Brain science explains meditation benefits

Neuroscientists at the University of Wisconsin recently asked volunteers to practice "compassion meditation" while reclining inside MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) machines. Results showed that the brains of more experienced meditators exhibited greater activity in areas known to be related to empathy and emotions than the brains of the less experienced meditators. The tentative conclusion seems to be that meditation does have "real" effects that can be objectively measured in the brain, and that experience and practice in meditation does make a difference.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23829470/

Does generosity reward the brain?

In a neurological study cited in Science, human research subjects were placed in an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scanner and manipulated through situations in which they gave charitable donations. Some brain regions involved in reward were activated by giving, indicating that the brain was experiencing positive sensations from the act of giving.

"If you look at human financial behavior as an attempt to increase the feeling of reward," said a neuroscientist, "then donating money makes economic sense. Look at it this way: when I'm giving to charity I'm paying for the pleasure of donating money."

http://tinyurl.com/yu4rhe

Meditation vs. depression

Meditating could be a simple solution to treating depression. Brain scans show significant changes in brain waves after just a few weeks of meditation. Experts say meditation helps patients get rid of anger, anxiety and just let everything go.

http://www.nbc12.com/news/healthcast/12657361.html

Change your brain -- with meditation

Feeling stressed or depressed? You may one day be prescribed meditation rather than medication, thanks to a study conducted by researchers from the Department of Psychology and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Ontario.

A research team is the first to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to map brain activity changes in people trained in mindfulness meditation. The researchers scanned the brains of study participants as they responded to various word prompts.

People with no meditation training showed very little change in brain activity from task to task. They mostly engaged the areas along the middle of the brain such as the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for personality and social behaviour.

But participants who had practiced meditation regularly showed a more dramatic change in brain activity when asked to move from the narrative to the experiential focus: they shifted away from the midline brain regions to areas that regulate more primitive functions such as touch, pain and temperature sensation.

“This ability to alter brain activity may explain why so many studies show mood improvements with meditation. It turns out taking a break from the middle regions of the brain, which we tend to overuse,might be just what’s needed to help you feel better,” said a researcher.

http://www.news.utoronto.ca/bin6/071214-3559.asp

Cognitive reserves help older brains

The brain, like every other part of the body, changes with age, and those changes can impede clear thinking and memory. Yet many older people seem to remain sharp as a tack well into their 80s and beyond. Although their pace may have slowed, they continue to work, travel, attend plays and concerts, play cards and board games, study foreign languages, design buildings, work with computers, write books, do puzzles, knit or perform other mentally challenging tasks that can befuddle people much younger.

But when these sharp old folks die, autopsy studies often reveal extensive brain abnormalities like those in patients with Alzheimer's.

Cognitive reserve, in this theory, refers to the brain's ability to develop and maintain extra neurons and connections between them via axons and dendrites. Later in life, these connections may help compensate for the rise in dementia-related brain pathology that accompanies normal aging.

Cognitive reserve is greater in people who complete higher levels of education. The more intellectual challenges to the brain early in life, the more neurons and connections the brain is likely to develop and perhaps maintain into later years. Several studies of normal aging have found that higher levels of educational attainment were associated with slower cognitive and functional decline.

But brain stimulation does not have to stop with the diploma. Better-educated people may go on to choose more intellectually demanding occupations and pursue brain-stimulating hobbies, resulting in a form of lifelong learning.

http://iht.com/articles/2007/12/11/healthscience/11brod.php

Good personality boosts attractiveness

Men and women who exhibit positive traits such as honesty and helpfulness are perceived as being more attractive, a U.S. researcher said.

The findings, published in the December issue of Personal Relationships, found that information on personality was found to alter perceived desirability significantly, showing that cognitive processes and expectations modify judgments of attractiveness.

(Newsdaily Science 11.30.07)

Mapping Neural Networks

New technologies that allow scientists to trace the fine wiring of the brain more accurately than ever before could soon generate a complete wiring diagram, including every tiny fiber and miniscule connection, of a piece of brain. Dubbed connectomics, these maps could uncover how neural networks perform their precise functions in the brain, and they could shed light on disorders thought to originate from faulty wiring, such as autism and schizophrenia.

With an estimated 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses in the human brain, creating an all-encompassing map of even a small chunk is a daunting task. Using standard methods, it would take roughly three billion person years to generate the wiring diagram of a single cortical column.

But neuroscientists at M.I.T. have now developed a new technique to make more fine-scaled wiring maps using electron microscopy. Starting with a small block of brain tissue, the researchers bounce electrons off the top of the block to generate a cross-sectional picture of the nerve fibers in that slice. They then take a very thin (30-nanometer) slice off the top of the block and repeat the process. Scientists go through the images slice by slice to trace the path of each nerve fiber.

http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/19731/

Migraine brains 'are different'

Scientists have discovered differences in the sensory areas of the brains of people who develop migraines.

They found a part of the cortex is thicker than in people who are free from the debilitating headaches. What is not clear is whether the difference causes, or is the result of migraine attacks. The neurology study, by Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, suggests the changes may make patients hyper-sensitive to pain in general.

Previous research has shown that the cortex becomes thinner with neurological disorders such as multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease. Part of the cortex, although not the somatosensory area, is also known to thicken with extensive motor training and learning.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7096798.stm

Scientists Spot Brain Center for 'Out-of-Body' Experience

A team of Belgian scientists have linked the sense of disembodiment central to the experience -- the feeling of leaving one's body and then floating outside it -- to abnormal activity in a specific region of the brain.

This activity appears to short-circuit the processing of sensory information and the ability to locate oneself in time and space, the team said.

"Self-perception is nothing else but a creation of your brain," explained neurosurgeon Dr. Dirk De Ridder, of the neurosurgical department at Antwerp University. "We found a key spot in the brain in which different areas are normally activated whenever stimulus comes in, so you can relate that stimulus to yourself, which helps create a unified perception of ourselves."

"The 'total perception of self,' " he added, "is built out of different parts. And one of these parts is that your consciousness belongs within your body."

http://tinyurl.com/37psyp

Mirror, Mirror In The Brain

ScienceDaily (Nov. 7, 2007) — Recent findings are rapidly expanding researchers' understanding of a new class of brain cells -- mirror neurons -- which are active both when people perform an action and when they watch it being performed.

Some scientists speculate that a mirror system in people forms the basis for social behavior, for our ability to imitate, acquire language, and show empathy and understanding. It also may have played a role in the evolution of speech. Mirror neurons were so named because, by firing both when an animal acts and when it simply watches the same action, they were thought to "mirror" movement, as though the observer itself were acting.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071106123725.htm

Brain Network Related To Intelligence Identified

In a review of 37 imaging studies related to intelligence, including their own, a pair of neuroscientists have uncovered evidence of a distinct neurobiology of human intelligence. Their Parieto-Frontal Integration Theory (P-FIT) identifies a brain network related to intelligence, one that primarily involves areas in the frontal and the parietal lobes.

The data suggest that some of the brain areas related to intelligence are the same areas related to attention and memory and to more complex functions like language. Haier and Jung say this possible integration of cognitive functions suggests that intelligence levels might be based on how efficient the frontal-parietal networks process information.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070911092117.htm

Adult Brains Can Heal Themselves

A new case study of a stroke patient suggests that adults' brains might be just as "plastic," or capable of creating new neural pathways, as those of children.

Past research has established the remarkable capacity of young brains to change or adapt to deficits by creating new signaling routes, a phenomenon called plasticity. However, whether adult brains have that same capacity has remained controversial.

Results from a new study, published in the Sept. 5 online edition of the Journal of Neuroscience, suggest at least in one patient, the visual center of an adult brain can reorganize itself neurally to overcome damaged pathways and result in changes (and possibly improvements) in visual perception.

The new finding adds weight to suggestions made by other research about the ability of adult brains to morph.

This year, neuroscientists reported the adult mice could grow new neurons, a finding they said could have implications for the treatment of human neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's. A similar finding was reported a couple of years ago in mice. In 2005, a brain-scan study of human adults with macular degeneration showed evidence of plasticity in the visual regions of their brains.

http://www.livescience.com/health/070906_brain_change.html

Scientists induce out-of-body sensation with virtual reality

Using virtual reality goggles, a camera and a stick, scientists have induced out-of-body experiences in healthy people, according to experiments being published in the journal Science.

When people gaze at an illusory image of themselves through the goggles and are prodded in just the right way with the stick, they feel as if they have left their bodies.

The research reveals that "the sense of having a body, of being in a bodily self," is actually constructed from multiple sensory streams...

Full story:
http://iht.com/articles/2007/08/23/healthscience/23body.php

Mirror Neurons Influenced by Culture

In a recent study by researchers at a UCLA neuroscience institute wanted to investigate the imprint of culture on the so-called mirror neuron network. Mirror neurons fire when an individual performs an action, but they also fire when someone watches another individual perform that same action. Neuroscientists believe this "mirroring" is the neural mechanism by which we can read the minds of other people and empathize with them.

When it comes to the influence of culture, they found that indeed, the mirror neuron network responds differently depending on whether we are looking at someone who shares our culture, or someone who doesn't.

Based on the research so far, it appears that neural systems supporting memory, empathy and general cognition encode information differently depending on who's giving the information -- a member of one's own cultural group, or a member of an out-group, and that ethnic in-group membership and a culturally learned motor repertoire more strongly influence the brain's responses to observed actions, specifically actions used in social communication.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070718002115.htm

Repair your brain . . . with gene therapy!

Researchers inject viruses into brains of Parkinsons' sufferers to retrain neurons

A major worldwide breakthrough in gene therapy was signalled last night after injections into the brain were used for the first time to successfully treat a degenerative brain disease.

In a pioneering study, researchers used the treatment to bring about significant improvements in the mobility of Parkinson's sufferers. They said it could also herald a breakthrough in the treatment of other neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer's or epilepsy.

The study, begun in 2003, was carried out on 11 men and one woman with an average age of 58, who had all had severe Parkinson's for at least five years and for whom current therapies were no longer effective.

They were given injections of billions of copies of a genetically altered virus into part of the brain called the subthalamic nucleus.

The altered virus carried the human gene for an enzyme, called GAD, which helps to make GABA. Once implanted, brain cells of the patients started to make the GABA chemical.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/06/22/nbrain122.xml

Milkshake energy-drug boosts brain power

Drinking a milkshake-style medicine at breakfast seems to feed brain cells starved from Alzheimer's damage, researchers reported Monday. It's one of four promising experimental drugs poised for large-scale testing against the brain-destroying disease.

The milkshake drug, called Ketasyn, is a dramatically different way to approach dementia. It hinges on recent research suggesting diabetic-like changes in brain cells' ability to use sugar for energy play a role in at least some forms of Alzheimer's.

Special fatty acids in Ketasyn offer an alternate food source to rev up those hungry neurons, say researchers.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/06/17/health/17_38_306_14_07.txt