We Are All Inattentive Superheroes

We Are All Inattentive Superheroes

By Bradley Voytek / Source: Oscillatory Thoughts

One of the more interesting parts about being a neuroscientist is when I'm suddenly struck by how absolutely weird our brains are.

And I'm not even talking about the super trippy stuff like free-will; even the mundane things are really mind-boggling.

For example: what does it mean to experience the world around us? We "see" things because photons that manage to pass through the inside-out design of our retinal cells cause a molecular change in the photoreceptors such that 11-cis-retinal isomerizes... etc.

When we "hear" things, the sound pressure waveform hits the tympanic membrane (eardrum) and ultimately causes the basilar membrane in your cochlea to vibrate. The basilar membrane is stiffer at one end (the basal end) and less stiff at the other end (the apical end). This fact was observed by Georg von Békésy (and earned him the 1961 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine).

Okay, great, so we know a ton of the basic biology and cellular mechanisms of the signal transduction mechanisms of our sensory apparatus.

But damn if I'm still not amazed by the actual experience of sensation.

Even beyond the philosophical wonder of passively sampling our outside environment in a shared, meaningful fashion is the ridiculous sensitivity of our senses.

We're used to thinking of our senses as being pretty shite: we can't see as well as eagles, we can't hear as well as bats, and we can't smell as well as dogs.

Or so we're used to thinking.

We All Have Superhuman Senses

It turns out that humans can, in fact, detect as few as 2 photons entering the retina. Two. As in, one-plus-one.

It is often said that, under ideal conditions, a young, healthy person can see a candle flame from 30 miles away. That's like being able to see a candle in Times Square from Stamford, Connecticut. Or seeing a candle in Candlestick Park from Napa Valley.

Similarly, it appears that the limits to our threshold of hearing may actually be Brownian motion. That means that we can almost hear the random movements of atoms.

We can also smell as few as 30 molecules of certain substances.

I mean, we're talking serious Daredevil-level detection here!

These facts suggest that we all have some level of what we'd normally think of as "super human" sensory abilities already.

But what the hell? If I can supposedly see a candle from 30 miles away, why do I still crack my frakkin' shin on the coffee table when it's only slightly dark in my living room?

Well, for one thing, attention plays a very important role. For example, consider the very famous visual attention experiment below:

How can we see TWO PHOTONS, but miss THAT!?

The easy hypothesis? Attention.

Attention is the Secret

You see, in the experiments testing the physical limits of the human sensory systems, the subjects involved are dedicating a lot of attention to the one sense being tested, almost certainly at the exclusion of the other senses.

I think we all have a pretty intuitive grasp of this. And sometimes our intuitive corrections are pretty damn funny. If you watch people's behavior carefully you'll notice some strange behaviors that we do.

Have you ever been driving around, trying to find a particular address, and then turn down the radio as you get close to where you think your destination is? Why would you turn down the radio when what you're doing is looking for an address? Seems pretty silly.

Do you close your eyes when you're trying to do calculations in your head? Why?

I think the answer to these questions is because we're trying to reduce sources of noise to maximize the amount of attention we can pay to the task at hand. The sounds from the radio capture your attention, making it hard to visually search for the address numbers on the house you're trying to find. Visual distractions in our surroundings may prevent us from maximally focusing our attention internally when trying to do hard math problems in our heads.

It strikes me that the experiments on the physical limits of our perception are probably also related to the adage that if you lose one sense, your remaining senses get heightened. This is a pretty common saying, but is it really true that if I became blind that I'd suddenly gain super-human hearing?

In a series of Nature studies published in the 1990s, it was shown that blind subjects reading via Braille actually use their visual cortex when reading by touch. This was demonstrated not only using brain imaging (PET, in this case), but also more causally via disruption of the visual cortex via TMS, a technique that can safely and reversibly disrupt the ability of a small region of the brain to process stimuli.

When TMS was used to disrupt the visual cortex of blind subjects, their ability to read Braille characters dropped!

Anecdotally, the impressive sensory adaptations by blind people can be seen in two particularly striking subjects.

The first is a blind boy who was able to navigate so well via echolocating his own clicking sounds that he could ride a skateboard.

The second example is of another blind young man who was able to play video games by sound alone. The guy could track the sounds in a game and use them to play through to completion.

In my own research I've tried to identify which regions of the brain are critical for attention and working memory, to understand how cognitive functions reorganize after brain damage, and to provide a physiological basis for how sensory and cognitive systems could interact.

In my future research I will further examine how sensory and cognitive systems interact and interrelate in more detail.

For now, sometimes the only thing I can do is sit back and marvel at how amazing it is that this three pounds of fat and water in my head does anything at all.

Edited by: Lawyer Asad

Violent Video Games Boost Brain Power

Violent Video Games Boost Brain Power

By Nancy J. White / Source: ParentCentral.ca

For 10 hours, Kathrin Herzhoff fired automatic weapons while storming beaches, patrolling jungles and shooting down enemy aircraft.

It was all in the name of science. Before and after she trained on the video game Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault, her brain waves were measured at a University of Toronto lab.

"It was a steep learning curve, but I felt I improved a fair bit," says Herzhoff, a graduate student in psychology. She doesn't usually play video games, much less bloody first-person shooter games like this one. Yet this action genre, often decried for its mind-numbing violence, is emerging as a hot research topic in an unexpected area.

Scientists have found that virtual war games may boost brain power.

"A surprising aspect of our research shows that action games seem to be the most beneficial type of game when it comes to how well you see, pay attention, make decisions and switch tasks," explains Daphne Bavelier, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester.

After playing Medal of Honor, participants in the U. of T. study tended to be more focused, directing their attention to what was important, says researcher Jing Feng. The study, currently being reviewed for publication, is the first to see if the brains of non-gamers show improved attention.

In 2007, Feng and her colleagues showed that action video-game play could close the gender gap in spatial cognition, skills that are important in mathematics and engineering.

So all those hours on the couch annihilating enemies haven't been a mindless waste? Could all that practice help a gamer find the right career?

"Is he interested in going into robotic surgery or operating the Canadarm on the space shuttle?" asks Lauren Sergio, a neuroscientist at York University.

She worked on a study published last fall that showed that gamers used their brains more efficiently, tapping into the executive functions of the frontal lobe as they performed increasingly difficult visual motor tasks.

Perhaps it could even help, not hurt, a kid in school.

"Not until we are able to put in the right content," says Bavelier.

The mission for researchers now is to explore how the brain learns from shooter games, then develop less bloody games that confer the same brain gains. "The idea would be to get the benefits without the killing parts," explains Bavelier. "You could create a game that would be good for teaching mathematics, slowing cognitive decline or training surgeons — games with more positive aspects."

In Canada, first-person shooter titles were the top-selling video-game genre last January to November, says Matthew Tattle, who tracks video games for market researchers NPD Group. With titles usually rated for mature or teen audiences, it commanded 15 per cent of the market, with sales of 2.3 million games.

While these games may have benefits, researchers recommend caution. Too much violent screen play could be detrimental to a person's physical and emotional health.

Bavelier, who studies brain plasticity, stumbled on to video games when a male research assistant working on an experiment came up with off-the-charts data. The odd findings were not from faulty science but rather from the researcher's own brain. He was a hardcore action gamer. Bavelier was intrigued. She has now done more than 20 video-game studies.

Her first, in 2003, found that action gamers could focus better on a task, ignoring distractions.

She's also found that playing video games helps visual resolution (the ability to see small details within clutter) and improves sensitivity to contrast (the ability to distinguish shades of grey). Her latest research showed that the games also sped up the brain's processing of visual information.

So does that sharp vision and alertness make hardcore action gamers better drivers?

Only in theory. Most gamers, after all, are young males. "The kids who play are also high on testosterone," says the neuroscientist with a laugh.

As part of her studies, action gamers and non-gamers are recruited and tested in the lab on boring screen tasks. The non-gamers then play 10 to 50 hours over several days of either a fast-paced action game, such as Call of Duty 2, or a slow-moving strategy one, such as The Sims 2. Consistently, those who played the action game were the ones who improved.

And the gains tended to last. Two years after a vision study, her team retested participants, who had not played action games since the lab study. The improvements remained. Other researchers, says Bavelier, found enduring attention gains after six months when they retested their participants.

"Everything changes your brain. The issue is whether it sticks," explains Bavelier.

"That's what's astonishing here. The changes lasted months to years. That's what we're after now, understanding how that happens."

She's also investigating potential brain benefits from body-moving game devices, such as Nintendo's Wii.

At the University of Toronto, Ian Spence, director of the Engineering Psychology Lab, Feng and other researchers were particularly interested in whether playing video games could boost women's spatial skills. Scientific literature shows a definite gender disparity in spatial cognition, important in navigation, geometry and other fields.

As part of the research, male and female non-gamers were tested for spatial skills, then played either the maze game Balance or the shooter game Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault for 10 hours, then were retested. Only the action gamers significantly improved, with the women making larger gains, nearly closing the gender gap in scores. When tested five months later, the gains were still evident.
Feng and her colleagues also found that women learned spatial skills as fast as men.

Non-gamer Herzhoff, who trained on Medal of Honor, hasn't noticed an enduring spike in her spatial skills. She just remembers being jumpy after playing.

Like many women, she's not attracted to the blood and gore. Even researcher Feng, who enjoys video games, doesn't play the shooter ones. "It would be nice to know the critical components in the game that give the benefits and rebuild it in a way that appeals to girls," she says.

Herzhoff, 24, muses about the possibilities. "Something brighter with friendlier characters. Maybe a frontier story plot. Maybe using animals instead of people, like in children's cartoons."

Maybe rated E for Everyone.

Edited by: Lawyer Asad

Bees' Tiny Brains Beat Computers!

Bees' Tiny Brains Beat Computers
Source: The Guardian

Bees can solve complex mathematical problems which keep computers busy for days, research has shown.

The insects learn to fly the shortest route between flowers discovered in random order, effectively solving the "travelling salesman problem" , said scientists at Royal Holloway, University of London.

The conundrum involves finding the shortest route that allows a travelling salesman to call at all the locations he has to visit.

Computers solve the problem by comparing the length of all possible routes and choosing the one that is shortest.

Bees manage to reach the same solution using a brain the size of a grass seed.

Dr Nigel Raine, from Royal Holloway's school of biological sciences, said: "Foraging bees solve travelling salesman problems every day. They visit flowers at multiple locations and, because bees use lots of energy to fly, they find a route which keeps flying to a minimum."

Using computer-controlled artificial flowers to test bee behaviour, his wanted to know whether the insects would follow a simple route defined by the order in which they found the flowers, or look for the shortest route.

After exploring the location of the flowers, the bees quickly learned to fly the best route for saving time and energy.

The research, due to appear this week in the journal The American Naturalist, has implications for the human world.

Modern living depends on networks such as traffic flows, internet information and business supply chains.

"Despite their tiny brains bees are capable of extraordinary feats of behaviour," said Raine. "We need to understand how they can solve the travelling salesman problem without a computer."

Edited by: Lawyer Asad

Increase brain power by walking.

How to Increase Your Brain Power By Walking Every Day

The simple and natural act of walking can help you to increase your brain power.

Research into this area has proven the people who walk greatly benefit their brains. Walking increases blood circulation. At the same time that blood circulation is increasing, glucose and oxygen are reaching the brain in increased amounts. This occurs because walking is a low impact exercise that is enjoyable and healthy.

When you exercise with fast paced movements your body is going to absorb that extra glucose and oxygen so it isn't available for the brain to receive.

The additional oxygen that goes to your brain is a great way to help you reduce levels of stress. Individuals that walk on a regular basis have better concentration and they seem to be more receptive to learning new things.

You might be concerned about this type of exercise if you're already having pain in your body. However, another side benefit of walking is the release of endorphins, which the body naturally produces. The result is you'll find you have a lot more energy after you've been walking than before you started. It is those endorphins that will also have an effect on body aches you might be dealing with.

Because walking is totally low impact, anyone and everyone can easily do it. It's an easy and inexpensive activity to use when you want the physical exercise your body needs. Along with the physical benefits, the workout for the brain is what maintains it's vitality as well. You can invite a friend along if you need motivation, or walk by yourself.

If yo have children, it's a good idea to take them along with you on your walks. Children are never too young to be introduced to all the benefits that can be enjoyed from staying healthy and alert. And children who are introduced to regular walking at a young age will naturally keep it a part of their lives. As they grow into adults, they will continue the walking habits that are ingrained in them in their youth. And this regular activity will help them to keep their brains healthy and strong as they grow.

They will stay that way too instead of slipping as they get older. You can get them a stroller or a wagon to help keep the pace rapid until they are old enough to keep up with you. Many parents walk at tracks around playgrounds too. This is perfect because the children get to play while you walk. Yet you can still keep a close eye on them while you do so.

At last you can improve your brain power naturally with these kinds of techniques shown here. It is possible to uncover the simple strategies it usually takes to develop more robust brain power so you can remember nearly anything at all.

Edited by: Lawyer Asad