prefrontal cortex – Shamskm: A site to exchange knowledge and solutions

Brainwaves reflect ability to beat built-in bias

By Guest PostJune 13, 2013Scienceactivity, behavior, brain science, brainwaves, brown institute, brown university, cognitive control, eeg scalp monitors, genetic, humans, ian eisenberg, james cavanagh, marc guitart masip, michael frank, neurological roots, obsessive compulsive disorder, pavlovian bias, prefrontal cortex, psychological factors, quentin huys, situational factors, specific brain activity, symbols, university college london, university of zurich, vertebrates

Many animals, including humans, harbor ingrained biases to act when they can obtain rewards and to remain inactive to avoid punishment. Sometimes, however those biases can steer us wrong. A new study finds that theta brainwave activity in the prefrontal cortex predicts how well people can overcome these biases when a better choice are available.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Vertebrates are predisposed to act to gain rewards and to lie low to avoid punishment. Try to teach chickens to back away from food in order to obtain it, and you’ll fail, as researchers did in 1986. But humans are better thinkers than chickens. In the May 8 edition of the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers show that the level of theta brainwave activity in the prefrontal cortex predicts whether people will be able to overcome these ingrained biases when doing so is required to achieve a goal. (more…)

Human Cognition Depends Upon Slow-Firing Neurons

By Guest PostFebruary 26, 2013Sciencealzheimer's disease, amy arnsten, any sensory stimulation, brain circuits, clear thinking, cognitive deficits, dementia, disease, Environment, firing of neurons, glutamate signaling regulate, good mental health, hallmark, human cognition, john krystal, mathematical models, medicine, mental sketch pad, min wang, molecular basis, nao j gamo, neuronal firing, new york university, nmda nr2b receptors, prefrontal cortex, receptors, schizophrenia, street drug, types of nmda, xiao jing wang, yale neurobiologist, yale school, yang yang

Good mental health and clear thinking depend upon our ability to store and manipulate thoughts on a sort of “mental sketch pad.” In a new study, Yale School of Medicine researchers describe the molecular basis of this ability — the hallmark of human cognition — and describe how a breakdown of the system contributes to diseases such as schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease.

“Insults to these highly evolved cortical circuits impair the ability to create and maintain our mental representations of the world, which is the basis of higher cognition,” said Amy Arnsten, professor of neurobiology and senior author of the paper published in the Feb. 20 issue of the journal Neuron. (more…)

First Measurements Made of Key Brain Links

By Guest PostDecember 5, 2012Scienceamalia gonzalez, axons, barry connors, behavioral significance, brain scientists, brown university, consciousness, cortex cells, excitatory cells, fundamental functions, inhibitory neurons, margot elmaleh, mental arousal, milliseconds, nonspecific thalamus, omar ahmed, optogenetics, outermost layer, prefrontal cortex, saundra patrick, scott cruikshank, sensory signals, tanya stevens, thalamic signals, thalamocortical partnership

Until now, brain scientists have been almost completely in the dark about how most of the nonspecific thalamus interacts with the prefrontal cortex, a relationship believed to be key in such fundamental functions as maintaining consciousness and mental arousal. Brown University researchers performed a set of experiments, described in the Journal of Neuroscience, to explore and measure those circuits for the first time.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Inside the brains of mice and men alike, a relatively big football-shaped region called the thalamus acts like a switchboard, providing the prefrontal cortex, the part that does abstract thinking and decision-making, with most of its information. The thalamus’s responsibility even includes helping the prefrontal cortex to maintain consciousness and arousal. (more…)

Yale Team Discovers How Stress and Depression Can Shrink the Brain

By Guest PostAugust 20, 2012Health, Scienceanimal model, antidepressant therapy, ashley lepack, bhavya voleti, brain, brain cell, brain mass, brain volume, chronic stress, cognitive impairment, depression, emotional, gata1, gene, gene activation, genetic switch, h j kang, mounira banasr, pattern, pawel licznerski, prefrontal cortex, ronald duman, shrink, stress, symptoms of depression, synaptic connection, transcription factor, yale

Major depression or chronic stress can cause the loss of brain volume, a condition that contributes to both emotional and cognitive impairment. Now a team of researchers led by Yale scientists has discovered one reason why this occurs — a single genetic switch that triggers loss of brain connections in humans and depression in animal models.

The findings, reported in the Aug. 12 issue of the journal Nature Medicine, show that the genetic switch known as a transcription factor represses the expression of several genes that are necessary for the formation of synaptic connections between brain cells, which in turn could contribute to loss of brain mass in the prefrontal cortex. (more…)

To Ditch Dessert, Feed the Brain

By Guest PostSeptember 22, 2011Sciencebrain, brain imaging scans, fmri scans, glucose, glucose levels, high calorie food, hypothalamus, kathleen page, low calorie food, prefrontal cortex, rajita sinha, regulating impulses, striatum, twinkies, yale university

If the brain goes hungry, Twinkies look a lot better, a study led by researchers at Yale University and the University of Southern California has found.

Brain imaging scans show that when glucose levels drop, an area of the brain known to regulate emotions and impulses loses the ability to dampen desire for high-calorie food, according to the study published online September 19 in The Journal of Clinical Investigation. (more…)

What Zen Meditators Don’t Think About Won’t Hurt Them

By Guest PostDecember 11, 2010Healtharthritis, back pain, behaviour, brain areas, brain function, cancer, chronic pain, functional magnetic resonance imaging, health benefits, joshua grant, meditators, mri data, notion of mindfulness, pain, pain perception, pain sensitivity, pierre rainville, prefrontal cortex, reduced sensitivity to pain, zen meditation

Zen meditation has many health benefits, including a reduced sensitivity to pain. According to new research from the Université de Montréal, meditators do feel pain but they simply don’t dwell on it as much. These findings, published in the month’s issue of Pain, may have implications for chronic pain sufferers, such as those with arthritis, back pain or cancer.

“Our previous research found that Zen meditators have lower pain sensitivity. The aim of the current study was to determine how they are achieving this,” says senior author Pierre Rainville, researcher at the Université de Montréal and the Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal. “Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we demonstrated that although the meditators were aware of the pain, this sensation wasn’t processed in the part of their brains responsible for appraisal, reasoning or memory formation. We think that they feel the sensations, but cut the process short, refraining from interpretation or labelling of the stimuli as painful.” (more…)

Tag Archives: prefrontal cortex