‘Mind’s eye blink’ proves ‘paying attention’ is not just a figure of speech

‘Mind’s eye blink’ proves ‘paying attention’ is not just a figure of speech
When your attention shifts from one place to another, your brain blinks. The blinks are momentary unconscious gaps in visual perception and came as a surprise to the team of Vanderbilt psychologists who discovered the phenomenon while studying the benefits of attention.

“Attention is beneficial because it increases our ability to detect visual signals even when we are looking in a different direction,” said Assistant Professor of Psychology Alex Maier, who directed the study. “The ‘mind’s eye blinks’ that occur every time your attention shifts are the sensory processing costs that we pay for this capability.”

Details of their study are described in a paper titled “Spiking suppression precedes cued attentional enhancement of neural responses in primary visual cortex” published in the journal Cerebral Cortex.

“There have been several behavior studies in the past that have suggested there is a cost to paying attention. But our study is the first to demonstrate a sensory brain mechanism underlying this phenomenon,” said first author Michele Cox, who is a psychology doctoral student at Vanderbilt.

The research was conducted with macaque monkeys that were trained to shift their attention among different objects on a display screen while the researchers monitored the pattern of neuron activity taking place in their brains. Primates are particularly suited for the study because they can shift their attention without moving their eyes. Most animals do not have this ability.

“We trained macaques to play a video game that rewarded them with apple juice when they paid attention to certain visual objects. Once they became expert at the game, we measured the activity in their visual cortex when they played,” said Maier.

By combining advanced recording techniques that simultaneously track large numbers of neurons with sophisticated computational analyses, the researchers discovered that the activity of the neurons in the visual cortex were momentarily disrupted when the game required the animals to shift their attention. They also traced the source of the disruptions to parts of the brain involved in guiding attention, not back to the eyes.

Mind’s eye blink is closely related to “attentional blink” that has been studied by Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Psychology David Zald and Professor of Psychology René Marois. Attentional blink is a phenomenon that occurs when a person is presented with a rapid series of images. If the spacing between two images is too short, the observer doesn’t detect the second image. In 2005, Zald determined that the time of temporary blindness following violent or erotic images was significantly longer than it is for emotionally neutral images.

Source:
https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2017/11/21/discovery-minds-eye-blink/

Journal article:
https://academic.oup.com/cercor/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cercor/bhx305/4653733?guestAccessKey=5e7603d6-4fed-44b4-aa1d-867c89850d2e

#visualcortex #attention #sensoryprocessing #neuroscience

Eye contact with your baby helps synchronize your brainwaves

Eye contact with your baby helps synchronize your brainwaves
Making eye contact with an infant makes adults’ and babies’ brainwaves ‘get in sync’ with each other – which is likely to support communication and learning – according to researchers at the University of Cambridge.

When a parent and infant interact, various aspects of their behavior can synchronize, including their gaze, emotions and heartrate, but little is known about whether their brain activity also synchronizes – and what the consequences of this might be.

Brainwaves reflect the group-level activity of millions of neurons and are involved in information transfer between brain regions. Previous studies have shown that when two adults are talking to each other, communication is more successful if their brainwaves are in synchrony.

Researchers at the Baby-LINC Lab at the University of Cambridge carried out a study to explore whether infants can synchronize their brainwaves to adults too – and whether eye contact might influence this. Their results are published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The team examined the brainwave patterns of 36 infants (17 in the first experiment and 19 in the second) using electroencephalography (EEG), which measures patterns of brain electrical activity via electrodes in a skull cap worn by the participants. They compared the infants’ brain activity to that of the adult who was singing nursery rhymes to the infant.

In the first of two experiments, the infant watched a video of an adult as she sang nursery rhymes. First, the adult – whose brainwave patterns had already been recorded – was looking directly at the infant. Then, she turned her head to avert her gaze, while still singing nursery rhymes. Finally, she turned her head away, but her eyes looked directly back at the infant.

As anticipated, the researchers found that infants’ brainwaves were more synchronized to the adults’ when the adult’s gaze met the infant’s, as compared to when her gaze was averted Interestingly, the greatest synchronizing effect occurred when the adults’ head was turned away but her eyes still looked directly at the infant. The researchers say this may be because such a gaze appears highly deliberate, and so provides a stronger signal to the infant that the adult intends to communicate with her.

In the second experiment, a real adult replaced the video. She only looked either directly at the infant or averted her gaze while singing nursery rhymes. This time, however, her brainwaves could be monitored live to see whether her brainwave patterns were being influenced by the infant’s as well as the other way round.

This time, both infants and adults became more synchronized to each other’s brain activity when mutual eye contact was established. This occurred even though the adult could see the infant at all times, and infants were equally interested in looking at the adult even when she looked away. The researchers say that this shows that brainwave synchronization isn’t just due to seeing a face or finding something interesting, but about sharing an intention to communicate.

To measure infants’ intention to communicate, the researcher measured how many ‘vocalizations’ infants made to the experimenter. As predicted, infants made a greater effort to communicate, making more ‘vocalizations’, when the adult made direct eye contact – and individual infants who made longer vocalizations also had higher brainwave synchrony with the adult.

Dr. Victoria Leong, lead author on the study said: “When the adult and infant are looking at each other, they are signaling their availability and intention to communicate with each other. We found that both adult and infant brains respond to a gaze signal by becoming more in sync with their partner. This mechanism could prepare parents and babies to communicate, by synchronizing when to speak and when to listen, which would also make learning more effective.”

Dr. Sam Wass, last author on the study, said: “We don’t know what it is, yet, that causes this synchronous brain activity. We’re certainly not claiming to have discovered telepathy! In this study, we were looking at whether infants can synchronize their brains to someone else, just as adults can. And we were also trying to figure out what gives rise to the synchrony.

“Our findings suggested eye gaze and vocalizations may both, somehow, play a role. But the brain synchrony we were observing was at such high time-scales – of three to nine oscillations per second – that we still need to figure out how exactly eye gaze and vocalizations create it.”

Source:
http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/eye-contact-with-your-baby-helps-synchronise-your-brainwaves

Journal article:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/11/24/108878

#neuroscience #brainwaves #brainactivity #eyecontact #infants #electricalactivity

Aurora and Manicouagan Crater from the Space Station

Aurora and Manicouagan Crater from the Space Station
How many of these can you find in today's featured photograph: an aurora, airglow, one of the oldest impact craters on the Earth, snow and ice, stars, city lights, and part of the International Space Station? Most of these can be identified by their distinctive colors.

The aurora here appears green at the bottom, red at the top, and is visible across the left of image. Airglow appears orange and can be seen hovering over the curve of the Earth. The circular Manicouagan Crater in Canada, about 100 kilometers across and 200 million years old, is visible toward the lower right and is covered in white snow and ice.

Stars, light in color, dot the dark background of space. City lights appear a bright yellow and dot the landscape. Finally, across the top, part of the International Space Station (ISS) appears mostly tan. The featured image was taken from the ISS in 2012.

Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap180529.html
Image Credit: NASA

#naturalphenomena #NASA #airglow #aurora #science

Thong idea ;)

Thong idea ;)

How Does Magnetic Putty Work?

How Does Magnetic Putty Work?
Magnetic putty becomes magnetic when iron oxide particles are added to silly putty. The iron oxides magnetize the putty making it a million times more fun and entertaining than regular putty. When magnets are within range of the influence of its magnetic field, the putty will slowly swallow them. Because the magnetic field of the putty is strongest at the center of the blob, the magnets are engulfed. The putty slowly sucks magnets in until they reach the strongest point of the magnetic field.

Good to know:
https://nationalmaglab.org/education/magnet-academy/plan-a-lesson/magnetic-putty

Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIVplzQ3xIA

#physics #magneticputty #science #experiments

Spiral minds are harder to twist

Spiral minds are harder to twist
Work by bigblueboo

#math #processing #animations #spirals

Smart people have better connected brains

Smart people have better connected brains
Differences in intelligence have so far mostly been attributed to differences in specific brain regions. However, are smart people’s brains also wired differently to those of less intelligent persons? A study published by researchers from Goethe University Frankfurt (Germany) supports this assumption. In intelligent persons, certain brain regions are more strongly involved in the flow of information between brain regions, while other brain regions are less engaged.

Understanding the foundations of human thought is fascinating for scientists and laypersons alike. Differences in cognitive abilities – and the resulting differences for example in academic success and professional careers – are attributed to a considerable degree to individual differences in intelligence. A study published in “Scientific Reports” shows that these differences go hand in hand with differences in the patterns of integration among functional modules of the brain. Kirsten Hilger, Christian Fiebach and Ulrike Basten from the Department of Psychology at Goethe University Frankfurt combined functional MRI brain scans from over 300 persons with modern graph theoretical network analysis methods to investigate the neurobiological basis of human intelligence.

Already in 2015, the same research group published a meta-study in the journal “Intelligence”, in which they identified brain regions – among them the prefrontal cortex – activation changes of which are reliably associated with individual differences in intelligence. Until recently, however, it was not possible to examine how such ‘intelligence regions’ in the human brain are functionally interconnected.

Earlier this year, the research team reported that in more intelligent persons two brain regions involved in the cognitive processing of task-relevant information (i.e., the anterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortex) are connected more efficiently to the rest of the brain (2017, “Intelligence”). Another brain region, the junction area between temporal and parietal cortex that has been related to the shielding of thoughts against irrelevant information, is less strongly connected to the rest of the brain network. “The different topological embedding of these regions into the brain network could make it easier for smarter persons to differentiate between important and irrelevant information – which would be advantageous for many cognitive challenges,” proposes Ulrike Basten, the study’s principle investigator.

In their current study, the researchers take into account that the brain is functionally organized into modules. “This is similar to a social network which consists of multiple sub-networks (e.g., families or circles of friends). Within these sub-networks or modules, the members of one family are more strongly interconnected than they are with people from other families or circles of friends. Our brain is functionally organized in a very similar way: There are sub-networks of brain regions – modules – that are more strongly interconnected among themselves while they have weaker connections to brain regions from other modules. In our study, we examined whether the role of specific brain regions for communication within and among brain modules varies with individual differences in intelligence, i.e., whether a specific brain region supports the information exchange within their own ‘family’ more than information exchange with other ‘families’, and how this relates to individual differences in intelligence.”

The study shows that in more intelligent persons certain brain regions are clearly more strongly involved in the exchange of information between different sub-networks of the brain in order for important information to be communicated quickly and efficiently. On the other hand, the research team also identified brain regions that are more strongly ‘de-coupled’ from the rest of the network in more intelligent people. This may result in better protection against distracting and irrelevant inputs. “We assume that network properties we have found in more intelligent persons help us to focus mentally and to ignore or suppress irrelevant, potentially distracting inputs,” says Basten. The causes of these associations remain an open question at present. “It is possible that due to their biological predispositions, some individuals develop brain networks that favor intelligent behaviors or more challenging cognitive tasks. However, it is equally as likely that the frequent use of the brain for cognitively challenging tasks may positively influence the development of brain networks. Given what we currently know about intelligence, an interplay of both processes seems most likely.”

Source:
http://www.goethe-university-frankfurt.de/69331994/036

Journal article:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-15795-7

Gif: Brain biology by MIT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOJx8tYlbGo

#intelligence #prefrontalcortex #neuroimaging #braincircuitry #neuroscience

Neuroscience research shows the brain is strobing, not constant

Neuroscience research shows the brain is strobing, not constant
It’s not just our eyes that play tricks on us, but our ears. That’s the finding of a landmark Australian-led collaboration that provides new evidence that oscillations, or ‘strobes’, are a general feature of human perception.

While our conscious experience appears to be continuous, the University of Sydney and Italian universities study suggests that perception and attention are intrinsically rhythmic in nature.
This has profound implications for our understanding of human behavior, how we interact with environment and make decisions.

A paper published in Current Biology provides the important new evidence for the cyclical nature of perception.
3 key findings:

1. auditory perception oscillates over time and peak perception alternates between the ears – which is important for locating events in the environment;
2. auditory decision-making also oscillates; and
3. oscillations are a general feature of perception, not specific to vision.

The work is the result of an Italian-Australian collaboration, involving Professor David Alais, Johahn Leung and Tam Ho of the schools of Psychology and Medical Sciences, University of Sydney; Professor David Burr from the Department of Neuroscience, University of Florence; and Professor Maria Concetta Morrone of the Department of Translational Medicine, University of Pisa.

With a simple experiment, they showed that sensitivity for detecting weak sounds is not constant, but fluctuates rhythmically over time.

It has been known for some years that our sight perception is cyclical but this is the first time it has been demonstrated that hearing is as well.

“These findings that auditory perception also goes through peaks and troughs supports the theory that perception is not passive but in fact our understanding of the world goes through cycles,” said Professor Alais.

“We have suspected for some time that the senses are not constant but are processed via cyclical, or rhythmic functions; these findings lend new weight to that theory.”

These auditory cycles happen at the rate of about six per second. This may seem fast, but not in neuroscience, given that brain oscillations can occur at up to 100 times per second.

“These findings are important as humans make decisions at the rate of about one-sixth of a second, which is in line with these auditory oscillations,” said Professor Alais.

The study found a variation of oscillation between the two ears, first one ear is at peak sensitivity, then the other. The oscillation is so fast that we are normally unaware of it, but can be revealed in experiments using very fine-grained timing.

Why should the brain sample information in this cyclic fashion? Theories abound, but one popular idea - favored by the authors of this study - is that it reflects the action of attention which appears to sample neural activity in rapid bursts.

The scientists are next focusing their attention on perceptions of touch and how this might make use of neural oscillations as part of a goal of characterizing perception in general over all the senses.

“The brain is such a complex ‘machine’ one could say – it is a testament to science that we are starting to make sense of it – but a takeaway could be that there is so much we don’t know,” Professor Alais concludes.

“A decade ago, no one would have thought that perception is constantly strobing – flickering like an old silent movie.“

For the moment, this research shows one thing very clearly: our sensory perception of the world is fundamentally oscillatory, like a strobing light or a wave waxing and waning.

The strobing brain – how it works
When we peruse a scene, not all parts are equally important: some receive more attention than others and are prioritized in processing. This is an effective strategy, concentrating limited cognitive resources on specific items of interest, rather than diluting resources over the entire space.

Similarly, oscillating attention would produce an analogous result over time, with resources concentrated into small temporal epochs instead of being sustained in a uniform but thin allocation.

This strobing approach to attention would bind together relevant information at regular time points and allow new groupings of information to reassemble at other moments.

Source:
https://sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2017/11/17/neuroscience-research-shows-the-brain-is-strobing-not-constant-.html

Journal article:
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)31320-9

#brainoscillations #auditoryperception #attention #neuroscience

Surrealist Eyes

Surrealist Eyes
Eyes and multiplication are definitely Dalinean elements. In 1976, Dali, inspired by an advertisement, created a conceptual architectural project which he transformed into a sculpture in 1980.

#personalnonsense #Dali #art

Milky Way vs Airglow Australis

Milky Way vs Airglow Australis
Captured last week after sunset on a Chilean autumn night, an exceptional airglow floods this allsky view from Las Campanas Observatory. The airglow was so intense it diminished parts of the Milky Way as it arced horizon to horizon above the high Atacama desert. Originating at an altitude similar to aurorae, the luminous airglow is due to chemiluminescence, the production of light through chemical excitation.

Commonly recorded in color by sensitive digital cameras, the airglow emission here is fiery in appearance. It is predominately from atmospheric oxygen atoms at extremely low densities and has often been present during southern hemisphere nights over the last few years. Like the Milky Way, on that dark night the strong airglow was very visible to the eye, but seen without color. Jupiter is brightest celestial beacon though, standing opposite the Sun and near the central bulge of the Milky Way rising above the eastern (top) horizon. The Large and Small Magellanic clouds both shine through the airglow to the lower left of the galactic plane, toward the southern horizon.

Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit & Copyright: Yuri Beletsky (Carnegie Las Campanas Observatory, TWAN)

#space #universe #NASA #MilkyWay #science

Paris is always a good idea! ;)

Paris is always a good idea! ;)

#personalnonsense #Paris

Galaxies in the River

Galaxies in the River
Large galaxies grow by eating small ones. Even our own galaxy practices galactic cannibalism, absorbing small galaxies that get too close and are captured by the Milky Way's gravity. In fact, the practice is common in the universe and illustrated by this striking pair of interacting galaxies from the banks of the southern constellation Eridanus, The River.

Located over 50 million light years away, the large, distorted spiral NGC 1532 is seen locked in a gravitational struggle with dwarf galaxy NGC 1531 (right of center), a struggle the smaller galaxy will eventually lose. Seen edge-on, spiral NGC 1532 spans about 100,000 light-years. Nicely detailed in this sharp image, the NGC 1532/1531 pair is thought to be similar to the well-studied system of face-on spiral and small companion known as M51.

Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit & Copyright: Michel Meunier, Laurent Bernasconi, Janus Team

#space #nasa #galaxies #universe #science

The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.

The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.
On that note, put your grown up pants and start your day...oh, and don't forget to read a little ;)

#personalnonsense

Coronal Hole Facing Earth

Coronal Hole Facing Earth
An extensive equatorial coronal hole has rotated so that it is now facing Earth (May 2-4, 2018). The dark coronal hole extends about halfway across the solar disk. It was observed in a wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light. This magnetically open area is streaming solar wind (i.e., a stream of charged particles released from the sun) into space. When Earth enters a solar wind stream and the stream interacts with our magnetosphere, we often experience nice displays of aurora. We shall see.

Credit: Solar Dynamics Observatory, NASA.
https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/potw/item/898

#NASA #SDO #space #universe #science #sun #coronalhole

Scientists identify mechanism that helps us inhibit unwanted thoughts

Scientists identify mechanism that helps us inhibit unwanted thoughts
Scientists have identified a key chemical within the ‘memory’ region of the brain that allows us to suppress unwanted thoughts, helping explain why people who suffer from disorders such as anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and schizophrenia often experience persistent intrusive thoughts when these circuits go awry.

We are sometimes confronted with reminders of unwanted thoughts — thoughts about unpleasant memories, images or worries. When this happens, the thought may be retrieved, making us think about it again even though we prefer not to. While being reminded in this way may not be a problem when our thoughts are positive, if the topic was unpleasant or traumatic, our thoughts may be very negative, worrying or ruminating about what happened, taking us back to the event.

“Our ability to control our thoughts is fundamental to our wellbeing,” explains Professor Michael Anderson from the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, which recently transferred to the University of Cambridge. “When this capacity breaks down, it causes some of the most debilitating symptoms of psychiatric diseases: intrusive memories, images, hallucinations, ruminations, and pathological and persistent worries. These are all key symptoms of mental illnesses such as PTSD, schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety.”

Professor Anderson likens our ability to intervene and stop ourselves retrieving particular memories and thoughts to stopping a physical action. “We wouldn’t be able to survive without controlling our actions,” he says. “We have lots of quick reflexes that are often useful, but we sometimes need to control these actions and stop them from happening. There must be a similar mechanism for helping us stop unwanted thoughts from occurring.”

A region at the front of the brain known as the prefrontal cortex is known to play a key role in controlling our actions and has more recently been shown to play a similarly important role in stopping our thoughts. The prefrontal cortex acts as a master regulator, controlling other brain regions – the motor cortex for actions and the hippocampus for memories.

In research published in the journal Nature Communications, a team of scientists led by Dr Taylor Schmitz and Professor Anderson used a task known as the ‘Think/No-Think’ procedure to identify a significant new brain process that enables the prefrontal cortex to successfully inhibit our thoughts.

In the task, participants learn to associate a series of words with a paired, but otherwise unconnected, word, for example ordeal/roach and moss/north. In the next stage, participants are asked to recall the associated word if the cue is green or to suppress it if the cue is red; in other words, when shown ‘ordeal’ in red, they are asked to stare at the word but to stop themselves thinking about the associated thought ‘roach’.

Using a combination of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and magnetic resonance spectroscopy, the researchers were able to observe what was happening within key regions of the brain as the participants tried to inhibit their thoughts. Spectroscopy enabled the researchers to measure brain chemistry, and not just brain activity, as is usually done in imaging studies.

Professor Anderson, Dr Schmitz and colleagues showed that the ability to inhibit unwanted thoughts relies on a neurotransmitter – a chemical within the brain that allows messages to pass between nerve cells – known as GABA. GABA is the main ‘inhibitory’ neurotransmitter in the brain, and its release by one nerve cell can suppress activity in other cells to which it is connected. Anderson and colleagues discovered that GABA concentrations within the hippocampus – a key area of the brain involved in memory – predict people’s ability to block the retrieval process and prevent thoughts and memories from returning.

“What’s exciting about this is that now we’re getting very specific,” he explains. “Before, we could only say ‘this part of the brain acts on that part’, but now we can say which neurotransmitters are likely important – and as a result, infer the role of inhibitory neurons – in enabling us to stop unwanted thoughts.”

“Where previous research has focused on the prefrontal cortex – the command centre – we’ve shown that this is an incomplete picture. Inhibiting unwanted thoughts is as much about the cells within the hippocampus – the ‘boots on the ground’ that receive commands from the prefrontal cortex. If an army’s foot-soldiers are poorly equipped, then its commanders’ orders cannot be implemented well.”

The researchers found that even within his sample of healthy young adults, people with less hippocampal GABA (less effective ‘foot-soldiers’) were less able to suppress hippocampal activity by the prefrontal cortex—and as a result much worse at inhibiting unwanted thoughts.

The discovery may answer one of the long-standing questions about schizophrenia. Research has shown that people affected by schizophrenia have ‘hyperactive’ hippocampi, which correlates with intrusive symptoms such as hallucinations. Post-mortem studies have revealed that the inhibitory neurons (which use GABA) in the hippocampi of these individuals are compromised, possibly making it harder for the prefrontal cortex to regulate activity in this structure. This suggests that the hippocampus is failing to inhibit errant thoughts and memories, which may be manifest as hallucinations.

According to Dr Schmitz: “The environmental and genetic influences that give rise to hyperactivity in the hippocampus might underlie a range of disorders with intrusive thoughts as a common symptom.”

In fact, studies have shown that elevated activity in the hippocampus is seen in a broad range of conditions such as PTSD, anxiety and chronic depression, all of which include a pathological inability to control thoughts – such as excessive worrying or rumination.

While the study does not examine any immediate treatments, Professor Anderson believes it could offer a new approach to tackling intrusive thoughts in these disorders. “Most of the focus has been on improving functioning of the prefrontal cortex,” he says, “but our study suggests that if you could improve GABA activity within the hippocampus, this may help people to stop unwanted and intrusive thoughts.”

Source:
http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/scientists-identify-mechanism-that-helps-us-inhibit-unwanted-thoughts

Journal article:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-00956-z

#hippocampus #GABA #prefrontalcortex #PTSD #interneurons #unwantedthoughts #neuroscience

The Red Rectangle Nebula from Hubble

The Red Rectangle Nebula from Hubble
How was the unusual Red Rectangle nebula created? At the nebula's center is an aging binary star system that surely powers the nebula but does not, as yet, explain its colors. The unusual shape of the Red Rectangle is likely due to a thick dust torus which pinches the otherwise spherical outflow into tip-touching cone shapes. Because we view the torus edge-on, the boundary edges of the cone shapes seem to form an X.

The distinct rungs suggest the outflow occurs in fits and starts. The unusual colors of the nebula are less well understood, however, and speculation holds that they are partly provided by hydrocarbon molecules that may actually be building blocks for organic life. The Red Rectangle nebula lies about 2,300 light years away towards the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros).

The nebula is shown here in great detail as recently reprocessed image from Hubble Space Telescope. In a few million years, as one of the central stars becomes further depleted of nuclear fuel, the Red Rectangle nebula will likely bloom into a planetary nebula.

Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit: Hubble, NASA, ESA;
Processing & License: Judy Schmidt

#space #NASA #universe #nebula #Hubble #ESA

Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst

Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst
This book is sort of enciclopedya of human nature, with the earlier chapters focused on the functions of different parts of the human brain and the later chapter focused on this brain's behavioral consequences. Complicated but so addictive.

#personalnonsense #brainfood

The Observable Universe

The Observable Universe
How far can you see? Everything you can see, and everything you could possibly see, right now, assuming your eyes could detect all types of radiations around you -- is the observable universe. In visible light, the farthest we can see comes from the cosmic microwave background, a time 13.8 billion years ago when the universe was opaque like thick fog.

Some neutrinos and gravitational waves that surround us come from even farther out, but humanity does not yet have the technology to detect them. The featured image illustrates the observable universe on an increasingly compact scale, with the Earth and Sun at the center surrounded by our Solar System, nearby stars, nearby galaxies, distant galaxies, filaments of early matter, and the cosmic microwave background.

Cosmologists typically assume that our observable universe is just the nearby part of a greater entity known as "the universe" where the same physics applies. However, there are several lines of popular but speculative reasoning that assert that even our universe is part of a greater multiverse where either different physical constants occur, different physical laws apply, higher dimensions operate, or slightly different-by-chance versions of our standard universe exist.

Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Illustration Credit & License: Wikipedia, Pablo Carlos Budassi

#universe #space #NASA #science

Spacing out after staying up late? Here’s why

Spacing out after staying up late? Here’s why
Ever sleep poorly and then walk out of the house without your keys? Or space out while driving to work and nearly hit a stalled car?

A study led by UCLA’s Dr. Itzhak Fried is the first to reveal how sleep deprivation disrupts brain cells’ ability to communicate with each other. Fried and his colleagues believe that disruption leads to temporary mental lapses that affect memory and visual perception. Their findings are published online by Nature Medicine.

“We discovered that starving the body of sleep also robs neurons of the ability to function properly,” said Fried, the study’s senior author, a professor of neurosurgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and Tel Aviv University. “This leads to cognitive lapses in how we perceive and react to the world around us.”

The international team of scientists studied 12 people who were preparing to undergo surgery at UCLA for epilepsy. The patients had electrodes implanted in their brains in order to pinpoint the origin of their seizures prior to surgery. Because lack of sleep can provoke seizures, patients stay awake all night to speed the onset of an epileptic episode and shorten their hospital stay.

Researchers asked each study participant to categorize a variety of images as quickly as possible. The electrodes recorded the firing of a total of nearly 1,500 brain cells (from all of the participants combined) as the patients responded, and the scientists paid particular attention to neurons in the temporal lobe, which regulates visual perception and memory.

Performing the task grew more challenging as the patients grew sleepier. As the patients slowed down, their brain cells did, too.

“We were fascinated to observe how sleep deprivation dampened brain cell activity,” said lead author Yuval Nir of Tel Aviv University. “Unlike the usual rapid reaction, the neurons responded slowly and fired more weakly, and their transmissions dragged on longer than usual.”

Lack of sleep interfered with the neurons’ ability to encode information and translate visual input into conscious thought.

The same phenomenon can occur when a sleep-deprived driver notices a pedestrian stepping in front of his car.

“The very act of seeing the pedestrian slows down in the driver’s overtired brain,” Fried said. “It takes longer for his brain to register what he’s perceiving.”

The researchers also discovered that slower brain waves accompanied sluggish cellular activity in the temporal lobe and other parts of the brain.

“Slow, sleep-like waves disrupted the patients’ brain activity and performance of tasks,” Fried said. “This phenomenon suggests that select regions of the patients’ brains were dozing, causing mental lapses, while the rest of the brain was awake and running as usual.”

The study’s findings raise questions about how society views sleep deprivation.

“Severe fatigue exerts a similar influence on the brain to drinking too much,” Fried said. “Yet no legal or medical standards exist for identifying overtired drivers on the road the same way we target drunk drivers.”

In future research, Fried and his colleagues plan to more deeply explore the benefits of sleep, and to unravel the mechanism responsible for the cellular glitches that precede mental lapses.

Previous studies have tied sleep deprivation to a heightened risk of depression, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and stroke. Research has also shown that medical school residents who work long shifts without sleep are more prone to make errors in patient care.

Source:
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/spacing-out-after-staying-up-late

#sleep #sleepdeprivation #braincells #neuroscience #research

Blood-Clotting Protein Prevents Repair in the Brain

Blood-Clotting Protein Prevents Repair in the Brain
Picture a bare wire, without its regular plastic coating. It’s exposed to the elements and risks being degraded. And, without insulation, it may not conduct electricity as well as a coated wire. Now, imagine this wire is inside your brain.

That’s what happens in many diseases of the nervous system, such as multiple sclerosis (MS), spinal cord injuries, stroke, neonatal brain injuries, and even Alzheimer’s disease.

Much like that bare wire, the nerve fibers in the brain lose their protective coating, called myelin, and become extremely vulnerable. This leaves the nerve cells exposed to their environment and reduces their ability to transmit signals quickly, resulting in impaired cognition, sensation, and movement.

In disease, the brain seems to activate mechanisms to repair myelin, but cannot complete the process. For years, scientists have been trying to understand why these repair mechanisms are halted, as overcoming this obstacle holds great potential for treating disabling neurological diseases.

Katerina Akassoglou, PhD, and her research team at the Gladstone Institutes uncovered a promising new therapeutic strategy. Surprisingly, it’s associated with a protein in the blood.

They found that when fibrinogen (a blood-clotting protein) leaks into the central nervous system, it stops brain cells from producing myelin and, as a result, prevents repair.

The Culprit Is a Protein in the Blood
The cells needed to repair myelin already exist in the central nervous system. They are adult stem cells that travel to sites of damage, where they mature into myelin-producing cells. However, in many neurological diseases, this process is blocked. This is why the brain is unable to repair damaged myelin.

In an effort to understand why the brain can’t repair itself, scientists have focused on understanding what happens inside the cell. Akassoglou took a different approach.

“We thought it might be important to look instead at the toxic environment outside the cell, where blood proteins accumulate” said Akassoglou, senior investigator at Gladstone, professor of neurology at UC San Francisco (UCSF), and senior author of a study published by the scientific journal Neuron. “We realized that targeting the blood protein fibrinogen could open up the possibility for new types of therapies to promote brain repair.”

Akassoglou has spent much of her career studying the role of the blood-brain barrier and fibrinogen in neurological diseases. She previously showed that when blood leaks into the brain, fibrinogen causes inflammation by acting in brain immune cells, which can lead to brain damage.

In the new study, Akassoglou and her team uncovered another, yet unexpected effect of blood leaking into the brain.

“We found that fibrinogen stops adult stem cells from transforming into the mature cells that produce myelin,” explained first author of the study Mark Petersen, MD, a visiting scientist in Akassoglou’s laboratory and an assistant adjunct professor of pediatrics at UCSF. “This blockade could be harmful for regeneration in the brain.”

New Target Could Help Treat Multiple Sclerosis and Other Diseases
The regeneration of myelin in the brain is critical for diseases like MS, stroke, neonatal brain injury, and Alzheimer’s disease. Now, the scientific community might get closer to making that happen.

“Repairing myelin by eliminating the toxic effects of vascular damage in the brain is a new frontier in disease therapeutics,” said Lennart Mucke, MD, director of the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease and professor of neurology at UCSF. “This study could change the way we think about how to repair the brain.”

Researchers can now look for new ways to target fibrinogen as a way to restore regenerative functions in the central nervous system. This could lead to novel therapies to help patients with MS and many other diseases associated with myelin.

Source:
https://gladstone.org/about-us/press-releases/blood-clotting-protein-prevents-repair-brain

Journal article:
https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(17)30976-5

#fibrinogen #myelin #MS #inflammation #stemcells #neuroscience

A group of Victorians doing the cakewalk, c.1890.

A group of Victorians doing the cakewalk, c.1890.
A bit bizarre if you ask me ;)

Photo via The Sun
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3705836/victorians-having-a-laugh-in-photos/

#history #victorians

Learning how to manage your mind can help build resilience, overcome emotional difficulties and enable...

Learning how to manage your mind can help build resilience, overcome emotional difficulties and enable self-development. Harnessing the correct tools and methods can lead to a more fulfilling and productive life.

#harvestyourmind #personalnonsense

Lack of oxygen, not blood flow, delays brain maturation in preterm infants

Lack of oxygen, not blood flow, delays brain maturation in preterm infants
Premature infants are at risk for a broad spectrum of life-long cognitive and learning disabilities. Historically, these conditions were believed to be the result of lack of blood flow to the brain. However, a new published in the Journal of Neuroscience, finds that while limited blood flow may contribute, major disturbances are actually caused by low oxygen.

This research challenges more than a decade of scientific study and clinical understanding of brain development in preterm children, said the study’s principal investigator Stephen Back, M.D., Ph.D., Clyde and Elda Munson Professor of Pediatric Research and Pediatrics, OHSU School of Medicine, OHSU Doernbecher.

“Previously, we thought lack of blood flow was causing preterm brain cells to die. Instead, these critically important cells simply fail to develop normally. This finding creates an opportunity to determine ways to restore oxygen loss and potentially reduce life-long impacts of preterm survivors.”

Utilizing a preterm sheep model, Back and his team analyzed the response of fetal subplate neurons – cells that play a critical role in regulating preterm brain function and connectivity – to disturbances of brain oxygenation. When the developing brain was exposed to lower than normal rates of oxygen for as short as 25 minutes, subplate neurons showed major long-term disturbances just one month following exposure.

“This brief exposure to low oxygen occurs frequently in preterm babies receiving care in a neonatal intensive care unit,” said Back. “And this result better explains the long-term complications that these preterm babies sustain as they grow older, which include significant challenges with learning, memory and attention.”

Although additional research is needed to determine the exact developmental timeframes for potential injury due to oxygen loss in infants, as well as the optimal concentration of oxygen necessary for early intervention therapies, Back believes these findings suggest a need to re-evaluate current practices in intensive care settings.

“Given this new range of opportunity to promote brain repair, clinicians must critically rethink how to interact with, stimulate and handle preterm babies during intensive care treatment. This will help to better manage transient low-oxygen states and determine what the preterm brain can and cannot tolerate.”

Journal article:
http://www.jneurosci.org/content/early/2017/10/31/JNEUROSCI.2396-17.2017

Source:
https://news.ohsu.edu/2017/11/02/lack-of-oxygen-not-blood-flow-delays-brain-maturation-in-preterm-infants

#prematurebabies #hypoxia #ischemia #brainoxygenation #brainfunction #neuroscience

Fantastic journey: how newborn neurons find their proper place in the brain

Fantastic journey: how newborn neurons find their proper place in the brain
One of the most hopeful discoveries of modern neuroscience is firm proof that the human brain is not static following birth. Rather, it is continually renewing itself, via a process called postnatal neurogenesis—literally, the birth of new neurons. It begins not long after birth and continues into old age. There is some evidence that when people respond to depression treatment, be it a pill or talk therapy, it has something to do with the wiring up of new neurons.

For reasons still not understood, only two parts of the human brain receive replenishments of neurons postnatally. One is a section of a tiny seahorse-shaped structure called the hippocampus, central in memory and learning. The other is the olfactory bulb, located in a small patch of tissue inside the nose, which receives signals from the environment and helps make them intelligible so they can serve as a basis for action—for instance, to recoil from curdled milk or veer from a stinking skunk.

In the Journal of Cell Biology, Professor Linda Van Aelst and colleagues at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) describe for the first time (in mice) how baby neurons—precursors called neuroblasts, generated from a permanent pocket of stem cells in a brain area called the V-SVZ—make an incredible journey from their place of birth through a special tunnel called the RMS to their target destination in the olfactory bulb. They travel as far as 8 mm, “a huge distance, when you consider how tiny the mouse brain is,” Van Aelst says.

The journey is made possible by two forces, one pulling from the front, the other pushing from behind. A single protein called DOCK7 helps to orchestrate these two steps. Ahead of the newborn neuron’s soma, or cell body, is a threadlike projection called a process. It stretches forward through the tunnel, guided by various signals. At the same time, the cell body, lagging behind, is powered forward by the activation of tiny molecular motors that push it from the rear. Multiple cells migrate together, one virtually on top of another, somewhat in the manner of a group of tiny worms inching forward by morphing the shape of their bodies.

Source:
https://www.cshl.edu/fantastic-journey-team-uncovers-mechanism-used-newborn-neurons-find-proper-place-brain/

Journal article:
http://jcb.rupress.org/content/216/12/4313

Image: Neurons in the making—called neuroblasts—migrate from deep within the mouse brain through a tunnel to positions in the olfactory bulb. How they do so—seeming to creep and crawl like inchworms—is the subject of new findings from the lab of Professor Linda Van Aelst of CSHL

#neurogenesis #neuroblasts #DOCK7 #olfactorybulb #neuroscience

What are the Universe’s Most Powerful Particle Accelerators?

What are the Universe’s Most Powerful Particle Accelerators?
Every second, every square meter of Earth’s atmosphere is pelted by thousands of high-energy particles traveling at nearly the speed of light. These zippy little assailants are called cosmic rays, and they’ve been puzzling scientists since they were first discovered in the early 1900s. One of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope’s top priority missions has been to figure out where they come from.

Cosmic rays are particles that mostly come from outside our solar system — which means they’re some of the only interstellar matter we can study — although the Sun also produces some. Cosmic rays hit our atmosphere and break down into secondary cosmic rays, most of which disperse quickly in the atmosphere, although a few do make it to Earth’s surface.

Cosmic rays aren’t dangerous to those of us who spend our lives within Earth’s atmosphere. But if you spend a lot of time in orbit or are thinking about traveling to Mars, you need to plan how to protect yourself from the radiation caused by cosmic rays.

Cosmic rays are subatomic particles — smaller particles that make up atoms. Most of them (99%) are nuclei of atoms like hydrogen and helium stripped of their electrons. The other 1% are lone electrons. When cosmic rays run into molecules in our atmosphere, they produce secondary cosmic rays, which include even lighter subatomic particles.

Most cosmic rays reach the same amount of energy a small particle accelerator could produce. But some zoom through the cosmos at energies 40 million times higher than particles created by the world’s most powerful man-made accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider.

So where do cosmic rays come from? We should just be able to track them back to their source, right? Not exactly. Any time they run into a strong magnetic field on their way to Earth, they get deflected and bounce around like a game of cosmic pinball. So there’s no straight line to follow back to the source. Most of the cosmic rays from a single source don’t even make it to Earth for us to measure. They shoot off in a different direction while they’re pin balling.

In 1949 Enrico Fermi — an Italian-American physicist, pioneer of high-energy physics and Fermi satellite namesake — suggested that cosmic rays might accelerate to their incredible speeds by ricocheting around inside the magnetic fields of interstellar gas clouds. And in 2013, the Fermi satellite showed that the expanding clouds of dust and gas produced by supernovas are a source of cosmic rays.

When a star explodes in a supernova, it produces a shock wave and rapidly expanding debris. Particles trapped by the supernova remnant magnetic field bounce around wildly.

Every now and then, they cross the shock wave and their energy ratchets up another notch. Eventually they become energetic enough to break free of the magnetic field and zip across space at nearly the speed of light — some of the fastest-traveling matter in the universe.

How can we track them back to supernovas when they don’t travel in a straight line?
We use something that does travel in a straight line — gamma rays (actual rays of light this time, on the more energetic end of the electromagnetic spectrum).

When the particles get across the shock wave, they interact with non-cosmic-ray particles in clouds of interstellar gas. Cosmic ray electrons produce gamma rays when they pass close to an atomic nucleus. Cosmic ray protons, on the other hand, produce gamma rays when they run into normal protons and produce another particle called a pion which breaks down into two gamma rays.

The proton- and electron-produced gamma rays are slightly different. Fermi data taken over four years showed that most of the gamma rays coming from some supernova remnants have the energy signatures of cosmic ray protons knocking into normal protons. That means supernova remnants really are powerful particle accelerators, creating a lot of the cosmic rays that we see!

Interesting article and info via NASA
http://nasa.tumblr.com

References:
https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/sciencecasts/mystery-of-high-energy-cosmic-rays
https://www.nasa.gov/content/fermi-gamma-ray-space-telescope

#nasa #space #fermi #gammaray #cosmic #spacetelescope #cosmicray #science