Video of the Day - Brain Study: "Use It or Lose It"

New research is changing the understanding of the relationship between getting older and keeping the mind healthy. The key - according to scientists - is exercise. Mental exercise.

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Foundation Awards $1.9 Million for Development of Non-Invasive Neuroimaging Techniques

The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research awarded approximately $1.9 million total to six teams working to develop neuroimaging technologies that would allow scientists to non-invasively visualize the clumping of the alpha-synuclein protein in the living human brain. Such technologies would dramatically accelerate research into the cause, progression and treatment of Parkinson's, says the foundation, named for the famed actor who suffers from the illness.

Investigators could more accurately identify individuals with Parkinson's as well as better characterize disease pathology and relate it to clinical measures of onset and progression. There is also growing interest in therapeutics that directly target alpha-synuclein; hence, a non-invasive imaging tool would be a useful therapeutic response marker for drug makers wishing to test biological impact of potentially disease-modifying drugs. Such tools would have a huge impact on clinical trial designs, allowing for more accurate patient selection and clearer trial outcome measures, the foundation says.

This program was funded with a lead gift from The Edmond J. Safra Foundation, which has been one of the most steadfast supporters of The Michael J. Fox Foundation since its inception, the Fox foundation says.

The Fox foundation says that as with all of its grants, full funding is dependent on the achievement of predetermined, specific milestones and on researchers' agreement to make the results of their work available to the Parkinson's research community.

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Video of the Day: Honey, I Love You With All My Medial Insula

If that special someone makes your heart go pitter-patter, you should see what's happening with your medial insula, anterior cingulate and hippocampus.

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Internal Choices Are Weaker Than Those Dictated by Outside World, Scientists Say

The underlying sense of being in control of our own actions is challenged by new research from University College London (UCL) which demonstrates that the choices we make internally are weak and easily overridden compared to when we are told which choice to make.

The research, which is published today in Cerebral Cortex, is one of the first neuroscientific studies to look at changing one's mind in situations where the initial decision was one's own 'free choice'. Free choices can be defined as actions occurring when external cues are largely absent – for example, deciding which dish to choose from a restaurant menu.

The researchers asked study participants to choose which of two buttons they would press in response to a subsequent signal, while their brain activity was recorded using EEG (electroencephalogram). Some choices were made freely by the volunteers and other choices were instructed by arrows on a screen in front of them. The volunteers' choices were occasionally interrupted by a symbol asking them to change their mind, after they had made their choice, but before they had actually pressed the button.

First author Stephen Fleming, UCL Institute of Neurology, says: "When people had chosen for themselves which action to make, we found that the brain activity involved in changing one's mind, or reprogramming these 'free' choices was weak, relative to reprogramming of choices that were dictated by an external stimulus. This suggests that the brain is very flexible when changing a free choice – rather like a spinning coin, a small nudge can push it one way or the other very easily.

"The implication is that, despite our feelings of being in control, our own internal choices are flexible compared to those driven by external stimuli, such as a braking in response to a traffic light. This flexibility might be important - in a dynamic world, we need to be able to change our plans when necessary."

Patrick Haggard, UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, adds: "Our study has two implications for our understanding of human volition. First, our brains contain a mechanism to go back and change our mind about our choices, after a choice is made but before the action itself. Our internal decisions are not set in stone, but can be re-evaluated right up to the last moment. Second, changing an internal choice in this way seems to be easier than changing a choice guided by external instructions.

"We often think about our own internal decisions as having the strength of conviction, but our results suggest that the brain is smart enough to make us flexible about what we want. The ability to flexibly adjust our decisions about what we do in the current situation is a major component of intelligence, and has a clear survival value."

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That Gut feeling May Actually Reflect Reliable Memory

You know the feeling. You make a decision you're certain is merely a "lucky guess."

A new study from Northwestern University offers precise electrophysiological evidence that such decisions may sometimes not be guesswork after all.

The research utilizes the latest brain-reading technology to point to the surprising accuracy of memories that can't be consciously accessed.

During a special recognition test, guesses turned out to be as accurate or more accurate than when study participants thought they consciously remembered.

"We may actually know more than we think we know in everyday situations, too," says Ken Paller, professor of psychology at Northwestern. "Unconscious memory may come into play, for example, in recognizing the face of a perpetrator of a crime or the correct answer on a test. Or the choice from a horde of consumer products may be driven by memories that are quite alive on an unconscious level."

The study links lucky guesses to valid memories and suggests that people need to be more receptive to multiple types of knowledge, Paller says.

Paller and Joel Voss, who received his Ph.D. at Northwestern and is now at the Beckman Institute, are co-investigators of the study. "An Electrophysiological Signature of Unconscious Recognition Memory" will be published online Feb. 8 by the journal Nature Neuroscience.

During the first part of the memory test, study participants were shown a series of colorful kaleidoscope images that flashed on a computer screen. Half of the images were viewed with full attention as participants tried to memorize them.

While viewing each of the other images, they heard a spoken number, such as 3, 8 or 4, which they had to keep in mind until the next trial, when they indicated whether it was odd or even. On every trial they had to listen to a new number and press a button to complete the number task.

In other words, they could focus on memorizing half of the images but were greatly distracted from memorizing the others.

A short time later, they viewed pairs of similar kaleidoscope images in a recognition test.

"Remarkably, people were more accurate in selecting the old image when they had been distracted than when they had paid full attention," Paller says. "They also were more accurate when they claimed to be guessing than when they registered some familiarity for the image."

Splitting attention during a memory test usually makes memory worse. "But our research showed that even when people weren't paying as much attention, their visual system was storing information quite well," Paller says.

When implicit recognition took place, EEG signals were recorded from a set of electrodes placed on each person's head. The brain waves were distinct from those associated with conscious memory experiences. A unique signal of implicit recognition was seen a quarter of a second after study participants saw each old image.

The findings include memory effects and brain-wave effects. The memory effects with kaleidoscopes were found in two groups of 24 people each (published in a prior paper: Voss & Paller, 2008). The brain-wave effects were found in one group of 12 subjects. Both memory and brain-wave effects were also seen in pilot studies not reported in either paper.

"The novel results show that when people try to remember, they can know more than they think they know," Paller says.

The study builds upon a body of research that shows that amnesia victims with severe memory problems often have strong implicit memories.

The study suggests that we shouldn't rely only on conscious memory, Paller concludes. "It suggests that we also need to develop our intuitive nature and creativity. Intuition may have an important role in finding answers to all sorts of problems in everyday life -- including big ones such as our ailing economy."

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Direct Recording Shows Brain Signal Persists Even in Dreamless Sleep

Neuroscientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have taken one of the first direct looks at one of the human brain's most fundamental "foundations": a brain signal that never switches off and may support many cognitive functions.

The results, appearing online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are an important step forward for efforts to outline what neuroscientists call the functional architecture of the brain. Better understanding of this architecture will aid efforts to treat brain injury and mental disorders, the researchers say.

Although the brain's different specialized regions can be considered as a collection of physical structures, functional architecture instead focuses on metaphorical structures formed by brain processes and interactions among different brain regions. The "foundation" highlighted in the new study is a low-frequency signal created by neuronal activity throughout the brain. This signal doesn't switch off even in dreamless sleep, possibly to help maintain basic structure and facilitate offline housekeeping activities.

"A different, more labile and higher-frequency signal known as the gamma frequency activity has been the focus of much brain research in recent years," says first author Biyu He, a graduate student. "But we found that signal loses its large-scale structure in deep sleep, while the low-frequency signal does not, suggesting that the low-frequency signal may be more fundamental."

"What we've been finding is reorienting the way we think about how the brain works," says senior author Dr. Marcus Raichle, M.D., professor of radiology, of neurology and of neurobiology. "We're starting to see the brain as being in the prediction business, with ongoing, organized carrier frequencies within the systems of the brain that keep them prepared for the work they need to do to perform mental tasks."

Neurologists have already spent many years exploring the upper levels of the brain's functional architecture. In these studies, researchers typically ask volunteers to perform specific mental tasks as their brains are scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Such "goal-oriented" tasks might include looking for or studying a visual stimulus, moving an arm or leg, reading a word or listening for a sound. As the subjects perform these tasks, the scans reveal increases in blood flow to different parts of the brain, which researchers take as indications that the brain areas are contributing to the mental task.

In the past decade, though, scientists have realized that deeper structures underlie goal-oriented mental processes. These underlying brain processes continue to occur even when subjects aren't consciously using their brain to do anything, and the energies that the brain puts into them seem to be much greater than those used for goal-oriented tasks.

"The brain consumes a tremendous amount of the body's energy resources—it's only 2 percent of body weight, but it uses about 20 percent of the energy we take in," says Raichle. "When we started to ask where all those resources were being spent, we found that the goal-oriented tasks we had studied previously only accounted for a tiny portion of that energy budget. The rest appears to go into activities and processes that maintain a state of readiness in the brain."

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Use of Techniques From Neuroscience in Today's Marketing

Using knowledge from neurosciences to market to consumers is nothing new but scanning consumers' brains to gauge their response to commercials is gaining in popularity.

Esteban Ribero, senior strategic planner at Lapiz says there are dangers in looking for answers to consumer behaviors using these techniques but there is tremendous value in using them as part of the overall strategic planning process. In his presentation to account planners at the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies 23rd Semi-Annual Conference, Ribero shared with an audience of account planners that opening the black box - the brain - is not the ultimate solution to effectively
market to consumers.

Account planners seek to understand the motivation behind consumer behavior and use insight and consumer perspective to provide the foundation for innovative concepts and creative execution. Borrowing the techniques and tools from neuroscientists to get to know the consumer better may offer some direction but it's not that easy, according to Ribero. "Scanning consumers' brainwaves while they watch ads and discuss concepts is a new fad and some are suggesting it is a way to bypass focus groups," Ribero says. "I want to open up the debate for account planners who are searching for the truth. I think there are huge dangers in basing our campaigns
solely on this type of information."

Ribero's presentation and interactive discussion with account planners from the Hispanic marketing industry was part of AHAA's skill-building workshops planned to challenge creative thinking and approaches. The conference was designed to spark ideas and debate, and maybe create a little controversy according to Jackie Bird, AHAA chairwoman and president of Wing Latino.

"It is imperative that we keep on top of trends that will continue to propel our industry forward," Bird says. "Our planners, and frankly all of the professionals in our business, need to understand new tools so they can use them effectively in delivering exceptional work to our clients. We can't rely on what's been done in the past to communicate with Latino consumers of today. It takes bold thinking and a willingness to listen to, and experiment with, new ideas to succeed as a professional, as a Latino agency and as an industry."

Ribero wants planners to be better informed about neuromarketing. Rather than asking consumers to identify the reasons for their behaviors, Ribero believes planners should infer that by studying humans and understanding why humans like certain things. "Humans behave the way they do but they don't know why," Ribero says. "And we won't get to the truth by asking them. By studying, reading and observing human behavior we will become better planners. As we become more strategic, our brands will become more connected with their consumers and not just sell stuff but fulfill
desires and needs that we can help them identify."

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Why We Learn From Our Mistakes

Psychologists from the University of Exeter have identified an 'early warning signal' in the brain that helps us avoid repeating previous mistakes. Published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, their research identifies, for the first time, a mechanism in the brain that reacts in just 0.1 seconds to things that have resulted in us making errors in the past.

Previous research has shown that we learn more about things for which we initially make incorrect predictions than for things for which our initial predictions are correct. The element of surprise in discovering we are wrong is conducive to learning, but this research is the first to show how amazingly rapid our brain’s response can be. This discovery was made possible through the use of electrophysiological recordings, which allow researchers to detect processes in the brain at the instant they occur.

'It's a bit of a cliché to say that we learn more from our mistakes than our successes,' says psychologist Andy Wills of the University of Exeter, 'but for the first time we’ve established just how quickly the brain works to help us avoid repeating errors. By monitoring activity in the brain as it occurs, we were able to identify the moment at which this mechanism kicks in.’

For this study, a group of volunteers took part in a computerised task, which involved them making predictions based on information they were given. New information was then introduced, which made many of their predictions incorrect, so they needed to learn from this in order to avoid repeating the error. While they did this, their brain activity was recorded via 58 electrodes placed on their scalp. The researchers identified activity in the lower temporal region of the brain, the area closest to the temples. This occurred almost immediately after the person was presented with the visual object that had previously made them make an error, and before there was time for conscious consideration.

Most previous research in this field has focused on the frontal lobes of the brain, which are the areas associated with sophisticated human thought processes such as planning, analysis and conscious decision-making. The lower temporal region of the brain, which was the focus for this activity, is responsible for the recognition of visual objects.

’This brain signal could help us in many different kinds of situations,’ says Wills. ‘For example, when driving abroad the rules of the road sometimes differ. We may make a mistake the first time we misinterpret a situation, for example not realising that in the States cars can turn right on a red light. The next time we’re driving out there and see a red light, this early warning signal will immediately alert us to our previous mistake to prevent us from repeating it.’


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