The power of the brain; as demonstrated by rhesus monkeys

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/11/141118-exoskeleton-neuroscience-brain-monkey-wheelchair-science/

I think this technology is extremely fascinated, innovative, and quite useful if I am being honest. In fact, it sort of surprises me that scientists are just now discovering how to use the redirect the signals in the brain to somehow “trick” a subject into thinking that they have the ability to move, or preform some sort of function which the currently cannot. This though came to me when I first heard of the disorder called “phantom limb”. It is a very strange, yet quite disabling syndrome where a person who has lost a limb I any instance (e.g. amputation, car accident, construction accident, war violence etc.) and with time they begin to feel as though their limb has suddenly reappeared.  It can also be explained as “feeling sensation that the limb could have experienced prior to the amputation” which according to many sources can be extremely painful. WedMD claims, “in addition to pain in the phantom limb, some people experience other sensations such as tingling, cramping, heat, and cold”. The reason for this syndrome is not entirely known, however many studies are being conducted in order to fully understand this phenomenon. What is known though, is that is entirely due to brain signals and nerve endings. To be specific researchers claim “nerve endings at the site of the amputation continue to send pain signals to the brain that make the brain think the limb is still there” (WebMD). It seems to me that this experience should be much further investigated. Fortunately this study with the rhesus monkeys proves that there is promise for some paralyzed people. Similarly to the research on phantom limb, a national geographic article by Dan Vergano reports "We are actually fooling the brain of patients to think it is not a machine carrying them, but they feel they are themselves walking forward."

            I think this article is proof that there are amazing things coming in the future for people with paralyses and other disabilities of this like. I think Vergano makes some incredible points in this article, which are worth reading. The discovery of brain-machine interfaces should be the primary focus of much more research in the near future. The article notes “brain-machine interfaces are giving us results producing a basic understanding of neural mechanisms.” Obviously this relates greatly to my neuroscience class and the content we are currently studying. More importantly, this article means we are approaching something revolutionary in medicine, and that relates to an incredible amount of people outside my psychology class as well.

Brain able to act through 'Mind's Eye'

Optical illusions are more than just those pictures in a book that helped me kill time on long road trips when I was a kid. They are fun, interesting ways to trick your brain. According to an article by Andy Henion, in Futurity, illusions can also help researchers try to figure out how your brain determines what to attend to and what to ignore. Since neural imaging was made possible, researchers have been attempting to ‘see’ what the brain is doing or at least where it is thinking. fMRI allows researchers to see a hemodynamic response to activity, signaling where the brain is active and where it is not. One downside to fMRI scanners is due to the nature of the test, it does not provide accurate temporal information.

Evidence for intentional control over attention is given by a simple study by Posner in 1980. He had subjects respond to the location of an image. Occasionally, the future location of the image would be hinted, greatly reducing reaction times. This lead most neuroscientists to infer that the frontal lobe, previously shown to work in spatial and goal oriented tasks and decisions, was responsible for spatial attention. Initial structural research done using MRI scanners and spatial perception seems to correlate activation in the fronto-parietal regions of the brain with a change in perception. However, because of the test’s inaccurate temporal information, it remained unclear whether fronto-parietal activation occurred before or after the change in perception. If activation occurs before a change in perception, it would indicate the activation is responsible for the change in perception. Conversely, if activation occurs after the change in perception, then it occurred as a response to the change.

Researchers at Michigan State University have found a way to isolate one possibility. By cleverly preventing subjects from becoming aware of when the change in perception occurred, they were able to reduce any possible effects from the noticing of the change in stimulus. Subjects looked at a monitor, with a small group of moving dots centered in front of each eye. The dots in front of each eye moved in random patterns that did not match each other, causing perceptual instability. Optical illusions, like the famous young woman / old lady picture or wine goblet / two faces, are other examples of perceptual instability. The instability caused perception to change back and forth, but, because the illusion was two non-identical sets of moving dots, it was hard to tell what was different in the chaos, causing subjects to effectively not perceive their own change in perception. This sounds scary, but it happens all the time. In all honestly, despite my best effort, I will find myself wondering about dinner or plans for the upcoming weekend in the middle of class! Distractions are normal, and attention can change rapidly, just ask any child. The researchers monitored subjects’ brains during these stealthy perceptual changes, and found a diminished BOLD effect in the fronto-parietal area of the brain. The lessened effect indicates lower activation in the frontal and parietal lobes.

Generally, the frontal and parietal lobes combine to form the ‘where pathway.’ It is the traditional area of activation for higher visuospatial cognition. The fact that there is a diminished response while the brain is able to change perception indicates that it is not responsible for changing visual perception, as has been considered. The paper discusses a possible theory that the cause of perceptual change must be elsewhere in the brain and suggests the occipital lobe and posterior temporal lobe as possible locations.

Article from Futurity: http://www.futurity.org/brain-vision-decisions-1019122/

Original Paper from Nature: http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.4130.html  

Training for Reading Disorders?

In this 21^st century, research has shown that approximately one out of every five children have a significant reading disability - the most common one being dyslexia. It is estimated that about 13 percent to 14 percent of elementary school children suffer from this reading disorder. However, with the new advances in brain-imagining technology, scientists and doctors have discovered that there is a way to help them improve and may even “treat” this disorder.

Thanks to the brain-imaging technology called magnetic source imaging, scientists have been able to identify the differences in brain activity between a child with a reading disorder and a child without a reading disorder. Studies have shown that different regions of the brain that activate during reading. For example, a child with no reading disorder has more activity in the speech areas of the left brain than on the right brain. However, a child with a reading disorder uses the right brain a lot more, thus causing the brain to go into overdrive. Other studies have shown that children with poor reading skills have lower activity in the parietal cortex region. In addition, children with dyslexia have shown to have less gray matter.

So what does this all mean?

This means that scientists can experiment with finding the right approach and reading instruction that will further develop a child’s ability to use the speech areas in the left brain; and, that is just what scientists have been testing! As mentioned in the American Psychology Association article, “See Brain. See Brain Read…”, images of children’s brains before and after they receive, “systemic, research-based reading instruction show that the” correct teaching technique can help normalize brain function. A study conducted by Guinevere Eden, PhD, at Georgetown University, showed that after intensive reading training, bodies of brain cells (gray matter) increased in children with dyslexia. Another study conducted also confirmed that after an experimental eight-month reading intervention, children with a reading disorder had an increase in the speech areas located in the left-hemisphere. These two studies showed that with the proper training, the brains of children with dyslexia can begin to look more like the brains of normal readers.

http://www.apa.org/action/resources/research-in-action/reading.aspx

Hallucinations aiding in task performance

Hallucinations experienced by patients who are prone to psychosis due to certain diseases such as schizophrenia can often times get in the way of everyday light and often times are terrifying. But what if these hallucinations could aid these patients in certain tasks? What if being prone to hallucinations aided in your ability to "connect the dots" during recall and image recognition?

Vision is a constructive process, meaning that we absorb many different cues and signals with our eyes from our environment and we mesh them together in an expected series of images to be processed by the brain. It is assumed that hallucinations occur in the event that people who are prone to hallucination, heavily rely on prior knowledge and past experience to construct these series of images from external cues to be processed by the brain. So theoretically, if someone prone to hallucination through psychosis was to recall certain information and "mesh" images and thoughts together, he or she would have an easier time doing so if bits of information were presented prior to the final task of recognition.

A team of researchers tested this by having 16 healthy volunteers (control group) and 18 volunteers who have been experiencing early psychosis symptoms(clinical group). The volunteers were presented with black and white images that either contained a person or didn't and participants were asked to respond. Then, the participants were presented with full-color images which a number of had been created with the template of the black and white image. The first set of pictures were presented again and responses were recorded again. The data showed that the group clinical group performed better the second time around, once they had certain information about the images circulating in their working memory, they were able to distinguish the presence of a person or not. The team expanded the study and found a positive correlation between task performance and a test of the person's psychosis proneness. And as stated by the author as more of a solidifying remark, "Taken together, these findings suggest that visual perception in people prone to psychosis shows a shift towards the use of prior knowledge rather than incoming sensory evidence."

 http://www.iflscience.com/brain/new-study-offers-insight-emergence-hallucinations

The Habit of Anorexia?

            In our society today, mass media is an inescapable phenomenon. It’s practically impossible for our minds to not be bombarded by images of super skinny models in some form or another. According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD) the mortality rate from eating disorders is higher than any other mental disorder among young women. It’s incredible how something that starts off simple and rewarding can morph into something so dangerous. In a recent article from the New York Times, Erica Goode discusses a new study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience called Neural mechanisms supporting maladaptive food choices in anorexia nervosa. The idea is that anorexia may be so difficult to treat because it has become a habit.

            This study was based off of a theoretical paper the senior author, Dr. Timothy Walsh, published a couple years ago in which he proposed the initial weight lose was the reward and since it was paired with dieting, eventually the act of dieting itself may have become a reward. This theory may help explain why earlier treatment is more successful.

            For this new study, the researchers used fMRI to observe activity in 21 anorexic women and 21 healthy women while they chose what foods to eat. The ventral striatum, which is part of the brain’s reward center, was activated in both sets of women. However, in the anorexic women, the dorsal striatum showed more activity compared to the healthy women. This is an area involved in habitual behavior so Goode assumes they “were acting automatically based on past learning.”

            In class, we discussed that long-term potentiation and continued firing of a synapse leads to less of the stimulus needed in order to achieve the same end result and fire the subsequent neuron. Maybe that is what is occurring within the dorsal striatum of women with anorexia. In that case, I think I would agree it could be that over time, the choices became so normal that stopping the behavior would be difficult because that is what their mind had been used to.

             Also, a big concept in cognitive neuroscience that we talked about in class is the interconnectivity of the brain networks and the different brain regions. We also discussed McClelland and Rumelhart’s neural network models they created in 1986 where units can be deactivated or activated with connections that can be strengthened due to previous firing. Dr. Walsh predicted that as diet becomes more habitual, the dorsal striatum becomes more involved. Since this different network seems to be activated in the case of people with anorexia, further experimentation could possibly be done using TMS if one were to specifically target the dorsal striatum and see how limiting it’s activity at the time of decision making affects the decisions and behaviors of those suffering from the disorder. The article also alludes to cocaine addiction and compulsive gambling to also be predicated on this theory of involvement of the habitual behavior network.

            In my opinion, I believe there is still a lot to be researched about anorexia and habitual behaviors but each study revels something that could be used to potentially help people battle devastating disorders and addictions.

New York Times article
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/health/extreme-dieting-of-anorexia-may-be-entrenched-habit-study-finds.html

ANAD
http://www.anad.org/get-information/about-eating-disorders/eating-disorders-statistics/

The Science of FOMO

After recently reading an article in the Atlantic regarding our generation’s addiction to social media, I wanted to further investigate. The article itself was backed by very few evidence based facts, but I had heard that “FOMO” or “fear of missing out” had become a valid diagnosis according to the most recent DSM. I searched for a study that actually operationalized the psychological impact of social medias, and was most interested in the 2014 study that measured anxiety levels in college aged students when their cell phones were taken away from them. The research question for the journal article was asking whether individuals of low, moderate or heavy mobile device use experience anxiety when their cell phone is taken away from them. I found this topic interesting because college students are the main demographic of cellular device over-usage, something that I did not know but makes sense in relation to my life as well. The three hypotheses stated that:

1. Participants without the use of their device will report significantly more anxiety over time, regardless of whether they had their device taken away or it was turned off and out of sight
2. Participants without the use of their device will report significantly more anxiety than those with their device close by, even though the latter are not able to access their device
3. Participants who use their WMD more during a typical day will report significantly more anxiety than those who use their WMD less in a typical day.

The methodology of the study tested a few conditions related to the three hypotheses. Participants were randomly assigned to have their cell phones taken away and were forced to sit quietly during the study, with State/Trait Anxiety Inventory tests administered in intervals of every 10 minutes. The hypotheses were supported, with participants exhibiting increasing anxiety as time progressed, however this was only displayed by moderate or heavy users of cellular devices. These results imply that constant use of cellular devices is unhealthy and produces a psychological attachment to the devices.

I think this finding is very relatable to myself and my fellow classmates. I have also noticed how people my age participate in their surroundings much less than our parents and even people 10 years older than us. However, I have especially noticed the symptoms of anxiety that come with social media the notifications associated with it. Each platform even utilizes certain colors such as red buttons to alert users. The color blue is utilized for almost every platform because it has been proven to emit a sense of trustworthiness, relaxation and stability. Social media creators hyper investigate the users that they seek. It is in this way that social media platforms run as a business, however instead of financial profit, they benefit off of a social currency that includes time consumption and psychological attachment.

Cheever, N.A., Rosen, L.D., Carrier L.M., Chavez A. (2014). Out of sight is not out of mind: The

impact of restricting wireless mobile device use on anxiety levels among low, moderate and high users. Computers in Human Behavior, 37, 290-297.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563214002805

Additional article: http://www.bluleadz.com/blog/bid/94213/Why-Are-Social-Media-Sites-Blue

What if Paralyzed People Could Walk by Using Their Thoughts?

What if paralyzed people could walk by using their thoughts?

An article written by Dan Vergano explains how new technologies show how the brain creates movement. This was published through National Geographic on November 19th, 2014. A pneumatically powered exoskeleton aids rhesus macaque monkeys in walking! This is controlled by a computer which reads signals coming from an implant in the monkey’s motor cortex consisting of electrodes.




Presenting this “brain-machine” interface is a neuroscientist from Duke University is Miguel Nicolelis. His findings from the “Walk Again Project” were presented at the Society for Neuroscience meeting. In his research, eight paralyzed patients walked used a robotic exoskeleton similar to what the monkeys used. These machines fool the brain.

Rhesus monkeys are able to steer a wheelchair with the electrodes just by using thought solely.  The monkeys were quick at wheelchair driving in order to get a grape.

The research goal is to develop implants that pick up clearer signals from thoughts in order to control future prosthetics better.  Not only have the patients been able to walk with an exoskeleton, but they were also noted by Nicolelis to have improved heart health, digestion and muscle tone.

How are these electrodes able to develop a mechanical skeleton?

With the width of human hair like bristles on a toothbrush send many signals to a central processing unit, copying into commands that are coherent. These commands are sent to a computer which coordinates the complex motions in order to walk. These commands move joints and limbs!

These machines offer extremely important tools about understanding the brain. Robotics are surely coming along nicely, but still have a lot more research and testing to go.

Works Cited:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/11/141118-exoskeleton-neuroscience-brain-monkey-wheelchair-science/

Photograph by Robert Clark, National Geographic Creative