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Friday, 20 August 2010 |
It's unavoidable: breakdowns in brain connections slow down our physical response times as we age, a new study suggests.
This slower reactivity is associated with an age-related breakdown in the corpus callosum, a part of the brain that acts as a dam during one-sided motor activities to prevent unwanted connectivity, or cross-talk, between the two halves of the brain, said Rachael Seidler, associate professor in the University of Michigan School of Kinesiology and Department of Psychology, and lead study author.
At other times the corpus callosum acts at a bridge and cross-talk is helpful, such as in certain cognitive functions or two-sided motor skills.
The U-M study is the first known to show that this cross-talk happens even while older adults are at rest, said Seidler, who also has appointments in the Institute of Gerontology and the Neuroscience Graduate Program. This resting cross-talk suggests that it is not helpful or compensatory for the two halves of the brain to communicate during one-sided motor movements because the opposite side of the brain controls the part of the body that is moving. So, when both sides of the brain talk simultaneously while one side of the body tries to move, confusion and slower responses result, Seidler said.
Previous studies have shown that cross-talk in the brain during certain motor tasks increases with age but it wasn't clear if that cross-talk helped or hindered brain function, said Seidler.
"Cross-talk is not a function of task difficulty, because we see these changes in the brain when people are not moving," Seidler said.
In some diseases where the corpus callosum is very deteriorated, such as in people with multiple sclerosis, you can see "mirror movements" during one sided-motor tasks, where both sides move in concert because there is so much communication between the two hemispheres of the brain, Seidler said. These mirror movements also happen normally in very young children before the corpus callosum is fully developed.
In the study, researchers gave joysticks to adults between the ages of 65 and 75 and measured and compared their response times against a group approximately 20-25 years old.
Researchers then used a functional MRI to image the blood-oxygen levels in different parts of the brain, a measurement of brain activity.
"The more they recruited the other side of the brain, the slower they responded," Seidler said.
However there is hope, and just because we inevitably age doesn't mean it's our fate to react more slowly. Seidler's group is working on developing and piloting motor training studies that might rebuild or maintain the corpus callosum to limit overflow between hemispheres, she said.
A previous study done by another group showed that doing aerobic training for three months helped to rebuild the corpus callosum, she said, which suggests that physical activity can help to counteract the effects of the age-related degeneration.
Seidler's group also has a study in review that uses the same brain imaging techniques to examine disease related brain changes in Parkinson's patients.
Source:
Laura Bailey
University of Michigan |
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Friday, 12 February 2010 |
 I just can't Sleep
A sleep disorder (somnipathy) is a disorder in the sleep patterns of a person or animal.
Sleep disorders include: Bruxism; delayed sleep phase syndrome; insomnia: jet lag or desynchronosis; narcolepsy; night terror; parasomnias; periodic limb movement disorder; rapid eye movement behavior disorder; restless legs syndrome; shift work sleep disorder; sleep apnea; sleep paralysis; sleepwalking or somnambulism; snoring. Treatments for sleep disorders generally can be grouped into three categories: 1) behavioral/ psychotherapeutic treatments, 2) medications, and 3) other somatic treatments.
None of these general approaches is sufficient for all patients with sleep disorders.
Rather, the choice of a specific treatment depends on the patient's diagnosis, medical and psychiatric history, and preferences, as well as the expertise of the treating clinician.
In general, medications and somatic treatments provide more rapid symptomatic relief from sleep disturbances.
On the other hand, some emerging evidence suggests that treatment gains with behavioral treatment of insomnia may be more durable than those obtained with medications. Some sleep disorders, such as narcolepsy, are best treated pharmacologically, whereas others, such as chronic and primary insomnia, are more amenable to behavioral interventions.
The management of sleep disturbances that are secondary to mental, medical, or substance abuse disorders should focus on the underlying conditions. For most sleep disorders, behavioral/psychotherapeutic and pharmacological approaches are not incompatible and can be effectively combined to maximize therapeutic benefits. A sleep diary can be used to help diagnose, and measure improvements in sleep disorders..
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Last Updated ( Friday, 12 February 2010 )
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Sunday, 24 January 2010 |
ScienceDaily — What if a jury could decide a man's guilt through mind reading? What if reading a defendant's memory could betray their guilt? And what constitutes 'intent' to commit murder? These are just some of the issues debated and reviewed in the inaugural issue of WIREs Cognitive Science, the latest interdisciplinary project from Wiley-Blackwell, which for registered institutions will be free for the first two years.
In the article "Neurolaw," in the inaugural issue of WIREs Cognitive Science, co-authors Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Annabelle Belcher assess the potential for the latest cognitive science research to revolutionize the legal system.
Neurolaw, also known as legal neuroscience, builds upon the research of cognitive, psychological, and social neuroscience by considering the implications for these disciplines within a legal framework. Each of these disciplinary collaborations has been ground-breaking in increasing our knowledge of the way the human brain operates, and now neurolaw continues this trend.
One of the most controversial ways neuroscience is being used in the courtroom is through 'mind reading' and the detection of mental states. While only courts in New Mexico currently permit traditional lie detector, or polygraph, tests there are a number of companies claiming to have used neuroscience methods to detect lies. Some of these methods involve electroencephalography (EEG), whereby brain activity is measured through small electrodes placed on the scalp. This widely accepted method of measuring brain electrical potentials has already been used in two forensic techniques which have appeared in US courtrooms: brain fingerprinting and brain electrical oscillations signature (BEOS).
Brain fingerprinting purportedly tests for 'guilty knowledge,' or memory of a kind that only a guilty person could have. Other forms of guilt detection, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), are based on the assumption that lying and truth-telling are associated with distinctive activity in different areas of the brain. These and other potential forms of 'mind reading' are still in development but may have far-reaching implications for court cases.
"Some proponents of neurolaw think that neuroscience will soon be used widely throughout the legal system and that it is bound to produce profound changes in both substantive and procedural law," conclude the authors. "Other leaders in neurolaw employ a less sanguine tone, urging caution so as to prevent misuses and abuses of neuroscience within courts, legislatures, prisons, and other parts of the legal system. Either way we need to be ready to prevent misuses and encourage legitimate applications of neuroscience and the only way to achieve these goals is for neuroscientists and lawyers to work together in the field of neurolaw."
As this paper shows, WIREs Cognitive Science takes an original interdisciplinary approach to understanding the key issues surrounding state-of-the-art cognitive research. Disciplines featured in the inaugural issue include topics as diverse as cognitive biology, computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy and psychology.
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