Seminar Papers
The project, which coordinated by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) and which is one part of the project European Metrology Research Programme (EMRP), researched about whether people are affected by inaudible sound or not. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the researchers could find that some area of the brain activates when infra/ultrasound is heard (above image). People can think that they couldn’t hear infra/ultrasound. However from the result of the research, we could find that those inaudible sound can affect people.
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Electrophysiological recordings in the medial temporal lobe could identify the changes of the memory formulation in the corresponding brain regions. For examples, “Clint Eastwood” neurons/cell in this regions are also firing for the same person with different backgrounds (which is a new memory formation).
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/07/science/scientists-see-neurons-change-as-memories-form.html
The researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine found that between remote brain regions, there is genetic underpinnings. It shows that cognitive operation isn’t occur in individual brain region. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), they narrowed their focus into four functional networks. After that they looked at gene-expression profiles. Therefore from the gene activity, the researchers could find that the network-connectivity strength is shown in genetic-variant profiles of 136 genes.
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The researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, were deduced the human thinking process using simple learning tasks. They used functional magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI) to find some activation in the brain. For the participants, the researchers taught them eight different animals. The participants learned about the diet and habits of the animals. Using fMRI, the researcher found brain region which regarding to ‘habitat’ and ‘diet’ respectively. ‘Habit’ regions shows the storing part of new information about where the animals lived, and ‘diet’ regions shows storing part of newly learned knowledge about animals. This research could apply to objects except abstract thoughts. Therefore it could be a help to figure out the systematic learning processes of human brain.
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Matthew Lieberman, a UCLA professor, showed the human brain is preparing to focus on the other people, during resting. The experiment is occurred with three tasks. First task is pairs of 40 pictures, with person’s mental state captions. Second task is identical images with the first task, and it also shows the behavior captions of the person in the picture. The last third task was the images with simple mathematical equations. The result was, the same region of the brain activates when the subject is watching the first task figure, and when the subject is resting. However the region wasn’t activated during second and third task. Also the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex of the participants was activated right before the task, during resting. In this case, the participants judge the figure faster, and it occurs only in the the first task. The last finding in this study was, the subjects who have special features of autism spectrum disorder, there are less activity in dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, and they judge slower in first task. Finally, from this study, researcher could find that the brain works during resting for preparing to concentrate on the other people.
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http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-05-resting-brains-social.html
In spoken language and structure of human speech, speech timing is important elements. To understand speech, brain need to interpret the phonemes, syllables and words. Therefore the brain need to take shortcuts in processing the sounds.
The “speech quilts”, which making a new sound by cutting and reassembling 30-960-millisecond chunks of the recorded sounds, was used in the study. The researchers also used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine to check the brain activation during giving the new sounds to subjects. Before this study, superior temporal sulcus (STS) was known as the region that integrates auditory and other sensory information. However, from the experiment, the researchers found the brain region, the STS, highly activated. It shows that STS is concerning with time structure in speech. For the future study, researchers plan to study whether the activation of STS in familiar speech is similar to unfamiliar speech.
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University of Michigan Medical School and Depression Center and their colleagues studied women whom had depression or bipolar disorder with healthy women. They were tested cognitive control task, which certain letters show up briefly on a screen in random series. The result was the group with depression or bipolar disorder shows poor performance on the test. By brain scanning, the researcher found the different activation level in the right posterior parietal cortex, which help controlling execution function, in each groups; healthy group, depression group, and bipolar disorder group. The depression group shows higher level than the healthy group, and the bipolar disorder group shows lower level than healthy group. From this research, Kelly Rayn, the lead author of the study, said that they showed mood disorders are shared with cognitive dysfunction, and they hope that this study will help other researchers for further study.
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Figure description from the news: Todd Richards demonstrates the fiber-optic pen used in the study while inside the fMRI scanner.
University of Washington researcher studied about whether dyslexia and dysgraphia disabilities are different. They used a fiber-optic pen, which records the writing of participant in real time while taking functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans. For the study, there were three groups of participants, 17 children with dyslexia, 14 children with dysgraphia, and 9 children of typical language learners. The task was writing the next alphabet after the showing letter, writing missing letter, resting, and planing a text about astronauts. The result showed the different connections and patterns of white matter and gray matter, between dyslexia group and the dysgraphia group.
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Babies were considered that they don’t feel pain. However in 1987, there was an experiment concerning with the pain of baby, which changed clinical practice. For pain, the experiment compared the outcome of the two groups of baby. One group received a muscle relaxants, and the other group didn’t receive a muscle relaxants. The result was the group, which got muscle relaxants, showed a better outcome. After this study, currently Slater and her colleagues studied of the babies pain by using MRI. They compared pain region of the brain of adults and babies. From MRI scans, they found that the region of pain activation of brain in adults and babies was similar.
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You can see the activation of anterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortex, when the brain experience suffering from physical or social. However, there are no localized center of pain, but it spreads to multiple regions. Some study regards the region of the pain as blanketing effect, and takes it to further research concerned with positive emotion. Based on the evidence of acetaminophen, which wipe out either negative feelings and emotional sensitivity, Way and his colleagues did two experiments. First is showing a set of images for two group; one group took a Tylenol pill, and the other group took a placebo. The participant has to rate the photos. The score was related to negative and positive emotional reaction. The result of this experiment was, the group of acetaminophen shows weaker emotional reaction than the other placebo group.
The researchers thought that the result wasn’t from the overlapping the brain which governing pain, so they managed another experiment. They proceeded the experiment same as previous one, except the response how the figure seemed blue. In this test, there are no effect concerned blue. Therefore, for the final result they found, “acetaminophen reduced neural responses to social rejection in brain regions previously associated with distress caused by social pain and the affective component of physical pain” they said.
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http://www.medicaldaily.com/acetaminophen-tylenol-also-dulls-emotions-better-or-worse-329178