzed teenager, who, flanked by the two contending soccer teams, will saunter onto the pitch clad in a robotic body suit."
  • According to the BBC, since November, Nicolelis has been training eight patients at a lab in Sao Paulo, amidst "media speculation that one of them will stand up from his or her wheelchair and deliver the first kick of this year's World Cup.")
  • the exoskeleton is being controlled by brain activity and it is relaying feedback signals to the patient.
  • The patient wears a cap which picks up brain signals and relays them to a computer in the backpack, decoding the signals and sending them to the legs.
  • A battery in the backpack allows for around two hours' use. The robotic suit is powered by hydraulics.
  • Many different companies helped to build the skeleton's components
  • they used a lot of 3-D printing technology for purposes of both speed and achieving strong but light materials, along with using standard aluminum parts
  • "When the foot of the exoskeleton touches the ground there is pressure, so the sensor senses the pressure and before the foot touches the ground we are also doing pre-contact sensing. It's a new way of doing skin sensing for robots," Cheng
  • Dr Gordon Cheng, at the Technical University of Munich
  • Duke University in November announced that in a study led by Duke researchers, monkeys learned to control the movement of both arms on an avatar using just their brain activity.
Mars Base

Specialized nerve fibers send touchy-feely messages to brain | Body & Brain | Scien... - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/...touchy-feely_messages_to_brain

scibyte80 TouchMessages

shared by Mars Base on 31 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Some nerve fibers seem to love a good rubdown. These tendrils, which spread across skin like upside-down tree roots, detect smooth, steady stroking and send a feel-good message to the brain
  • The results are the latest to emphasize the strong and often underappreciated connection between emotions and the sensation of touch
  • “It may seem frivolous to be studying massage neurons in mice, but it raises a profound issue — why do certain stimuli feel a certain way?”
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • . Earlier studies in people suggested that a particular breed of nerve fibers detects a caress and carries that signal to the brain
  • scientists hadn’t been able to directly link this type of neuron to good feelings, either in people or in animals.
  • Directly linking these neurons with pleasure clarifies the importance of touch
  • The new study relied on mice genetically engineered so that a select population of nerve cells would glow when they sensed a caress
  • These neurons,
  • possessed the attributes of massage sensors, but they stubbornly refused to respond to touch in experiments in lab dishes
  • by touching the genetically engineered animals’ skin, the researchers were able to study these cells in live mice.
  • A harsher poke, with a more focused point of pressure, didn’t elicit a reaction from the cells
  • These neurons, which all carry a protein called MRGPRB4, seem tuned to detect a steady stroke
  • the researchers tested whether this stroke felt good to mice
  • the scientists used a different kind of genetically engineered mouse, one with caress-sensitive neurons that a drug could activate
  • When the researchers dispensed the drug in a particular room, the mice soon learned to prefer that room over others
  • associating it with the presumably enjoyable sensation of being stroked
  • not yet clear whether the nerve fibers in the mice have exact analogs in humans,
  • new view of caress detection
  • offers a deeper understanding of touch.
Mars Base

Bionic retina runs on laser power - 0 views

optics.org/1

Scibyte55 RestoringVision

shared by Mars Base on 18 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • tiny implant that is inserted into the eye and attached to the retina in a minimally invasive procedure no more complicated than conventional cataract surgery
  • consists of photodetectors, microelectrodes and electronic circuitry that act together to replace the eye’s natural photoreceptors that have been damaged by AMD and feed visual information to the brain
  • photoreceptors in a healthy retina convert light into a series of electrical signals which are transmitted to the brain via complex neural pathways
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • AMD, the photoreceptors do not function, which prevents the brain from receiving these signals from the eyes
  • bio-retina implant is essentially a combined imaging circuit and neural interface which is glued rather than sutured to a patient’s macula
  • area of the retina responsible for high-resolution central vision
  • Measuring 3 x 4 mm and 1 mm thick, the implant is designed to capture light through the normal optical track of the eyeball and stimulate neurons to transmit information to the brain, essentially restoring the function of the damaged photoreceptors
  • Light incident on the implant is collected by an array of CMOS pixels
  • first-generation bio-retina will use an array of 600 pixels, although the aim is to increase this to 5000 pixels in future generations
  • Nano Retina has dedicated a substantial amount of time developing a proprietary algorithm that translates the received visual information and image into the neuron language
  • translating circuitry that discriminates 100 gray-scale levels and responds to varying light levels. It is a sophisticated process
  • implant uses an array of micro-electrodes that first penetrate into the retina, then connect closely to the neurons and thereafter transmit the information. The goal is that every pixel will connect to a neuron, so that every pixel in the array would use a micro-electrode
  • neurons must be stimulated electrically
  • the bio-retina implant also requires a source of electrical power
  • Patients who undergo surgery to implant a bio-retina will need to wear a special set of glasses
  • glasses feature a built-in battery and an infrared diode laser. “The infrared laser light is transmitted into the eye and captured by a miniature photovoltaic cell on the bio-retina
  • harvests the energy, which in turn powers the electronic circuitry. Our goal is for the imager and the electronics to consume no more than 1mW
Mars Base

Researchers identify brain cells responsible for keeping us awake - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...1-brain-cells-responsible.html

scibyte20 brain sleep light

shared by Mars Base on 04 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Bright light makes it easier to stay awake
  • Very bright light not only arouses us but is known to have antidepressant effects.
  • Bright light makes it easier to stay awake.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • dark rooms can make us sleepy.
  • researchers at UCLA have identified the group of neurons that mediates whether light arouses us — or not
  • the cells necessary for a light-induced arousal response are located in the hypothalamus
  • an area at the base of the brain responsible for, among other things, control of the autonomic nervous system, body temperature, hunger, thirst, fatigue — and sleep.
  • the activity of hypocretin neurons in their WT littermates was maximized when working for positive rewards during the light phase, but the cells were not activated when performing the same tasks in the dark phase.
  • These cells release a neurotransmitter called hypocretin
  • This current finding explains prior work in humans that found that narcoleptics lack the arousing response to light, unlike other equally sleepy individuals
  • researchers examined the behavioral capabilities of mice that had their hypocretin genetically "knocked-out" (KO mice) and compared them with the activities of normal, wild-type mice (WT) that still had their hypocretin neurons
  • they found that the KO mice were only deficient at working for positive rewards during the light phase
  • During the dark phase, however, these mice learned at the same rate as their WT littermates and were completely unimpaired in working for the same rewards
  • This same UCLA research group earlier determined that the loss of hypocretin was responsible for narcolepsy and the sleepiness associated with Parkinson's disease
  • findings suggest that administering hypocretin and boosting the function of hypocretin cells will increase the light-induced arousal response
  • Conversely, blocking their function by administering hypocretin receptor blockers will reduce this response and thereby induce sleep
  • implications for treating sleep disorders as well as depression
Mars Base

Dream contents deciphered by computer | Body & Brain | Science News - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/...ontents_deciphered_by_computer

scibyte89 Dreams

shared by Mars Base on 05 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Experiments with mice have revealed aspects of sleep and dreaming, such as how the experiences contribute to forming memories
  • researchers recorded brain activity in three adult male volunteers during the early stages of sleep
  • After the subjects had dozed off, they were repeatedly awakened and asked for detailed reports on what they had seen while sleeping
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • After gathering at least 200 such reports from the three men, the researchers used a lexical database to group the dreamed objects in coarse categories, such as street, furniture and girl
  • On average, the computer could pick which of two objects had appeared in a dream 70 percent of the time
  • Computer algorithms sorted through
  • patterns of brain activity, linking particular patterns with objects
  • The study bolsters the notion that the vivid imagery of dreams, no matter how fantastic, is as real as waking life,
  • from the brain’s perspective
Mars Base

Scientists reverse memory loss in animal brain cells - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...everse-memory-loss-animal.html

scibyte91 BrainTraining

shared by Mars Base on 18 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Using sea snail nerve cells, the scientists reversed memory loss by determining when the cells were primed for learning
  • scientists were able to help the cells compensate for memory loss by retraining them through the use of optimized training schedules
  • study builds on
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • 2012 investigation that pioneered this memory enhancement strategy
  • The 2012 study showed a significant increase in long-term memory in healthy sea snails
  • study's co-lead author and a research scientist
  • has developed a sophisticated mathematical model that can predict when the biochemical processes in the snail's brain are primed for learning
  • model is based on five training sessions scheduled at different time intervals ranging from 5 to 50 minutes
  • can generate 10,000 different schedules and identify the schedule most attuned to optimum learning
  • Memory is due to a change in the strength of the connections among neurons. In many diseases associated with memory deficits, the change is blocked
  • senior research scientist
  • simulated a brain disorder in a cell culture by taking sensory cells from the sea snails and blocking the activity of a gene that produces a memory protein
  • This resulted in a significant impairment in the strength of the neurons' connections, which is responsible for long-term memory
  • To mimic training sessions, cells were administered a chemical at intervals prescribed by the mathematical model
  • After five training sessions, which like the earlier study were at irregular intervals, the strength of the connections returned to near normal in the impaired cells
  • This methodology may apply to humans if we can identify the same biochemical processes in humans
  • results suggest a new strategy for treatments of cognitive impairment
  • Mathematical models might help design therapies that optimize the combination of training protocols with traditional drug treatments
  • Combining these two could enhance
  • effectiveness
  • while compensating at least in part for any limitations or undesirable side effects of drugs
  • two approaches are likely to be more effective together than separately and may have broad generalities in treating individuals with learning and memory deficits."
Mars Base

Green tea and red wine extracts interrupt Alzheimer's disease pathway in cells - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...en-tea-red-wine-alzheimer.html

scibyte81 Alzheimer

shared by Mars Base on 06 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Natural chemicals found in green tea and red wine may disrupt a key step of the Alzheimer's disease pathway
  • Alzheimer's disease is characterised by a distinct build-up of amyloid protein in the brain
  • clumps together to form toxic, sticky balls of varying shapes
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • These amyloid balls latch on to the surface of nerve cells in the brain by attaching to proteins on the cell surface called prions
  • investigate whether the precise shape of the amyloid balls is essential for them to attach to the prion receptors
  • if so, we wanted to see if we could prevent the amyloid balls binding to prion by altering their shape, as this would stop the cells from dying
  • The team formed amyloid balls in a test tube and added them to human and animal brain cells
  • When we added the extracts from red wine and green tea, which recent research has shown to re-shape amyloid proteins, the amyloid balls no longer harmed the nerve cells
  • this was because their shape was distorted, so they could no longer bind to prion and disrupt cell function
  • showed, for the first time, that when amyloid balls stick to prion, it triggers the production of even more amyloid
  • the team's next steps are to understand exactly how the amyloid-prion interaction kills off neurons
  • that this will increase our understanding of Alzheimer's disease even further, with the potential to reveal yet more drug targets,
  • While these early-stage results should not be a signal for people to stock up on green tea and red wine, they could provide an important new lead in the search for new and effective treatments
Mars Base

Neuro researchers sharpen our understanding of memories - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...05-neuro-sharpen-memories.html

scibyte45 brain memories

shared by Mars Base on 01 May 12 - No Cached
  • Scientists now have a better understanding of how precise memories are formed
  • these findings could help us to better understand memory impairments in neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer's disease
  • study looks at the cells in our brains, or neurons, and how they work together as a group to form memories
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • neurons are classified into two groups according to the type of chemical they produce: excitatory, who produce chemicals that increase communication between neurons, and inhibitory, who have the opposite effect, decreasing communication
  • Scientists knew that inhibitory cells enable us to refine our memories, to make them specific to a precise set of information
  • findings explain for the first time how this happens at the molecular and cell levels
  • very little research has been done on inhibitory neurons, partly because they are very difficult to study
  • In the laboratory, we simulated the formation of a new memory by using chemicals
  • measured the electrical activity within the network of cells
  • cells where we had removed CREB, we saw that the strength of the electrical connections was much weaker
  • scientists found that a factor called "CREB" plays a key role in adjusting gene expression and the strength of synapses in inhibitory neurons
  • when we increased the presence of CREB, the connections were stronger
  • This new understanding of the chemical functioning of the brain may one day lead to new treatments
  • we are unfortunately many years away from developing new treatments from this information."
Mars Base

Study: Old flu drug speeds brain injury recovery - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...rug-brain-injury-recovery.html

scibyte36

shared by Mars Base on 01 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • reporting the first treatment to speed recovery from severe brain injuries caused by falls and car crashes: a cheap flu medicine whose side benefits were discovered by accident decades ago
Mars Base

First evidence that fear memories can be reduced during sleep - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...2013-09-evidence-memories.html

scibyte104 brain

shared by Mars Base on 23 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • A fear memory was reduced in people by exposing them to the memory over and over again while they slept
  • It's the first time that emotional memory has been manipulated in humans during sleep
  • potentially offers a new way to enhance the typical daytime treatment of phobias through exposure therapy by adding a nighttime component
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • showed a small but significant decrease in fear
  • If it can be extended to pre-existing fear, the bigger picture is that, perhaps, the treatment of phobias can be enhanced during sleep."
  • Previous projects have shown that spatial learning and motor sequence learning can be enhanced during sleep
  • wasn't previously known that emotions could be manipulated during sleep
  • 15 healthy human subjects received mild electric shocks while seeing two different faces
  • also smelled a specific odorant while viewing each face and being shocked
  • the face and the odorant both were associated with fear
  • Subjects received different odorants to smell with each face such as woody, clove, new sneaker, lemon or mint
  • when a subject was asleep, one of the two odorants was re-presented, but in the absence of the associated faces and shocks.
  • occurred during slow wave sleep when memory consolidation is thought to occur
  • Sleep is very important for strengthening new memories
  • particular odorant was being presented during sleep, it was reactivating the memory of that face over and over again
  • similar to the process of fear extinction during exposure therapy
  • When the subjects woke up, they were exposed to both faces
  • When they saw the face linked to the smell they had been exposed to during sleep, their fear reactions were lower than their fear reactions to the other face
  • Fear was measured in two ways
  • through small amounts of sweat in the skin, similar to a lie detector test
  • through neuroimaging with fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging).
  • fMRI results showed changes in regions associated with memory
  • and changes in patterns of brain activity in regions associated with emotion
  • These brain changes reflected a decrease in reactivity that was specific to the targeted face image associated with the odorant presented during sleep
Mars Base

Using thoughts to control airplanes -- ScienceDaily - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...140527101454.htm

scibyte132

shared by Mars Base on 27 May 14 - No Cached
  • Scientists have now demonstrated the feasibility of flying via brain control -- with astonishing accuracy
  • first breakthrough
  • succeeded in demonstrating that brain-controlled flight is indeed possible -- with amazing precision
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Seven subjects took part in the flight simulator tests
  • They had varying levels of flight experience, including one person without any practical cockpit experience whatsoever
  • The accuracy with which the test subjects stayed on course by merely thinking commands would have sufficed, in part, to fulfill the requirements of a flying license test
  • Several of the subjects also managed the landing approach under poor visibility
  • scientists are now focusing in particular on the question of how the requirements for the control system and flight dynamics need to be altered to accommodate the new control method
  • Normally, pilots feel resistance in steering and must exert significant force when the loads induced on the aircraft become too large
  • This feedback is missing when using brain control
  • The researchers are thus looking for alternative methods of feedback to signal when the envelope is pushed too hard, for example
  • Mars Base on 27 May 14
     
    Using thoughts to control airplanes
Mars Base

Numbers Games Devised to Aid People with "Dyscalculia": Scientific American - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

scibyte78 Dyscalculia

shared by Mars Base on 19 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Three months on, Christopher seems to be faring better at the number-line game, going so quickly that Babtie asks him to slow down and explain his reasoning for each move
  • dyscalculic children tend to learn much more quickly when they talk through what they do
  • also believes that Christopher's maths anxiety, a near-universal trait of child and adult dyscalculics, is fading
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • Tetris-like game called Numberbonds, in which bars of different lengths fall down the screen
  • select a block of the correct size to fill out a row
  • emphasizes spatial relationships, which some dyscalculics also struggle with.
  • The Number Sense games, including a snazzy-looking iPhone version of Numberbonds, are intended to nurture the abilities that
  • contends, are the root of numerical cognition and the core deficit of dyscalculia — manipulating precise quantities.
  • In a game called Dots to Track, for example, children must ascribe an Arabic numeral to a pattern of dots, similar to those on dice.
  • When they enter the wrong value — and they often do — the game asks the children to add or remove dots to achieve the correct answer.
  • Other students are improving more slowly, but it is not easy to say why
  • Dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder are common among dyscalculics, and it can be difficult to untangle these problems,
  • with the right practice and attention from teachers and parents, dyscalculic children can thrive,
  • computer games are a supplement, not a replacement, for one-on-one tutoring.
  • in 2009 that Number Race, a game his group developed, modestly improved the ability of 15 dyscalculic kindergarten children to discern the larger of two numbers, but that it had no effect on their arithmetic or counting
  • a Swiss team reported in 2011 that a game that involves placing a spaceship on a number line helped eight- to ten-year-old dyscalculics with arithmetic
  • studied the children in an fMRI scanner during a task that involved arranging numbers.
  • one month after training, the children showed increased activation in the intraparietal sulcus and reduced neural activation elsewhere in the parietal lobes — a hint that their improvements in arithmetic were related to changes involving brain areas that respond to number.
  • hopes to monitor the brains of students such as Christopher as they practice Number Sense, to see if their parietal lobes are indeed changing
  • turned down by every funding source he has applied to
  • dyscalculia, like other learning disabilities, takes a toll on productivity
  • it doesn't attract much attention or money
  • In the United States, for example, the National Institutes of Health spent $2 million studying dyscalculia between 2000 and 2011, compared with more than $107 million on dyslexia.
Mars Base

Researchers debunk the IQ myth - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...2012-12-debunk-iq-myth.html

scibyte76 IQ

shared by Mars Base on 23 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • After conducting the largest online intelligence study on record
  • research team has concluded that the notion of measuring one's intelligence quotient or IQ by a singular, standardized test is highly misleading
  • study, which included more than 100,000 participants
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Utilizing an online study open to anyone, anywhere in the world, the researchers asked respondents to complete 12 cognitive tests tapping memory, reasoning, attention and planning abilities, as well as a survey about their background and lifestyle habits.
  • expected a few hundred responses, but thousands and thousands of people took part, including people of all ages, cultures and creeds from every corner of the world
  • The results showed that when a wide range of cognitive abilities are explored, the observed variations in performance can only be explained with at least three distinct components: short-term memory, reasoning and a verbal component
  • No one component, or IQ, explained everything
  • scientists used a brain scanning technique known as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), to show that these differences in cognitive ability map onto distinct circuits in the brain.
  • Intriguingly, people who regularly played computer games did perform significantly better in terms of both reasoning and short-term memory
  • smokers performed poorly on the short-term memory and the verbal factors
  • people who frequently suffer from anxiety performed badly on the short-term memory factor in particular
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