Rhythmic Nature of Brain Activity Slowly Unfolds

In monitoring electrical brain activity of motor-cortex neurons, researchers found that they typically exhibit a brief oscillatory response. These responses are not independent from neuron to neuron. Instead, the entire neural population oscillates as one in a beautiful and lawfully coordinated way.

The electrical signal that drives a given movement is therefore an amalgam—a summation—of the rhythms of all the motor neurons firing at a given moment.

"Under this new way of looking at things, the inscrutable becomes predictable," said Churchland. "Each neuron behaves like a player in a band. When the rhythms of all the players are summed over the whole band, a cascade of fluid and accurate motion results."

...electrical engineering associate professor Krishna Shenoy and postdoctoral researchers Mark Churchland, now a professor at Columbia University, and John Cunningham of Cambridge University, now a professor at Washington University in Saint Louis, have shown that the brain activity controlling arm movement does not encode external spatial information—such as direction, distance, and speed—but is instead rhythmic in nature. _R&D Mag

This finding, (Nature, June 3, 2012, doi:10.1038/nature11129), is apparently quite startling to a select group of cognitive psychologists who are not well grounded in biology. For Al Fin cognitive scientists, on the other hand, the rhythmic nature of brain activity -- motor, sensory, and higher order activity -- has always been axiomatic.

The specific rhythms associated with particular brain functions will need to be worked out. The Stanford study helps in this regard, with respect to motor cortex rhythms controlling body motion.

In a series of striking graphs, the Stanford team plotted the signals from individual neurons in the motor-cortex as monkeys completed a series of reaches. The reaching motions are shown by the starburst patterns at the top left of each graph. The neuronal patterns are then plotted atop one another for the entire series of reaches, clearly establishing the rhythmic nature of the brain activity. Credit: Mark Churchland, Stanford School of Engineering

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When they monitored the electrical activity of motor-cortex neurons, researchers found that they typically oscillate briefly, not independently as single neurons, but as an entire neural population in one beautifully coordinated way. "Each neuron behaves like a player in a band," said Churchland. "When the rhythms of all the players are summed over the whole band, a cascade of fluid and accurate motion results." The electrical signal for a movement is the sum of the rhythms of all the motor neurons firing at a given moment.

Rhythmic neural activity has been known for a while. It is present in the swimming motion of leeches and the gait of a walking monkey, for instance.

The engineers studied the brain activity of monkeys reaching to touch a target. The pattern of shoulder-muscle behavior could always be described by the sum of two underlying rhythms. "Say you're throwing a ball. Beneath it all is a pattern. Maybe your shoulder muscle contracts, relaxes slightly, contracts again, and then relaxes completely, all in short order," explained Churchland. "That activity may not be exactly rhythmic, but it can be created by adding together two or three other rhythms. Our data argue that this may be how the brain solves the problem of creating the pattern of movement." _Atlantic

The dominant, dysfunctional perspective of machine-oriented cognitivists, who attempt to think of the brain as a mechanical construct -- instead of the evolved organ within a larger organism that it is -- has slowed discovery in cognitive science unnecessarily.

Here is another look at this research:

In the new model, a few relatively simple rhythms explain neural features that had confounded science earlier.

"Many of the most-baffling aspects of motor-cortex neurons seem natural and straightforward in light of this model," said Cunnigham.

The team studied non-rhythmic reaching movements, which made the presence of rhythmic neural activity a surprise even though, the team notes, rhythmic neural activity has a long precedence in nature. Such rhythms are present in the swimming motion of leeches and the gait of a walking monkey, for instance.

"The brain has had an evolutionary goal to drive movements that help us survive. The primary motor cortex is key to these functions. The patterns of activity it displays presumably derive from evolutionarily older rhythmic motions such as swimming and walking. Rhythm is a basic building block of movement," explained Churchland. _PO

Perhaps now, more cognitivists will take this hard-earned insight, and apply it to associative and higher order brain activity. For too long, graduate students and their advisors have struggled under the "single neuron" and "segregated parameters and functions" delusion of brain activity, memory, and control -- perhaps as a confused, erroneous subconscious analogy to computer memory and computer processors.

It is somewhat paradoxical that this important clarification would be made, at least in part, by electrical engineers. It illustrates the importance of multi-disciplinary cooperation in complex fields of research. The real world, it seems, has not been informed that it should hold all its parts within the artificial confines of human academic fields.

Militaries Look at Neuroscience and Cognitive Enhancement

The militaries of the advanced world, in anticipation of the inevitable future war or conflict, are constantly looking for ways to give their forces an advantage on the field (or sea) of battle. The Royal Society has recently released a report on the use of neuroscience to enhance military performance, and to subdue opposing forces.

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)/Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)
These technologies transiently disrupt or enhance brain function through brain stimulation. TMS induces weak electrical currents in the brain using a rapidly changing magnetic field; it is administered by placing a coil of wire, with current passing through, close to the scalp. tDCS passes weak electrical currents through the skull by attaching electrodes directly to the scalp.

Because TMS and tDCS can suppress as well as stimulate neural activity they are powerful tools to complement neuroimaging as they can be used to investigate whether activity of neurons in a particular brain region is necessary or causal for a particular function. If transient simulation impairs a particular mental process one can infer that the area is necessary.

Additionally, the timing of mental processes can also be investigated with these techniques, by showing if stimulation at only one particular time during a process is effective at causing disruption. Enhancement of brain activity in terms of driving brain plasticity via tDCS approaches is in its infancy but growing rapidly within the neuroscience community _Royal Society PDF Download: Neuroscience Conflict Security Brain Waves

Modern militaries cannot ignore the pivotal role of the mind in military conflict. Further, militaries cannot assume that their adversaries in future conflicts will ignore the central role of neuroscience. In other words, military planners must consider both offensive and defensive uses of neuroscience for future wars.

In terms of cognitive enhancement for soldiers, seamen, and marines, militaries have been looking at a number of key issues. First, they want to start with cognitively competent, resilient, and flexible warriors. In addition, they want to be able to train these fighters to the optimum levels possible, for their specific range of tasks. Finally, they want to develop better ways to repair and rehabilitate service members who have been wounded and injured.

Some techniques used widely in neuroscience are on the brink of being adopted by the military to improve the training of soldiers, pilots and other personnel.

A growing body of research suggests that passing weak electrical signals through the skull, using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), can improve people's performance in some tasks.

One study cited by the report described how US neuroscientists employed tDCS to improve people's ability to spot roadside bombs, snipers and other hidden threats in a virtual reality training programme used by US troops bound for the Middle East.

"Those who had tDCS learned to spot the targets much quicker," said Vince Clark, a cognitive neuroscientist and lead author on the study at the University of New Mexico. "Their accuracy increased twice as fast as those who had minimal brain stimulation. I was shocked that the effect was so large."

Clark, whose wider research on tDCS could lead to radical therapies for those with dementia, psychiatric disorders and learning difficulties, admits to a tension in knowing that neuroscience will be used by the military.

"As a scientist I dislike that someone might be hurt by my work. I want to reduce suffering, to make the world a better place, but there are people in the world with different intentions, and I don't know how to deal with that.

"If I stop my work, the people who might be helped won't be helped. Almost any technology has a defence application."

Research with tDCS is in its infancy, but work so far suggests it might help people by boosting their attention and memory. According to the Royal Society report, when used with brain imaging systems, tDCS "may prove to be the much sought-after tool to enhance learning in a military context".

One of the report's most striking scenarios involves the use of devices called brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) to connect people's brains directly to military technology, including drones and other weapons systems.

The work builds on research that has enabled people to control cursors and artificial limbs through BMIs that read their brain signals.

"Since the human brain can process images, such as targets, much faster than the subject is consciously aware of, a neurally interfaced weapons system could provide significant advantages over other system control methods in terms of speed and accuracy," the report states. _Guardian

More:

Building a homemade tDCS system

Should brain enhancement choices be left to governments and elite overlords?

Turning every brain into Spock's brain

Waiting for superbrain?

Cognitive enhancers

The Royal Society report discusses ways of screening potential recruits which amount to advanced, high tech IQ tests, which are essentially bias-free and culture independent. You will not hear very much in the news about this aspect of cognitive and neuroscience research, but for an elite military, being able to select the best of the best -- for your purposes -- is paramount. Advanced cognitive and brain-machine training is the icing on the cake, for future oriented strategists and tacticians.

Growing Small Brains on Chips -- What Can We Learn?

Scientists can now grow interconnecting cultures of nerve cells on microfluidic chips in the lab, to study neuron growth and synaptic activity. MIT postdoc Peng Shi is hoping to use that technique to learn more about neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's.

a team of MIT researchers has developed a new way to grow synapses between cells in a laboratory dish, under very controlled conditions that enable rapid, large-scale screens for potential new drugs.

Using their new technology, the researchers have already identified several compounds that can strengthen synapses. Such drugs could help compensate for the cognitive decline seen in Alzheimer’s, says Mehmet Fatih Yanik, the Robert J. Shillman (1974) Career Development Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT and leader of the research team. Yanik and his colleagues described the technology in the Oct. 25 online edition of the journal Nature Communications.

Lead author of the study is MIT postdoc Peng Shi. _MedXpress_Physorg

Peng Shi began working with this technique for studying synapses when he was doing PhD work at Columbia. Here is an earlier study using similar microfluidic chips for studying axon guidance in development.

Proper function of the nervous system relies on the formation of precise connections between nerve cells that span complex substrates and long distances. Axon guidance is a key process in establishing this architecture, in which cells must appropriately integrate and respond to multiple signals presented in the extracellular environment 1. These cues come from a wide range of signaling systems, including “canonical” guidance molecules (e.g. Netrins, Slits, Semaphorins, and Ephrins), morphogens (e.g. Hedgehog, BMP, and Wnt families), growth factors (e.g. NGF, BDNF, HGF, and FGFs), and cell adhesion proteins (e.g. N-cadherin, NCAM, L1-CAM). Extensive cross-talk between these pathways has been demonstrated, introducing additional layer of complexity to the mechanisms controlling axonal navigation. Moreover, guidance molecules that are often associated with extracellular matrix components are received and interpreted by nerve cells in a highly localized manner within the growth cones found at the tips of growing axons. Axon guidance is thus an intricate process occurring on a subcellular scale, requiring highly refined experimental techniques to study and manipulate.

Contemporary microfabrication methods have much promise for enhancing the tools that are used to study how localized signaling drives cell function. For example, Campenot chambers, which consist of millimeter-scale barriers that isolate axons and cell bodies into separate compartments, have been widely used to investigate local signaling by restricting the activity of pharmacological agents to distinct parts of the neuron 2. This allows localized study of receptors on the cell surface and limits the effects of detrimental or toxic drugs to the rest of the cell. Microfabricated versions of the Campenot chamber have been more recently developed that provide higher reproducibility and better compatibility with a broad range of nerve cells... _LabChip 2010 April 21

Abstract of Peng Shi's PhD thesis on using microfluidic labs-on-chips to study neuronal development and regeneration

Good overview of the use of microfluidic chambers for the study of synapses (PDF)

Why do I refer to such work as "growing small brains on chips?" Because that is the possiblity that this research promises for the future. Different chips can be fabricated to serve as scaffolds for different types of brain structures and substructures. One chip could host a cerebellum, another chip a hippocampus, another chip a prefrontal cortex . . . and so on. It sounds like an overly ambitious goal, considering how things currently stand, but then there is nothing wrong with looking far ahead -- as long as it is possible and useful to discover how to get there from here.

Very tedious work, you say? Yes, but we have vastly improved tools of micro- and nano-fabrication, along with exponentially improving computational tools, and rapidly increasing knowledge of the genetics and molecular dynamics of neuronal activity and needs.

It is the nature of nerve cells to exhibit spontaneous activity, both in normal development, and in cell culture. As neuronal cultures become more sophisticated -- grown on crafted scaffolds and supplied with a specialised combination of humoral factors -- it will be possible to grow miniature models of brain components which exhibit spontaneous activity. As you then interconnect the different models together, you might expect the different miniature conglomerates to begin communicating, spontaneously. And so on.

This is not what Peng Shi and other researchers are doing. They are looking at synaptic strength, and trying to find ways to strengthen synapses in hopes of finding ways to treat neurodegenerative diseases. Such research is extremely important, and critical to the needs of modern, aging societies.

But growing miniature, working brains using future iterations of similar technologies as used by Peng Shi is something of a holy grail to the Dr. Frankensteins among us. You know who you are.

The aims of such in vitro whole brain modeling are largely theoretical at this point, but who knows? We may eventually find the cure to the Idiocracy and the Age of Zombies.

More: Brian Wang presents links to an MIT article about this research and a link to the study.

Supplementary information (PDF)

Giulio Tononi's Theory of Consciousness

The New York Times recently did a piece on University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Giulio Tononi, which like most mainstream treatments of science failed to penetrate at all closely to the core. Instead, one would need to read this 2004 paper by Tononi to understand a bit of what Tononi wants to achieve.

Tononi has collaborated with Nobel Prize winning scientist Gerald Edelman on a number of books and studies. So you might think that Edelman's theory of consciousness would have influenced the younger Tononi's development of his own theory of consciousness.

There are bound to be similarities between Tononi and his mentor Edelman, but Tononi seems to be cutting his own path through the wilderness of consciousness. Unlike Edelman or Antonio Damasio -- another famous cognitive scientist -- Tononi does not appear to be as aware of his own body and the crucial role the body plays in generating consciousness.

Tononi's theory of consciousness penetrates more deeply into neurobiological realities than the philosophical work of David Chalmers and than the computational neurophilosophical work of Paul or Patricia Churchill. Yet it seems as if Tononi remains largely "stuck in his head" when attempting to tease the roots of consciousness.

Consciousness is extremely complex, but it is often made far more complicated than it needs to be. One of the favourite bugaboos of "philosophers of mind" is "qualia," or experiential quanta. Philosophers such as Chalmers enjoy riding mental merry-go-rounds such as qualia, because it provides them with arcane areas of expertise and plenty of material to publish -- regardless of any lack of practical significance in the real world. Academia is academia, and "publish or perish" says nothing about grounded relevance to the actual world. (For an interesting "party crashing" of some of the sensory phenomena related to qualia, see this [via commenter Loren])

And yet consciousness cannot mean anything unless it is indeed grounded to the real world. And consciousness cannot ground to the world by means of words. Even the best verbal metaphors of mentation cannot connect consciousness to physical existence. This failure of words is often the takeoff point for computational neurophilosophers and neuroscientists and theoreticians of sophisticated computational neural networks including Bayesian approaches.

But to be brutally honest, most scholars of consciousness do not even give lip service to the bare necessities of the physical underpinnings of conscious awareness and higher level consciousness. What about Tononi? I'm not sure yet. He showed a lot of promise in his earlier collaborations with Edelman. His "Integrated Information" theory of consciousness suggests some interesting possibilities, but so far I have not seen the necessary connecting, or grounding, of the mental processes with the bodily processes -- which are absolutely crucial.

Understanding the Brain / Mind: Key Concept Videos

Understanding how the human mind works is one of the key steps to self-liberation. Exciting discoveries in cognitive science, neuroscience, and machine "cognition" are paving the way to a powerful comprehension of who we are and what we can do. The following links go to different cognitive science and neural science conferences on video. Think of them as hidden gold mines of mental treasure.

Almaden Institue 2006 Cognitive Computing

2007 Brain Network Dynamics Conference at UCB

Almaden 2007 Cognitive Computing at UCB

2008 Holiday Lectures Making Your Mind: Molecules, Motion, and Memory

NIH Neuroscience Videos and Podcasts

A very good set of links to Online Neuroscience Lectures (Kilgard UT Dallas)

A good set of links to mind / brain lectures from 2006

Free Online Cognitive Psychology Courses from Top Universities

A lecture is only a tiny bite of knowledge, needing to be fleshed out by careful study, using several sources. Contradictory sources are best because they force one to think in order to resolve the contradictions, if possible.

We are fortunate that politics has largely ignored the subjects of cognitive science and neuroscience. Freedom from political correctness and political restraints in funding allows a science to progress more or less naturally over time.

In other areas of study, such as gender and ethnic differences in cognitive abilities, or climate science, the political constraints prevent the necessary open free for all, the give-and-take that good science requires.

Getting past political correctness is one significant goal of the next level project. To do that, we must understand the human mind in isolation and in groups.

Learning To Remember, Remembering to Learn

There is something of a conflict between learning something new, and remembering something old. Different parts of the brain are involved, and they tend to inhibit each other's activity (seen on fMRI) when the brain tries to engage both functions (learning and remembering) simultaneously. Researchers in the Netherlands and the US recently published an fMRI based study in PLOS Biology demonstrating this conflict, and the part of the frontal lobe that appears to mediate the conflict and maximise functionality of both learning and remembering.

Despite the encoding/retrieval competition, on several trials, all participants were actually able to both remember and learn. Follow-up fMRI analyses showed that these trials were accompanied by selective activity in the left mid-VLPFC (Figure 3C). A subsequent correlation analysis indicated a negative relationship showing that more activity in left mid-VLPFC was coupled with less encoding suppression. Together, these findings suggest a role for the left mid-VLPFC in resolving the competition between learning and remembering. Given that encoding and retrieval were forced to occur within a brief period of time, we propose that the role of left mid-VLPFC involves the facilitation of rapid switching between the encoding and retrieval processes.

A role of left mid-VLPFC in rapid memory switching fits well with evidence implicating this region in flexible behavior and cognitive control. Outside the domain of memory, several studies have linked left mid-VLPFC activity to situations requiring flexible switching between different task sets or rules. For example, a recent fMRI study showed that activity in left mid-VLPFC is linked to task-switching [20]. _PLOSBiology _ via _SD

It is often necessary to remember and learn virtually simultaneously.

Virtually all social interactions require the rapid exchange of new and old information. For instance, normal conversation requires that while listening to the new information another person is providing, we are already retrieving information in preparation of an appropriate reply.

....Future research should reveal the extent and practical implications of impairments in switching between learning and remembering in patients and older adults, and whether we can improve our switchboard through training. _SD

You would expect any lesion to the left ventral lateral pre-frontal cortex (VLPFC) to interfere with a person's ability to rapidly switch between learning and remembering modes. Since any type of active learning involves both new encoding of information and recall of previously encoded information, the left VLPFC appears to be critical to the knowledge acquisition -- as well as retrieval -- process. (the right VLPFC is involved in vigilance and implicated in anxiety disorders)

Cognitive control mechanisms permit memory to be accessed strategically, and so aid in bringing knowledge to mind that is relevant to current goals and actions. In this review, we consider the contribution of left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) to the cognitive control of memory. Reviewed evidence supports a two-process model of mnemonic control, supported by a double dissociation among rostral regions of left VLPFC. Specifically, anterior VLPFC (approximately BA 47; inferior frontal gyrus pars orbitalis) supports controlled access to stored conceptual representations, whereas mid-VLPFC (approximately BA 45; inferior frontal gyrus pars triangularis) supports a domain-general selection process that operates post-retrieval to resolve competition among active representations. We discuss the contribution of these control mechanisms across a range of mnemonic domains, including semantic retrieval, recollection of contextual details about past events, resolution of proactive interference in working memory, and task switching. _Neuropsychologia (review) 1,Oct2007

The authors of the recent PLOS article quoted at top admit that fMRI lacks the spatial resolution needed to achieve fine definition of brain activity involved in information encoding and retrieval. The rough outline achieved by the study will likely be useful in further experiments, nonetheless.

We need to know how to optimise learning materials for individual students, but we also need to know how to optimise information encoding for individuals, given the learning materials at hand. Maximising the use of a person's intelligence may involve special exercises for the VLPFC, even deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the VLPFC or associated regions of the brain.

Given the wide variety of brain exercise systems on the market currently, it will probably take time and experimentation to determine which systems most optimally train the parts of the frontal lobe that are most operative in learning.

The educational establishment is bogged down in labour union politics and other forms of inertial resistance to adaptating to the neuroscience of learning. A certain amount of conservatism is fine, if the current theories of pedagogy were based upon sound principles. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. This means that enlightened educators will need to work to improve teaching and learning methods in spite of and in opposition to the full weight of the government-supported and financed education establishment.

Watching While You Think and Learn

"With this method we can understand, in greater detail, how the human brain regulates complex thought processes and, for example, how it transforms the numerous sensory impressions into long-term memories" _MNT

The circuits of your brain trace complex paths across space and time. Understanding how brains think means understanding the spatial and temporal actions of the neuronal correlates of thought. Nature Methods has a recent (4Jan09) online report describing the use of a trio of genetically engineered viruses used to trace the activity of complex brain circuits.

In a recent paper in Nature Methods, the team describes the production and application of three types of transsynaptic viruses. The first class was engineered with differentially colored “bulbs” such that neural circuits can be lit up with all the colors of the rainbow. The second type of virus brings a small genetic clock into each infected cell in the circuit so that the elapsed time after virus entry can be recorded. The third class has the most intelligent nanotools. These viruses turn on a special fluorescent bulb in each neuron but only when the neuron is active. Using these tools, researchers can now “watch” the activity of many neurons simultaneously in identified, connected neurons of different brain circuits. _FMI

This work extends previous work using engineered viruses to act as trans-synaptic "ferries" of genes encoding for fluorescent proteins, to infect specific neurons along the path of a particular brain circuit. Such infected neurons along the circuit will subsequently "light up" like a light bulb when activated.

The protein complex was actually produced in the nerve cells of the "infected" mice and functions there as an calcium indicator: if the calcium level within a cell increases - which is the case with every action potential - the D3cpv changes form when it binds to calcium. As a result, the two fluorescent proteins, CFP and YFP, move closer to each other and the transmission of energy between the CFP and YFP changes.

"To observe this change, we use a two-photon microscope developed by Winfried Denk", explains Hasan. Each individual action potential that arises due to a stimulus makes itself directly perceivable in the brain through yellow illumination and the simultaneous reduction in the emission of blue light. The two-photon microscope pinpoints the coincidence between the two fluorescent signals very accurately and clearly reveals which nerve cells are communicating and exchanging information with each other and when. _MedNewsToday

Such methods of observing functioning brain circuits over a period of time should help in piecing together how the brain "thinks." Other tools such as special types of fMRI, MEG, nuclear medicine techniques such as PET and SPECT, etc. will further complete the overall picture, when correlated with psycho-neurological observations.

A reliable "lie-detector" would be a simple test of concept. As expertise with these methods of real-time brain tracing improves, a more subtle and sophisticated reading of minds will become possible.

Bootcamp for Professionals: Quick Hard Knowledge for Ambitious Outsiders

Successful professionals can not afford to ever stop learning. When a professional attends a conference within his field, it is called continuing education. But what about those who need to significantly expand their knowledge into a new field, but cannot take the time to go back to school? For them, there are "boot camps." Intensive, week-long or longer courses designed for the outsider, by insiders. Here is a good example, H/T Brain Waves:

Neuroscience is increasingly relevant to a number of professions and academic disciplines beyond its traditional medical applications. Lawyers, educators, economists and businesspeople, as well as scholars of sociology, philosophy, applied ethics and policy, are incorporating the concepts and methods of neuroscience into their work. Indeed, for any field in which it is important to understand, predict or influence human behavior, neuroscience will play an increasing role. The Penn Neuroscience Boot Camp is designed to give participants a basic foundation in cognitive and affective neuroscience and to equip them to be informed consumers of neuroscience research.

...Through a combination of lectures, break-out groups, panel discussions and laboratory visits, participants will gain an understanding of the methods of neuroscience and key findings on the cognitive and social-emotional functions of the brain, lifespan development and disorders of brain function.

Each lecture will be followed by extensive Q&A. Break-out groups will allow participants to delve more deeply into topics of relevance to their fields. Laboratory visits will include trip to an MRI scanner, an EEG/ERP lab, an animal neurophysiology lab, and a transcranial magnetic stimulation lab. Participants will also have access to an extensive online library of copyrighted materials selected for relevance to the Boot Camp, including classic and review articles and textbook chapters in cognitive and affective neuroscience and the applications of neuroscience to diverse fields.

The Boot Camp faculty consists of leaders in the fields of cognitive and affective neuroscience who are committed to the goal of educating non-neuroscientists. Several of our faculty have won awards for their teaching.

...The only prerequisites are a grasp of basic statistics and at least a dim recollection of high school biology and physics. (A short set of readings will be made available prior to the Boot Camp to remind you about the essentials.) _UPennNeuroscienceCamp

Roughly ten days of neuroscience for $3000. If you can get your employer to pay for it, fine, otherwise weigh the costs and benefits. Considering the generally abysmal coverage of scientific topics by "science journalists", it might be worthwhile for media outlets that cover science to sponsor one of their "science journalists" for this camp.

The concept is widely applicable across science, engineering, medicine, and other complex and somewhat insular fields which should be made more easily accessible to larger parts of the general public.

The internet contains huge numbers of free journal articles, textbooks, audio/video lectures, and other types of media access to otherwise esoteric fields of science, technology, and learning. But for some people, only the intensive face-to-face experience will serve.

Brain Stimulation Preserves Brain Cells, Zen Training Restores Distracted Attention

In Parkinson's disease, certain dopamine secreting cells in the substantia nigra die off, leading to the loss of fine control of motion. But deep brain stimulation with implanted electrodes in the brains of rats preserves dopamine cells by causing increased levels of BDNF (brain derived neurotrophic factor), suggesting a similar therapy in humans may halt progression of Parkinson's. Remember that BDNF can also stimulate the differentiation of neural stem cells into mature neurons.

During the DBS study, researchers implanted high-frequency stimulating electrodes in the subthalamic nucleus, an area of the brain associated with movement, in rats and then induced dopamine neuron loss. When the rats had experienced a 50 percent loss of dopamine neurons, the researchers initiated brain stimulation in half of the group. Measurements of surviving, functioning dopamine neurons in rats implanted with active stimulators were then compared to a control group implanted with inactive stimulators. While the control group’s loss of dopamine neurons increased to 75 percent after two weeks, the rats implanted with active stimulators experienced no further loss of cells during that time.

Subsequent tissue analysis revealed that in rats implanted with active stimulators the trophic factor BDNF had tripled in the striatum, a part of the brain that houses dopamine terminals and “receives” the dopamine neurotransmitters that are produced in the substantia nigra. _SD

In other research, it was found that persons with Zen training are able to refocus their attention more quickly after being distracted, than persons without such training.

The study compared 12 people from the Atlanta area with more than three years of daily practice in Zen meditation with 12 others who had never practiced meditation...While having their brains scanned, the subjects were asked to focus on their breathing. Every once in a while, they had to distinguish a real word from a nonsense word presented at random intervals on a computer screen and, having done that, promptly "let go" of the just processed stimulus by refocusing on their breath....

After interruption, experienced meditators were able to bring activity in most regions of the default network back to baseline faster than non-meditators. This effect was especially prominent in the angular gyrus, a region important for processing language. _SD

Scientists have also created an animal model of chronic stress by boosting levels of corticotropin releasing factor (CRF) in a specific part of an animal's brain. Drugs to modify the effect of CRF in humans have been in the pipeline for some time. Perhaps eventually a non-addictive treatement for chronic anxiety and over-stress will be developed. Meditation, exercise, and avoiding bad habits can also do wonders.

Remember the wonder drug Dimebon, being studied as a treatment for Alzheimer's? Pfizer has acquired the rights for the drug from Medivation. Scientists are also beginning to zero in on the specific protein-protein interactions that lead to damaging neurodegeneration in Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's, etc.

Here's a report of more research into stimulating replacement neurons in the brain for treating neurodegenerative disorders.

Remember: All of this research is made possible by the excess wealth generated by market economics. The more of that excess wealth (profit) that government sucks up through taxation, or prevents by excess regulation or counter-productive tort laws, the less research that can be done. Government and foundation funding through NIH etc. is only possible when there is excess wealth available to begin with. Have you ever wondered why most of the research is being done in non-socialist countries?

Ampakine Update: S18986 and Brain Aging

Scientific work continues on the use of Ampakine drugs to treat Alzheimer's and other neurological disorders.

The drug, temporarily designated S18986, interacts with AMPA (short for α- Amino-3-hydroxy-5- methylisoxazole-4- propionic acid, or ampakine) receptors in the brain. These receptors transmit excitatory signals in the brain, and researchers were interested in experimental AMPA-receptor drugs (such as S18986) for their neuroprotective abilities and for the way they temporarily boost memory. But rather than investigating the compound’s short-term effects, Alfred E. Mirsky Professor Bruce McEwen and his lab members...studied the drug’s impacts on middle-aged to elderly rats and found that, when administered daily over four consecutive months, it appeared to improve memory and slow brain aging.

...When compared to control animals that had received only sugar water, the drugged rats were not only more active and better at memory tests, but their brains showed physical signs of slowed aging. Neurons in the forebrain that produce acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter known to play a role in learning and memory, had 37 percent less decline. Dopamine-producing neurons, which are responsible for sustaining activity and motivation levels, slowed their decline by 43 percent. Levels of inflammation in the brain were also significantly lower. “Every marker we chose to look at seemed to indicate there was some preservation of function during aging with chronic treatment,” Hunter says. The drug appears to slow aging’s effects throughout the entire brain.___ScienceDaily__via__FutureScanner

This particular Ampakine appears to have a protective effect on the brains of rats over a significant part of the rat's lifespan.

Ampakines are being researched as potential treatments for Alzheimer's, Depression, and other neuropathological and neuropsychiatric conditions. This research suggests an even broader potential application of Ampakines--as a neuroprotective for those at risk for neuropathology. Broadly speaking, that would be most of us, over our lifespans.

Top Down Brain, Bottom Up Brain

Cognitive Science has embarked upon the epic quest to understand--and recreate--a functioning "human-equivalent" brain. With such a daunting task of unprecedented magnitude, different teams of scientists are approaching the problem from different directions. A UC Berkeley team used an fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) scanner to learn how the visual cortex (occipital lobe) of the brain decodes visual images.

Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists, led by Dr Jack Gallant from the University of California at Berkeley, said: "Our results suggest that it may soon be possible to reconstruct a picture of a person's visual experience from measurements of brain activity alone. Imagine a general brain-reading device that could reconstruct a picture of a person's visual experience at any moment in time."

...The technique relies on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a standard technique that creates images of brain activity based on changes in blood flow to different brain regions. The first step is to train the software decoder by scanning a subject's visual cortex while they view thousands of images over five hours. This teaches the decoder how that person's brain codes visual information. The next stage is to take a new set of images and use the decoder to predict the brain activity it would expect if the subject was viewing each of them. Finally, the subject views images from this second set while in the scanner. "We simply look through the list of predicted activities to see which one is most similar to the observed activity, and that's our guess," said Gallant.

...The team estimate that if they used 1bn images (roughly the number on Google) it would have a success rate of 20%. With that many images, Gallant said, the software is close to doing true image reconstruction - working out what you are seeing from scratch. "There is no reason we shouldn't be able to solve this problem ... That's what we are working on now."___Guardian

A better understanding of brain coding for various tasks done by different parts of the brain, should facilitate better neurochips to serve as temporary "neural-scaffolding" after stroke or brain injury. The neurochip would allow continued brain processing for the damaged parts of the brain, while ongoing stimulation encourages natural brain connections to re-form.The opposite, bottom-up approach to understanding the brain is being done by IBM researchers in Switzerland. The researchers are attempting to "recreate", or simulate a rat brain cortex with advanced silicon parallel processors.

In the basement of a university in Lausanne, Switzerland sit four black boxes, each about the size of a refrigerator, and filled with 2,000 IBM microchips stacked in repeating rows. Together they form the processing core of a machine that can handle 22.8 trillion operations per second. It contains no moving parts and is eerily silent.

...Each of its microchips has been programmed to act just like a real neuron in a real brain. The behavior of the computer replicates, with shocking precision, the cellular events unfolding inside a mind. "This is the first model of the brain that has been built from the bottom-up," says Henry Markram, a neuroscientist at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the director of the Blue Brain project. "There are lots of models out there, but this is the only one that is totally biologically accurate. We began with the most basic facts about the brain and just worked from there."

Every brain is made of the same basic parts. A sensory cell in a sea slug works just like a cortical neuron in a human brain. It relies on the same neurotransmitters and ion channels and enzymes. Evolution only innovates when it needs to, and the neuron is a perfect piece of design...In theory, this meant that once the Blue Brain team created an accurate model of a single neuron, they could multiply it to get a three-dimensional slice of brain.

...After assembling a three-dimensional model of 10,000 virtual neurons, the scientists began feeding the simulation electrical impulses, which were designed to replicate the currents constantly rippling through a real rat brain. Because the model focused on one particular kind of neural circuit—a neocortical column in the somatosensory cortex of a two-week-old rat—the scientists could feed the supercomputer the same sort of electrical stimulation that a newborn rat would actually experience.

It didn't take long before the model reacted. After only a few electrical jolts, the artificial neural circuit began to act just like a real neural circuit. Clusters of connected neurons began to fire in close synchrony: the cells were wiring themselves together. Different cell types obeyed their genetic instructions. The scientists could see the cellular looms flash and then fade as the cells wove themselves into meaningful patterns. Dendrites reached out to each other, like branches looking for light. "This all happened on its own," Markram says. "It was entirely spontaneous." ___Seed__via__NextBigFuture

Read the full article at the link above.

Of course, that is just a bare beginning in the approach to simulating a real rat brain. A human brain will be much harder. Still, there is much to be said for the bottom-up approach.

The goal is for researchers taking opposite approaches in understanding the brain to meet somewhere in the middle--like the US intercontinental railroad builders. The reality will probably be more interesting. We will likely see the two approaches feeding off each other--each result from one suggesting new experiments for the other.

Both approaches rely largely upon the ability of processor chips to analyse information, and put it in a form that allows the human brains of the researchers to generate logical hypotheses for testing and falsifying. The final goal of understanding human cognition well enough to recreate it in a machine, is still some distance off. Expect significant spinoffs to occur from such research long before the final goal is reached.

Neuron Signaling Networks:

Each neuron is a complex biomachine in its own right. Combined with its glial cell complement, a neuron forms a potent building block of more complex neural systems. Researchers at the UCSD School of Medicine and Moores UCSD Cancer Center are developing new technology for studying the signaling networks of neurons--how they grow neuritic extensions that form dendrites and axons.

This technological breakthrough opens the door to understanding how neurites form and differentiate to regenerate neuronal connections and give rise to a functioning network. It also led to the discovery of how two key signaling molecules are regulated by a complex protein network that controls neurite outgrowth. Their study will be published the week of January 28 to February 1 in the on-line, early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

The formation of neurites, a process called neuritogenesis, is the first step in the differentiation of neurons, the basic information cells of the central nervous system.... Neurons regenerate by sending out one or several long, thin neurites that will ultimately differentiate into axons, which primarily receive signals, or dendrites, primarily involved in sending out signals. These long, branch-like protrusions have a specialized sensory structure called a growth cone that probes the extracellular environment to find its way and determine which direction the neurite should move in order to hook up with other neurites that will also differentiate into axons and dendrites.

The neural signaling network of dendrites and axons forms a huge information grid, which the UCSD team is studying in order to discover how neurons connect properly and regenerate to maintain proper wiring of the brain. Understanding the role that neuritogenesis plays in the regeneration of nerve connections damaged by diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or other neurogenerative diseases is an important component of mapping the signaling network.____Physorg

Neurons in different parts of the brain are specialised for different function--different parts of the genome are turned on and off according to a complex regulatory program. This genomic regulation controls the sophisticated cell-signaling pathway that controls what the cell machinery does--how the neuron connects to other neurons and glial cells in the larger system.

Our nervous systems are made of ultra-sophisticated building blocks. Each neuron is a processor in itself.

It is safe to say that neuroscientists do not understand how consciousness arises from the network of a hundred billion neurons in the human cortex. It is safe to say that artificial intelligence researchers likewise do not have a clue as to how consciousness can arise from neural networks.

The goals of ambitious machine intelligence researchers are laudable. The hopes of singularity enthusiasts and "friendly AI" advocates, are likewise admirable. Needless to say, the foundations of those hopes are less than solid. At this point, and for the foreseeable future, consciousness is the purview of biological nervous systems.

For over half a century, AI researchers have largely ignored the biological, embodied nature of the only consciousness the known universe has ever seen--biological consciousness. By ignoring the embodied nature of consciousness, AI has gone on several quite unproductive wild goose chases. Of course, like Edison with the electric light bulb, AI is learning thousands of ways that AI will not work.

That is not good enough. Researchers such as Jeff Hawkins may have finally started down a road of research that will lead to artificial modular systems that can display some limited aspects of "consciousness." It will be a multi-disciplinary task that will have to learn from neuroscience.

A Frayed and Ravelled Consciousness

The human mind is only marginally better than the mind of a chimpanzee, but from that small margin emerges the ability to create a high-technology civilisation--perhaps eventually a star-faring civilisation. Let's look at the basic cognitive cycle:

1. Incoming sensory stimuli is filtered through preconscious perception where meaning is added and a percept produced.
2. The current percept moves to preconscious working memory where it participates, along with undecayed percepts from previous cycles, in the structure building of higher-level perception.
3. The current structure from working memory cues transient episodic memory and declarative memory producing local associations, which are stored in long-term working memory.
4. Coalitions of the contents of long-term working memory compete for consciousness thus training attention on the most relevant, urgent, important, etc.
5. The conscious broadcast a la global workspace theory occurs, enabling the various forms of learning and the recruitment of internal resources. The broadcast is hypothesized to be the time of phenomenal consciousness.
6. Receiving the contents of the conscious broadcast, appropriate schemes from procedural memory respond.
7. Responding schemes instantiate copies of themselves in the action selection mechanism, bind variables, and pass activation.
8. The action selection mechanism chooses an action for this cognitive cycle.
9. [the agent acts on its] environment.

Human cognitive cycles, as modeled by LIDA are hypothesized to sample the environment and act on it asynchronously every 100 to 300 ms.

sci-con.org

The agent described above is "LIDA", or "Learning IDA", a software agent doing personnel work for the US Navy.

If the human "conscious bandwidth" is approximately 10 to 40 bits per second, at 3 to 10 cycles per second, each asynchronous cycle must incorporate a cluster of "conscious" bits.

There are a number of ways for human consciousness to fray. Ignoring obvious causes of disruption of consciousness--such as trauma, stroke, degenerative disease, metabolic disturbance, sleep or sleep deprivation, extreme mental stress or excitement--we can look at some intriguing examples of conscious raveling.

First of all, emotions act as an unconscious rapid assessment mechanism which register a judgment (and provoke an action) before the conscious mind can render a judgment. By hijacking the emotions, consciousness can be bypassed and disrupted. That is one mechanism for hypnotic engagement and suggestion.

A fairly recent "agent of disruption" of consciousness is TMS--transcranial magnetic stimulation. Focused magnetic stimulation of the cerebral cortex temporarily disrupts activity in the stimulated region. Depending upon the region of cortex stimulated, the effects on consciousness can be striking.

Consolidated long term memory is important to the cycle of consciousness above. One intriguing insight into the impermanence of even consolidated memory came from the lab of Joseph LeDoux. Karim Nader discovered that activated memories in mice could be "erased" by the antibiotic Anisomycin--a protein synthesis inhibitor. More recent research suggests this effect may be more complicated, but the possibility that consolidated memories can be erased remains quite intriguing.

While rumours of remote "mind-control technology" are rampant, the true "gold standard" of mind control will be direct neural interface technology. Much progress has been made in neural chip technology. The improved ability of neural chips to code and decode neural "language" promises to advance neural rehabilitation and regeneration significantly. More ominously, direct neural interface holds the threat of at least partial external control of a person's mind.

Otherwise intelligent and accomplished persons can also be undone by lust, drugs, momentary rage, jealousy, a gambling impulse, or simply unwise conformity to the wishes of others. There are many ways for minds to unravel. Science is learning more ways every day.

While attempting to build toward the next level, it is important to understand some of the problems humans face in trying to create a rational, moral, and equitable society. We must learn ways to better build and strengthen our minds, to understand and reinforce our core identities. While learning to reach further into the unknown, we must also learn to "return to ourselves" periodically.

H/T Chris Chatham

Yes, But Will It Transmit My Thoughts at Cell Phone Frequency?

Clever scientists at UC Berkeley have assembled the smallest radio ever--

— a single carbon nanotube one ten-thousandth the diameter of a human hair that requires only a battery and earphones to tune in to your favorite station....The nanoradio, which is currently configured as a receiver but could also work as a transmitter, is 100 billion times smaller than the first commercial radios, and could be used in any number of applications — from cell phones to microscopic devices that sense the environment and relay information via radio signals, Zettl says.

...In the nanoradio, a single carbon nanotube works as an all-in-one antenna, tuner, amplifier, and demodulator for both AM and FM. These are separate components in a standard radio. A demodulator removes the AM or FM carrier frequency, which is in the kiloHertz and megaHertz range respectively, to retrieve the lower frequency broadcast information.

The nanoradio detects radio signals in a radically new way — it vibrates thousands to millions of times per second in tune with the radio wave. This makes it a true nanoelectromechanical device, dubbed NEMS, that integrates the mechanical and electrical properties of nanoscale materials....Although it might seem that the vibrating nanotube yields a "one station" radio, the tension on the nanotube also influences its natural vibration frequency, just as the tension on a guitar string fine tunes its pitch. As a result, the physicists can tune in a desired frequency or station by "pulling" on the free tip of the nanotube with a positively charged electrode. This electrode also turns the nanotube into an amplifier. The voltage is high enough to pull electrons off the tip of the nanotube and, because the nanotube is simultaneously vibrating, the electron current from the tip is an amplified version of the incoming radio signal.

Impact Lab

Now, combining a receiver/transmitter nano-tube radio with a new Japanese device that allows you to speak from your ear--not your mouth!--it is obvious that an "invisible" two way radio could be implanted inside a person's ear.

A Japanese company Tuesday unveiled a new device that will allow people "speak" through their ear so they can use their mobile telephones in noisy places.

The device -- named "e-Mimi-kun" (good ear boy) -- doubles as an earphone and a microphone by detecting air vibrations inside the ear, developer NS-ELEX Co. said.

The earpiece and an accompanying device can be connected to a mobile phone, or wirelessly to a Bluetooth handset

A team of operatives with such devices could operate in perfect synchrony, but without revealing any obvious means of communication. Just be careful what your ear is telling the rest of the world.

Of course, the "input" to the transmitter could be placed anywhere--including inside nerves controlling speech...or other nerve pathways. Nano-probes inside nerves that are made of non-bioreactive materials, could be designed to contain their own nano-electronic devices. These devices could translate the code of efferent nerves into code that can be transmitted to remote receiving devices. These remote receiving devices could theoretically re-code the "message" into afferent nerve code. Given the rapid progress in transistor design using silicon nanowires (and nanowires/nanotubes of other materials), the probe itself could be a transceiver and codec device.

This technology could easily go beyond mere "quasi-telepathy" to a type of remote sensing or remote acting by one human to/from another. But far more likely is the use of such technology for remote sensing/controlling of a remote robot or grobyC. Stay tuned.

Belief, Disbelief, and Uncertainty: How the Brain Makes Us What

We are what our brains make us. What we believe, what we disbelieve. The UCLA Brain Mapping Center is using fMRI to map the different parts of the brain that perform different functions of making us what we are.

“These results suggest that the differences among belief, disbelief, and uncertainty may 1 day be distinguished reliably, in real time, by techniques of neuroimaging,” the researchers, with first author Sam Harris, a graduate student from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Brain Mapping Center, conclude. “This would have obvious implications for the detection of deception, for the control of the placebo effect during the process of drug design, and for the study of any higher-cognitive phenomenon in which the differences among belief, disbelief, and uncertainty might be a relevant variable.”

The study appeared online December 10 in advance of publication in the January 2008 issue of the Annals of Neurology....The difference between believing and disbelieving a proposition is 1 of the most potent regulators of human behavior and emotion, the authors write. “When one accepts a statement as true, it becomes the basis for further thought and action; rejected as false, it remains a string of words.”

...When they contrasted the trials of belief vs disbelief, they found increased signals in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), which is involved in linking factual knowledge with emotion. “The involvement of the VMPFC in belief processing suggests an anatomical link between the purely cognitive aspects of belief and human emotion and reward,” they write....Contrasting disbelief with belief showed increased signals in the anterior insula, a brain region involved in the sensation of taste, perception of pain, and the feeling of disgust, the authors write. “Our results appear to make sense of the emotional tone of disbelief, placing it on a continuum with other modes of stimulus appraisal and rejection,” the authors write.

Finally, uncertainty evoked a positive signal in the anterior cingulate cortex and a decreased signal in the caudate, a region of the basal ganglia that plays a role in motor action, they note. Because both belief and disbelief were associated with an increased signal in the caudate compared with uncertainty, the authors suggest that the basal ganglia may play a role in mediating the cognitive and behavioral differences between decision and indecision.

Medscape

The regions of the brain mediating belief also mediate emotion. Can anyone who has witnessed an online flame war doubt the connection? What about a family fight over Christmas dinner over whether a certain politician is Hitler reincarnated? Or a religious argument over which is the true faith? Emotion, belief, emotion--plus the caudate, preparation for motor action and memory encoding if necessary.

A person's entire life hinges on what he believes, whom she trusts, what groups they will join, what alliances they will make, what political party, what religion, what peer group . . . A lot depends upon a moment's hunch. Maybe, eventually, we can change our minds. But by then, what damage has been done?

Logic is an evolutionary latecomer to the human brain. For most people, logic is more difficult than cursory, emotional evaluation of an argument or situation. This is true for scientists, physicians, judges, and politicians--like anyone else. Trusting someone else's "judgment" is always a gamble. Of course, one who has never learned to use logic himself, has no other choice but to gamble on rapid, emotional evaluation.

Rat Cortical Column Simulation Update: From Here to an Artificial Brain?

One of the holy grails of neuroscience is the creation of an accurate simulation of mammalian brain cortex. Swiss researchers have been working on the "Blue Brain" project since 2005, and are collaborating with IBM researchers to simulate the neocortex.

By mimicking the behavior of the brain down to the individual neuron, the researchers aim to create a modeling tool that can be used by neuroscientists to run experiments, test hypotheses, and analyze the effects of drugs more efficiently than they could using real brain tissue.

The model of part of the brain was completed last year, says Markram. But now, after extensive testing comparing its behavior with results from biological experiments, he is satisfied that the simulation is accurate enough that the researchers can proceed with the rest of the brain.

"It's amazing work," says Thomas Serre, a computational-neuroscience researcher at MIT. "This is likely to have a tremendous impact on neuroscience."

TechReview

The neocortical column is considered the functional building block of the mammalian cortex--a logical unit of brain organisation to begin a useful brain simulation project.

The project began with the initial goal of modeling the 10,000 neurons and 30 million synaptic connections that make up a rat's neocortical column, the main building block of a mammal's cortex. The neocortical column was chosen as a starting point because it is widely recognized as being particularly complex, with a heterogeneous structure consisting of many different types of synapse and ion channels. "There's no point in dreaming about modeling the brain if you can't model a small part of it," says Markram.

The model itself is based on 15 years' worth of experimental data on neuronal morphology, gene expression, ion channels, synaptic connectivity, and electrophysiological recordings of the neocortical columns of rats. Software tools were then developed to process this information and automatically reconstruct physiologically accurate 3-D models of neurons and their interconnections.

The researchers now think they have their neocortical column model well enough perfected to begin working on an entire mammalian "brain." They think they can model a mammalian brain realistically within 3 years, but respected neuro-researcher Christof Koch says "not so fast!"

However, none of these results have so far been published in the peer-reviewed literature, says Christof Koch, a professor of biology and engineering at Caltech. And this is by no means the first computer model of the brain, he points out. "This is an evolutionary process rather than a revolutionary one," he says. As long ago as 1989, Koch created a 10,000-neuron simulation, albeit in a far simpler model.

Furthermore, Koch is skeptical about how quickly the brain model can progress. Any claims that the human brain can be modeled within 10 years are so "ridiculous" that they are not worth discussing, he says.

Rat brains have about 200 million neurons, while human brains have in the region of 50 to 100 billion neurons. "That is a big scale-up," admits Markram.

source

The simulation is at a cellular level, and the researchers want to go deeper to the molecular level. This will put a tremendous strain on the computational infrastructure of the system. And it is not clear what is to be gained at this early stage by going to molecular resolution. Particularly when the cortical function appears to be at least partially based upon oscillatory phase-locking of assembles of neurons, such as columns and columnar groups.

Perhaps the Swiss researchers' "bottom-up" approach, combined with "top-down" approaches by people such as Jeff Hawkins, will begin to simulate some of the function of the human neocortex within the next 15 years. Perhaps.

Just Born that Way?

I would laugh at you, except I understand that you were born to believe silly things like that. Like what? Like Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, for example. Or Peak Oil. What about divine creation of the earth and all life? Have I stung you yet? Intelligent Design. Democracy. Monogamy. God or the gods. The true path. Do you believe?

Do you want to know the funny part? No matter how much I may laugh at your silly beliefs, chances are that some of my beliefs seem just as silly to you or someone else just as intelligent as you or I. Whether or not we "believe" does not depend upon our IQ or our level of emotional maturity. It has to do with how our brains are put together--how we think right out of the box. We are born to believe.

At least, that is what neuroscientist/physician Andrew Newberg says in his book and lectures, Born to Believe.

As the field studying the biology of religious experience advances into the next millenium, continued improvements in our abilities to study the brain coupled with better methods of measuring the subjective state of religious experiences will refine our understanding of the mystical mind. However, the ideas presented in this book represent the most up-to-date knowledge and the most complete synthesis of information currently available. The first installment will thus consider several basic principles of brain function as it relates to human experience, and in particular, religious experience.


...The causal operator permits reality to be viewed in terms of causal sequences. This operator seems to have played a significant role in the development of human science, philosophy, and particularly religion. In its basic function, the causal operator tends to impart a sense of causality on all of the events that we observe. Thus, this operator forces us to question why we are here, why does something work the way it does, and what created the universe. In all of these, and in every other instance, we want to know what is the cause that lies behind every event that we experience. Thus, we would suggest that it is the mind or brain itself that is designed to seek out causality. Our brain functions in such a way that it tries to find the cause of all of the things it experiences. If this is the case, then it is a biological necessity for us to seek out causality. Furthermore, there is evidence that our drive to determine causality may be present even as early as infancy. The causal operator has often led to the development of myth formation and in particular, religious beliefs. Religions, in general, offer an answer as to what ultimately causes things to happen in this universe -- power sources, gods, and in the high religions -- God.

Newberg

The quest to understand religion and mysticism through the lens of science goes back decades.

Scientists and scholars have long speculated that religious feeling can be tied to a specific place in the brain. In 1892 textbooks on mental illness noted a link between “religious emotionalism” and epilepsy. Nearly a century later, in 1975, neurologist Norman Geschwind of the Boston Veterans Administration Hospital first clinically described a form of epilepsy in which seizures originate as electrical misfirings within the temporal lobes, large sections of the brain that sit over the ears. Epileptics who have this form of the disorder often report intense religious experiences, leading Geschwind and others, such as neuropsychiatrist David Bear of Vanderbilt University, to speculate that localized electrical storms in the brain’s temporal lobe might sometimes underlie an obsession with religious or moral issues.

Exploring this hypothesis, neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran of the University of California, San Diego, asked several of his patients who have temporal lobe epilepsy to listen to a mixture of religious, sexual and neutral words while he tested the intensity of their emotional reactions using a measure of arousal called the galvanic skin response, a fluctuation in the electrical resistance of the skin. In 1998 he reported in his book Phantoms in the Brain (William Morrow), co-authored with journalist Sandra Blakeslee, that the religious words, such as “God,” elicited an unusually large emotional response in these patients, indicating that people with temporal lobe epilepsy may indeed have a greater propensity toward religious feeling.

The key, Ramachandran speculates, may be the limbic system, which comprises interior regions of the brain that govern emotion and emotional memory, such as the amygdala and hypothalamus. By strengthening the connection between the temporal lobe and these emotional centers, epileptic electrical activity may spark religious feeling.

To seal the case for the temporal lobe’s involvement, Michael Persinger of Laurentian University in Ontario sought to artificially re-create religious feelings by electrically stimulating that large subdivision of the brain. So Persinger created the “God helmet,” which generates weak electromagnetic fields and focuses them on particular regions of the brain’s surface.

In a series of studies conducted over the past several decades, Persinger and his team have trained their device on the temporal lobes of hundreds of people. In doing so, the researchers induced in most of them the experience of a sensed presence—a feeling that someone (or a spirit) is in the room when no one, in fact, is—or of a profound state of cosmic bliss that reveals a universal truth. During the three-minute bursts of stimulation, the affected subjects translated this perception of the divine into their own cultural and religious language—terming it God, Buddha, a benevolent presence or the wonder of the universe.

... University of Pennsylvania neuroscientist Andrew Newberg and his late colleague, Eugene d’Aquili, have pointed to the involvement of other brain regions in some people under certain circumstances. Instead of artificially inducing religious experience, Newberg and d’Aquili used brain imaging to peek at the neural machinery at work during traditional religious practices. In this case, the scientists studied Buddhist meditation, a set of formalized rituals aimed at achieving defined spiritual states, such as oneness with the universe.

When the Buddhist subjects reached their self-reported meditation peak, a state in which they lose their sense of existence as separate individuals, the researchers injected them with a radioactive isotope that is carried by the blood to active brain areas. The investigators then photographed the isotope’s distribution with a special camera—a technique called single-photon-emission computed tomography (SPECT).

The height of this meditative trance, as they described in a 2001 paper, was associated with both a large drop in activity in a portion of the parietal lobe, which encompasses the upper back of the brain, and an increase in activity in the right prefrontal cortex, which resides behind the forehead. Because the affected part of the parietal lobe normally aids with navigation and spatial orientation, the neuroscientists surmise that its abnormal silence during meditation underlies the perceived dissolution of physical boundaries and the feeling of being at one with the universe. The prefrontal cortex, on the other hand, is charged with attention and planning, among other cognitive duties, and its recruitment at the meditation peak may reflect the fact that such contemplation often requires that a person focus intensely on a thought or object.

Neuroscientist Richard J. Davidson of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and his colleagues documented something similar in 2002, when they used fMRI to scan the brains of several hundred meditating Buddhists from around the world. Functional MRI tracks the flow of oxygenated blood by virtue of its magnetic properties, which differ from those of oxygen-depleted blood. Because oxygenated blood preferentially flows to where it is in high demand, fMRI highlights the brain areas that are most active during—and thus presumably most engaged in—a particular task.

Davidson’s team also found that the Buddhists’ meditations coincided with activation in the left prefrontal cortex, again perhaps reflecting the ability of expert practitioners to focus despite distraction. The most experienced volunteers showed lower levels of activation than did those with less training, conceivably because practice makes the task easier. This theory jibes with reports from veterans of Buddhist meditation who claim to have reached a state of “effortless concentration,” Davidson says.

...Brain scans alone cannot fully describe a mystical state, however. Because fMRI depends on blood flow, which takes place on the order of seconds, fMRI images do not capture real-time changes in the firing of neurons, which occur within milliseconds. That is why Beauregard turned to a faster technique called quantitative electroencephalography (EEG), which measures the voltage from the summed responses of millions of neurons and can track its fluctuation in real time. His team outfitted the nuns with red bathing caps studded with electrodes that pick up electric currents from neurons. These currents merge and appear as brain waves of various frequencies that change as the nuns again recall an intense experience with another person and a deep connection with God.

Beauregard and his colleagues found that the most prevalent brain waves are long, slow alpha waves such as those produced by sleep, consistent with the nuns’ relaxed state. In work that has not yet been published, the scientists also spotted even lower-frequency waves in the prefrontal and parietal cortices and the temporal lobe that are associated with meditation and trance. “We see delta waves and theta waves in the same brain regions as the fMRI,” Beauregard says.

...Inducing truly mystical experiences could have a variety of positive effects. Recent findings suggest, for example, that meditation can improve people’s ability to pay attention. Davidson and his colleagues asked 17 people who had received three months of intensive training in meditation and 23 meditation novices to perform an attention task in which they had to successively pick out two numbers embedded in a series of letters. The novices did what most people do, the investigators announced in June: they missed the second number because they were still focusing on the first—a phenomenon called attentional blink. In contrast, all the trained meditators consistently picked out both numbers, indicating that practicing meditation can improve focus.

Meditation may even delay certain signs of aging in the brain, according to preliminary work by neuroscientist Sara Lazar of Harvard University and her colleagues. A 2005 paper in NeuroReport noted that 20 experienced meditators showed increased thickness in certain brain regions relative to 15 subjects who did not meditate. In particular, the prefrontal cortex and right anterior insula were between four and eight thousandths of an inch thicker in the meditators; the oldest of these subjects boasted the greatest increase in thickness, the reverse of the usual process of aging. Newberg is now investigating whether meditation can alleviate stress and sadness in cancer patients or expand the cognitive capacities of people with early memory loss.

Artificially replicating meditative trances or other spiritual states might be similarly beneficial to the mind, brain and body. Beauregard and others argue, for example, that such mystical mimicry might improve immune system function, stamp out depression or just provide a more positive outlook on life. The changes could be lasting and even transformative.

SciAm

Certainly, if we are born to seek the transcendent, it is plausible that doing so constructively could be beneficial to our immune, neurological, and endocrine systems. Rational spirituality is almost certainly good for us. Even "irrational spirituality", like the "irrational" optimism of Seligman, may be good for us is some cases. The pessimist and the depressive may be more rational, in many situations, but are they more constructive and helpful--more functional?

Our brains cannot know and understand everything about those things we think about and care about. So we are forced to "bluff"--to believe. The fact that we often take our beliefs a bit too far may be regrettable. But it is certainly very much human. We are born that way.

More on Newberg's research and ideas here,here, and here.

Update: Lubos Motl comments on the fact that we take science on faith too.

Electromagnetic Brain Stimulation: More on TMS as Depression Treatment

Electromagnetic brain stimulation has been used for Parkinson's,... Alzheimer's,... Tourette's,...dystonia,... simply for overall "brain boosting."

Here is a recent look at using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) for depression:

"This study provides new support for the efficacy of TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) as a 'stand alone' treatment for depression," said John Krystal, editor of Biological Psychiatry which will publish the study on December 1.

"This finding could be particularly important for patients who do not tolerate antidepressant medications, for whom they are not safe, or who have not benefited from other alternative treatments."

The treatment works by sending very rapid bursts of magnetic energy into the brain through coils attached to the scalp.

These pulses cause the neurons in a small area of the brain to "fire off," said study co-author Philip Janicak, a psychiatry professor at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

.... This is the first large-scale study of the technique and researchers also used much higher doses of the energy pulses.

Remission rates among those who received the treatment were twice as high as those receiving a "sham" treatment where a shield was placed on the coils.

They were also higher than average rates in antidepressant drug trials, Janicak said.

This is particular significant given that most of the patients in the study had failed to respond to antidepressants - a criteria which would have excluded them from most drug trials, he said.

Researchers in at 23 sites in Canada, the United States and Australian randomly assigned 325 patients suffering from major depressive disorder to nine weeks of magnetic stimulation or a sham treatment.

Physorg

We are a long way from understanding the complex structure and function of the human brain, and how it shapes our behaviour and conscious experience. Better methods of mapping microscopic nerve pathways in the brain should help, as should better real-time brain imaging techniques used in conjunction with targeted neuropsychological testing.

Using TMS, deep brain stimulation (DBS), neural interface chips, and other non-pharmacological methods of targeted modifying of brain pathways and nuclei should give researchers and clinicians more options for study and treatment of normal and pathological brain/mind processes.