The Learning Brain Gets Bigger

Meditation found to increase brain size Kris Snibbe/Harvard News Office Sara Lazar (center) talks to research assistant Michael Treadway and technologist Shruthi Chakrapami about the results of experiments showing that meditation can increase brain size. People who meditate grow bigger brains than those who don’t. Researchers at Harvard, Yale, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found the first evidence that meditation can alter the physical structure of our brains. Brain scans they conducted reveal that experienced meditators boasted increased thickness in parts of the brain that deal with attention and processing sensory input. In one area of gray matter, the thickening turns out to be more pronounced in older than in younger people. “Our data suggest that meditation practice can promote cortical plasticity in adults in areas important for cognitive and emotional processing and well-being,” says Sara Lazar, leader of the study and a psychologist at Harvard Medical School. Controlling random thoughts

The Conversation is Over. Long Live the Conversation. - David Rock - The Conversation by David Rock | 8:15 AM May 24, 2011 This post is part of the HBR Insight Center Making Collaboration Work. I recoiled in horror this week at a recent story in the New York Times about using twitter-like tools in a high school classroom. The project is well-intentioned: they wanted to get kids more comfortable with speaking up by giving them digital tools to do so. The average empathy level of college kids has plummeted in the last decade. With less attention being paid to nuanced facial movements and tone of voice, we don’t get to store the billions of patterns in long-term memory that our social network (the one in the brain) needs to draw on for interpreting complex social landscapes. I wander through the offices of another large organization nearly every week. With the rise of teams, work today is more social than ever. Without good social skills, when the pressure to deliver is on, it’s all too tempting to retreat to executing alone, or worse. David Rock is a consultant and author.

UCSB scientists discover how the brain encodes memories at a cellular level (Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Scientists at UC Santa Barbara have made a major discovery in how the brain encodes memories. The finding, published in the December 24 issue of the journal Neuron, could eventually lead to the development of new drugs to aid memory. The team of scientists is the first to uncover a central process in encoding memories that occurs at the level of the synapse, where neurons connect with each other. "When we learn new things, when we store memories, there are a number of things that have to happen," said senior author Kenneth S. "One of the most important processes is that the synapses –– which cement those memories into place –– have to be strengthened," said Kosik. This is a neuron. (Photo Credit: Sourav Banerjee) Part of strengthening a synapse involves making new proteins. The production of new proteins can only occur when the RNA that will make the required proteins is turned on. When the signal comes in, the wrapping protein degrades or gets fragmented.

Why Crossing Your Arms Helps Kill Pain To the list of unusual antidotes for pain — including cursing, meditation and giving a massage (also, getting one) — now add crossing your arms. A new study published in the journal Pain found that when people crossed their arms, it reduced their perception of pain. The pain source was a “pinprick” sensation caused by the heat from a laser aimed at one of their hands. (More on TIME.com: Bleep! The research involved two experiments — one that included eight participants and another that included 12. Researchers led by Giandomenico Iannetti of University College London found that when people’s hands were crossed to other side of their bodies, it confused the brain by interrupting the processing of information incoming from multiple regions. (More on TIME.com: Forget Pain Pills, Fall In Love Instead) Although the information about the pain’s location was accurately processed, the brain had trouble integration this information correctly with information about the nature of the sensation.

Brain Atlas - Introduction The central nervous system (CNS) consists of the brain and the spinal cord, immersed in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Weighing about 3 pounds (1.4 kilograms), the brain consists of three main structures: the cerebrum, the cerebellum and the brainstem. Cerebrum - divided into two hemispheres (left and right), each consists of four lobes (frontal, parietal, occipital and temporal). The outer layer of the brain is known as the cerebral cortex or the ‘grey matter’. It covers the nuclei deep within the cerebral hemisphere e.g. the basal ganglia; the structure called the thalamus, and the ‘white matter’, which consists mostly of myelinated axons. – closely packed neuron cell bodies form the grey matter of the brain. Cerebellum – responsible for psychomotor function, the cerebellum co-ordinates sensory input from the inner ear and the muscles to provide accurate control of position and movement. Basal Ganglia Thalamus and Hypothalamus Ventricles Limbic System Reticular Activating System Neurons Glia

Mind-reading scan identifies simple thoughts - health - 26 May 2011 A new new brain imaging system that can identify a subject's simple thoughts may lead to clearer diagnoses for Alzheimer's disease or schizophrenia – as well as possibly paving the way for reading people's minds. Michael Greicius at Stanford University in California and colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify patterns of brain activity associated with different mental states. He asked 14 volunteers to do one of four tasks: sing songs silently to themselves; recall the events of the day; count backwards in threes; or simply relax. Participants were given a 10-minute period during which they had to do this. This differs from previous experiments, in which the subjects were required to perform mental activities at specific times and the scans were then compared with brain activity when they were at rest. Read my mind The idea of the system being used by security services or the justice system to interrogate prisoners or suspects is far-fetched, Greicius says.

Neuron All neurons are electrically excitable, maintaining voltage gradients across their membranes by means of metabolically driven ion pumps, which combine with ion channels embedded in the membrane to generate intracellular-versus-extracellular concentration differences of ions such as sodium, potassium, chloride, and calcium. Changes in the cross-membrane voltage can alter the function of voltage-dependent ion channels. If the voltage changes by a large enough amount, an all-or-none electrochemical pulse called an action potential is generated, which travels rapidly along the cell's axon, and activates synaptic connections with other cells when it arrives. Neurons do not undergo cell division. In most cases, neurons are generated by special types of stem cells. Overview[edit] A neuron is a specialized type of cell found in the bodies of all eumetozoans. Many neurons fit the foregoing schema in every respect, but there are also exceptions to most parts of it. Anatomy and histology[edit]

Brain Training as a New Treatment for Addictions By: Dr. Pascale Michelon Sub­stance abuse can have dra­matic con­se­quences on the brain and behav­ior. Would it be pos­si­ble then to train the brain of these peo­ple so that they show less delay dis­count­ing? Delay dis­count­ing is a brain func­tion that involves the frontal lobes of the brain (behind the fore­head). Dr. It is not known so far whether train­ing work­ing mem­ory would indeed help in reduc­ing the abuse itself but this is a very promis­ing study. Related post: What is Work­ing Mem­ory? Imagining the Future Invokes Your Memory I REMEMBER my retirement like it was yesterday. As I recall, I am still working, though not as hard as I did when I was younger. My wife and I still live in the city, where we bicycle a fair amount and stay fit. In reality, I’m not even close to retirement. A new study from the January issue of Psychological Science may explain why we are all so optimistic about what’s to come. Cognitive scientists are very interested in people’s “remembered futures.” Still, very little was known until recently about how these simulations work. These are very difficult questions to study in a laboratory—or at least they were until now. Recalling Tomorrow Szpunar and his colleagues began by collecting a lot of biographical detail from volunteers’ actual memories. A week later the researchers took each person’s raw material—all those people, places and things from near and distant pasts—and jumbled it all together.

Brain scans reveal why some people feel your pain - life - 27 May 2011 FOR some people, seeing pain in someone else is more than emotionally distressing: they feel the pain in their own body too. Now some of the pathways involved have been identified. "Synaesthetic pain" occurs mainly in people who have lost a limb. "When I hear my husband's power tools, or see a knife, I often get a sharp pain through my phantom leg," says Jane Barrett, who has experienced synaesthetic pain since losing her leg in a motorcycle accident. When we observe or imagine pain, it activates areas of the brain involved in the processing of real pain. Bernadette Fitzgibbon at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and colleagues, think those inhibitory mechanisms are themselves inhibited in pain synaesthetes. When viewing the images, pain synaesthetes exhibited decreased theta and alpha brainwaves compared with the other volunteers. Fitzgibbon says the traumatic experience associated with losing a limb may heighten the sensitivity of pain synaesthetes to others' pain.

The Brain May Disassemble Itself in Sleep Compared with the hustle and bustle of waking life, sleep looks dull and unworkmanlike. Except for in its dreams, a sleeping brain doesn’t misbehave or find a job. It also doesn’t love, scheme, aspire or really do much we would be proud to take credit for. Yet during those quiet hours when our mind is on hold, our brain does the essential labor at the heart of all creative acts. It edits itself. And it may throw out a lot. In a provocative new theory about the purpose of sleep, neuroscientist Giulio Tononi of the University of Wisconsin–Madison has proposed that slumber, to cement what we have learned, must also spur the brain’s undoing. Select an option below: Customer Sign In *You must have purchased this issue or have a qualifying subscription to access this content

Eat a protein-rich breakfast to reduce food cravings, prevent overeating later, researcher finds A University of Missouri researcher has found that eating a healthy breakfast, especially one high in protein, increases satiety and reduces hunger throughout the day. In addition, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) the researchers found that eating a protein-rich breakfast reduces the brain signals controlling food motivation and reward-driven eating behavior. "Everyone knows that eating breakfast is important, but many people still don't make it a priority," said Heather Leidy, assistant professor in the MU Department of Nutrition and Exercise Physiology. In the study, Leidy assessed physiological hunger and satiety by measuring perceived appetite sensations and hormonal markers in combination with psychological reward-driven motivation to eat, using fMRI to identify brain activation in specific regions related to food motivation and reward. The researchers decided to target 'breakfast-skipping' teens for two reasons, Leidy said.

Is the Purpose of Sleep to Let Our Brains “Defragment,” Like a Hard Drive? | The Crux Neuroskeptic is a neuroscientist who takes a skeptical look at his own field and beyond at the Neuroskeptic blog. Why do we sleep? We spend a third of our lives doing so, and all known animals with a nervous system either sleep, or show some kind of related behaviour. But scientists still don’t know what the point of it is. There are plenty of theories. But others argue that sleep has a restorative function—something about animal biology means that we need sleep to survive. Waking up after a good night’s sleep, you feel restored, and many studies have shown the benefits of sleep for learning, memory, and cognition. Recently, some neuroscientists have proposed that the function of sleep is to reorganize connections and “prune” synapses—the connections between brain cells. This illustration, taken from their paper, shows the basic idea: While we’re awake, your brain is forming memories. Yet this poses a problem for the brain. After heavy use, hard disks tend to get “fragmented.”

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