At Brookhaven, researchers combined light-activated proteins that stimulate specific brain cells, a technique known as optogenetics, with positron emission tomography (PET) to observe the effects of stimulation throughout the entire brain. Their paper in the Journal of Neuroscience describes this method, which will allow researchers to map exactly which neurological pathways are activated or deactivated downstream by stimulation in specific brain areas. Hopefully, following these pathways will enable researchers to correlate the brain activity with observed behaviors or certain symptoms of disease.

Three markers on the head of a mouse enable the AwakeSPECT system to obtain functional images of the brain of a conscious mouse as it moves around. (Credit: Image courtesy of DOE/Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility)

Scientists at Oak Ridge used dynamic imaging in mice to examine changes in brain chemistry caused by disease or application of a drug. They hope this research tool will be used to develop better disease diagnostics as well as better treatments. The newest aspect of this study, however, is that unlike most nuclear imaging studies where laboratory mice are drugged or kept in place so that their brains can be studied, the new technique allows for moving subjects. The researchers from Jefferson Lab, Oak Ridge, Johns Hopkins and Maryland used their new system to obtain functional images of the brains of conscious mice that were free to move. The system, called AwakeSPECT (Awake Single-Photon Emission Computed Tomography),  was then used to examine the effects of anesthesia on the action of a dopamine transporter in the mouse brain for the first time. These types of dopamine transporter imaging compounds are used for Alzheimer’s, dementia and Parkinson’s disease studies. The technique entails injection of a radionuclide, which gathers in targeted areas of the brain. The radionuclide emits gamma rays that are detected in separate scans from many different angles, all of which are combined by an algorithm to produce a three-dimensional image.

Martin Pomper led a group of researchers at Johns Hopkins Medical School to conduct the first mouse imaging studies with the new system. Their study showed that AwakeSPECT can be used to obtain detailed, functional images of the brain in a conscious mouse that was able to move freely around in an enclosed space. “We’ve shown the technology works. Now, you just have to make it a tool that more people will readily use” says Jefferson Lab’s Drew Weisenberger, who led the multi-institutional collaboration that created the novel technique.

One area of active research that would benefit from such imaging techniques is the question of how animals orient themselves in space. Existing experiments have all looked at how animals move around in two-dimensional settings and they have made the important discovery of place cells, neurons located in the hippocampus responsive to spatial orientation. Populations of place cells working together can produce full representations of an animal’s environment, the only problem being that in the real world animals have to navigate in three dimensions unlike the laboratory experiments. That’s why Dr. Nachum Ulanovsky of the Weizmann’s Institute’s Neurobiology Department chose to study the Egyptian fruit bat to look at how three-dimensional space is perceived in mammalian brains for the first time. His research used a miniaturized neural-telemetry system developed especially for this task, which enabled the measurement of single brain cells during flight. The activity of the  hippocampal neurons in the bats’ brains showed that the representation of three-dimensional space is just like in two dimensions: each place cell is responsible for identifying a particular spatial area in space and sends an electrical signal when the bat is located in that area. The population of place cells provides full coverage of the particular area, say a cave, left, right, forward, back, up and down.

These results give new insights into navigation, spatial memory and spatial perception, all basic functions of the mammalian brain. The study’s success is due to the development of the technology that allowed looking into the brain of a flying animal. Single cell measurement is only the first step, looking at neural circuits can reveal much more about how these place cell representations are then used in conjunction with other brain areas resulting in the behavior we see. Development of new brain imaging techniques continues to provide a more complete understanding of basic human and animal behaviors, and hopefully one day will lead to a full understanding of the human brain.

-Leo Shapiro

Sources:

Lights, Chemistry, Action: New Method for Mapping Brain Activity – ScienceDaily

System Provides Clear Brain Scans of Awake, Unrestrained Mice – ScienceDaily

Neural Activity in Bats Measured In-Flight – ScienceDaily

Scientists from Duke University and Brazil claim wires connecting one rodent to another can allow communication spanning continents via the internet. Professor Miguel Nicolelis of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, led a team of researchers who demonstrated that it is possible to transmit instructions from one animal to another by brain-to-brain communication, a process akin to telepathy.

Brain-to-brain communication could be the start of  organic-based computing based on networks of interconnected brains. Pairs of laboratory rats were able to communicate with each other using microscopic electrodes implanted into their brains. This occurred as part of an experiment where the two rats had to work together in order to receive a reward (see video at source).

The researchers had this to say: “as far as we can tell, these findings demonstrate for the first time that a direct channel for behavioral information exchange can be established between two animal’s brains without the use of the animal’s regular forms of communication.” One rat in each pair, assigned to be the encoder, detected the signals of where to find a food reward and had to communicate these instructions to a second decoder rat. Once the second rat followed the first rat’s instructions, both rats would receive a reward. These communications were able to be sent over the internet, with rats at one lab in Brazil communicating with rats at the other lab in North Carolina.

Professor Nicolelis inserted micro-electrode implants into the rats’ brains to record the neuron activity associated with decision-making. Putting these signals through a computer encoder transmitted them to the second rat via wires connected to another set of micro-electrode implants. The second rat learned how to decode the signals quickly for its own use.  Each rat was trained to find water in its cage based on the type of signals they were given. However, only the encoder rat was actually exposed to the signals, which it had to pass on  correctly to the decoder rat. The decoder rats managed to find the reward in about 70% of trials.

What is most interesting, however, was the scientists found that when two rats were paired up they quickly established a rapport based on  some sort of sensory feedback. If the second rat failed at its task, the first rat would modify what it was transmitting to help the second rat. Both rats worked together since they were sufficiently motivated by the reward.

Future work could encode entire thoughts, hopefully connecting more brains to each other, boosted by the effect of sensory feedback rapport.  Professor Christopher James of the University of Warwick, who conducts similar research, said that the technique is still very crude since it relies only on monitoring one part of the rat’s brain for its nerve activity. “Leap into the future by, say, 50 years: if you could stimulate many multiple sites, and if we knew what patterns to use and when, then we may well be able to conjure up complex ‘thoughts’,”  Professor James said. “Abstract thoughts are harder to read and represent; but not impossible technologically.  We can already do that … we just need to understand the brain better.” Professor Nicolelis hopes brain-to-brain communication will expand the capabilities of  intelligence one day, saying “we cannot even predict what kinds of emergent properties would appear when animals begin interacting as part of a brain-net. In theory, you could imagine that a combination of brains could provide solutions that individual brains cannot achieve by themselves.”

Mind-reading rodents: Scientists show ‘telepathic’ rats can communicate using brain-to-brain connections – The Independent

The Human Connectome Project (HCP) has started trials on volunteers with a state-of-the-art scanner.

New maps of the networks of live brains could lead to better treatments for neurological disorders

Today’s technology allows neuroscientists to map the brain’s connections on an unprecedented level of detail. The ultimate goal of the HCP is to create a map, or connectome, of every neuron and synapse to better understand how the brain works. A better understanding of the brain means a better understanding of brain disorders like schizophrenia or autism, which in turn means better treatment.

The diffusion-imaging scanner is built by Siemens, a German engineering company. It works by tracking water molecules as they travel through nerve fibers. This imaging technique results in a more precise picture of the brain’s neuronal pathways. Van J. Wedeen, director of Connectomics at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), explains how the scanner works. “The diffusion image is a map of the water diffusion which we then convert into a marker for the fiber pathways, we then reconstruct it through computer algorithms that explain the water diffusion that we have observed.”

The scanner looks just like an MRI machine, but the new technology inside enables it to produce images that are ten times clearer. “It’s the difference between looking at the bonnet (of a car) and looking at the gears and belts inside,” Van J. Wedeen says. The idea behind the new technique is to look at the brain relative to a coordinate system. The idea is akin to the difference in making a map with longitude and latitude versus without.

Wedeen and his colleague Bruce Rosen are excited about the potential data collected by this machine. Rosen, the director of the Martinos Center for Biological Imaging at MGH, sees the future of the scanner, saying “Over time, it’s clear that in addition to scanning normal volunteers, we’d be very interested in scanning patients with disease.  The tools we are developing, as well as many other scientists around the world mapping these brain circuits, may be fundamental to how we understand and conceptualize diseases and treat them. Once you understand that it’s an abnormality of specific circuits, it gives you clues in terms of the pharmacology you want to use depending on the part of the brain.”

Diseases like autism that are not well understood could be the result of abnormal brain connections called connectopathies, which could be more easily diagnosed with the knowledge provided by a connectome. Rosen hopes that eventually “we’ll be in a position to see if that’s true or not. And if it is, try to understand where it came from and try to fix it.”

Source: Mapping out a new era in brain research – CNN.com
Connectome Scanner Progress Report 2011 – Human Connectome Project
Further Reading: Connectome: How the Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are – Sebastian Seung

Recently, 23 year old Kim Suozzi who was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer was seeking financial help for cryonic suspension.  Diagnosed with an aggressive form of Glioblastoma multiforme, Kim died on January 17th and spent the final two weeks of her life at a hospice in Scottsdale, Arizona, close by to the cryopreservation center that she chose.

Suozzi was seeking financial help for her suspensial, which proved controversial but is now settled since the Alcor board agreed to fund her cryopreservation as a charity case, stating “The board accepted the CEO’s recommendation to accept Kim Suozzi as a charity case, based on arrangements that will reduce Alcor’s costs. The full allocation of $25,000 to the patient care trust fund will be made. Alcor members have contributed to the fundraising effort to enable Kim to be cryopreserved.” More controversial, however, is the possiblilty that many terminally ill patients might seek preservation as charity cases, potentially impacting the viability of the entire operation. Furthermore, cryopreservation is not a cure in itself, terminally ill patients could possibly not be the best test subjects for a successful preservation and revival simply due to the chance of succeeding.

The board also passed the following in addition to Ms. Suozzi’s preservation: “Alcor shall tender to the PCT (patient care trust) the full amount of the current PCT minimums for all underfunded cases, as soon as practicably consistent with Alcor’s cash flow needs, except to the extent that the PCT board waives some amount. Any amount not immediately paid shall be recorded as a liability to be discharged as soon as practicably possible.” It seems like Alcor’s goal is to preserve more people in order to help potentially cure them rather than those who can simply afford it. An altruistic goal most people would agree with.

Most importantly, Alcor CEO Max More wrote “If cryonics is to become more widely accepted in the general scientific community, we need to add to existing evidence for the effectiveness of our procedures. One way to do this is to gather more data during all stages of stabilization, transport, and cryoprotection. We can also gather evidence of the quality and effectiveness of brain perfusion and structural preservation by routine CT scanning of neuro patients and by conducting biopsies of the spinal cord and possibly other samples for all patients. The board expressed general support for carefully moving forward with this, ensuring that members understand what we propose to do.” The goals of Alcor are part of a broader one of the entire scientific community, and that goal is a better understanding of the brain. Whatever commercial or charity enterprise that gets us closer to that goal is one I can support.

Sources:

Alcor 2012 Stategy Meeting — Kim Suozzi’s Cryonic Suspension Funded and More – H+ Magazine

Futurists set up charitable fund to help terminally ill woman get cryonically preserved – io9

Report on 2012 Alcor Strategic Meeting – Alcor News

Neuroscience researchers in China have created a method of transforming brainwaves into music by combining EEG and fMRI scans into sounds that are recognizable to human beings. The EEG adjusts the pitch and duration of a note, while the fMRI controls the intensity of the music.  According to Jing Lu and his associated colleagues from the University of Electronic Science and Technology in China,  this brain music, “embodies the workings of the brain as art, providing a platform for scientists and artists to work together to better understand the links between music and the human brain.”

Applying EEG and fMRI data to make better music represents the limitless opportunities of the brain, potentially leading to improvements useful for research, clinical diagnosis or biofeedback therapy. In fact, researchers at the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate have already looked at a form of neuro-training called ‘Brain Music’, which uses music created from an individual’s brain waves to help the individual move from an anxious state to a relaxed state.

A sample of brain music of a patient at resting state is here:

Beats By Brain

Sources:

Remixed Brain Waves Reveal Soundtrack of the Human Brain – Science News

Brainwaves Translated Into Music for Cerebral Soundtrack – Wired

Listen to the sounds of the human mind: Remixed brain scans reveal our inner music – Daily Mail

We live in an era where the rapid advances in technology are constantly changing how we perceive and interact with the world around us. The question on everyone’s mind is always “what’s next?” The answer: brain-machine interfaces. For the average consumer, brain-computer interfaces are becoming increasingly available on the mass market and their current uses offer a wide range of fascinating opportunities.

A company that’s been in the news a lot lately is NeuroVigil. Their product known as the iBrain has been used to help world-renowned astrophysicist Steven Hawking communicate with a computer simply by thinking. Hawking, who suffers from Lou Gehrig’s disease, developed his own solution to allow him to speak by twitching his cheek to select words from a computer. In its current state, the iBrain is still slower than Hawking’s solution, but NeuroVigil’s founder MD Philip Low hopes that it will eventually be possible to read thoughts aloud. NeuroVigil also made the news by signing a contract with Roche, a major Swiss pharmaceutical company, to use the iBrain in clinical studies for evaluating drugs for neurological diseases.

Philip Low with the iBrain

So how does the iBrain actually work? The iBrain uses one sensor to measure brain signals by means of specialized algorithms. Surprisingly easy to use, NeuroVigil claims that its software makes up for using only one channel. A competing device, the EPOC, made by Emotiv uses a multitude of sensors. The EPOC is a neuro-headset that looks like headphones with sensors extending in all directions. These sensors pick up electrical signals that our brains produce while we are awake or asleep; essentially an EEG recorder. These measurements are not accurate enough to pick up what individual neurons in our brain are doing, but they can provide a rough idea of overall brain activity. Users of the headset learn to think specific thoughts for which the EPOC learns the related brain signals corresponding to a certain command, such as moving the mouse to the left. Emotive has an online store with dozens of applications for the headset and there is also a Mind Workstation for research purposes.

Emotiv's headset

The key strategy of another company, Zeo, is sleep research. Zeo offers a wireless headband to monitor sleep patterns that connect to smartphones using a Bluetooth link. Looking to enter the research scene with their innovative technology at a bargain price, Zeo hopes that it can satisfy the huge demand for a sleep aid product. In a similar manner, NeuroVigil wants to use a smartphone processor to map people’s mind while they sleep using the unique brain ‘signatures’ to diagnose neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s, depression and autism, which again increases the number of potential users. An increasing number of people want to do their own health monitoring and new, inexpensive, wireless sensors and data processing by smartphone apps can help in this goal. Cheap brain-computer interfaces are the next step in this health-monitoring trend and will hopefully lead to newer and much cooler extensions of our mind.

Zeo headset and its app

Sources:

Emotiv

NeuroVigil

Zeo Sleep Manager

A research team led by Laura Matzen at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuqurque, NM has demonstrated that it is possible to predict how well people will remember information by monitoring their brain activity while studying. Matzen’s team monitored test volunteers with electroencephalography (EEG) sensors to make accurate predictions. Why bother making a prediction if the result will show how well someone remembered the information anyways? Matzen brought up this example, ”if you had someone learning new material and you were recording the EEG, you might be able to tell them, ‘You’re going to forget this, you should study this again,’ or tell them, ‘OK, you got it and go on to the next thing.”  Essentially providing a real-time performance metric, the applications of which many students would appreciate.

The team monitored test subjects’ brain activity while they studied word lists, then used the EEG data collected during the trial to predict who would remember the most information. Researchers had a baseline of what brain activity looked like for good and poor memory performance, so they knew the average percentage of correct answers under various conditions. The computer model predicted five of 23 people tested would perform best, based on their EEG scans. And the model was correct, they remembered 72 percent of the words on average, compared to 45 percent for everyone else.

This study is part of Matzen’s overarching research goal to understand the Difference Related to Subsequent Memory, or Dm Effect. The Dm effect is a measure of brain activity that can distinguish remembered items from forgotten ones. A measurable difference would give cognitive neuroscientists a way to test hypotheses about how information is encoded in memory. Matzen is interested in not only what causes the effect, but also how to change it; she wants to discover how different methods of training can help people performing at different levels.  That’s why the second half of this study was done, to predict who would benefit most from memory training.

This second half of the study tested different types of memory training to see how they changed participants’ memory performance and brain activity. This study, still in its preliminary stages, aims to find out whether recording partcipants’ brain activity while they use their natural approach to studying can predict what kind of training would work best for them. The computer model from the first half of the study was used to predict who would perform best on the memory tasks, and after memory training, the high performers did even better.

90 volunteers spent 9 to 16 hours over five weeks in the memory training study. The first half provided a baseline for how well they remembered words or images. Most then underwent memory training for three weeks and were retested. The control group received no training, one group practiced mental imagery strategy, thinking up vivid images to remember words and pictures, and the final group went through working memory training to increase how much information they could handle at a time.  Each volunteer, shut into a sound-proof booth, watched a screen that flashed words or images for one second, interrupted with periodic quizzes on how well the person remembered what was shown.

Sandia National Laboratories researcher Laura Matzen demonstrates the memory testing task of her experiment

The test was divided into five sections, each about 20 minutes long and testing a different type of memory. The first, middle, and last sections consisted of single nouns. During quizzes, volunteers hit buttons for yes or no to whether they’d seen the word before. The other two sections combined adjectives and nouns or pairs of unrelated drawings, and volunteers were tested on what they remembered. The image section tested associative memory or memory for two unrelated things, which according to Matzen is the most difficult because it links arbitrary relationships.

When performance was compared before and after training, the control group did not change, but the mental imagery group’s performance improved on three of the five tasks. ”Imagery is a really powerful strategy for grouping things and making them more memorable,” Matzen said.

The working memory group did worse on four of the five tasks after training. Volunteers trained on working memory, remembering information for brief periods, improved on the task they had trained on, but that training did not carry over to other tasks. Matzen believes the difference between the two groups boils down to strategy: The imagery training group learned a strategy, while the working memory training group simply tried to push the limits of memory capacity.

While the imagery group did better overall, they made more mistakes than the other groups when tested on “lures” that were similar to, but not the same as, items they had memorized. ”They study things like ‘strong adhesive’ and ‘secret password,’ and then I might test them on ‘strong password,’ which they didn’t see, but they saw both parts of it,” Matzen said. “The people who have done the imagery training make many more mistakes on the recombinations that keep the same concept. If something kind of fits with their mental image they’ll say yes to it even if it’s not quite what they saw before.”

What’s next? Matzen and the Center for the Advanced Study of Language at the University of Maryland plan to study tasks that measure cognitive flexibility and how it relates to training performance, working on understanding and affecting the Dm affect.

Sources:

Sandia Shows Monitoring Brain Activity During Study Can Help Predict Test Performance – ScienceNewsline

Monitoring Brain Activity During Study Can Help Predict Test Performance – Science Daily

Researchers have developed a technique that reconstructs the words patients are thinking of that could help locked-in or comatose patients communicate.

A newly developed computer model reconstructs the sounds of words that patients think of. Over the past few years, scientists have been coming closer to being able to listen in to our thoughts.  This study achieved that goal by implanting electrodes directly into patients’ brains. In an earlier 2011 study, test subjects with electrodes in their brains were able to move a cursor around a screen just by thinking of different vowel sounds. Another study, conducted in September of that year by Jack Gallant at the University of California, Berkeley, was able to guess images being thought of through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

Brian Pasley of the University of California, Berkeley wanted to see “how far can we get in the auditory system by taking a very similar modelling approach” of stimulus reconstruction. His team focused on the superior temporal gyrus (STG) because not only is it part of the overall auditory pathway of the brain, but also because it is a higher-order brain region that makes linguistic sense out of sounds.

The team played audio of different speakers saying words and sentences to 15 patients with implanted electrodes and recorded brain waves from their STGs. To interpret all the electrical signals the audio enacted in patient’s brains, computer modelling was used to map out which parts of the brain were firing at what rate for each frequency. With help from this model, the researchers were able to guess what words patients were thinking of out of a select few presented to them. Turning the brain waves back into sound using this model enabled the researchers to reconstruct some of those words.

Some words and their STG reconstructions

As for where this work could lead, Robert Knight of UC Berkeley, senior author of the study said ”from a prosthetic view, people who have speech disorders… could possibly have a prosthetic device when they can’t speak but they can imagine what they want to say.”

Mindy McCumber, a speech-language pathologist told BBC News that “The development of direct neuro-control over virtual or physical devices would revolutionise ‘augmentative and alternative communication’, and improve quality of life immensely for those who suffer from impaired communication skills or means.”

Where this kind of technology will go we don’t know, there are some extremely beneficial possibilities for those unable to speak, and also some very scary possibilities if this kind of technology got into the wrong hands and was used as an interrogation technique.

Source: Science decodes ‘internal voices’ – BBC News

Reconstructing Speech from Human Auditory Cortex – PLoS Biology

Amodel for what the zombie brain would look like

All of the zombies’ “symptoms” would likely be caused by loss of the association areas of the brain, essentially ridding zombies of higher cognitive functions, as demonstrated by their overly-aggressive behavior and aphasia. Along with deficits of the association areas, the hippocampi would be massively damaged, resulting in memory defects. Finally, a loss of the majority of the cerebellum could explain their lack of coordinated movements. What would remain unimpaired, however, are most of the primary cortices. From so-called “behavioral observations”, Voytek and Verstynen concluded that vision, hearing, olfaction and gustation would still work perfectly, and somatosensation would be preserved for the most part. Since zombies are alive (or at least, undead) most parts of their thalami and midbrains, hindbrains, and spinal cords would be either over-active or preserved.

Many of these damaged regions of the zombie brain are part of the Papez circuit. James Papez identified the circuit while trying to understand the strong link between memory and emotion. He tested his hypothesis by injecting cats with a rabies virus to watch how it would spread. Sure enough, the disease spread through the hippocampus (important for memory formation), the orbitofrontal cortex (social cognition and self-control), the hypothalamus (hunger regulation, etc.), the amygdala (emotional regulation), and so on. Voytek even suggest that a virus similar to rabies could create zombies…maybe.

The widespread nature of zombie brain damage accounts for almost all of a zombie’s behaviors. It explains their over-active aggression circuit, global aphasia (they can’t speak or understand language), impaired pain perception, long term memory loss…With all this knowledge, we should be able to avoid the zombie apocalypse…right?

The Zombie Brain by Bradley Voytek – Quora

At Universitat Tel Aviv in Israel, scientists have successfully engineered and implanted an artificial cerebellum into the brain of a rat. Designed by Dr. Matti Mintz, it is a microchip attached to the rat’s head that receives sensory information from the brain stem and sends it to other parts of the brain. The artificial cerebellum has successfully restored lost brain function in rats.

There have been devices for a while now that work by one way electrical communication with the brain such as cochlear and retinal implants. This device is a breakthrough because it receives an input directly from the brain, analyzes it much like an actual neural network, and then sends the information back to the brain in a decipherable code. One major function of the cerebellum is to precisely time and coordinate movements, necessitating the pairing of the neuronal input and output. Since the architecture of the cerebellum is well known, it is a relatively simple region of the brain to replicate.

The chip that sits outside the skull is wired into the brain using electrodes. Mintz and his colleagues extensively characterized the neuronal communication between intact brainstem-cerebellum circuits to precisely program the chip to behave identically.

To test the chip, Mintz’s team anaesthetised a rat and disabled its cerebellum to hook up their own version. With the chip disconnected, the rat was unable to learn a conditioned motor reflex; in this case, the team combined a tone with a puff of air into the eye so that the rat would blink on only hearing the tone. However, once the chip was connected, the rat behaved normally and blinked in response to the puff.

As a proof of concept, the chip demonstrates how close we are to creating circuitry to mimic or even enhance parts of the brain. Even though the chip only mimics a very basic function it opens up doors to immense possibilities. The next step is to model a larger area of the cerebellum, perhaps a section that can learn a sequence of movements rather than just one, and to to test that on a conscious animal. The ultimate goal then being to duplicate any of the complex parts of the brain which could be a potent means to treat brain damage as opposed to more tradiotional biological or surgical methods.

Rat Cyborg Gets a Digital Cerebellum – New Scientist