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JESUS CHRIST+JESU KRISTE+YESHUA HAMASHIACH+JESUS CHRISTUS+JESU KRISTU+ISOUS HRISTOS

2007-10-03T22:43:46Z

JESUS CHRIST+JESU KRISTE+YESHUA HAMASHIACH+JESUS CHRISTUS+JESU KRISTU+ISOUS HRISTOS

Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophesy and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near. REVELATION 1:3

And I will give power to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy one thousand two hundred and sixty days, clothed in sackcloth." REVELATION 11:3

He who testifies to these things says, " Surely I am coming quickly." Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus! The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. REVELATION 22:20-21

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Everyone, has the responsibility to find the truth for themselves. What is stated below, must be researched and verified, so that every individual can then decide to accept, or discard it as myth. The only truth is God the Father, the Son our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Read the Bible, pray to the Holy Spirit for guidance and our Lord Jesus Christ will not abandon you, but will place the truth in your heart.

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We must not try to copy the world, but be different to it, as the example set by our Teacher, our Lord Jesus Christ. Being the same as the world, sharing its base values, being part of the fashion trends, is all part of Satan's system (Sex changes that are taking place ever more frequently and therefore not knowing anymore who is a man or a woman). The Pope of Rome is one of Satan's instruments (the Papists have immense power and wealth, our Lord Jesus Christ was humble and owned nothing). Talmudists/Zionists want to rebuild Solomon's Temple and proclaim their own false king of the world (there is only one King of the Jews and Orthodox Christians and that is our Lord Jesus Christ). Their power base is the U.S.A (Superpower of the world). They contol many governments, banks, newspapers, television stations (the media in general), etc. We must not forget the very elusive and cunning Masonic Lodges which form part of Satan's means to spread anti-Christian and heretic information. Television and video has been one of the most powerful tools of Satan, which has ruined the ethics which sustained our youth and the family unit. With pornography in all its forms, men have been misled and subsequently their women, a whole generation of our youth and their families have been devoured by Satan. We have forgotten about God, the Bible and prayer and have allowed ourselves to go down the road to hell and have fallen into Satan's trap (in other words we are slaves to flesh and our desires). Hedonism is the aim of humanity.

The group that is attempting to rule the world, consists of three member countries, U.S.A, Europe and Japan (3 presidents). Their central control, consists of 32 members (of the 29, 8 are Americans; 9 from Japan; 12 from the European Union (contolled from Belgium/Luxembourg). Head of the 3 member group is Rockefeller (his head quaters is in Rhodes, Greece; his specific influence is in the U.S.A and E.U). Whoever does not obey the orders of this group are murdered. Death is the penalty for disobedience. Another Satanic "club" is called, Bildeberg. They can destroy any government and put a new one together again. They can make a country vanish and create a new one too. 200 members, which include intelligence agencies (CIA; BIA; BND (Ger.); SIB (Ital.); SPELA (Fra.)). There are members who are involved with NATO and hold important positions in the US administration, etc. They hold an extremely harsh stance against the East, especially with Russia because of its Christian Orthodox heritage. They exterminate/demolish any opposition.

An enemy going back thousands of years is head quatered in China (the Himalayas/Tibet). The Seljuks come from that region, who are the ancestors of the Turks, who attacked and oppressed Christian Orthodoxy in Asia Minor and Greece. The Turks/Jews have tried many times to wipe out the Greeks and Christian Orthodoxy. They call the Greeks and Christian Orthodoxy, the people of the "Blue Trigramaton" (which is refering to the Holy Light that emenates from our Lord Jesus Christ's tomb). The roots of martial arts is that region spoken of above. Martial arts are Satanic and anti-Christian and yet has our youth spellbound under the innocent guise of sport/fitness. In the Himalayas there is a glass pyramid (Sambala), it has many entrances. This is where the White Brotherhood is based. It's aim is to destroy all the world's religions except its own. It has more power than the U.S.A. It has more resources at its disposal than all the governments in the world. It has infiltrated and controls many governments and religions (Roman Catholics, Protestants and Judaism). The First and Second World Wars were masterminded by them. They are going to start the Third World War too. The White Brotherhood works with the Bildeberg club and all the others. They are assisted by the Zionists. They created Hitler and introduced the Swastika (broken cross, that is what it means). Hirohito of Japan was responsible for a massive bloodbath, but he was not punished like the others, after the Second World War because he was a member of the world ruling 3 member group mentioned above. Grey Wolves (Turkish Muslims), are connected to the White Brotherhood. Only Grey Wolves members may rule Turkey. They must always mantain a harsh stance against Greece/Christian Orthodoxy (Turgut Ozal, was exterminated for his softer stance).

The White Brotherhood want to destroy the followers of Jesus Christ. They call His followers, bipods or two-legged ones. Their methods are many: thirst, hunger on a worldwide scale. All plants and forests must be destroyed. Wars, so as to ensure maximum slaughter. They refer to humanity as a chicken breeding farm. They destroy humanity with drugs; they have contaminated our drinking water (it has been doctored with medication); our food is also contaminated and our clothes too from the fancy washing powders that we use (that is why everyone is getting ill and they don't know why). Thirst on a worldwide scale, for eg.. Euphrates to be dried up because of Turkey, which will lead to a confrontation with Iran/Syria. Hunger, for eg., Russia was the world's wheat provider, even the U.S.A relied on her. The White Brotherhood ensured that Russia would starve. In Moscow young women give themselves for a plate of food. Homosexuality, the U.S.A being its banner. One can go on and on, but there will be no end then. It is devestating. But do not despair, if you are a follower of our Lord Jesus Christ because He has defeated Satan and the world.

(This is a summarized version and a translation of a tape recording in Greek, from a Greek Orthodox perspective ofcourse, given to me by a Monk at Calvary/Golgotha in Jerusalem, Christmas, 2001. I cannot divulge any names, nor my own because this is a very dangerous subject. You will have to verify the truthfullness of the matter yourself. Please excuse my errors of spelling or other. May God forgive me if I am wrong about any of this, but I do it with honest intentions. God bless you. From a humble follower of our Lord Jesus Christ.)

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"These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." JOHN 16:33

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"LORD JESUS CHRIST, HAVE MERCY ON ME."

posted in The Brain - 3 replies

creating an explorative art project on my tribe page

2007-07-23T05:14:55Z

I am creating an interactive art project on my tribe page
where I make an piece of art and then post a question
and the comments inspire the next piece of art and question

comments greatly inspire the projects direction
so please hop on over to my tribe page
and see if this art project will provide anything of value to you

posted in The Brain - 1 reply

Understanding empathy

2006-09-27T23:43:36Z

Print or Premium only @ http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=S%27%29%28H%2APQ%2F%22%20%20%21%24%0A

CHRISTIAN KEYSERS has a good way of making his point. He shows his audience a clip from a James Bond movie in which a large, hairy spider is climbing over our hero's naked body. He then asks the audience what they think the actor playing Bond is feeling.

It is impossible to tell, of course, whether Sean Connery was really revolted and fearful when the scene was being shot, or whether he was actually indifferent, but just acting well. The point is that the observer can feel—literally feel—Bond's fear. This ability not merely to know in an intellectual sense what someone else is feeling, but actually to feel it with them, is an important social attribute. Dramatists, novelists and psychologists have known about it for centuries, of course. And those who lack it, such as people who are autistic, are at a social disadvantage. But it is only in the past few years that its neurological basis has begun to be understood. It seems to rely on a type of nerve cell known as a mirror neuron. Dr Keysers, who works at the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands, is one of a band of neurologists that is studying them.

A mirror neuron is one that is active when the individual whose brain it is in is engaged in some action or experiencing some sensation or emotion, and also when that particular action, sensation or emotion is being observed in someone else. Action-sensitive mirror neurons were the first to be found, and they were discovered in rhesus monkeys, one of the mainstays of animal laboratory research.

When a monkey reaches out for something—a piece of food, for example—a particular group of nerve cells in its brain fires off lots of electrical signals. The activity of individual neurons within such a group of action-sensitive cells can be traced with electrodes that have tips so fine that they can be placed against a single cell. Most such cells fire only in response to the action. But about 20% of them also fire in exactly the same way if the monkey sees another monkey (or, indeed, a human) reaching out for food. This empathic firing "mirrors" the way the cells behave when they are involved in an action.

Sticking electrodes into human brains in this way is not on, of course. But modern brain-scanning techniques can be used to look for mirror activity in particular parts of the brain, even if they cannot pick out individual nerve cells. So Dr Keysers uses brain scanners to study the role of mirror neurons in human emotional and sensational empathy, such as the audience feels with Connery/Bond.

Measuring fear by letting a venomous spider crawl over the body of an experimental subject is no more likely to get past an ethics committee than is sticking electrodes in his brain, so Dr Keysers chose to study another emotion, disgust, instead. He put his volunteers in a brain scanner and wafted disgusting odours such as rancid butter and rotten eggs into their nostrils (he wafted some non-disgusting ones in, too, as a control). The disgusting odours, he found, activated part of the brain called the anterior insula. He then played film clips of people's faces registering disgust to his volunteers, and found activity in exactly the same part of the brain.

The sense of touch, too, is mirrored in this way. Though no spiders were involved, Dr Keysers found that part of the brain that was activated by touching the leg of a person in a brain scanner also reacted if the subject was shown film of another person being touched on the leg. All this suggests that understanding the experiences and emotions of others involves the same neural circuitry that we require to have those experiences and emotions ourselves—in other words, that it is mediated by mirror neurons.

Mirror, mirror on the wall

Such observations lead to bigger questions, and one of the most pertinent concerns "theory of mind", a grandiloquent term used to describe the extent to which one individual can understand and anticipate the intentions of another.

Two recent papers address this question. Marco Iacoboni, of the University of California, Los Angeles, and his colleagues employed a similar methodology to Dr Keysers's to study the human brain. Meanwhile Leonardo Fogassi and his colleagues at the University of Parma, in Italy, used monkeys and electrodes to watch the process in individual nerve cells (indeed, it was this group, led by Giacomo Rizzolatti and Vittorio Gallese, which was responsible for discovering mirror neurons this way in the first place).

Both papers showed that the mirror-neuron activity is context-dependent in a way that suggests the experimental subjects not only recognise particular movements, but also understand the intention behind them. Watching someone grasping food or drink is a well-known stimulus of mirror-neuron activity. Dr Iacoboni's study, published in Public Library of Science Biology, showed, though, that there is far more such activity in someone's brain when they see a teacup being grasped in the context of a scene that includes biscuits, milk and a teapot (which suggests the grasping hand belongs to someone who is about to drink and eat), than when the scene contains empty plates and vessels (which suggests the hand belongs to someone who is clearing up).

Dr Fogassi's paper in Science has similar results for monkeys (though the context is grasping a pellet that sometimes is and sometimes is not made of food, rather than a tea party). This suggests that monkeys' mirror neurons, too, are capable of distinguishing intentions.

The idea that a lack of mirror-neuron activity is at least part of the cause of autism, has also received support recently. Eschewing brain scanners and implanted electrodes, Vilayanur Ramachandran and his colleagues at the University of California, San Diego, studied brainwaves believed to be associated with mirror neurons by pasting surface electrodes on their volunteers' scalps and faces, and monitoring them while those volunteers performed different tasks.

Ten of the volunteers were men and boys of normal intelligence, but who suffer from autism (not all those with the condition have other, more damaging, symptoms such as low intelligence as well). The other ten were individuals of similarly normal intelligence who had no autistic symptoms. The researchers were interested in the so-called mu-wave (an electrical oscillation in the brain that has a frequency of between eight and 13 cycles a second). In healthy people mu-waves are suppressed not only when actions are executed, but also when they are observed or even simply imagined. It is this suppression that has led researchers in the field to believe mu-waves might be connected with mirror-cell activity. Dr Ramachandran and his colleagues therefore wanted to see what happened to mu-waves in people with autism.

Once they had wired their subjects up, they asked them to perform four tasks. One was for the subject to watch one of his own hands as he opened and closed it in a sort of slow-motion shadow-puppet routine, about once a second. The other three tasks involved watching video clips. These clips were of someone else making the same hand motion, of balls bouncing into each other and apart, and of visual "static" (the sort of thing seen on a badly tuned television).

As the team report in their paper in Cognitive Brain Research, the non-autistic individuals all responded in the expected way: both moving their own hand and watching someone else's hand move caused mu-suppression in their brains, while the other two video clips had no effect. But in people with autism, only their own hand movements caused the mu-waves to be suppressed. Watching other people's hands move had no more effect than watching the balls and the static. That suggests there is something awry with their mirroring system.

This finding followed on the heels of another study investigating mirror-neuron activity in autists, published in Current Biology by Hugo Théoret and his colleagues at Harvard University. Dr Théoret wanted to see whether watching video clips of people moving their fingers changed the excitability of neurons in the part of the brain where action-sensitive mirror neurons are found. This experiment also studied ten autists of normal intelligence and ten controls.
Once again, the mirror neurons in the autistic volunteers failed to respond to the hand actions of others in the way that those of the controls did.

All of these experiments are focused on relatively simple stimuli that researchers can reproduce and measure easily. Whether mirror neurons are involved in more complex calculations of motive—and, most significantly, in those calculations made when someone is trying to manipulate the behaviour of someone else—remains to be seen. But it seems a plausible hypothesis, and the tools to test it more thoroughly are now in place. Understanding what someone else thinks is the necessary first step to deceiving or even controlling them. The actions of mirror cells may have wide ramifications.

posted in The Brain - 4 replies

Permanent damage from lack of use?

2006-09-16T22:53:33Z

I have been reading posts from this tribe with great interest. A very basic question has been nagging me, and I'm sure you can help.

I understand that the brain has plasticity and what you use is more fine tuned; what you don't you 'lose'. The piano player and the juggler examples I understand well enough-- at my level of not having studied the brain, anyway.

So tell me this. I'm 34 years old, and after a decade of being --quite frankly, lazy with my brain in the sense that I haven't been reading novel after novel as I used to, and I haven't had to memorize facts like I did when attending school (career for last decade: flight attendant, biggest problem: almost incessant jet-lag), I wonder--

Have I done some sort of permanent damage to the capacity that I once had to retain and process information? Because I was reading in one of your posts that some of those neurons die if not uses. I always figured that, like muscles, they become weak, but I didn't believe that they could be rendered useless at some point-- speaking during my 30's, not speaking about those who fall ill to such diseases such as Alzheimer's.

I plan to go back to school to receive a (new) Master's degree. I'm wondering if my last decade of mental laziness will make my ability to get back on track and fill my head with new facts, ideas, and memorization will be much more difficult then, say, if I hadn't let so much time pass while allowing parts of my brain to 'atrophy like muscles unused'.

Pardon the difficulty I'm having to propose a clear question-- but do you understand what I'm wondering, and if so, any feedback?

posted in The Brain - 8 replies

Brain Gym class in NYC in September-send me a message to register!

2006-08-19T15:28:51Z

To all those interested, here is the info:
“Movement is the Door to Learning” ----Paul Dennison Ph.D

What is Brain Gym®?
Brain Gym is a series of simple and enjoyable movements performed in an intentional way which optimize functioning of the brain. The 26 movements contained within the Brain Gym 101 course are safe and effective for people of all ages, and have been utilized by thousands of practitioners in over 50 different countries to bring about dramatic improvements in many areas of life (organizational skills, memory, concentration, attention, reading, writing, communication, physical coordination for exercise/dance/sports, group dynamics, etc) in a short time.
The movements performed as part of a Brain Gym “Balance” process, help to stimulate and integrate neural pathways within the brain to remove stress that has been associated with specific learning situations. The enhanced sensory perception and whole brain integration make former challenges to learning effortless. Integration of the brain which results enhances quality of new learning as well as daily life functioning.
The Brain Gym 101 course material gives the participants amazingly effective tools that can be easily incorporated into existing programs or used as is, to easily manage stress and effect positive changes in themselves and others. Professionals such as regular and special education teachers, reading specialists, business personnel, occupational therapists, physical therapists, physical education teachers, speech therapists, as well as parents and anyone who is interested in improving functioning for themselves or others will benefit greatly from this course.
For those who are interested in going further to become a teacher or consultant of this modality, Brain Gym 101 is the first step in the certification process by the Educational Kinesiology Foundation as a licensed Brain Gym Instructor and Consultant.

For more information on Brain Gym® go to www.braingym.org

This workshop includes:
 PACE – a powerful combination of 4 simple steps which create learning readiness
 Twenty-six Brain Gym movements that facilitate mind-body integration.
 The five step Edu-K balance process
 Dennison Laterality Repatterning
 The 3 dimensions of learning: Laterality, Centering, and Focus
 Hands-on opportunities to learn with fellow participants using the newly acquired skills
 Strategies for implementation with individuals and within the classroom setting
 Applications for personal and professional use
 FUN!
Mari Miyoshi, OTR/L has a degree in Occupational Therapy and brings her knowledge of neurology and sensory integration as well as her experience working with children in the Maryland and New York Public school system to help Brain Gym 101 participants find the best application of Brain Gym principles in their daily lives. She has found Brain Gym to be very effective to integrate the underlying cause of living and learning challenges and continues to be amazed by the results she observes in both her pediatric and adult clients. She is also continually interested in utilizing Brain Gym to improve the grace and ease of daily life functioning for enhanced enjoyment of life and learning.

Class information and Registration

Date and times (please note this class is offered in a 3 day format):
Saturday September 9, 2006 11:00 A.M. – 6:00 P.M.
Sunday September 10, 2006 9:00 A.M. – 5:00 P.M.
and
September 16, 2006 11:00 A.M. – 6:00 P.M.
Location: The Breathing Project (Broadway and W. 26th street)
Tuition: Early Registration $375 (Registered before September 1, 2006)
Late Registration $425 (Registered after September 1, 2006)
Full Time Student Discount $250
$175 Review Tuition for those re-taking the course for certification
$50 non-refundable deposit reserves your space – new and review students

posted in The Brain - 0 replies

Neuroscience and Neuroengineering

2006-01-17T07:01:35Z

For those of you who don't know, I have a tribe called Neuroscience and Neuroengineering, which is a nice complement to this tribe. It discusses how technology may influence how we treat and understand the brain. here it is:

http://neuroengineering.tribe.net

I have a moderated membership but, if you're interested, I'll let anyone join :)

I just have it moderated so i can kick people out when they become too whiny :)

Alan

posted in The Brain - 0 replies

Flicker fusion threshold

2006-01-17T06:56:26Z

I'm curious about information on the flicker fusion threshold relative to conscious vision and that which we are not conscious of.

More specifically, I am curious because I have an interest in vestibular dysfunction and know that those who have multiple cuncussive syndrome also suffer from the strobe effect of flourescent lighting and some computer monitors. So it seems that these stimuli are within the flicker fusion threshold for most of us, yet we are still unconsciously affected by the flicker that we cannot consciously see.

Anyone have any information or leads?

posted in The Brain - 1 reply

People With No Detectable Brain

2005-12-04T19:01:06Z

Has anybody ever heard of people that lead normal and even intellectual lives, yet when put through a CAT, have no detectable brain? It's mentioned in this article:

http://www.alternativescience.com/no_brainer.htm

I thought it was fascinating, figured you guys might dig it, too

posted in The Brain - 3 replies

Seeker needs assistance

2005-10-13T16:47:18Z

What are some steps one can take in his life to begin to open doorways of consciosness not accessible by normal waking means?

I have used some hallucinogens and experienced what I felt to be altered states of mind; however, I REALLY want to go deeper into the rabbit hole. But I live in Central Missouri with no known access to guides or gurus.

Any suggestions?

posted in The Brain - 0 replies

Who says a woman can't be Einstein?

2005-08-21T12:11:51Z

WHO SAYS A WOMAN CAN'T BE EINSTEIN?
Yes, men's and women's brains are different. But new research upendsthe old myths about who's good at what. A tour of the ever changing brain
By AMANDA RIPLEY RESEARCH BY COCO MASTERS;

Time Magazine Mar. 7, 2005 Issue
THERE WAS SOMETHING SELF-DESTRUCTIVE ABOUT Harvard University President Larry Summers' speech on gender disparities in January. In his first sentence, he said his goal as "provocation" (rarely a wise strategy at a diversity conference). He called for "rigorous and careful" thinking to explain the gender gap among top-tier tenured science professors. But he described his pet theory with something less than prudence. The most likely explanations, he said, are that
1) women are just not so interested as men in making the sacrifices required by high-powered jobs, 2) men may have more "intrinsic aptitude" for high-level science and 3) women may be victims of old-fashioned discrimination. "In my own view, their importance probably ranks in exactly the order that I just described," he announced. Cue the hysteria. The comments about aptitude in particular lingered, like food poisoning, long after the conference ended. For weeks, pundits and professors spouted outrage and praise, all of which added
up to very little. Then came the tedious analysis of faculty-lounge politics at Harvard, as if anyone outside Cambridge really cared.

The rest of us were left with a nagging question: What is the latest science on the differences between men's and women's aptitudes, anyway? Is it true, even a little bit, that men are better equipped for scientific genius? Or is it ridiculous--even pernicious--to ask such a question in the year 2005?

It's always perilous to use science to resolve festering public debates. Everyone sees something different--like 100 people finding shapes in clouds. By the time they make up their minds, the clouds have drifted beyond the horizon. But scientists who have spent their lives studying sex differences in the brain (some of whom defend Summers and some of whom dismiss him as an ignoramus) generally concede that he was not entirely wrong. Thanks to new brain-imaging technology, we know there are indeed real differences between the male and the female brain, more differences than we would have imagined a decade ago. "The brain is a sex organ," says Sandra Witelson, a neuroscientist who became famous in the 1990s for her study of Albert Einstein's brain. "In the last dozen years, there has been an exponential increase in the number of studies that have found differences in the brain. It's very exciting."

But that's just the beginning of the conversation. It turns out that many of those differences don't seem to change our behavior. Others do--in ways we might not expect. Some of the most dramatic differences are not just in our brains but also in our eyes, noses and ears--which feed information to our brains. Still, almost none of those differences are static. The brain is constantly changing in response to hormones, encouragement, practice, diet and drugs. Brain patterns fluctuate within the same person, in fact, depending on age and time of day. So while Summers was also right that more men than women make up the extreme high--and low--scorers in science and math tests, it's absurd to conclude that the difference is primarily because of biology--or environment. The two interact from the time of conception, which only makes life more interesting.

Any simplistic theory is "doomed to fail," says Yu Xie, a sociology professor at the University of Michigan. Xie's research on women in the sciences was cited by Summers in his statement, and Xie has spent every day since trying to explain the intricacy of human behavior to reporters. "I don't exclude biology as an explanation," he says. "But I know biological factors would not play a role unless they interacted with social conditions."

Unless one appreciates that complexity, it would be all too easy to look at the latest research on the brain and conclude, say, that men may not in fact make the best university presidents. For example, studies show that men are slightly more likely to say things without realizing how their actions will affect others. And as men age, they tend to lose more tissue from a part of the brain located just behind the forehead that concerns itself with consequences and self-control.
Generally speaking, the brain of a female is more interlinked and—if one assumes that a basic requirement of the post is to avoid dividing the faculty into two sweaty mobs--may be better suited for the kind of cautious diplomacy required of a high-profile university leader. Of course, to borrow a line from Summers, "I would prefer to believe otherwise."

Now that scientists are finally starting to map the brain with some accuracy, the challenge is figuring out what to do with that knowledge. The possibilities for applying it to the classroom, workplace and doctor's office are tantalizing. "If something is genetic, it means it must be biological. If we can figure out the biology, then we should be able to tweak the biology," says Richard Haier, a psychology professor who studies intelligence at the University of California at Irvine. Maybe Summers' failure was not one of sensitivity but one of imagination.

LESSON 1: FUNCTION OVER FORM

SCIENTISTS HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR SEX differences in the brain since they have been looking at the brain. Many bold decrees have been issued. In the 19th century, the corpus callosum, a bundle of nerve fibers that connects the two hemispheres of the brain, was considered key to intellectual development. Accordingly, it was said to have a greater surface area in men. Then, in the 1980s, we were told that no, it is larger in women--and that explains why the emotional right side of women's brains is more in touch with the analytical left side. Aha. That theory has since been discredited, and scientists remain at odds over who has the biggest and what it might mean. Stay tuned for more breaking news.

But most studies agree that men's brains are about 10% bigger than women's brains overall. Even when the comparison is adjusted for the fact that men are, on average, 8% taller than women, men's brains are still slightly bigger. But size does not predict intellectual performance, as was once thought. Men and women perform similarly on IQ tests. And most scientists still cannot tell male and female brains apart just by looking at them.

Recently, scientists have begun to move away from the obsession with size. Thanks to new brain-imaging technology, researchers can get a good look at the living brain as it functions and grows. Earlier studies relied on autopsies or X rays--and no one wanted to expose children or women, who might be pregnant, to regular doses of radiation.

The deeper you probe, the more interesting the differences. Women appear to have more connections between the two brain hemispheres. In certain regions, their brain is more densely packed with neurons. And women tend to use more parts of their brain to accomplish certain tasks. That might explain why they often recover better from a stroke, since the healthy parts of their mind compensate for the injured regions. Men do their thinking in more focused regions of the brain, whether they are solving a math problem, reading a book or feeling a wave of anger or sadness.

Indeed, men and women seem to handle emotions quite differently. While both sexes use a part of the brain called the amygdala, which is located deep within the organ, women seem to have stronger connections between the amygdala and regions of the brain that handle language and other higher-level functions. That may explain why women are, on average, more likely to talk about their emotions and men tend to compartmentalize their worries and carry on. Or, of course, it may not.

"Men and women have different brain architectures, and we don't know what they mean," says Haier. By administering IQ tests to a group of college students and then analyzing scans of their brain structure, Haier's team recently discovered that the parts of the brain that are related to intelligence are different in men and women. "That is in some ways a major observation, because one of the assumptions of psychology has been that all human brains pretty much work the same way," he says. Now that we know they don't, we can try to understand why some brains react differently to, say, Alzheimer's, many medications and even teaching techniques, Haier says.

Even more interesting than the brain's adult anatomy might be the journey it takes to get there. For 13 years, psychiatrist Jay Giedd has been compiling one of the world's largest libraries of brain growth. Every Tuesday evening, from 5 o'clock until midnight, a string of children files into the National Institutes of Health outside Washington to have their brains scanned. Giedd and his team ease the kids through the MRI procedure, and then he gives them a brain tour of their pictures--gently pointing out the spinal cord and the corpus callosum, before offering them a copy to take to show-and-tell.

Most of the kids are all business. Rowena Avery, 6, of Sparks, Nev., arrived last week with a stuffed animal named Sidewalk and stoically disappeared into the machine while her mom, dad and little sister watched. In preparation, she had practiced at home by lying very still in the bathtub. Her picture came out crystal clear. "The youngest ones are the best at lying still. It's kind of surprising," Giedd says. "It must be because they are used to hiding in kitchen cabinets and things like that."

Among the girls in Giedd's study, brain size peaks around age 11 1/2. For the boys, the peak comes three years later. "For kids, that's a long time," Giedd says. His research shows that most parts of the brain mature faster in girls. But in a 1999 study of 508 boys and girls, Virginia Tech researcher Harriet Hanlon found that some areas mature faster in boys. Specifically, some of the regions involved in mechanical reasoning, visual targeting and spatial reasoning appeared to mature four to eight years earlier in boys. The parts that handle verbal fluency, handwriting and recognizing familiar faces matured several years earlier in girls.

Monkeys are among our most trusted substitutes in brain research. This week a study in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience shows that stage of life is also important in male and female rhesus monkeys. In a sort of shell game, young male monkeys proved better at finding food after they saw it hidden on a tray--suggesting better spatial memory. But they peaked early. By old age, male and female monkeys performed equally well, according to the study, which was led by Agnès Lacreuse at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. All of which suggests that certain aptitudes may not be that different between males and females. It just depends on when you test them. (We'll have more to say about those monkeys in just a bit.)

LESSON 2: THE SEGREGATION OF THE SENSES

SO HOW DO WE EXPLAIN WHY, IN STUDY after study, boys and men are still on average better at rotating 3-D objects in their minds? As for girls and women, how do we explain why they tend to have better verbal skills and social sensitivities?

The most surprising differences may be outside the brain. "If you have a man and a woman looking at the same landscape, they see totally different things," asserts Leonard Sax, a physician and psychologist whose book Why Gender Matters came out last month. "Women can see colors and textures that men cannot see. They hear things men cannot hear, and they smell things men cannot smell." Since the eyes, ears and nose are portals to the brain, they directly affect brain development from birth on.

In rats, for example, we know that the male retina has more cells designed to detect motion. In females, the retina has more cells built to gather information on color and texture. If the same is true in humans, as Sax suspects, that may explain why, in an experiment in England four years ago, newborn boys were much more likely than girls to stare at a mobile turning above their cribs. It may also help explain why boys prefer to play with moving toys like trucks while girls favor richly textured dolls and tend to draw with a wider range of colors, Sax says.

Likewise, women's ears are more sensitive to some noises. Baby girls hear certain ranges of sound better. And the divergence gets even bigger in adults. As for smell, a study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience in 2002 showed that women of childbearing age were many times more sensitive than men to several smells upon repeated exposure. (Another study has found that heterosexual women have the most sensitive smell and homosexual men have the least.)

Rest assured, Sax says: none of that means women are, overall, better than men at perception. It just means the species is internally diverse, making it more likely to survive. "The female will remember the color and texture of a particular plant and be able to warn people if it's poisonous. A man looking at the same thing will be more alert to what is moving in the periphery," he says. "Which is better? You need both."

LESSON 3: NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE BRAIN

UNTIL RECENTLY, THERE HAVE BEEN TWO groups of people: those who argue sex differences are innate and should be embraced and those who insist that they are learned and should be eliminated by changing the environment. Sax is one of the few in the middle--convinced that boys and girls are innately different and that we must change the environment so differences don't become limitations.

At a restaurant near his practice in Montgomery County, Md., Sax spreads out dozens of papers and meticulously makes his case. He is a fanatic, but a smart, patient one. In the early 1990s, he says, he grew alarmed by the "parade" of parents coming into his office wondering whether their sons had attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Sax evaluated them and found that, indeed, the boys were not paying attention in school. But the more he studied brain differences, the more he became convinced that the problem was with the schools. Sometimes the solution was simple: some of the boys didn't hear as well as the girls and so needed to be moved into the front row. Other times, the solution was more complex.

Eventually, Sax concluded that very young boys and girls would be better off in separate classrooms altogether. "[Previously], as far as I was concerned, single-sex education was an old-fashioned leftover. I thought of boys wearing suits and talking with British accents," he says. But coed schools do more harm than good, he decided, when they teach boys and girls as if their brains mature at the same time. "If you ask a child to do something not developmentally appropriate for him, he will, No. 1, fail. No. 2, he will develop an aversion to the subject," he says. "By age 12, you will have girls who don't like science and boys who don't like reading." And they won't ever go back, he says. "The reason women are underrepresented in computer science and engineering is not because they can't do it. It's because of the way they're taught."

So far, studies about girls' and boys' achievements in same-sex grammar schools are inconclusive. But if it turns out that targeting sex differences through education is helpful, there are certainly many ways to carry it out. Says Giedd: "The ability for change is phenomenal. That's what the brain does best." A small but charming 2004 study published in Nature found that people who learned how to juggle increased the gray matter in their brains in certain locations. When they stopped juggling, the new gray matter vanished. A similar structural change appears to occur in people who learn a second language. Remember that new research on spatial memory in rhesus monkeys? The young females dramatically improved their performance through simple training, wiping out the gender gap altogether.

In a recent experiment with humans at Temple University, women showed substantial progress in spatial reasoning after spending a couple of hours a week for 10 weeks playing Tetris, of all things. The males improved with weeks of practice too, says Nora Newcombe, a Temple psychologist who specializes in spatial cognition, and so the gender gap remained. But the improvement for both sexes was "massively greater" than the gender difference. "This means that if the males didn't train, the females would outstrip them," she says.

Of course, we already manipulate the brain through drugs--many of which, doctors now realize, have dramatically different effects on different brains. Drugs for improving intelligence are in the works, says Haier, in the quest to find medication for Alzheimer's. "We're going to get a lot better at manipulating genetic biology. We may even be better at manipulating genetic biology than manipulating the environment."

Until then, one solution to overcoming biological tendencies is to consciously override them, to say to yourself, "O.K., I may have a hard time with this task, but I'm going to will myself to conquer it." Some experiments show that baby girls, when faced with failure, tend to give up and cry relatively quickly, while baby boys get angry and persist, says Witelson at Ontario's Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University. "What we don't know is whether that pattern persists into adulthood," she says. But in her experience in academia, she says she knows of at least a couple of brilliant women who never realized their potential in science because they stopped trying when they didn't get grants or encountered some other obstacle. "It's much better," she says, "for people to understand what the differences are, act on their advantages and be prepared for their disadvantages."

LESSON 4: EXPECTATIONS MATTER

WE HAVE A TENDENCY TO MAKE TOO MUCH of test-score differences between the sexes (which are actually very small compared with the differences between, say, poor and affluent students). And regardless of what happens in school, personality and discipline can better predict success when it comes to highly competitive jobs.

One thing we know about the brain is that it is vulnerable to the power of suggestion. There is plenty of evidence that when young women are motivated and encouraged, they excel at science. For most of the 1800s, for example, physics, astronomy, chemistry and botany were considered gender-appropriate subjects for middle-and upper-class American girls. By the 1890s, girls outnumbered boys in public high school science courses across the country, according to The Science Education of American Girls, a 2003 book by Kim Tolley. Records from top schools in Boston show that girls outperformed boys in physics in the mid-19th century. Latin and Greek, meanwhile, were considered the province of gentlemen--until the 20th century, when lucrative opportunities began to open up in the sciences.

Today, in Iceland and Sweden, girls consistently outperform boys in math and physics (see box). In Sweden the gap is widest in the remote regions in the north. That may be because women want to move to the big cities farther south, where they would need to compete in high-tech economies, while men are focused on local hunting, fishing and forestry opportunities, says Niels Egelund, a professor of educational psychology at the Danish University of Education. The phenomenon even has a name, the Jokkmokk effect, a reference to an isolated town in Swedish Lapland.

Back in the States, the achievement gap in the sciences is closing, albeit slowly. Female professors have been catching up with male professors in their publishing output. Today half of chemistry and almost 60% of biology bachelor of science degrees go to females. Patience is required.

Next, Summers may want to take up the male question. In all seriousness. Why do so many more boys than girls have learning disorders, autism, attention-deficit problems and schizophrenia? Why are young men now less likely to go to college than women are? And what to make of a 2003 survey that found eighth-grade girls outperforming boys in algebra in 22 countries, with boys outscoring girls in only three nations? If we're not careful, the next Einstein could find herself working as a high-powered lawyer who does wonders with estate-tax calculations instead of discovering what the universe is made of. --With reporting by Nadia Mustafa and Deirdre van Dyk/New York and Ulla Plon/Lulea

posted in The Brain - 1 reply

Evolution of the Human Brain

2005-05-27T02:31:20Z

Here is a very readable yet in depth article on the evolution of the human brain describing what some of the specific selected differences are with respect to the rest of the primates an mammals in general.

Molecular Insights into Human Brain Evolution
http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0030050

posted in The Brain - 0 replies

Natural Neural Rewiring

2005-05-11T13:54:21Z

I think this study deserves mention and discussion here.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science&article=UPI-1-20050510-16580800-bc-us-brain.xml

Monkey brain rewires to use robotic arm
By STEVE MITCHELL
WASHINGTON, May 10 (UPI) --

WASHINGTON, May 10 (UPI) -- The brains of monkeys who learned to control robotic arms rewired themselves to treat the arms as if they were real -- a finding scientists say has implications for developing limbs to assist handicapped humans.

The findings build upon a 2003 study that found monkeys were able to control robotic arms using only signals from their brains and without moving their own arms.

Miguel Nicolelis and colleagues at Duke University's Center for Neuroengineering analyzed the data to see what was happening to the primates' brain cells as they learned to use the robotic arm to position a cursor on a video screen.

"The monkey's brain incorporates properties of the robotic arm as if it was another arm and changes to adapt to those properties," Nicolelis, a neurobiologist, told United Press International. "Basically, the brain extends the representation of the animal's body and enhances the sense of self. The animal can function using two arms but also can function as if he has a third arm."

This not only expands the limit of the brain's ability to adapt itself to new situations, it also "opens new venues for how to design prosthetics that can be more readily incorporated by the brain," he said.

*****

Experiments in Nicolelis' lab already are building on the neuroprosthetic concept. His team is developing ways patients can receive feedback sensation, either visually or by touch, from neuroprosthetic devices via electrodes running from the limb to the brain. This would make the appendages function more like real limbs by providing a perceptual image in the patients' minds, he said.

*****

Research in other labs also has advanced this concept. In February, a team from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine reported a monkey fitted with a robotic arm controlled by only its brain signals was able to feed itself using the arm. Tiny electrodes implanted in the brain translated the brain signals into movement of the robotic arm.

In Nicolelis' study, which appears in the May 11 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, the monkey's brain was able to adapt to the robotic arm by shifting some of its neurons that previously were used to control its own arms to become more attuned to the function of the robotic arm.

When the researchers analyzed the brain signals collected during the experiment, they found the monkey simultaneously carrying out an activity with its own arm while performing another with the robotic arm.

*****

The findings challenge some experts' views of the brain's plasticity, Nicolelis said. Although it has long been accepted the human brain is uniquely adaptable to functioning in novel situations and learning to use new tools, Nicolelis and his colleagues believe their results push the boundaries of that concept.

They propose the human brain has the unique ability to change its concept of self and this extends to the tools humans use. This is not too surprising since the brain routinely incorporates tools in everyday use into its perception of who people are.

"Everything from cars to clothing that we use in our lives becomes incorporated into our sense of self," Nicolelis said. "So, our species is capable of 'evolving' the perception of what we are."

Steve Mitchell is UPI's medical correspondent. E-mail sciencedesk@upi.com.

{excerpts}

Those who can get the source study and present the data would be highly appreciated.

posted in The Brain - 0 replies

Mind reading?

2005-04-27T18:10:49Z

Here is a subject for discussion.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/space/20050427/sc_space/scientistssayeveryonecanreadminds&e=2

Scientists Say Everyone Can Read Minds

Wed Apr 27,10:24 AM ET Science - SPACE.com/LiveScience.com
Ker Than Special to LiveScience, LiveScience.com

Empathy allows us to feel the emotions of others, to identify and understand their feelings and motives and see things from their perspective. How we generate empathy remains a subject of intense debate in cognitive science.

Some scientists now believe they may have finally discovered its root. We're all essentially mind readers, they say.

The idea has been slow to gain acceptance, but evidence is mounting.

Mirror neurons

In 1996, three neuroscientists were probing the brain of a macaque monkey when they stumbled across a curious cluster of cells in the premotor cortex, an area of the brain responsible for planning movements. The cluster of cells fired not only when the monkey performed an action, but likewise when the monkey saw the same action performed by someone else. The cells responded the same way whether the monkey reached out to grasp a peanut, or merely watched in envy as another monkey or a human did.

Because the cells reflected the actions that the monkey observed in others, the neuroscientists named them "mirror neurons."

Later experiments confirmed the existence of mirror neurons in humans and revealed another surprise. In addition to mirroring actions, the cells reflected sensations and emotions.

"Mirror neurons suggest that we pretend to be in another person's mental shoes," says Marco Iacoboni, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine. "In fact, with mirror neurons we do not have to pretend, we practically are in another person's mind."
{excerpts}

http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/050427_mind_readers.html

posted in The Brain - 0 replies

Improved Scanning Technique Uses Brain as Portal to Thought

2005-04-26T17:05:14Z

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/25/science/25brain.html

By peering not into the eyes but into the brain, an improved scanning technique has enabled scientists to figure out what people are looking at - even, in some cases, when they are not aware of what they have seen.

The advance, reported today, shows that the scanners may be better able than previously supposed to probe the border between conscious and unconscious thought and even, in certain circumstances, to read people's state of mind.

The scanning technique, known as functional magnetic resonance imaging, is a more powerful version of a technique widely used in hospitals. It can show which regions of the brain are actively performing some task, but until now has lacked the resolution to track specific groups of neurons, as the functional units of the brain are called.

posted in The Brain - 0 replies

5/16 Bleep Happens filmfest (SF Bay area)

2005-04-26T09:08:52Z

Hello,

"Bleep Happens" is a short film festival coming up at Rafael Theater. It features five short films written and produced by survivors of brain injury. They are participants at Marin Brain Injury Network's Larkspur Center, a very cool program I was involved with. Participants at the center have a lot to say, and insights to share, as their lives have been irrevocably and drastically changed. www.mbin.org

Thanks,

Laurie

[please pardon my cross-postings]
----------------------

Marin Brain Injury Network and The Larkspur Center
Present:

"Bleep Happens"
A festival of 5 short films written and produced by
Larkspur Center program participants

Monday, May 16th at 7:00pm
California Film Institute
Rafael Theater
38 Miller Avenue Suite 6
Mill Valley, CA 94941
(415)461-6771
Reception Following at Bank of Marin
------------------------------------------
About The Marin Brain Injury Network

Marin Brain Injury Network (MBIN) is a grassroots
organization whose members include survivors of
Acquired Brain Injury, their families and caregivers,
professionals from the fields of medicine and social
service, and other concerned individuals from
throughout the community.

MBIN provides a community reintegration program at The
Larkspur Center in Larkspur, California, near the
College of Marin. The program addresses the
functional limitations and psychosocial barriers that
survivors of acquired brain injury frequently
experience.

"The Glen"
by Glen Bullock

If I were a fruit, I would be a lemon,
because I can be sweet, but I am often sour.

If I were a shoe, I would be a sandal,
because I am comfortable, but not too formal.

If I were a song, I would be, "Amazing Grace"
because the fact that I am alive
proves God's grace.

If I were a car, I would be a racecar,
because I went really fast, and was dangerous.

If I were a color, I would be blue,
like a blue streak.
Sometimes I feel sad and blue.

If I were a land formation,
I would be a large island,
because I am large, but often alone.

posted in The Brain - 0 replies

THE MIND

2005-04-02T02:38:30Z

Agree, disagree.

posted in The Brain - 24 replies

Consciousness puzzle

2005-03-30T15:35:12Z

I'm sure this is standard stuff in artificial consciousness circles, but could someone solve it for me?

The location: an operating theatre with facilities for two simultaneous operations.
Your situation: you are laid out on one table. You can see the other table at the other side of the room. There is a body on it…

Scenario 1:
The doctors anaesthetise you, remove your brain, examine it carefully and replace it.
What do you experience when you wake up?
Select one of the following responses:
A. Everything is normal.
B. You see your old body lying on the other table, and if you look in a mirror you see a new face.
C. Nothing; you don’t exist anymore
D. None of the above. Explain why…
Answer (A) is not too controversial here. No one would imagine that your personality could not survive being separated from your skull for a few minutes.

Scenario 2:
The doctors anaesthetise you, remove your brain and transplant it into the skull of the brainless donated cadaver on the other table.
What do you experience when you wake up?
Select one of the following responses:
A. You see your old body lying on the other table, and if you look in a mirror you see a new face.
B. Everything is normal.
C. Nothing; you don’t exist anymore
D. None of the above. Explain why…
Answer (A) should not be too controversial. Unless your personality resides in any area other than the brain then transplanting the whole brain shouldn’t affect it.

Scenario 3:
The doctors anaesthetise you, remove your brain, disassemble it particle by particle, examine each particle carefully, re-assemble the brain perfectly and replace it.
What do you experience when you wake up?
Select one of the following responses:
A. Everything is normal.
B. You see your old body lying on the other table, and if you look in a mirror you see a new face.
C. Nothing; you don’t exist anymore
D. None of the above. Explain why…
Answer (A) seems logical. If not, then it implies that temporarily separating your molecules affects your personality. Does your soul escape? You would be reluctant to use a Star Trek transporter!

Scenario 4:
The doctors anaesthetise you, proceed to remove your brain particle by particle, discarding each particle and replacing it with an exact copy.
What do you experience when you wake up?
Select one of the following responses:
A. Everything is normal.
B. You see your old body lying on the other table, and if you look in a mirror you see a new face.
C. Nothing; you don’t exist anymore
D. None of the above. Explain why…
Any answer other than (A) would suggest that consciousness depends on some property of the particles that cannot be copied. In that case, a conscious electronic computer would be impossible.

Scenario 6:
The doctors anaesthetise you, proceed to remove your brain particle by particle, examine each particle and replace it with an exact copy. However, the original particles are then re-assembled perfectly and the resulting brain transplanted into the body on the other table.
What do you experience when you wake up?
Select one of the following responses:
A. Everything is normal.
B. You see your old body lying on the other table and if you look in the mirror you see a new face.
C. Nothing; you don’t exist anymore
D. None of the above. Explain why…
If you answered (A) for all of the previous questions then “you” are now in two places simultaneously – which cannot be true. Therefore at least one of your previous answers must be wrong. Which, and why?

posted in The Brain - 3 replies

Neurodiagnostic/EEG techs....

2005-03-15T02:30:07Z

Is anyone hear involved in neurology or working as an EEG tech or NeuroDx tech? Or working doing any kind of brain imaging/brain MRI's? Please let me know what you do and where/what specifically you studied, if so.

posted in The Brain - 4 replies

Need funnies regarding the brain

2005-02-04T04:16:09Z

Hi All,
I am teaching a Brain Gym class this weekend, and was wondering if anyone here had any attachments, websites, etc. with funny cartoons (1-4 frames) regarding the brain, and/or any of the five senses. Any input would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks so much!
Mari

posted in The Brain - 0 replies

Memories

2004-12-09T21:02:42Z

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/05/magazine/05MEMORY.html

December 5, 2004
In Search of Lost Time
By CATHRYN JAKOBSON RAMIN

few months ago, as I trudged down the stairs of my office building, deep in my thoughts, I noticed a dark-haired woman waving to me from the window of her car. She looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place her. Like quite a few others, she had slipped out of my mental Rolodex. In my brain, the synaptic traces that connected us had frayed. Yet again, I had misplaced an entire human being.

''So wonderful to see you,'' she said, inquiring by name after every member of my family, including the two dogs. Apparently she was not a casual acquaintance. Fending off panic, I proceeded through a mental list: Work? School? Synagogue? I couldn't visualize her in these places. I was about to cut and run with a quick ''nice to see you, too'' when the rear window slid down, revealing a toothy grin.

''We've been to the orthodontist,'' she said. The minute I saw Sam's freckled face, the mystery was solved. Our sons were best pals in nursery school and kindergarten. I had sat in her kitchen, discussing birthday parties. I remembered her backyard dotted with Little Tikes plastic play furniture. I knew what she did for work, and the name of her Portuguese nanny.

''Lisa,'' I said, as if her identity had never eluded me, ''it's terrific to see you.''
Why, as I edge toward the end of my 40's, has so much of what I know become impossible to access on demand? Where are the thoughts that spring forth in the shower but evanesce before they can be recorded, the mental lists that shed items on the way to the supermarket? The names of books and movies, actors and authors, le mot juste, the memory of social plans agreed upon in some calendarless situation -- what have become of these?

I take some comfort in the fact that I am not alone. In the space of one week, a psychologist remarked that she had turned over all social scheduling to her husband, at his insistence, because the couple had appeared at yet another dinner party on the wrong night. A woman who publishes a local magazine noted that she'd just come from the bank, where she'd spent 10 minutes searching through her purse, briefcase and pockets for a check that she'd never written. A freelance illustrator disclosed that he'd gone to work on Friday, completed a drawing for an editor and mailed it off, only to return on Monday to re-execute the identical assignment without any sense of deja vu.

The feelings of embarrassment, frustration and anger that surround such middle-aged lapses serve to disguise a more primitive emotion. At the heart of it, there is fear -- cold, implacable anxiety, emerging from the suspicion that this is just the beginning. Memory, the instrument we trusted to guide us, has instead betrayed us, making us deeply uncertain about our cognitive futures. We worry about decades of dependence, of life with a diminished mind trapped in a still vigorous body.

To the person who has misplaced his keys three times in two days or just called a colleague by the wrong name, forgetfulness in middle age can feel like incipient Alzheimer's disease. But for most of us, the memory deficits we encounter in midlife reflect a common pattern of brain aging and are not thought to be predictive of the progressive degeneration that leads to dementia. Neuropsychological tests can help tease out the difference between normal aging and pathology. Individuals, even in the early stages of Alzheimer's, show a marked inability to remember a list of several words after a 20-minute delay. When they are reminded that, for instance, one of the words is a type of fruit, they still lack the ''aha!'' experience that allows the average person to say, ''Oh, yes, it was an orange.''

''We are hyper-alert about Alzheimer's disease,'' said Dr. Oliver Sacks, the author and neurologist, when I asked him why we find cognitive lapses so worrisome. ''Even momentary forgetting, quite benign, can be unduly upsetting, because there is general alarm around us. But that is only one part of it: For people who have always been very competent, forgetting brings a disturbing sense of the loss of control and mastery.''

So much that is fundamental is bound up in the ease and accuracy of recollection. Foremost, there is trust: On the afternoon when you forget that it is your turn to carpool and leave three kids and a disgruntled coach standing on a soccer field in the teeming rain, your belief (and theirs) that you are a reliable person is severely tested. There is self-knowledge: at the holiday table, when your brother recounts your role in setting the garage on fire some 30 years earlier and you can't recall the event, your historical perspective is altered forever. There is self-esteem: when you open your mouth to ask a question at a professional meeting, certain that you have the facts at your fingertips, but the words elude you, you feel witless and weak.

''In an information age,'' writes Charles Baxter in a collection of essays called ''The Business of Memory,'' ''forgetfulness is a sign of debility and incompetence. It is taken as weakness, an emblem of losing one's grip. For anyone who works with quantities of data, a single note of forgetfulness can sound like a death knell. To remember is to triumph over loss and death; to forget is to form a partnership with oblivion.''

Nearly 15 years ago, when I was pregnant with my first son, I realized that something was happening to my mind. Beyond the typical things -- forgetting names, directions to places I'd been before -- I found it harder to comprehend or retain complex reading material. I could no longer make rapid connections between ideas, because I'd lost access to knowledge I'd already absorbed.

''How bothersome the loss is,'' Dr. Sacks said, ''depends very much on personality. Someone who has prided herself on control, on having everything in order, may be much less tolerant than the easygoing person.'' As an indisputably Type A person, I was deeply perturbed.

Three years ago, a few days before I turned 45, I went to the movies with my husband. On the short drive home, I realized that I couldn't remember the title of the film, which I had liked very much, or the name of the actor who played the leading role. Was this just the result of growing older -- the same middle-aged muddle my friends felt -- or was it something of a different magnitude? The question, for me, had become urgent. I could give up, resigning myself to existence in a mental fog. Or I could subject my brain to the best analysis and treatment that science could offer.

went first to see Dr. Gary Small, director of U.C.L.A.'s Center on Aging. He's the author of ''The Memory Bible,'' as well as the recently published ''The Memory Prescription.'' After meeting with him, I enrolled in a research study he was conducting; I'd adhere to a high-protein diet including fruits and vegetables with antioxidant properties, omega-3 fatty-acid supplements, daily multivitamins and capsules of vitamins E and C. The program also called for exercise, daily mental challenges and stress-release activities. Dr. Small was investigating whether following this regimen for two weeks would improve memory. In order to assess my base-line cognitive abilities, Dr. Small ordered two imaging studies -- a PET scan and an M.R.I. of my brain -- as well as a brief neuropsychological evaluation. The images were heartening -- apparently, my brain was free of the signs of Alzheimer's disease or evidence of stroke or tumors. As for my neuropsych evaluation, Dr. Karen Miller, a neuropsychologist working on the research study, explained gently that although some of my scores were below those of my peers, when averaged, they were consistent with the impairment that one might expect at my age.

At first I didn't grasp the importance of what Dr. Miller had said. That five of my scores showed significant cognitive deficits was in fact the first concrete evidence that something was awry in my brain. I clung instead to the notion that what I was experiencing was ''average.''

And what precisely did it mean to have an average amount of memory impairment? Although we notice it first in middle age -- sometimes as early as our mid-30's -- memory starts to decline in our 20's. This has been demonstrated with mice, rats, primates and humans, all of whom begin to lose processing speed at about the same relative age. If you're a middle-aged rat, 15 months old, this means that it takes you longer to locate an underwater platform in a water maze. If you're a middle-aged human, it means that when you hear a list of words, you begin to lose some of your ability to ''acquire'' them (place them in short-term memory and parrot them back immediately), ''store'' them (move them -- after 10 seconds -- from short-term memory to long-term memory) and ''retrieve'' them (haul them out of long-term memory). These abilities don't change overnight, but by the time a person reaches her early 40's, there are statistically significant differences from the early-to-mid-20's peak.

One explanation for these changes is put forth by Dr. George Bartzokis, director of U.C.L.A.'s Memory Disorders and Alzheimer's Disease Clinic, who has studied the midlife breakdown of the myelin sheath, a sheet of lipid fat that wraps around the delicate branches of a neuron and is critical to brain development. From infancy, cholesterol levels in the brain slowly increase in order to facilitate myelin growth. Bartzokis suggests that at some point after age 30, these cholesterol levels reach a point where they become high enough to promote the development of a toxic protein that begins to eat away at myelin and other membranes, disrupting the smooth flow of neuronal messages. (It is not clear whether reducing blood cholesterol has an effect on levels of brain cholesterol, but researchers suggest that cholesterol-lowering medications are among the preventative therapies worth investigating.)

''Our hypothesis is that the very process of myelination -- which allows us to become wise human beings -- sets up the degeneration,'' Dr. Bartzokis says. ''How to prevent that degeneration is the focus of a great deal of research.''

In some individuals, the escalation of toxic protein may begin earlier or progress more quickly than in others, possibly engendering the development of the plaques and tangles that are the hallmark of Alzheimer's disease.

Scientists believe that there is a relationship between this toxic protein production and the Apolipoprotein E gene. All of us carry two copies of this gene. Research confirms that individuals who carry the e-4 variant of the Apolipoprotein E gene (about 20 percent of the population) are vulnerable to developing Alzheimer's disease at an earlier age.

There is a blood test to determine whether a person carries this variant. Several scientists warned me, however, that the test could not predict whether or not a person would develop Alzheimer's and noted that it would be difficult to obtain without a diagnosis of unspecified dementia. My internist, accustomed at this point to my requests for odd laboratory tests, simply noted ''memory impairment'' in the appropriate form and faxed it to Athena Diagnostics in Massachusetts. If the test was positive, health-insurance providers would likely consider me a terrible risk. Still, I wanted to know. Several weeks and half a dozen phone calls later, I had my answer: I didn't carry the variant.

Generally speaking, middle-aged forgetting follows a familiar pattern. People's names often go first, because they are word symbols with no cues attached. Difficulties with word retrieval tend to follow. Instead of the phrase you want, you get what James Reason, a psychologist at the University of Manchester, in Britain, called ''the ugly sisters'' -- similar-sounding but frustratingly incorrect combinations of syllables.

Recently acquired ''how to'' memory becomes challenging to consolidate. You think and think, but you just can't remember the steps required to back up the new hard drive, a skill you perfected yesterday. Prospective memory, that is, remembering to perform an action at some distance in the future -- to fetch milk from the store on the way home, for instance -- is vulnerable, particularly in the face of competing distractions. The cues that are supposed to remind you that you need milk -- your husband's phone call a half-hour before, or the Post-it now deep in your handbag -- fail to alert you, until you pull into your driveway. ''As you age,'' said Dr. Daniel Schacter, a Harvard psychologist, ''those retrieval cues have to be readily accessible, unambiguous and informative. The equivalent of a string around the finger isn't going to do it. You're going to be asking yourself what that string is for.''

A decline in the availability of working memory, which allows us to manage several ideas or intentions at the same time, storing and retrieving them with the fluidity of a three-card monte player, is perhaps the most odious loss of all. Multitasking can be frustrating and often counterproductive. New research, from Dr. David E. Meyer, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, shows that for all but the most routine endeavors -- and few cognitive efforts seem to require such minimal attention -- it is more time-consuming and wearying for the brain to alternate among tasks than it would be if the same jobs were done one at a time.

There are many potential catalysts for forgetfulness; in fact, the list is so long that it's a wonder we remember anything at all. Stress, anxiety and depression all inhibit memory. Hypothyroidism can affect memory and concentration. Type 2 diabetes and its precursor, insulin resistance, can also significantly reduce cognitive function. Even fish-eating can be a hazard. Exposure to neurotoxins, most commonly the methyl mercury that we consume when we eat large predatory ocean fish, like swordfish and tuna, can result in what Dr. Jane Hightower, a San Francisco internist who wrote the resolution on fish and methyl mercury toxicity that was adopted by the American Medical Association, calls ''fish fog.''

None of these factors seemed to account for my own cognitive troubles, however. I wasn't depressed. My mercury levels were a little high, but not high enough to cause fish fog. My thyroid was fine. I felt stressed, certainly, but for the most part because I was so worried about my memory. One catalyst, on the other hand, did seem plausible: lack of sleep. Like many people who had spoken to me about their memory deficits, I slept poorly -- often I was up at 3 a.m., when, in the words of the poet Richard Lang, the bedroom turns into ''a switching yard for the freight trains of anxiety.'' A modest but constant sleep shortage can undermine alertness, a University of Pennsylvania study notes. Those with ''minor'' sleep debts -- say, sleeping just four to six hours a night -- may display cognitive declines equal to people who have not slept for up to two full nights.

Good sleep, both REM and non-REM sleep, appears to be critical to the ability to absorb information. During non-REM sleep, which comprises about 80 percent of snooze time, simple spatial tasks and recollections of personal experiences may be consolidated, according to Dr. Michael Perlis, who directs the University of Rochester's Sleep and Neurophysiology Research Laboratory. Tasks involving visual skills, like facial recognition and memory of events with strong emotional impact, appear to be fortified during REM, as are memories of complex actions and procedures.

Dr. Jan Born, at the University of Lubeck, in Germany, recently demonstrated how our sleeping brains may continue to focus on problems that baffle us during waking hours. That's why, in addition to being well rested while you take in information, it may also be important to have a good night's sleep afterward, in order to successfully move that information into long-term memory.

Born's study suggests that creativity or problem-solving insight may often happen during that portion of non-REM sleep known as slow-wave sleep -- the deepest type of sleep, usually occurring during the first third of the sleep cycle and usually devoid of dreams. But from age 40, said Dr. Robert Stickgold, a sleep researcher and assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, ''slow-wave sleep virtually disappears, diminishing from about 20 percent of the night to near zero. Since slow-wave sleep helps us consolidate certain types of memories, this might explain a substantial component of our memory decline with age.''

Several pharmaceutical companies, Dr. Michael Perlis said, are pursuing the development of new compounds that may reverse declines in slow-wave sleep. ''This new class of drugs may or may not help people fall asleep as quickly, or stay asleep as long, as traditional sleeping pills,'' he said. ''But they have the potential to produce qualitatively better sleep.''

As a research subject in Gary Small's study, I'd been following his recommended memory regimen. Along with the diet, I pursued the recommended exercise program, spending some time each day on an elliptical trainer. Studies indicate that as we age, our mental abilities are improved by regular aerobic and strength-training workouts, while nonaerobic exercise, like stretching and toning, are less beneficial. I felt more energetic, but frankly, I didn't feel much sharper.

Frustrated, I went to see Dr. Jonathan Canick, the director of the neuropsychological assessment service at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. Canick is a pragmatic specialist, accustomed to evaluating patients with serious dementias, head injuries, brain tumors and strokes, as well as those with more subtle neurocognitive disorders. ''When a patient ends up in my office,'' he said, ''it's because the medical professionals are stumped.''

Dr. Canick suggested that for most middle-aged people, the real issue was not so much declining memory or retention but rather the faltering ability to attend to and process the onslaught of colliding streams of information coming at us all day long. ''It gets experienced as a memory issue,'' he said, ''but in reality, it could be about attention, learning or retrieving information.'' We could blame evolution: our brains, designed to attend to novel stimuli like a tiny sound downstairs in the middle of the night, ignore that which seems old and familiar. A great deal of what we experience every day -- some of it important, some not -- simply fails to be encoded. As we age, our brains slip into ''been there, done that'' mode. ''If it blows by you,'' he said, ''and it doesn't register, you're never going to be able to retrieve it -- because it doesn't exist.''

Over the course of two days, Dr. Canick put me through an exhausting seven hours of neuropsychological tests. I knew I was struggling. To test facial recognition, I thumbed through a book of head shots. A minute later, presented with a book containing the same photos as well as a group of new ones, I was unable to say whom I had already seen. In another task, I was asked to connect the dots through an alternating and ascending lineup of numbers and letters. I lost the sequence and had to backtrack to rediscover it. Numbers, letters, words, figures -- they were bewildering. ''Keep going,'' Dr. Canick said. ''Go to the end.'' He worked my brain like a trainer works an athlete, looking for weakness.

Halfway into the testing, he told me that there was no evidence of a dementing, neurodegenerative or progressive disorder. But the tests I flubbed nevertheless showed impairments that were disturbing and not considered ''average'' in midlife. He explained that there might be a reason for these deficits. People with mild traumatic brain injuries, he said, often demonstrate variable and reduced ability for attention, processing information, word-finding or multitasking. Typically, they interpret their experience of slowed processing and attention deficits as ''memory'' problems.

''For now, it's only a hypothesis,'' he said. ''But your symptoms and your results show the distinct neurobehavorial fingerprint of brain damage, the kind that stems from a series of mild traumatic brain injuries.''

''That's impossible,'' I said. ''I've never even been knocked unconscious.''
''And that,'' Dr. Canick said, ''reflects a very common misperception.'' Concussions do not always result in a loss of consciousness, he explained; one can have a mild concussion, experienced as ''seeing stars,'' and remain conscious. In fact, a person doesn't even have to experience direct impact to her head. Rapid acceleration or deceleration of the head, which is often accompanied by a rotation of the brain, can result in concussion. In some cases the brain bounces off the interior of the skull, causing dendrites and axons to be stretched and sheared, damaging the myelin sheath and disrupting communication in a way that could cause a person eventually to slow cognitively and physically. Mild traumatic brain injuries often are undiagnosed, Dr. Canick said. With successive concussions, the effect is more logarithmic than linear. Even if the first injury did little harm, the second can have exponential impact, as does every injury that follows.

A few weeks later, I broached the subject of brain injury with my brother Peter, expecting him to agree that Dr. Canick's hypothesis was ridiculous. He did not. ''Don't you remember,'' Peter asked, ''when we were children, and I hit you with. . . . '' I never heard the end of the sentence. I hadn't given it a thought in 30 years, but in less than a second, I was 9 years old, back in the basement of our house in Scarsdale. My brother, a whirling towheaded kid drunk on centrifugal force, spun in circles, an old broomstick extended horizontally from his hands. I was in the wrong place. The impact knocked me flat. For the next three weeks, as my eye sockets and forehead turned every color in the rainbow, my fourth-grade teacher referred to me as Miss Technicolor.

There were other head injuries as well: horseback-riding wrack-ups and, because I am tall, forehead-smashing collisions with low-hanging doorways and tree branches. One by one, these recollections emerged. According to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, at least 1.1 million people each year sustain mild traumatic brain injuries that result in confusion, disorientation or impaired consciousness for fewer than 30 minutes. The number is probably underestimated, given that many people with mild injuries don't go to a doctor's office or an emergency room at all.

How could I know that Dr. Canick was right -- that my mild traumatic head injuries could actually produce long-lasting neurocognitive deficits? I was reluctant to credit his diagnosis, suspecting that he might want to be the guy with the answer, whether or not that answer was correct. I understood the concept of logarithmic damage, but why had I failed to notice any impairment until I reached my mid-30's?

''You must take into account the concept of neuronal reserve,'' said Dr. Ronald Ruff, a clinical neuropsychologist in San Francisco, who concurred with Dr. Canick's findings. ''By age 25, you have all the neurons you're going to get,'' he said. ''For most of us, the fact that we experience continuous slow cell death over the years doesn't become evident until we reach our 80's. If, on the other hand, you've had concussions, or abused substances or alcohol, you'll have diminished your share of neurons, and the slope of decline will be sharper. In your 20's, this is usually no big deal, but by the time you reach your mid-30's or 40's, the net availability has declined so much that, when you're called to rise to the height of your capacity, you start to notice.''

That made sense, I thought -- but why, in my case, had the onset of cognitive problems occurred so swiftly? Hormonal changes during pregnancy can affect memory and cognition, Dr. Canick said. In addition, ''you had an underlying vulnerability,'' he explained. ''You toughed it out during your 20's, because you had the neuronal resources to do it. After the birth, you faced a new situation -- you were compelled to divide your attention as you never had before, and you discovered the deficiency in your brain function.''

Serious long-term effects of mild traumatic brain injury are often missed because the injured person returns rapidly to normal life, said Dr. Tracy McIntosh, professor of neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania. ''Several months down the road -- about two months later in mice -- you'll begin to see subtle cognitive changes,'' he said, because, perhaps, it takes that long for the injured neurons to die or the neural pathways to become dysfunctional. The vast majority of these injuries were thought to resolve completely within a few months or even weeks, but brain-injury specialists like Dr. McIntosh now question that assumption.

I returned to Dr. Canick to talk more about the results of my test and his theory about brain trauma. ''Your results range from the 10th percentile to the 98th,'' he said. ''You cannot rely upon your own abilities, because they are so variable.'' He said it was as if neurologically I were two different people. ''You don't know which of the two people is going to be available for any task. And that is destabilizing, as well as a recipe for anxiety, confusion, angst and self-doubt.''

Dr. Canick's descriptions felt achingly familiar, an explanation for a dichotomy I'd felt for years. As a psychologist, Dr. Canick could not prescribe drugs. But he told me that several of his brain-injured, attention-compromised patients had improved with the use of neurostimulants, either Ritalin or Adderall, the same drugs that are regularly administered to children with A.D.H.D. Although these drugs enabled people to focus better and make more effective use of their brains, he cautioned that they did not bestow abilities that weren't there in the first place.

I discovered that Adderall -- an amphetamine and a controlled substance with a high potential for abuse and addiction -- was rapidly developing a black-market status. Despite its side effects -- dry mouth, insomnia, lack of appetite, headache and racing heartbeat -- college students were using it to improve their focus on exams, some young professionals have been taking it to increase their productivity at work and increasingly, middle-aged people like myself were using it to restore their attention and concentration. If you were willing to visit a psychiatrist or a sympathetic general practitioner and answer a series of rather transparent questions that suggested that you were suffering from adult attention deficit disorder, it seemed that prescriptions were readily available.

Adderall and Ritalin appear to provide a boost in focus to virtually anyone who ingests them. Dr. Anthony Rostain, medical director the University of Pennsylvania's Adult A.D.H.D. Treatment and Research Program, suggested that he wouldn't be surprised if, in the future, hordes of middle-aged people popped pills for cognitive enhancement. In fact, he predicted that these stimulants would be available over the counter. ''Given the performance orientation we have today,'' he said, ''and the urgent need to improve productivity, it seems to me that people will use these drugs in the same way we now use socially sanctioned stimulants like caffeine.'' Other cognitively enhancing drugs, he noted, were on the way -- the market for them was vast, and the pharmaceutical companies had taken notice.

I wish I could say that the Adderall didn't help. But after about a week, the gears meshed in my brain. Once again, I could move sentences around in a manuscript without finding myself holding a handful of orphaned words. I regained access to my vocabulary. My errands proceeded in an orderly fashion.

Dr. Canick asked me to return to his office. He wanted to test me again now that I was on the drug. On the test of facial recognition, my scores improved from well below average -- in the 19th percentile -- to the 93rd. On a test of mental arithmetic, my performance increased from the 50th percentile to the 91st for people my age. Verbal math problems, once unfathomable because I could not remember how many doughnuts Sally, Bill and Jane had each purchased, became quite easy. Other tests showed more modest improvements, but the trend was clear.

I didn't kid myself. Drugs aside, the mechanism was still broken. If Dr. Canick's diagnosis was correct, I was dealing with a problem that could be patched up but never fixed. New imaging technology will detect microscopic damage to axons and specific neural pathways, perhaps answering the question of whether indeed my brain had suffered an injury. While I knew that my expectations for myself were high, and that a pathology could be involved, I also saw that many people in midlife experienced the same sense of perpetual distraction and preoccupation. What had brought us to this point? I wondered. Were we trying too hard to live fast-paced, information-heavy lives, when our brains were naturally slowing down? Our fleeting attention, it seemed to me, might be a protective if ill-timed response -- the brain's way of saying that it had simply had enough.

After a month of Adderall I could see that there were side effects I hadn't read about in the drug literature. I worked like a demon, but I found myself disconnected. At the computer I was entirely focused, but off duty, certain pleasures, like wandering around aimlessly in my own mind, were no longer available to me. I began to take mini-vacations from Adderall -- a Sunday off, so that I could recline in a lounge chair and watch my kids perform cannonball dives. I suspected that I was gunning a middle-aged engine at speeds better suited to one with fewer miles on it, and that there would be consequences. Because I never experienced the feeling of euphoria that causes some people to desire ever-increasing doses of the drug, I didn't worry about addiction, but I was concerned about psychological dependency.

Sometimes I wondered whom I was trying to fool. Was this cognitive enhancement actually no more than vanity, as frivolous as a face lift, but more deceptive, because in the end, you duped only yourself? I could not imagine tossing the Adderall prescription and returning to the mental fog. Nevertheless I found myself wondering whether at some point in the future, such hard-edged, drug-induced accuracy might start to feel as unseemly to me as a thigh-high miniskirt, and I'd quit.

ot long ago, I spent some time with Dr. Thomas Crook III, a clinical psychologist who had devoted his long career -- including 14 years at the National Institute of Mental Health, where he served six years as chief of the Geriatric Psychopharmacology Program -- to helping to establish age-associated memory impairment as a clinical condition that warranted attention and treatment. Years ago, he noted the insensitivity implicit in telling older patients who complained about their memories that what they were experiencing was inconvenient but typical. If they went in complaining that they could no longer read, he wrote in 1993, ''it would scarcely occur to the clinician to inform them that their problems are no worse than those of other persons of the same age and, therefore, that they do not merit treatment.''

Something he mentioned gave me hope that I would not always feel so troubled by what had happened to my mind. Although for many, essential cognitive skills, like the ability to remember names or recognize faces, decline precipitously as the decades go by, people's self-reported impressions reflect a different understanding. ''Asked how they would describe their memories,'' Dr. Crook said, ''people who are in their 40's are the most critical. In their 50's, they feel a little bit better about their capacities, and by the time they reach their 60's, they're as satisfied as they were in their early 30's.''

With Adderall, I had a Proustian taste of what I thought I'd left behind. I was glad to know that, at least while pharmaceutically enhanced, I still had the chops. Still, I often thought about what Dr. Crook had said. At what point might I stop dwelling on what had been lost, I wondered, and begin to relish what I had gained with age? Perspective and insight, fused with acceptance, formed the cornerstone of wisdom. The rest, presumably, I could get from Google.

Cathryn Jakobson Ramin is at work on a book about midlife memory for HarperCollins.

posted in The Brain - 1 reply

Brainwave Cap buiilt

2004-12-07T19:22:11Z

Well its getting closer all the time.

Here is another article from today's news on a new cap with as few as 64 electrodes. These are human trials, which show remarkable success with serious implications.

'Brainwave' cap controls computer
Tuesday, 7 December, 2004, 10:30 GMT

The cursor movements were recorded: blue is slowest, and red fastest.

A team of US researchers has shown that controlling devices with the brain is a step closer. Four people, two of them partly paralysed wheelchair users, successfully moved a computer cursor while wearing a cap with 64 electrodes.

Previous research has shown that monkeys can control a computer with electrodes implanted into their brain.
{excerpt}
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4074869.stm

And this time the effort is in my back yard, very very cool. I may have to make contact.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/heal..._thought07.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci...ght7dec07.story

posted in The Brain - 1 reply

News about brain www.nanoaging.com

2004-10-02T05:23:13Z

http://www.nanoaging.com/modules.php?name=News&new_topic=26

posted in The Brain - 0 replies

Explain this

2004-05-21T03:32:35Z

OK folks now for some fun science. Please visit this image and explain the effect. If you are certifiably color blind please visit anyway as I am curious if you still observe the illusion and would love your comments.

http://www.imminst.org/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=137&t=3650&hl=&s=

Many of you folks are some of the smarter people I have met so consider this complement a blatant come on and hook. I have already gone out on a limb and posted my reasoning on the web site but I would love to hear this discussed here and if any of you are not members there please consider it too.

Now I will shamelessly cross post this on a few other relevant tribes. If you are members there please forgive me ;-)

posted in The Brain - 2 replies

Getting started

2004-02-23T09:59:25Z

Here is an article referencing recent studies that explode a common myth about neural tissue not regenerating or growing during our lives. This one is even more interesting to me because it addresses a specific task associated growth pattern.

I would love to build a data base here that separates fact from fictions and resolves a most up to date analysis of exactly how we define the brain.

Also as the dualism debate is raging in the Cognitive Science tribe and the Meta Brain Consciousness tribe how about we stick to physiology in this tribe?

laz

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20040121/sc_nm/science_juggling_dc&e=2&ncid=
Study: Learning to Juggle Causes Changes in Brain
Wed Jan 21, 1:10 PM ET Science - Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - It's a great party trick and useful for circus performers but scientists said Wednesday that learning to juggle can cause changes in areas of the adult brain.

Mastering the skill increases the amount of gray matter in areas of the brain that process and store visual information, proving what was not thought possible -- that new stimuli can alter the brain's structure.

A comparison of brain-imaging scans of non-jugglers and other volunteers before they learned to juggle and three months later, revealed an increase in gray matter in certain areas of the newly trained jugglers' brains.

"Our results challenge our view of the human central nervous system. Human brains probably must be viewed as dynamic, changing with development and normal learning," said Arne May, of the University of Regensburg in Germany, who headed the research team.

Gray matter refers to parts of the brain and spinal cord that are comprised of the tightly packed nuclei of nerve cells. In the brain it is mainly found in the outer layers of the cerebrum which is responsible for advanced mental functions.

In a report in the science journal Nature, May and his colleagues said brain scans done three months after the new jugglers had stopped juggling showed the increase in gray matter had been reduced.

"I believe the challenge we face is...to be able to adapt and modulate this knowledge into disease management," May added in an email interview.

Mental Muscles of Steel at Popular Science (Jan 20, 2004)
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/medicine/article/0,12543,572388,00.html

The Human Brain-what is it? at Pravda.ru (Jan 9, 2004)
http://english.pravda.ru/science/19/94/377/11742_brain.html

• Brain Briefings
http://www.sfn.org/briefings/
• Neuroscience
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/ehc.html
• Digital Anatomist: Interactive Brain Atlas
http://www9.biostr.washington.edu/cgi-bin/DA/PageMaster?atlas:Neuroanatomy+ffpathIndex:Splash^Page+2

posted in The Brain - 1 reply