A Highly Predictable Trajectory of Brain Development

The trajectory of brain development through childhood is so predictable that scientists can estimate a child's age within a year, using brain structure revealed in brain scans.

The group performed structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) on the young peoples' brains. The images showed features such as the size of each brain region, the level of connectivity between neurons, and how much white matter was insulating the neurons. By putting all these features together in an algorithm, the researchers formed a picture of what the average brain looks like at each year of childhood. Different areas and features of the brain varied between individuals, but the algorithm correctly predicted a child's age to within a year in 92 per cent of cases. Brown says this suggests that brain anatomy is a developmental clock of which we were unaware. _NewScientist

Journal Abstract from Current Biology

Brain development begins early, inside the womb. After birth the brain continues to add neurons and connections rapidly, then begins to prune back and refine neuronal connections in the toddler years.

The pattern of brain myelination -- or the adding of insulation to nerve fibres -- occurs from the back of the brain to the front of the brain, over a period of between 20 and 30 years. Teenagers lack full development and use of the pre-frontal lobes of the brain, for example, which contributes to impulsivity and lack of sound judgment.

As new structures and connections grow and mature, the developing brain passes through "critical developmental periods," which seem to allow especially rapid skills formation for the particular circuits which mature, or come online. In other words, newly functional brain circuits appear to be particularly "plastic" when they first develop and mature.

Understanding this trajectory of brain development should help anyone who deals with children to see that children are not simply "little adults." Depending upon the age, children are quite different creatures altogether than an adult's daily work or recreational companions.

Brain imaging is providing powerful tools to understand the dynamics of brain structure and brain function. We should expect many of our conventional prejudices about the brain to be overturned in the near future.

Instant Complex Skills Training, Like in The Matrix?

Scientists in Boston and Tokyo are developing an advanced form of fMRI neurofeedback that promises to make the learning of complex skills both faster and easier. The study was published in the Journal Science.

When we learn complex skills consciously, we typically practise the skill over and over, comparing our performance with an ideal performance. Eventually, our skills generally improve, and become automatic -- bypassing the conscious level. But with advanced neuroimaging feedback, we can skip the long and tedious training period and move directly to the automatic brain plasticity phase.

MedXpress

Boston University post-doctoral fellow Kazuhisa Shibata designed and implemented a method using decoded fMRI neurofeedback to induce a particular activation pattern in targeted early visual areas that corresponded to a pattern evoked by a specific visual feature in a brain region of interest. The researchers then tested whether repetitions of the activation pattern caused visual performance improvement on that visual feature.

The result, say researchers, is a novel learning approach sufficient to cause long-lasting improvement in tasks that require visual performance.

What's more, the approached worked even when test subjects were not aware of what they were learning.

"The most surprising thing in this study is that mere inductions of neural activation patterns corresponding to a specific visual feature led to visual performance improvement on the visual feature, without presenting the feature or subjects' awareness of what was to be learned," said Watanabe, who developed the idea for the research project along with Mitsuo Kawato, director of ATR lab and Yuka Sasaki, an assistant in neuroscience at Massachusetts General Hospital.
"We found that subjects were not aware of what was to be learned while behavioral data obtained before and after the neurofeedback training showed that subjects' visual performance improved specifically for the target orientation, which was used in the neurofeedback training," he said.
The finding brings up an inevitable question. Is hypnosis or a type of automated learning a potential outcome of the research?

"In theory, hypnosis or a type of automated learning is a potential outcome," said Kawato. "However, in this study we confirmed the validity of our method only in visual perceptual learning. So we have to test if the method works in other types of learning in the future. At the same time, we have to be careful so that this method is not used in an unethical way."
At present, the decoded neurofeedback method might be used for various types of learning, including memory, motor and rehabilitation. _MedXpress

It is fascinating to Al Fin cognitivists that the subjects were unaware of the skills which were to be learned, even though a complex type of learning actually occurred inside the brain. Not surprising, but fascinating nonetheless.

In order for complex skills learning to become faster and easier, it must necessarily bypass the slow and tedious conscious levels of learning and pass directly to the fast, hyper-parallel, sub-conscious levels of automatic brain plasticity.

Yes, this technology -- like all powerful technologies -- is extremely dangerous if used improperly. Since the learner is unconscious of what he is to learn, he is at the mercy of the person or program which has designed the learning protocol. Such is the life of an advanced ape species.

But on the more positive side, one of the greatest tragedies of human life has been that the wisdom, knowledge, and skills of highly accomplished persons has never been transferrable to other persons, in any practical way -- other than through a long, limited, awkward, and uncertain apprenticeship process.

Advanced induced neuroplasticity methods -- of which this is only one -- can study the working brains of highly skilled individuals, and learn how the skills are assembled and integrated within brain structures. Then, creating highly abstracted target images, neurofeedback protocols can be designed to quickly build neural foundations for the transferrence of these mental and physical skill sets.

NSF newsrelease

More: Enhanced memory through the blocking of a natural protein

Brave New Baby: Genius Training for Infants

Image Source
We have heard of the "better baby" and even the "superbaby." But those approaches to creating the "brave new baby" have been around for a while, and yet, here we are. Still looking for workable ways of training smarter, more cognitively capable children.

University of London researchers have come up with a new approach, beginning with 11 month old infants:

The researchers trained 11-month-old infants to direct their gaze toward images they observed on a computer screen. For example, in one task, a butterfly flew only as long as the babies kept their eyes on it while other distracting elements appeared on screen. Infants visited the lab five times over the course of 15 days. Half of the 42 babies took part in training, while the other half watched TV. Each child was tested for cognitive abilities at the beginning and end of the study.

Trained infants rapidly improved their ability to focus their attention for longer periods and to shift their attention from one point to another. They also showed improvements in their ability to spot patterns and small but significant changes in their spontaneous looking behavior while playing with toys.

"Our results appeared to show an improved ability to alter the frequency of eye movements in response to context," Wass said. "In the real world, sometimes we want to be able to focus on one object of interest and ignore distractions, and sometimes we want to be able to shift the focus of our attention rapidly around a room -- for example, for language learning in social situations. This flexibility in the allocation of attention appeared to improve after training."

The fact that the babies' improvements in concentration transferred to a range of tasks supports the notion that there is greater plasticity in the unspecialized infant brain.

...The findings reported online on Sept. 1 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, are in contrast to reports in adults showing that training at one task generally doesn't translate into improved performance on other, substantially different tasks. _ScienceDaily

Study abstract from Science Direct

This type of research is likely to continue and intensify -- particularly in parts of the world with more authoritarian government control. It is likely to continue because it is quite probable that infant brains can eventually be functionally shaped to approximate a preconceived "ideal." Infant brains are highly plastic, and experience incredibly rapid shaping and re-shaping of local neuronal assemblies and white matter pathways.

Of course there are ethical approaches to this type of research, which should be freely carried out in more open societies. And of course individual parents are free to incorporate elements of such research into their child's overall, well-rounded upbringing. It is likely that there are easily devised "games" which the baby would enjoy playing, which could lead to a faster-thinking, more imaginative child. Perhaps even a child capable of multi-tasking in many ways.

But experimenting parents should beware. The super-baby which you raise may rapidly grow beyond your ability to comprehend and control. Children are essentially amoral creatures who are capable of incredible destruction if given too much power too soon, without superb training in executive function.

It is not wise to train a child in particular areas of genius without incorporating safeguards, executive function training, and ethical training into the overall program. This training should resemble an assortment of games and engaging interactional narratives to the very young child.

At the Al Fin Institute for the Brave New Baby, we are concerned about current trends toward a dumbed-down future. We will share the results of our research into brave new babies as it becomes available.

Taken from a recent posting on Al Fin the Next Level

When Is a Child's Brain Ready for Maths?

The newest study examined 90 children recruited from a variety of schools. Half had just completed second grade; the other half had just completed third grade. All children had normal intelligence and had math reasoning scores between the 25th and 98th percentile. On average, the third-graders were one year older than the second-graders and had significantly better math-reasoning skills.

...The scientists found that children in third grade showed much more differentiated brain responses between complex and simple problems. They found significant change in the responses of two key regions of the brain to the different types of addition problems.Greater responses to complex addition problems were seen in third-graders’ brains in both the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a brain area responsible for manipulating information in working memory, and in the intraparietal sulcus, a posterior brain region essential for representing numerical quantity. _Vinod Menon et al described in Physorg

MyNextBrain_Taken from Brain Age PDF
It appears that significant changes in brain function occur in children sometime between grades 2 and 3, measured by fMRI. At least some of these changes in brain activity appear to allow more sophisticated maths reasoning in children.

Compared to 2nd graders, 3rd graders showed greater activity in dorsal stream parietal areas right SPL, IPS and angular gyrus (AG) as well as ventral visual stream areas bilateral lingual gyrus (LG), right lateral occipital cortex (LOC) and right parahippocampal gyrus (PHG). Significant differences were also observed in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), with 3rd graders showing greater activation in left dorsal lateral PFC (dlPFC) and greater deactivation in the ventral medial PFC (vmPFC). Third graders also showed greater functional connectivity between the left dlPFC and multiple posterior brain areas, with larger differences in dorsal stream parietal areas SPL and AG, compared to ventral stream visual areas LG, LOC and PHG. No such between-grade differences were observed in functional connectivity between the vmPFC and posterior brain regions. These results suggest that even the narrow one-year interval spanning grades 2 and 3 is characterized by significant arithmetic task-related changes in brain response and connectivity, and argue that pooling data across wide age ranges and grades can miss important neurodevelopmental changes. _Abstract Menon et al via ScienceDirect

It is likely that another similar maths-facilitating change occurs during puberty, at least partially triggered by testosterone surge. Understanding these age specific developmental brain changes is critical to the study of group differences and the efficacy of interventions in maths learning.

Abstract from an earlier collaboration between David Geary and Vinod Menon dealing with counting and retrieval strategies in early maths learning.

Modern high tech societies are based upon technologies which require sophisticated maths skills. Various commercial methods from maths learning have been developed in an attempt to assure a plentiful supply of talent for engineering and science training programs of the future. Most of these programs fail to compensate for the huge weaknesses of the government educational system as a whole, which limits their usefulness.

Music learning is another activity which displays a developmental learning window in childhood, at least for highly proficient musical skills and abilities. Not coincidentally, musical skills and math skills overlap significantly. This interesting study looks at brain networks in music, and how they come into play during everyday "segmentation of the neural stream." In other words, good and timely early childhood training in language, maths, music -- and probably many other skills not properly delineated -- can make a crucial difference in the skillful execution of ordinary moment to moment thinking processes.

This page links to a sophisticated analysis (PDF Thesis Download 6MB) of fMRI analysis of mental patterns from a whole-brain spatio-temporal perspective. Only for those most curious.

Modern educators and neuroscientists do not actually understand how children learn, nor do they know the best ways of assisting children in the crucial learning processes. In fact, modern educational practises are so infused with politicised dogma and indoctrination, that a mainstream education is apt to do as much harm as good in the average student.

If you are the parent of a young or adolescent child, DO NOT LEAVE your child's education up to the system. To you, your child is your life. To the system, your child is a statistic, prone to currents of political favouritism and neglect.

Online Puzzles and Brain Boosters: Saving Your Brain

Norman Doidge: Neuro-plasticians show that the brain is plastic not only in early childhood but from cradle-to-grave. This means we have to revisit the whole notion of adult development as a very, very serious undertaking. The adult brain can be maintained, developed and improved in many areas. But not by taking the occasional course after the age of 45.

VB: That message is going to become increasingly important with an aging population.

Norman Doidge: Yes, the longer we live the more relevant it becomes. And it is relevant not just for developing and improving but also for preserving. The secret to old age is a very simple one from the medical point of view. What you want is to have all your organ systems last as long as they can and then cease to function all at once!

VB: Exactly.

Norman Doidge: We’re in a situation now where, because of extended lifespan, a very high proportion of people—close to half—will find that their brains crap out before their hearts, livers and kidneys. So extending mental life span to equal that of other organs is a kind of imperative, otherwise we’ll have aged humans that are like infants who can’t function and care for themselves. _IdeaConnection

We make choices from moment to moment, unconsciously, as to how we will train our brains. Children and young adults need mentors and guides to help them make best use of early life mental plasticity. But the brains of adults and seniors are still plastic to a significant degree. Grownups have to be their own mentors and guides, more times than not, in the continuing task of brain development and preservation. Fortunately, there is a wide range of tools available online to assist in this task. Here is a report on one of these tools, n-back mental training exercises:

In an award address on May 28 at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science in Washington, D.C., University of Michigan psychologist John Jonides presented new findings showing that practicing this kind of task for about 20 minutes each day for 20 days significantly improves performance on a standard test of fluid intelligence—the ability to reason and solve new problems, which is a crucial element of general intelligence. And this improvement lasted for up to three months.

Jonides, who is the Daniel J. Weintraub Collegiate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, collaborated with colleagues at U-M, the University of Bern and the University of Tapei on a series of studies with more than 200 young adults and children, demonstrating the effects of various kinds of n-back mental training exercises. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and by the Office of Naval Research.

According to Jonides, the n-back task taps into a crucial brain function known as working memory—the ability to maintain information in an active, easily retrieved state, especially under conditions of distraction or interference. Working memory goes beyond mere storage to include processing information _MedXPress

Online brain games from Online Brain Games Blog:

Memory Games:

Dual N-Back — Documented I.Q. booster!

Simon Says

Concentration

Cogolog — Memory game site with 14 different memory games
Board Games:
Go – (Go Rules and tips) — 3000yr old board game!

Checkers — (Checkers Rules and tips)

Chinese Checkers – (Chinese Checkers Rules and tips)

Chess — (Chess Rules and tips)

Reversi — (Reversi Rules and tips)

Words:

Crosswords — (Crosswords Rules and tips)

Wordcrunch

Numbers:

Online Math Games – Highlight post with many links

Other:

Click The Color – Based on the Stroop Effect
Connect4 — (Connect4 Rules and tips)
Phit
Tetris
Other Websites with Free Brain Games
brainbashers.com
braingle.com
brainwaves.com
fitbrains.com
freebrainagegames.com
funbrain.com – elementary school
fun4thebrain - elementary school
gamesforthebrain
interjeux.net
mathplayground – elementary/middle school
matica.com
neuroscience for kids - elementary/high school
nursingdegree.net
online-college-blog
playwithyourmind.com
proprofs
samgine.com – online flash game puzzles

100 Online Puzzles, Brain Games, and Brain Tests from Nursingdegree.net (excerpt):

79. Sharp Brains: This site is "the brain fitness authority," and you’ll find all kinds of tricky brain teasers.
80. Smart Kit: This "brain gym and puzzle playground" has picture puzzles, Flash puzzle games, brain games, cryptograms, logic puzzles and more.

Evaluation Tools and Articles
Test your brain fitness with these tricks and games.

81. Brain Teasers and IQ Tests: Visit this site to take all kinds of tests and quizzes and to solve brain teasers.
82. Test Your Brain: Test your brain on its processing speed, ability to process information in a noisy room and more.
83. Lumosity: The initial trial for Lumosity’s brain fitness program is free.
84. IQ and intelligence tests: Take these IQ tests, subliminal messages test, organizational web design tests, memory tests and more to see how well your brain is functioning.
85. 50 Fun Ways to Maximize Your Brain Fitness: This website has lots of great ways to keep your brain in shape, from drinking pomegranate juice to changing up your regular route.
86. Steps to Brain Fitness: The Alliance for Aging Research lists 10 different ways to have a well-exercised brain.
87. Train the Brain: Take reflex tests, play with a Rubik’s cube and more on this site.
88. Mensa Fun Test: Find out if you’re one of the smartest people in the world when you take this test.
89. Surveys and Psychology Tests: Tests offered on this BBC website include an art and personality test, memory and more.
90. Test Cafe: Take all kinds of quizzes to test your brain, IQ, personality type and more.

Is Mental Illness Preventable?

Of the 10 leading causes of disability in the world in 1990, five were mental disorders; specifically unipolar depression, alcohol use, manic depression, schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder (Murray and Lopez, 1996). It is clear that both the extent of mental health problems and the enormous associated personal, social and financial cost can not be addressed by treatment services alone. _Robinson et Pennebaker

Schizophrenia.com
Schizophrenia is one of the most debilitating and disabling of the mental illnesses. So if we could find a way to prevent schizophrenia -- even a substantial proportion of the disease -- we would be making impressive progress toward the goal of preventing mental illness.

Recent research findings from Duke and Johns Hopkins suggest that a proportion of schizophrenia with genetic causes could be prevented by early detection of susceptible persons in early childhood, with appropriate intervention before symptoms manifest themselves in late adolescence or early adulthood. Scientists have known for decades that brain structure in schizophrenia was not normal -- and even pointed toward an early developmental "lesion" as the cause of the structural abnormalities.

The critical network of signals which control early brain development is becoming better understood -- both in terms of general development and in terms of specific brain diseases when the signaling network goes awry. Here is more about the recent Duke et Johns Hopkins research:

Katsanis, who directs the Duke Center for Human Disease Modeling, and Akira Sawa, M.D., Ph.D., a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, were introduced to each other by a clinical colleague who thought that Bardet-Biedl syndrome (BBS) proteins that are involved in transport duties within cells might have a role in schizophrenia. Katsanis is an expert in using BBS genetic mutations and proteins to learn more about other diseases. BBS is a complex genetic disease with autism-like symptoms, cognitive defects and depression. Sawa is an expert on DISC1, the protein named Disrupted in Schizophrenia 1, known to be a major susceptibility factor for schizophrenia and related disorders.

Together, they discovered that these proteins are involved in a key switch for neurons that is necessary for brain development. When DISC1 gains a phosphate group at a specific site, it recruits BBS1. When BBS1 is missing in this system, the team could observe defective neuron migration, while a model with no DISC1 at all leads to defects in both cell proliferation and migration.

...Katsanis predicts that, for perhaps 10 percent of psychiatric illness, the illness is primarily driven by defects in this switch system. "So we now have ways to interpret variation in humans, in a context that is relevant to their particular cases, to their physiology -- that is where medicine will move next," Katsanis said.

...The study was published by Nature journal on April 6 in its advance online publication. _SD

The researchers were looking at brain signaling which controls early brain development -- the multiplying of brain neurons and subsequent placement in proper locations, orientiation, and connectivity to other parts of the brain. But there is another "brain growth spurt" which occurs just before adolescence, which could be just as critical to the subsequent development of schizophrenia and other types of mental illness which first manifest in adolescence or early adulthood. This neuronal growth spurt is no doubt also under the control of brain signaling proteins.

Prevention comes into the picture when scientists learn to correct abnormal signaling in early stages of development, or to compensate for abnormal brain development, later in childhood. Some genetic abnormalities can be treated now, and the opportunities to treat more genetic problems are growing rapidly.

That means that besides mental illness, many disadvantages which are widespread in the third world and in disadvantaged ethnic groups -- and which are at least partially genetically mediated (such as low intelligence and poor executive function) -- should be amenable to treatment in the not so distant future.

It is the denial of such genetically mediated disadvantages and disabilities which dooms sufferers to lifetimes of misery and underachievement. Such HBD deniers likewise doom entire societies and regions to generations of misery, poverty, widespread disease, and hopelessness.

Automatic Expertise Grows with Time and Training

Wikipedia
The human brain learns a lot, over time. Experience shapes the brain, determining how it will work, and which parts of the brain will be active in different circumstances. With training, many parts of the brain learn to function more quickly and efficiently to perform particular tasks in a more expert manner. But this training must be intense enough, and take place early enough in life -- before the developmental windows close -- for the skills to become automatic at expert levels.

Recent Japanese brain research has determined that expert players in the Japanese chess game "Shogi" use different parts of their brain (the caudate nucleus among others) to play, than do amateurs of the game. The caudate nucleus is the curved purple structure in the image above.

Neuroscientists at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Wako, Japan, studied a group of professional and amateur shogi players. Shogi is the Japanese version of chess. With the use of real-time brain scans, the researchers discovered that the pros activated different parts of their brains than the amateurs did while studying game patterns and contemplating their next moves.

The findings were published in the Jan. 21 issue of Science.

Senior study author Keiji Tanaka, deputy director of the institute and head of the Cognitive Brain Mapping Laboratory, said the experts' unique brain circuitry enabled them to have "superior intuitive problem-solving capabilities."

Professional shogi players, who have practiced three or four hours a day for several years, "repeatedly note that the best next move comes to their mind 'intuitively,'" the authors wrote. "Being 'intuitive' indicates that the idea for a move is generated quickly and automatically without conscious search, and the process is mostly implicit."

... brain difference occurred when the players were forced to quickly pick their next best move. The professionals' brain scans revealed activity in a portion of the basal ganglion known as the caudate nucleus, while the amateurs' scans did not.

The researchers suggest that a unique circuit between these two regions of the brain is what enables professional players to expertly recognize board game patterns and quickly choose their optimal next move.

"There was no volume difference of the caudate nucleus between professional and amateur players," said Tanaka. This suggests that "the caudate nucleus is used for other purposes in ordinary people [but] the experts have developed a unique way to use the system." _BW_via_ImpactLab

The caudate nucleus has been implicated in the development of automaticity of several types -- which places the caudate in a central, pivotal position for humans living in modern societies.

First, the caudate appears to be involved in the acquired automaticity of motor skills. This is not such a big surprise to brain researchers. But the caudate also seems to be involved in the automaticity of emotional processing, the automaticity of perceptual categorisation (PDF), automaticity of rule-based categorisation, and in switching between two languages in bilingual individuals. There are almost certainly more caudate functions to come.

Sure, there is overlap between the different caudate functions, but the brain -- and its many modular parts -- is nothing if not multi-functional. A Swiss Army knife of cognitive and emotional tools that modifies itself over a person's lifetime, adapting to the individual's experience.

That is why it is so important to the individual that the brain's many potential functions be developed before their developmental windows close. And why it is so important to society that the brains of its members are well developed and long-lived.

We cannot afford to waste all of that hard-earned knowledge, experience, and savvy by dying too young. 500 year lifespans should be seen as a minimum timespan for skills acquisition and for passing these skills along to future generations.

Taken from an article on Al Fin Longevity

Micro-Electronic Brain Implant Supervises Brain Re-Wiring

When the human brain is damaged from trauma, stroke, infection, or tumour etc., the damaged tissue does not re-grow itself spontaneously. Instead, the person must learn to compensate for the loss of function. Some brain plasticity may occur, as undamaged parts of the brain take responsibility for some of the functions which the destroyed parts previously carried out. But damaged brain does not heal.

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University intend to change that, by using implanted electronics devices which can help teach the brain how to re-wire itself to allow disconnected parts of the brain to become connected -- and functional -- again.

Pedram Mohseni, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Case Western Reserve University, and Randolph J. Nudo, a professor of molecular and integrative physiology at Kansas University Medical Center, believe repeated communications between distant neurons in the weeks after injury may spark long-reaching axons to form and connect.

Their work is inspired by the traumatic brain injuries suffered by ground troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

...Mohseni has been building a multichannel microelectronic device to bypass the gap left by injury. The device, which he calls a brain-machine-brain interface, includes a microchip on a circuit board smaller than a quarter. The microchip amplifies signals, called neural action potentials, produced by the neurons in one part of the brain and uses an algorithm to separate these signals – brain spike activity - from noise and other artifacts. Upon spike discrimination, the microchip sends a current pulse to stimulate neurons in another part of the brain, artificially connecting the two brain regions.

...During the next four years, they expect to understand the ability to rewire the brain in a rat model and to determine whether the technology is safe enough to test in non-human primates. If tests show the treatment is successful in helping recovery from traumatic brain injury, the researchers foresee the possibility of using the approach in patients 10 years from now. _Eurekalert

Here is an abstract of a paper published by Mohseni in an IEEE publication from 2008:

This paper reports on the design, implementation, and performance characterization of a high-output-impedance current microstimulator fabricated using the TSMC 0.35 mum 2P/4M n-well CMOS process as part of a fully integrated neural implant for reshaping long-range intracortical connectivity patterns in an injured brain. It can deliver a maximum current of 94.5 muA to the target cortical tissue with current efficiency of 86% and voltage compliance of 4.7 V with a 5-V power supply. The stimulus current can be programmed via a 6-bit DAC with an accuracy better than 0.47 LSB. Stimulator functionality is also verified with in vitro experiments in saline using a silicon microelectrode with iridium oxide (IrO) stimulation sites. _IEEEXplore

The technology for such interventions is in the early stages. The researchers are also working on devices which can be used for a broad range of neurological and psychiatric conditions, and in conjunction with neurosurgery and standard post-surgical rehabilitation.

Eventually such devices will probably be implanted into a damaged area of brain, along with an artificial matrix seeded with a person's own stem cells and growth factors. The devices will be wired to "bridge" from healthy brain on one side of the lesion to healthy brain on other sides of the lesion (corresponding to interrupted pathways). The electronic signals will not only help guide a re-wiring of the brain, but they should also guide the re-growth of new replacement brain tissue of specific replacement types.

Anyone who has read the science fiction novel "Old Man's War" by John Scalzi, should recognise some of the intent behind the early stage, rudimentary devices being developed at Case Western -- and to see where the technology may be heading.

More on a related topic from Brian Wang

How Will You Boost Your Brain?

ImageSourceTrue "brain-boosting" can occur when the brain's ability to form new neurons and new synaptic connections is enhanced. Such cognitive enhancement can occur from the use of certain drugs, for example some anti-depressants and even ritalin.

But there are other ways to boost your brain, besides drugs. Deep brain stimulation using electromagnetism can work. And now, new research shows that brainwave training in the alpha frequencies can enhance brain plasticity and synaptogenesis.

Researchers from Goldsmiths and the Institute of Neurology have demonstrated that half an hour of voluntary control of brain rhythms is sufficient to induce a lasting shift in cortical excitability and intracortical function.

Remarkably, these after-effects are comparable in magnitude to those observed following interventions with artificial forms of brain stimulation involving magnetic or electrical pulses. The novel finding may have important implications for future non-pharmacological therapies of the brain and calls for a serious re-examination and stronger backing of research on neurofeedback, a technique which may be promising tool to modulate cerebral plasticity in a safe, painless, and natural way. _SD

The Mindflex device ($80 from Walmart and Amazon) is a fairly inexpensive way to train your brain in alpha wave relaxation. There is also a wide array of brain-machines that claim to entrain relaxation brain-wave frequencies -- including alpha. Learn how to make such a device yourself. Or browse around and see if anything here interests you. Even more here.

These are all tiny little baby steps compared to the type of brain-machine interfaces that are coming. Neurofeedback machines are available at all levels of sophistication and expense. With a sophisticated neurofeedback machine, you can go far beyond simple alpha training. But alpha wave relaxation is not a bad place to start. As long as it is just a start.

In the future, some individuals will use brain-machine interface as an escape from daily problems and challenges. What will be far more exciting is the level of challenges that people will be able to solve using various types of brain training, and machine-assisted brain plasticity.

Turning Back the Brain Clock

“It is never too late to have a happy childhood” _TomRobbins

A team of UCSF scientists has turned back the clock of brain development for young mice by transplanting fetal mouse neurons into their brains.

...the researchers took a specific type of neuron from the brains of fetal mice and grafted them into mice that had either just been born or were approximately 10 days old. Known as inhibitory interneurons, these cells release a chemical signal that quiets neighboring cells, making it more difficult for them to fire. The transplanted neurons, labeled with a fluorescent marker, began migrating to their normal place in the brain and making connections with resident neurons.

The mice went through the typical critical period, at about 28 days of age. But the transplanted neurons seemed to induce a second critical period, which was timed to the age of the transplanted cells rather than the age of the animals. The later critical period occurred when the transplanted neurons were about 33 to 35 days old, the same age as resident inhibitory interneurons during the normal critical period. (The neurons arise in the brain before birth.)

Scientists aren't yet sure how the cells induce this second period of malleability. Stryker's team and others had previously shown that the cells' inhibitory signaling plays a key role--the critical period can be delayed or induced earlier by mimicking the inhibitory effects of the cells with drugs, such as valium. But in these previous experiments, it was not possible to induce a second critical period after the normal one. "Once you've had it, can never get another one, at least until these transplant experiments," says Stryker. "That shows there is something other than just the inhibitory [chemical] they release that must be involved in this process." Researchers plan to transplant different types of inhibitory neurons, in an attempt to find the specific cell type responsible.

"I would love to see if the same sort of transplant worked in older animals," says Jianhua Cang, neuroscientist at Northwestern University, in Chicago. "This work is a significant advance, but if one can do it in adult animals, it would be even more remarkable. And it opens the possibility of therapeutic potential." Cang was not involved in the current research, thought he has previously worked with the authors.

The findings could have wide-reaching implications for how we think about the nature of plasticity in the brain. Humans have a similar critical period, though in humans this phase is more extended than in mice. _TechnologyReview

Al Fin neuroscientists say that this research opens the door to the idea that even adult brains may be induced to undergo repeated "critical periods" for vision, math, music, language and foreign language, etc. It is not so much a question of "if" but of "when" the proper combination of precursor cells, growth factors, and other auxiliary factors can be devised and tested, to bring the exceptional brain plasticity of young animals to the adult human brain.

This is the type of foundational research that society's resources should be devoted toward, rather than the corrupt and wasteful scams of pseudo-science so favoured by the governments of Europe, Australia, the US, and the UK.

A Distributed and Most Plastic Brain

TED Talk by Michael Merzenich
The brain is more plastic than most of us believe.  We need to believe in the brain's plasticity, because there are many ways in which we could help our brains to better help us -- by taking the effort to strengthen weak brain functions which may be holding us back.

Our brains help determine who we are, but your brain is not just inside your skull.  It is also below your belt. We are led by our guts more than we know.  Whenever we let our brains fall back into its "default state", when we are not thinking about anything in particular, we are led down many a subconscious path whose origin and destination may lie well outside our skulls.  This is why many approaches to the rehabilitation of malfunctioning brains also involve the rest of the body.

The reason why it is important to consider ways in which we may help our brains help us, is that it is likely that all of us have run into particular obstacles and blockages -- over and over again.  Like "strange attractors", our own particular weaknesses tend to pull us toward them repeatedly.  But what if we could learn to change our default brain circuits so that such weaknesses no longer held us back?

In fact, particular parts of our default brains inform us as to "who we are" and "what we can do."  That is fine when our brain is telling us accurately that we can indeed do what we need and want to do.  But when our default brain states are telling us that we are helpless to achieve our needs and valid wants, we have a problem.

Although many of the parameters of our default brain states are largely determined by genetic factors, that is not to say that we are helpless to alter these states.  Persons who are depressed may find changing dysfunctional defaults to be particularly difficult.   But the brain can change for the better, and along with it the person.  But not without work.

That is where it is particularly important to understand that the rest of the body contains a significant proportion of the human nervous system.  Your digestive system may be especially important, but also the musculoskeletal system, the endocrine system, and the cardiorespiratoryvascular system.  Or maybe it is better to just think of it as the body-brain, working alongside the head-brain.

We need to be better than the zombies, led their entire lives by forces outside of themselves.  In a world that has devolved to suit zombies rather than free individuals, it is hugely important that we make the most of who we are.   First we have to understand what is possible.

Astrocytes: The Power Behind the Neuronal Throne?

Scientists are learning more about an interesting brain cell known as an astrocyte. Astrocytes are glial cells, or support cells of the brain. But is it possible that astrocytes were never told that they are mere support cells?

Scientists at Yale, most notably Ann H. Cornell-Bell and Steven Finkbeiner, have shown that calcium waves can spread from the point of stimulation of one astrocyte to all other astrocytes in an area hundreds of times the size of the original astrocyte. Furthermore, calcium waves can also cause neurons to fire. And calcium waves in the cortex are leading scientists to infer that this style of communication may be conducive to the processing of certain thoughts. If that isn't convincing, it was recently shown that a molecule that stimulates the same receptors as THC can ignite astrocyte calcium release. _SciAm

Those are the words of neuroscientist Andrew Koob, author of the book "The Root of Thought," which suggests that astrocytes may be an important key to human consciousness. Glia are the most numerous cells in the brain, and are crucial to the survival of neurons. But until recently, no one believed that astroglia may be active participants in human consciousness itself.

The means by which astrocytes may alter and control human consciousness is thought to be "the calcium wave."

Interestingly, astrocytes are excitable cells like neurons. They base their communication on spontaneous or evoked cytosolic Ca2+ variations, instead of membrane electrical transients. Their remarkable morphology supports intercellular signaling as they form interconnected networks of cells coupled by gap-junctions, where each unit occupies a virtually non-overlapping domain of the inter-neuronal space. Surprisingly, astrocytes communicate also to neurons and synapses. In fact, they extend membrane processes to simultaneously contact hundreds of neuronal dendrites, thousands of synapses and even blood vessels. Indeed, astrocytes control the vasculature tone and they are likely to sense neuronal energy-demand and gate its consumption. Their physiology is thus bidirectionally linked to neuronal and synaptic activity, as they are capable of selectively respond to it on a millisecond time scale, by releasing specific neuroactive molecules (Ni et al., 2007). Notable are the discoveries of the -interaction with synaptic physiology and plasticity that led to -revisiting -information transfer between neurons, with the proposed concept of a “tri-partite synapse” (Perea and Araque, 2002). _frontiers

Actually, science has just begun to understand astrocytes. Beneath the level of the "calcium wave" is the "calcium oscillation". Calcium oscillations occur within individual astrocytes spontaneously within the hippocampus -- the seat of human long-term memory formation. Connections between calcium oscillations, calcium waves, neuronal oscillations, and various neuronal correlates of consciousness, will take time to locate and solidify. Stay tuned, and don't forget to drink your high calcium beverage of choice.

A Brain Changes Over Time: Make Yours Count

Anyone who has studied the behaviour of children, adolescents, and adults understands that -- beyond basic aptitude -- brains function differently at different ages and levels of experience. Now neuroscientists at WUSM in St. Louis have the beginning of an explanation for the differences -- adult brain centers learn to communicate quickly across greater distances.

The results have revealed that most of the connections in children's brains are formed between regions of the cortex that are physically close to each other. Conversely, in adults' brain, most such paths are created between distant brain regions, which are not functionally linked to each other. The scientists have also determined that kids have a very reduced number of long-distance brain connections, as opposed to adults, where this form of interaction is the standard. _Softpedia

The explanation sounds simple, but the reality is far more complex. The brain is plastic throughout life, but particularly during early childhood and adolescence. The mechanism for brain plasticity is defined genetically, and influenced by the brains environment in the womb and in infancy. The specifics of micro-plasticity of particular brain regions are strongly influenced by environment in childhood and adolescence. If a child learns a second language, is trained in music, or studies martial arts, for example, the brain organises itself differently.

Throughout childhood, myelination of brain pathways occurs from back to front -- from occipital to pre-frontal. The famous "developmental windows" of a child's brain correspond roughly to periods of regional myelination. A person's pre-frontal myelination may not be completed until the age of 25 or 30, suggesting that that person's brain is not fully functional (lacking in judgment and perspective) prior to that age. But in order to acquire the ability to communicate "by long distance", brain centers need more than well-myelinated neural connections.

They need to learn the neural language of synchronous oscillations, in order for enough complementary brain centers to be able to interact simultaneously to create rich and textured perceptions and conceptualisations. Closer brain centers tend to communicate via beta wave synchrony. Farther centers tend to use gamma wave synchrony. The significance of these distinctions is still being worked out.

Younger brains can certainly be as "intelligent" as older brains, in terms of IQ scores. But it is unlikely for a young brain to be able to achieve the complexity or efficiency of thought and action that an older brain can display, to say nothing of wisdom and perspective. Part of the difference may well be due to lack of experience / knowledge. Part may well be due to differences in myelination and underlying micro-connectivity.

Here is the huge problem we are facing as a society: modern educational and child-rearing methods are permanently handicapping the brains of our young, by missing critical "developmental windows". Large chunks of entire generations have been lost so far due to our societal dysfunction in this regard. And there are no signs that society is waking up -- quite the opposite in fact. A societal wide shortage of competence is likely to be the result.

As baby boomers start retiring, critical skills shortages will grow more acute. Besides being fewer in number, subsequent generations have been damaged more thoroughly by the wave of social engineering that hit university schools of education in the late 60s and early 70s. This damage to young minds is not slowing down, but is growing worse. Under the Obama / Pelosi reich -- which is most beholden to teachers' unions and more radical academics -- the brain killing machine will only grow larger and stronger.

In order to create a core of competent individuals and communities that will be able to best take advantage of the coming breakthroughs in genetics, neuroscience, and psycho-philosophy, it is important that large numbers of parents opt out of government education and other brain-stunting influences of popular and mainstream culture. As an atheist, I choose to be neither pro-religion nor anti-religion in the coming cultural schisms. There are larger things at stake.

Everything Old is New Again

Old brains can start acting like young brains again, thanks to University of British Columbia researchers:

The research reveals that the loss of plasticity is due to the protein calpain actively blocking the protein cortactin, which is responsible for the sprouting of new connections. The researchers reduced calpain activity in animal models to unlock the sprouting potential of neurons and found that when calpain activity is reduced neural plasticity is enhanced.

“The maintenance of neuronal connections is an active process that requires constant repression of the formation of nerve sprouts by the protein calpain to avoid uncontrolled growth,” says Mingorance-Le Meur, who is also a member of the Brain Research Centre at UBC and VCH Research Institute. “But a consequence of this role is that calpain limits neural plasticity and the brain’s ability to repair itself. The next step is to find a way to enhance neural plasticity without interfering with the good connections that are already in place. The next step is to find a way to enhance neural plasticity without interfering with the good connections that are already in place.” _PO

Younger brains capable of learning rapidly could change a lot of things in the developed world, where populations are aging. Between 1% and 2% of populations in the developed world may be walking around with Alzheimer's, and the proportion will only grow unless we learn how to stop the inexorable senescence.

What about the rest of the body? How do we regenerate aging livers, kidneys, hearts, lungs, pancreases, lymphatics and blood vessels? We would probably start with stem cells. But we want our own stem cells -- stem cells that are compatible with our immune systems. Fortunately, science is unraveling the tangled knot of inducing pluripotent stem cells from adult cells:

A team led by Scripps Research Institute scientists has for the first time developed a technique for generating novel types of....human stem cells with characteristics similar to mouse embryonic stem cells, currently the predominant type of stem cells used for creating animal models of human diseases in research. The technique potentially provides scientists with new sources of stem cells to develop drugs and treatments for human diseases.

The study, which appears in the December 18 online version of Cell Stem Cell and the January 2009 print edition of the journal, provides proof of principle that alternative sources of stem cells can be created. _SD

The new technique apparently creates human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) that are very close to hESCs in behaviour. This research suggests that before long, all of us will be able to bank our own hiPSCs as a type of "old age insurance" against the loss of function of virtually any tissue type.

The ability to grow entire new organs from hiPSCs has not been demonstrated, but it is only a matter of time and engineering. If hiPSCs behave like hESCs, all of the cell types to make any tissue or organ are there, potentially.

A lot more work is necessary before we can expect routine rejuvenation procedures from these breakthroughs. A lot of other breakthroughs will be necessary before the entire repertoire of rejuvenation techniques are available to significantly prolong the period of fulfilled and productive human lifespan.

Good news? Yes, but superficial good news. Underneath it all, humans are still generally stupid, unwise, ignorant, bigoted, easily led, fanatically violent creatures. The path to the next level does not involve superimposing all of the marvelous high tech accomplishments of western science and engineering onto the masses of humans. The transplant simply will not take, despite the best wishes of Kurzweil and friends.

More later.

Metronome Learning in Elementary School--Calibrating the Internal Brain Clock

Mental calibration for optimal learning is an important discipline, particularly for children just beginning to learn how to deliberately learn. One mental calibration method that appears to help elementary school children learn better is the interactive metronome.

...the 9-year-old bobs his head between cowbell tones to help him fixate on the metronome beat. Scores on the computer screen in front of him track his timing with the beat, but unbeknownst to the fourth-grader, the repetitious movements are helping him develop new neural pathways in his brain....Almost a dozen youngsters have been hooked up to the metronome at the school, which includes a hand and floor pad sensor that measures the accuracy of the user's response to the reference tone and shows results on a computer screen.

There are 13 exercises that involve a combination of clapping, tapping the hand sensor and stepping in time to the beat with one foot, and shuffling both feet onto the floor pad sensor. While it may be difficult to fathom how synchronized tapping can improve your brain's ability to process information, studies back up anecdotal evidence that the metronome works.

...After a short stint using Interactive Metronome, teenagers at the school showed a sharp one-year improvement in reading fluency scores. Even more interesting to Taub and his colleagues, there were gains in the students' ability to solve problems in mathematics.

It's an important point because most learning seems to be domain-specific, said Kevin McGrew, an educational psychologist and director of the Institute for Applied Psychometrics, a private consulting company in Minnesota...."It doesn't make you smarter; it doesn't give you more knowledge, but you're better able to manage, focus and concentrate better," said McGrew, a visiting professor in educational psychology at the University of Minnesota.

Source via Kevin McGrew

From the research paper by Gordon Taub et al, referenced by Kevin McGrew, one of the coauthors:

86 participants completed pre- and post-test measures of reading achievement (i.e., Woodcock-Johnson III, Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing, Test of Word Reading Efficiency, and Test of Silent Word Reading Fluency). Students in the experimental group completed a 4-week intervention designed to improve their timing/rhythmicity by reducing the latency in their response to a synchronized metronome beat, referred to as a synchronized metronome tapping (SMT) intervention. The results from this non-academic intervention indicate the experimental group’s post-test scores on select measures of reading were significantly higher than the non-treatment control group’s scores at the end of 4 weeks. This paper provides a brief overview of domain-general cognitive abilities believed effected by SMT interventions and provides a preliminary hypothesis to explain how this non-academic intervention can demonstrate a statistically significant effect on students’ reading achievement scores.

Tick Tock Talk

I am more familiar with the Interactive Metronome technique as used for brain rehab. But it makes sense as a mental calibration method for young children--whose brains are rapidly changing. Every athletics coach understands the need for an athlete to "warm up" prior to performing. The same need to calibrate applies for singers and actors. Smarter surgeons will tend to mentally rehearse a complex procedure before beginning.

But the mental calibration of the interactive metronome is at a more basic level than a pre-performance warmup. It is closer to the neuroplasticity shaping that occurs with neurofeedback training. I would expect neurofeedback to be useful from time to time in overseeing metronome therapy. It is only a matter of time before the various parallel calibrations find each other.

Here is a video illustrating basic IM technique

Here is one of many free online metronomes

Case Study in Adult Neuroplasticity: Charles Darwin

Thanks to Alvaro at SharpBrains for this fascinating peek into how Charles Darwin's thinking changed over his adult life.

I have said that in one respect my mind has changed during the last twenty or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays. I have also said that formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. Music generally sets me thinking too energetically on what I have been at work on, instead of giving me pleasure. I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did. On the other hand, novels which are works of the imagination, though not of a very high order, have been for years a wonderful relief and pleasure to me, and I often bless all novelists.

Darwin's Autobiography

Darwin's own writing style apparently changed over the years--to his own satisfaction.

Formerly I used to think about my sentences before writing them down; but for several years I have found that it saves time to scribble in a vile hand whole pages as quickly as I possibly can, contracting half the words; and then correct deliberately. Sentences thus scribbled down are often better ones than I could
have written deliberately.

ibid

That is a technique that I have found useful as well, even in short comments. The first sentence I write is often useful as a summary, after I work through the ideas a little better. It helps to put the ideas out in the open first for modification and reconstruction.

Darwin's brain experienced neuroplasticity and modification from the "overuse" of some faculties at the expense of other faculties--such as appreciation of poetry and music. His observations of the natural and human worlds may have gained a certain rigour and precision in this process of "selective cultivation" of cortical real estate.

If Darwin had been given the opportunity to relive his life, and thus was able to carry out his plan-in-hindsight of listening to music and reading poetry at least once a week--would his scientific writings have been as clean and precise? An interesting question.

While the neuroplasticity of both motor and sensory cortex following strokes, other denervation, and amputation, are well documented, the neuroplasticity of the associative cortex--prefrontal lobes etc--still requires study to delimit the possibilities. The old saying "you are what you think" is likely to be proven truer than many people would like.

You can find Darwin's works free online here or here.

Plastic Brains--Shaping Your Future Self

The human brain retains some capacity to learn and change throughout its life. Cortical neurons can not only change their wiring based upon inputs, but new neurons can be grown to reinforce (and replace?) existing networks. Neuroscientists are hot on the trail of brain plasticity, and the story is far from being told entire.

Focal hand dystonia (FHD) is a fascinating disorder of brain plasticity that particularly affects musicians. FHD involves plastic changes in the somatosensory cortex that receives inputs from the involved hand. The brain actually loses its ability to distinguish sensory input from the different fingers, leading to the inability of the musician to synchronize and sequence the intricate fingerings of difficult pieces for piano, violin, and other instruments. The reason for this brain confusion is that long practise sessions playing rapid, difficult pieces confuse the brain into thinking that input from different fingers is actually coming from the same finger. Input from one finger grows into the somatosensory map of a different finger as the brain adapts to this new input, until the brain can no longer distinguish one finger from another when attempting to play music. Here is more on focal dystonia.

We have only so much cortex to work with. The intricate folding of the neocortex provides us with more gray matter than we would have with smooth-surfaced brains, but there is a limit. If we lose an eye or a limb, the cortex serving that part of the body is freed up for other uses. Inputs from other sensory organs or other units of the same sense will typically grow into the unused area of cortex in those cases. Thus someone who goes blind may develop keener hearing and much better discrimination with his Braille reading hand.

Similar plastic remapping of motor cortex can occur, for example after a stroke (CVA). You should not be surprised that many scientists and mental health professionals believe that the associative cortex is capable of similar plastic remapping. In other words, it appears that you truly are shaped by the things you most commonly think about. Your brain accomodates your choices of thought and action by changing as you think, act, cogitate, and daydream.

Jeffrey Schwartz has gone beyond thinking about brain plasticity, to incorporating it into a therapy for his Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) patients. His results are promising.

While most educated persons may consider themselves too modern to fall for the admonitions of religious teachers and self-help gurus, who constantly drone that "you are what you think," perhaps it is time to go back to the underlying idea--without all the religious and other extraneous matter.

Humans are at a major turning point. They can either choose the path of accelerating change, or the path of stagnation--with its inherent vulnerability to more primitive, more vital ways of thinking and living. Al Fin frequently points out the stagnant and self-defeating ways of education and child-raising in the modern west. Here at Al Fin, the best alternative put forward to mainstream stagnation, is the next level. But the next level will require smarter humans--humans who can direct their own evolution.

The curve of forward development and accelerating change will not be a smooth, continuously upward curve. It will develop in fits and starts, with occasional relapses and reversals. We are missing much of the data we will need for many of our forward leaps, but more than that, we are missing the conceptual power we will need. If we--through our commitment to stagnant ideologies and customs--neglect basic advances we could be making, we will pay for our lapses dearly, in time.

Adult brains are not nearly as plastic as childhood and teenage brains. The one advantage that adult brains possess, is their life experience and possibly their fuller use of the prefrontal pathways of the brain. These advantages may be used exclusively for one's own benefit, or in addition, used to assist younger generations.

We will eventually utilise gene therapy to bring about higher intelligence in humans. This will be done first in neurodegenerative conditions of old age and childhood. As the methods improve, the benefits of better intelligence-conferring genes (and other augments) will be made available to everyone who can pay--even if the person must travel to Brasil or India to obtain the treatments. But I suspect that we are capable of significant improvement in our ability to learn and conceptualize simply by using the natural plasticity of our own brains. Certainly methods for teaching our children can result in much more capable and confident children if they work with the natural plasticity and the natural hunger for competence of the young brain.

The positive lessons of brain plasticity in Schwartz's treatments for OCD and the negative lessons of brain plasticity in FHD, should give a thoughtful person much to think about.

Previous posts at Al Fin discussed the importance of "purpose" in providing motivation for development and positive change. Learning the lessons of neuroplasticity provides a deeper rationale for discovering purpose in life, and using that purpose to motivate, and to set personal goals.

Religious and ideological zealots and terrorists have no lack of purpose or motivation. They simply want to destroy all competing ideologies and religions. Those of us with more constructive goals may need to focus a bit more.

Being Fully Human: Feral Children and Developmental Critical Periods

Most people have heard stories of "wild children", children who grew without exposure to language, so that by the time they were finally exposed to a human language, their brains were no longer capable of learning to speak or understand. These true stories highlight the concept of a cortical "critical period", a time period in the child's life when he must either learn a skill, or the skill will be lost to him for the rest of his life. The concept of the feral child is also common in myth and fiction.

The stories of the feral children demonstrate the phenomenon of the critical period for language skills. Similar critical periods for mathematics, music, poetry, art, and spatial visualization skills are also likely, although the following discussion will explain why the concept is not as simple as it first appears.

Chris Chatham at Develintel Blog posts a fascinating examination of the cognitive modeling of "critical periods" using computational models.


A central theme of several articles in the May issue of Developmental Psychobiology is that future research must strive to explain the mechanisms that give rise to critical periods in development, rather than merely describing a relationship between plasticity and age. While some argue for the use of converging behavioral, neuropsychological, ERP, and fMRI techniques to achieve this goal, an article by Thomas & Johnson suggests that computational modeling is a particularly effective tool for any such attempt to causally link neural development with behavioral change.

The authors emphasize that computational simulations of critical or sensitive periods force theorists to become explicit about the precise nature of the representations in that problem domain or modality, and how those representations may change with age. Computational models also require that theorists indicate the exact kind of "input" required for a developing system to illustrate the critical period effect, as well as the frequencies with which those inputs are encountered.


....Sometimes, sensitive period effects can seem to result from increased competition for mental resources. For example, some children who appear to recover from brain damage will not manifest any particular deficit, but will show an overall decrement in cognitive performance

....The learning algorithms of neural network simulations also suggest other ways in which sensitive periods might emerge. For example, the Hebbian learning algorithm can be described as "fire together, wire together," and based on this description, it becomes clear that the more "active" brain would manifest more plasiticity. The authors go on to describe that both electrical activity and brain metabolism appear to peak in early to mid childhood, and that children's hemodynamic response tends to be more widespread than that in adults for the same tasks.

....In a simple model of imprinting, O'Reilly and Johnson illustrated how Hebbian learning can cause a self-organized termination of sensitivity to input. Their model was trained on Object A for 100 presentations, and then trained with 150 presentations of a very different looking object, Object D. Preference for an object was interpreted as the amount of activity on the output layer, and by the end of training, the network "preferred" Object D. However, if the network was trained on just 25 more presentations of A (bringing the total to 125), the network would never show a preference for Object D, despite over 900 presentations of that object. In this case, the connection weights within the network became entrenched as a result of a specific type and frequency of input, ultimately resulting in reduced sensitivity to further training. In other words, the "sensitive period" for this network closed between 100 and 125 presentations of Object A.

....Thomas & Johnson also describe how sensitive periods may seem to end as a result of endogenous factors, in which the potential for plasticity is reduced according to a strict developmental timeline. They used a three-layer model of past-tense acquisition, trained through backpropagation, with an input layer of 90 units, an output layer of 100 units, and a hidden layer of 100 units. Two pathways existed between input and ouput: a direct pathway between input and output, and an indirect pathway which connected the input to the output via the hidden layer.

The networks were damaged after 10, 50, 100, 250, 400, 450 or 490 training presentations by removing 75% of the connections between both pathways. After sustaining this damage, each network was trained for an additional 500 trials, and then tested on past-tense formation for both regular mappings (walk - walked) and three types of irregular mappings (run - ran, sleep - slept, go - went). Critically, the authors simulated reduced plasticity by including a small probability that any low connection weight would be destroyed after 100 presentations, which is roughly equivalent to the developmental time-course of synaptic overproduction and subsequent synaptic pruning throughout late childhood and adulthood. More at the source.

Computational modeling of neural development using neural nets and other models allows the sort of experiments that would be extremely difficult to monitor and interpret using animal models. Over time, these methods get more sophisticated and useful. Critical periods arise naturally from developmental phenomenon, including pruning of networks and evolutionary competition for neural resources in the developing brain.

By learning to utilise the critical periods in the upbringing of young humans, the inborn capacities of the young can be developed more fully. Although the "g" value on IQ tests might not be changed appreciably post-adolescence, the power of the "g" which is present could conceivably be multiplied considerably. This is one possible escape valve from the "genetics determines g -------> genetics is destiny" argument.

But only by approaching the issues honestly can the potential of newer generations of humans be augmented. The current denial of the genetic contribution to "g", and the current denial of the importance of "g", makes it very difficult to approach the subject clearly and soberly. Political Correctness has the effect of dooming the disadvantaged to more generations of disadvantage. Is that paradoxical? Is it by design? Ask the Nutzis who continue to push the PC agenda.