Seminar Papers
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
Brett Foster (a postdoctoral research fellow at Stanford University, told FoxNews.com) and colleagues studied about the activating area of the brain, when doing a cognitive task. The brain region they studied, were angular gyrus and the posterior cingulate cortex, which comprise default mode network (which the Stanford researchers call). It is difficult to study the space by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans. Therefore, the researchers used intracranial electrophysiology to study.
The researchers recruited three patients. The patients have frequent epileptic seizures, and they are required to record their brain activity. Also the location of recording was default mode network. Researchers asked them some questions of personal and non-personal.
The result of the brain activation order was, the vision centers, the angular gyrus and posterior cingulate cortex, the decision centers of the brans, and the motor area. From this result, the authors said that the network they found, could be interesting to investigate some other research.
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Brain-Wide Association Analysis(BWAS) is the method developed by researchers at the University of Warwick. It shows panoramic views of the brain, and it can help researchers to study with 3D model. By using BWAS, we can compare all the connectivity between whole brain voxels. Using BWAS method and fMRI data, the researchers analyzed autistic and non-autistic brain. They checked the part of the voxel in the autistic brain, whether it shows stronger or weaker than the non-autistic brain. For the result, they found some key systems. One is the temporal lobe visual cortex with reduced cortical functional connectivity, and the other one is related to reduced cortical functional connectivity.
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http://www.science20.com/news_articles/autistic_and_nonautistic_brain_differences_isolated-154156
By scanning people’s brain when they make decisions, scientist discovered that stress or emotion involved in in brain can cause thinking pattern change. In calm state, frontal lobes of our brains guide slow, rational thinking; “cold cognition”. On the other hand, people get stress or anger, even love, impulsive “hot cognition” decisions are made by the emotionally-driven limbic system and amygdala, which hijacks information before it’s processed the more logical frontal lobes.
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http://blogs.wsj.com/experts/2015/03/23/the-neuroscience-behind-hot-headed-emails/
There are two theories of consciousness: focal and global. Focal theories argue that there are specific areas of the brain for generating consciousness. However global theories contend that there are large-scale brain changes in activity. To adjudicate between those theories, the research used graph theory analysis.
In this research, researchers recruited 24 members of the university community for a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment. They checked the participant’s respond of the trials and their confidence of the answer. The trials was treated as “aware” and “unaware”.
From the research, ’no one area or network of areas of the brain stood out as particularly more connected during awareness of the target; the whole brain appeared to become functionally more connected following reports of awareness'.
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We can use brain scans to many ways. It could be used for neuromarketing, checking the location of the brain function, and so on. In this article, they are focused on the neuromarketing. For an example, they talked about the beverage Coca-Cola and Pepsi. There are no explanation about how the advertising campaigns changes the perception of the drink of people. However, we can find that the brain region of memory and the hippocampus activate in case of the Coca-Cola, when the subjects know what they were drinking.
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Nina Kraus at Northwestern university and her colleagues showed connection between music and education in her research. She said it is because of overlap between neural circuits dedicated to speech and music, and the distributed network of cognitive, sersorimotor, and reward circuits engaged during music making.
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Neuroplasticity, in the article, is the brain to change its structure and how it works in response to mental activity and experience. The article shows the research about the neuroplasticity, that brain can overcome the pain and untreatable illnesses. One of the instance is the patients, who suffered from chronic pain. The patient treated some visualization exercises for brain overpower, and the pain disappeared.
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