[TedTalk] How playing an instrument benefits your brain – Anita Collins

From the YouTube site

Published on Jul 22, 2014

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-playing…

When you listen to music, multiple areas of your brain become engaged and active. But when you actually play an instrument, that activity becomes more like a full-body brain workout. What’s going on? Anita Collins explains the fireworks that go off in musicians’ brains when they play, and examines some of the long-term positive effects of this mental workout. Lesson by Anita Collins, animation by Sharon Colman Graham.   http://youtu.be/R0JKCYZ8hng

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How Early Social Deprivation Impairs Long-Term Cognitive Function

 

Brain structures involved in dealing with fear and stress. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

From the 17 September 2012 article at Medical News Today

 

A growing body of research shows that children who suffer severe neglect and social isolation have cognitive and social impairments as adults. A study from Boston Children’s Hospital shows, for the first time, how these functional impairments arise: Social isolation during early life prevents the cells that make up the brain’s white matter from maturing and producing the right amount of myelin, the fatty “insulation” on nerve fibers that helps them transmit long-distance messages within the brain…

…

When isolation occurred during a “critical period,” starting three weeks after birth, cells called oligodendrocytes failed to mature in the prefrontal cortex, a brain region important for cognitive function and social behavior. As a result, nerve fibers had thinner coatings of myelin, which is produced by oligodendrocytes, and the mice showed impairments in social interaction and working memory.

 

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Integrative Body-Mind Training Prompts Double Positive Punch In Brain White Matter

From the 12 June 2012 Medical News Today article

Scientists studying the Chinese mindfulness meditation known as

brains! (Photo credit: cloois)

say they’ve confirmed and expanded their findings on changes in structural efficiency of white matter in the brain that can be related to positive behavioral changes in subjects practicing the technique regularly for a month.

In a paper appearing this week in the online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists Yi-Yuan Tang and Michael Posner report improved mood changes coincided with increased axonal density – more brain-signaling connections – and an expansion of myelin, the protective fatty tissue that surrounds the axons, in the brain’s anterior cingulate region.

Deficits in activation of the anterior cingulate cortex have been associated with attention deficit disorder, dementia, depression,schizophrenia and many other disorders.

IBMT was adapted from traditional Chinese medicine in the 1990s in China, where it is practiced by thousands of people. It differs from other forms of meditation because it depends heavily on the inducement of a high degree of awareness and balance of the body, mind and environment. The meditative state is facilitated through training and trainer-group dynamics, harmony and resonance. …

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Book Review: Avoiding self-sabotage

What makes your brain happy and why you should do the opposite

From the 28 December 2011 EurekAlert

Why do we routinely choose options that don’t meet our short-term needs and undermine our long-term goals? Why do we willingly expose ourselves to temptations that undercut our hard-fought progress to overcome addictions? Why are we prone to assigning meaning to statistically common coincidences? Why do we insist we’re right even when evidence contradicts us? In WHAT MAKES YOUR BRAIN HAPPY AND WHY YOU SHOULD DO THE OPPOSITE (Prometheus Books $19), science writer David DiSalvo reveals a remarkable paradox: what your brain wants is frequently not what your brain needs. In fact, much of what makes our brains “happy” leads to errors, biases, and distortions, which make getting out of our own way extremely difficult.

New Scientist says, “David DiSalvo takes us on a whistle-stop tour of our mind’s delusions. No aspect of daily life is left untouched: whether he is exploring job interviews, first dates or the perils of eBay, DiSalvo will change the way you think about thinking… an enjoyable manual to your psyche that may change your life.”

DiSalvo’s search includes forays into evolutionary and social psychology, cognitive science, neurology, and even marketing and economics—as well as interviews with many of the top thinkers in psychology and neuroscience today. From this research-based platform, the author draws out insights that we can use to identify our brains’ foibles and turn our awareness into edifying action. Joseph T. Hallinan, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Why We Make Mistakes”, calls DiSalvo’s book “the Swiss Army knife of psychology and neuroscience research—handy, practical, and very, very useful. It boils down the latest findings into simple easy-to-understand lessons you can apply to your daily life.”

Ultimately, DiSalvo argues, the research does not serve up ready-made answers, but provides us with actionable clues for overcoming the plight of our advanced brains and, consequently, living more fulfilled lives…

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The Teen Brain: Still Under Construction (link to NIMH brochure and personal musings)

The US National Institute of Mental Health has recently published an easy to read brochure which outlines brain changes in the still developing adolescent brain.  An understanding of these changes go a long way in explaining puzzling contradictions in teen behavior.

These sections of the brochure especially resonated with me. They essentially point to growing evidence that even up to their early 20’s, people are still maturing emotionally. They have not yet reached full capacity to think and reason.

“The (functional brain imaging) scans also suggest that different parts of the cortex mature at different rates. Areas involved in more basic functions mature first: those involved, for example, in the processing of information from the senses, and in controlling movement. The parts of the brain responsible for more “top-down control, controlling impulses, and planning ahead – the hallmarks of adult behavior- are among the last to mature.”

“Several lines of evidence suggests that the brain circuitry involved in emotional responses is changing during the teen years. Functional brain imaging studies, for example, suggest that the responses of teens to emotionally loaded images and situations are heightened relative to younger children and adults. The brain changes underlying these patterns involve brain centers and signaling molecules taht are part of the reward system with which the brain motivates behavior. These age-related changes shape how much different parts of the brain are activated in response to experience, and in terms of behavior, the urgency and intensity of emotional reactions.”

As adults, we have the responsibility to continue to nurture young adults, provide guidance, and fully respect them in the light of how they are able to reason, react emotionally, and learn.

These responsibilities we have as adults should resonate in the public sector.
For example, those who market and advertise should exercise caution with “emotionally laden images” when targeting teens and young adults to buy their products and services. To do otherwise is disrespectful.

In a similar vein, I believe that the recruitment of people under 21 into the armed services is not too farm removed from recruiting child soldiers. Again, it is easy to market with images appealing to the emotions involved with sense of adventure, being in a group of like minded individuals, patriotism, and fighting evil. But is the age group of 18-21 a good fit for the military? I think not.  Recruiting in this age group is taking advantage of the still developing, not fully developed  areas of the brain devoted to analyzing risks and self control. People in this age group should be guided and nurtured in environments in which risk taking and self control  are valued, not violence based or used against individuals or groups. I believe the military is violence based under the guise of words as protection, defense, and patriotism. The military is no place for a developing brain.

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Addiction As A Brain Disease

Image via Wikipedia

From the 29 April 2011 Medical News Today article

One can look at drug addiction as a moral issue, a social ill, or a criminal problem. But Lynn Oswald’s experience studying the neuroscience of addiction tells her that it is something else entirely: a disease of the brain.

“Addiction is a brain disease because differences in the way our brains function make some people more likely to become addicted to drugs than others-just as differences in our bodies make some people more likely to develop cancer or heart disease,” says Oswald, PhD, RN, an assistant professor at the School of Nursing.

However, the neurobiological mechanisms that underlie a person’s risks for alcohol and drug abuse are not well understood by scientists. Oswald is hoping to change this. She is currently at work on a study funded by a five-year $3 million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse that aims to answer questions about why some people become addicted to drugs and others do not.

“There is growing evidence that vulnerability for substance abuse may stem from pre-existing variances in brain function,” she says.

“These variations could be something that a person is born with or the result of changes that take place later on. Like other chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease, risks for drug use disorders seem to be influenced by both genes and environment. Scientific evidence continues to grow about the effects of environmental stress on the body. We now know that the brain is a very plastic organ and various life experiences, such as severe stress, can also change the way the brain works.”

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Better Brain Wiring Linked to Family Genes

Image via Wikipedia

Better Brain Wiring Linked to Family Genes

 

From the March 3 2011 Science Daily item

ScienceDaily (Mar. 3, 2011) — How well our brain functions is largely based on our family’s genetic makeup, according to a University of Melbourne led study. The study published in The Journal of Neuroscience provides the first evidence of a genetic effect on how ‘cost-efficient’ our brain network wiring is, shedding light on some of the brain’s make up.

Lead author Dr Alex Fornito from the Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre at the University of Melbourne said the findings have important implications for understanding why some people are better able to perform certain tasks than others and the genetic basis of mental illnesses and some neurological diseases….

…”We found that people differed greatly in terms of how cost-efficient the functioning of their brain networks were, and that over half of these differences could be explained by genes,” said Dr Fornito.

Across the entire brain, more than half (60%) of the differences between people could be explained by genes. Some of the strongest effects were observed for regions of the prefrontal cortex which play a vital role in planning, strategic thinking, decision-making and memory.

Previous work has shown that people with more efficient brain connections score higher on tests of intelligence, and that brain network cost-efficiency is reduced in people with schizophrenia, particularly in the prefrontal cortex.

“This exciting discovery opens up a whole new area of research focus for scientists around the world,” he said.

For suggestions on how to get this article for free or at low cost, click here

 

 

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Parts of Brain Can Switch Functions: In People Born Blind, Brain Regions That Usually Process Vision Can Tackle Language

Parts of Brain Can Switch Functions: In People Born Blind, Brain Regions That Usually Process Vision Can Tackle Language

From a March 1, 2011 Science Daily item

ScienceDaily (Mar. 1, 2011) — When your brain encounters sensory stimuli, such as the scent of your morning coffee or the sound of a honking car, that input gets shuttled to the appropriate brain region for analysis. The coffee aroma goes to the olfactory cortex, while sounds are processed in the auditory cortex.

That division of labor suggests that the brain’s structure follows a predetermined, genetic blueprint. However, evidence is mounting that brain regions can take over functions they were not genetically destined to perform. In a landmark 1996 study of people blinded early in life, neuroscientists showed that the visual cortex could participate in a nonvisual function — reading Braille.

Now, a study from MIT neuroscientists shows that in individuals born blind, parts of the visual cortex are recruited for language processing. The finding suggests that the visual cortex can dramatically change its function — from visual processing to language — and it also appears to overturn the idea that language processing can only occur in highly specialized brain regions that are genetically programmed for language tasks.

“Your brain is not a prepackaged kind of thing. It doesn’t develop along a fixed trajectory, rather, it’s a self-building toolkit. The building process is profoundly influenced by the experiences you have during your development,” says Marina Bedny, an MIT postdoctoral associate in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and lead author of the study, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of Feb. 28…

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Allô allô! Mom’s voice plays special role in activating newborn’s brain

Researchers applied electrodes to babies’ heads to analyze their brain activity.

Allô allô! Mom’s voice plays special role in activating newborn’s brain
Recordings within 24 hours of birth reveal brain parts that only react to her voice

From the December 15, 2010 Eureka news release

A mother’s voice will preferentially activate the parts of the brain responsible for language learning, say researchers from the University of Montreal and the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Centre. The research team made the discovery after performing electrical recordings on the infants within the 24 hours following their birth. The brain signals also revealed that while the infants did react to other women’s voices, these sounds only activated the voice recognition parts of the brains. “This is exciting research that proves for the first time that the newborn’s brain responds strongly to the mother’s voice and shows, scientifically speaking, that the mother’s voice is special to babies,” said lead researcher Dr. Maryse Lassonde of the University of Montreal’s Department of Psychology and the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Centre.

The research was published in Cerebral Cortex and received funding from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, and the Canada Research Chairs programme.The full text of the article may be found here.

 

 

Brain’s Error-Detection System Demystified

 

 

Researchers identify two autonomous feedback loops in ‘typo’ study

An October 28 Health News Day item

THURSDAY, Oct. 28 (HealthDay News) — A new study provides insight into the brain’s ability to detect and correct errors, such as typos, even when someone is working on “autopilot.”

Researchers had three groups of 24 skilled typists use a computer keyboard. Without the typists’ knowledge, the researchers either inserted typographical errors or removed them from the typed text on the screen.

They discovered that the typists’ brains realized they’d made typos even if the screen suggested otherwise and they didn’t consciously realize the errors weren’t theirs, even accepting responsibility for them.

“Your fingers notice that they make an error and they slow down, whether we corrected the error or not,” said study lead author Gordon D. Logan, a professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.

The idea of the study is to understand how the brain and body interact with the environment and break down the process of automatic behavior. “If I want to pick up my coffee cup, I have a goal in mind that leads me to look at it, leads my arm to reach toward it and drink it,” he said. “This involves a kind of feedback loop. We want to look at more complex actions than that.”

In particular, Logan and colleagues wondered about complex things that we do on autopilot without much conscious thought. “If I decide I want to go to the mailroom, my feet carry me down the hall and up the steps. I don’t have to think very much about doing it. But if you look at what my feet are doing, they’re doing a complex series of actions every second,” Logan explained.

Enter the typists. “Think about what’s involved in typing: They use eight fingers and probably a thumb,” Logan said. “They’re going at this rate for protracted periods of time. It’s a complex act of coordination to carry out typing like this, but we do it without thinking about it.”

The researchers report their findings in the Oct. 29 issue of the journal Science.

The research suggests that “the motor system is taking care of the keystrokes, but it’s being driven by this higher-level system that thinks in terms of words and tells your hands which words to type,” Logan said.

Two autonomous feedback loops are involved in this error-detection and correction process, the researchers said.

What’s next? “By understanding how typists are so good at typing, it will help us train people in other kinds of skills, developing this autopilot controlled by a pilot [typist],” he said.

Gregory Hickok, director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of California at Irvine, said such research can indeed lead to advances.

Simply reaching for a cup is a fairly complicated process, said Hickok, who’s familiar with the study findings. “Despite all that is going on, our movements are usually effortless, rapid, and fluid even in the face of unexpected changes,” he said.

“If we can understand how humans can achieve this, we might be able to build robots to do all sorts of things, or develop new therapies or build prosthetic devices for people who have lost their motor abilities due to disease or injury,” he said.

SOURCES: Gordon D. Logan, Ph.D., professor, psychology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn.; Gregory Hickok, Ph.D., director, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of California at Irvine; Oct. 29, 2010, Science