Dreams are random firings of neurons

the about.com site has a featured article today regarding Freud and his dreams.

Let's get a few things straight:

1. The interpretation of dreams has no reliability or validity as an assessment or intervention technique
2. Dreams are just random firings of neurons.

Our brains operate on a constructivist model, where it seeks out to organize disparate events and happenings into a coherent whole. See for example many of the conspiracy theories from JFK to a second shooter in the VA Tech shooting.

So, if someone is made to visualize certain people and hear certain voices in their sleep due to random firingsof neurons, the brain will seek to organize it into a whole, a story, a gestalt. The story is for all intents and purposes, meaningless.

Brain Pacemakers aricle in Wired magazine

Wired magazine this month has an article written by Steven Gulie, a programmer for Apple. Gulie wrote a first hand account of his brain pacemaker operation and subsequent "tunings" in order to help alleviate his Parkinson's Disorder.

A common purpose of modern brain implants and the focus of much current research is establishing a biomedical prosthesis circumventing areas in the brain, which became dysfunctional (in Gulie's case, the area which was targeted was the subthalamic nucleus, which normally produces dopamine). What was described was a process of inserting two filaments (deep brain stimulator lead wires) which were connected (with some peripheral wires) to a pacemaker surgically implanted into the person's collar.

The pacemaker then releases low volatge shocks which stimulate specific parts of the brain to bring upon the desired effect. Gulie described the pacemaker as being about the size of an Ipod.

Although this article is of interest, what is much more interesting is that recent research has focused on implanting pacemakers into the brains of individuals with Tourrette's Syndrome and depression.

Specifically for depression, the pacemaker is set to affect the vagus nerve; these electrical stimulations affect blood flow to different parts of the brain, and affect neurotransmitters including serotonin and norepinephrine.

Gulie wrote about some side effects after the operation, which were related to the identification of the appropriate voltage and rate of shocks that the pacemaker was to deliver. Very interesting stuff indeed.

As he identified, this operation was part of a very Web 2.0 procedure; previous brain pacemakers were much more crude and more difficult to work with.

Babies do form memories; they just forget...

The AP reports that babies' rate of forgetting is even faster than that of adults, this quote taken directly from Patricia J. Bauer of Duke University said Friday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Bauer was part of a panel discussing "infant amnesia," the puzzling inability of people to remember events early in life.

Previous neuropsychological orthodoxy stated that babies' brains were simply unable to form memories, but Bauer said new research indicates that is incorrect; this was due to the fact that the hippocampal structures were not solidly developed at such a young age (they tend to solidify at age 3).

The ability to form memories depends on a network of structures in the brain and these develop at different times, Bauer said. As the networks come together between 6 months and 18 months of life, researchers see increased efficiency in the ability to form short-and long-term memory, she said.

From age six months to two years, memory increases from about 24 hours to a year researchers stated. But, noting that children, like adults, forget, she compared the brains of infants and adults to colanders used to drain food. The adult colander has small holes, for draining something like orzo or rice, while the infant colander has larger holes, such as for draining large penne pasta, but allowing more information to flow out.

Bauer's research proceeded by testing infants by using objects such as cups and blocks. In one test a baby would be shown two cups, a block would be put into one, the other cup would be put over the top and the group would be shaken to form a rattle.

This is something children do not do instinctively, she explained, but once they see it they can copy it, and researchers can see how long they remember when given the same objects.
Oakes said she studied infants by watching how long they would look at something. Babies will look longer at something new than something they are familiar with, she said, which allows researchers to calculate how long the baby remembers something.

Tracy DeBoer of the University of California, Davis, said babies born to diabetic mothers are at increased risk of memory loss. Such children may have shortages of oxygen and iron before birth and that can cause impaired memory when they are growing. That impairment did not occur in cases where the mothers' diabetes was controlled during pregnancy, she added.

Brain Images Show LD Children Respond To Spelling Treatment

One of the interesting things about reading disorders is that children with a positive diagnosis tend to show different patterns of brain activity that non-identified children. This is a brief summary of reserach (too brief in my opinion - I would have liked to have seen more of it) in which a treatment showed positive results as shown through pre- and post- fMRI patterns. Specifically, the LD groups post fMRI patterns more closely resembled the non-LD children's fMRI patterns.

Interesting stuff - check it out

Technorati tags: fMRI learning disability psychologyspelling
reading brain

Brain scans help think away pain

So, in an attempt to let you into the madness that is Livanis, here is an article on my next obsession - neurofeedback, which is a variation on biofeedback, only, instead of receiving feedback from your body, you receive feedback from brain scans. Here is an article describing this activity in helping individuals deal with pain:



It may really be a matter of mind over matter - scientists suggest it is possible to control brain activity to reduce the pain you feel.

Stanford University researchers found seeing brain scans and using mental exercises helped reduce pain.

A UK pain expert said the work backed other studies which suggested changing how people thought about pain could reduce its effects.

The research is in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Thirty-six volunteers took part in the study.

"I'd think of little people on my back digging out the pain, or I'd think of snowflakes", Laura Tibbitt, who took part in the study. Heat was applied to their palms, with the temperature for each person set depending on what they found painful.

One group was placed inside a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanner where they were able to watch their brain activity on a moment-by-moment basis. They were then shown "live" action images of their rostral anterior cingulate cortex, an area of the brain responsible for processing pain. Next, they were given various mental strategies to try to train the brain to respond to pain differently, such as being asked to think of it as a relatively pleasant experience.

Over time, the eight people who went through this training procedure showed an increased ability to modulate their response to pain. Other groups were either shown no scans at all - and just given behavioural techniques to help them cope with pain, or shown scans of different areas of the brain, or those showing other people's pain responses.

People in these groups showed no changes in how they responded to pain.
'Brain exercise' . Dr Sean Mackey, who led the research, said the study findings offered great hope for people who suffer chronic pain.

"We could change people's lives. However, significantly more science and testing must be done before this can be considered a treatment for chronic pain."

He said it was not clear how people had controlled their brain activity, but added: "We really don't know how anyone controls their brain to perform an action." Laura Tibbitt, 31, who took part in the study, has chronic back pain caused by a horseback riding accident seven years ago, said she used different thoughts to decrease the pain while watching her brain scans.

She said: "I'd think of little people on my back digging out the pain, or I'd think of snowflakes.
"The goal was to exercise your brain, to retrain your brain. Sometimes I felt like I had made a change in my brain. The pain was never completely gone, but it was better."

Dr Beverley Collett, president of the British Pain Society, said: "In some ways, this supports some of what we are already doing in pain treatment, using cognitive therapy to change how people think about their pain. "And we know psychological treatments do help people manage their pain."



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4524138.stm






neuropsychology
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