Professional athletes have extraordinary skills for rapidly learning complex and neutral dynamic visual scenes
Evidence suggests that an athlete’s sports-related perceptual-cognitive expertise is a crucial element of top-level competitive sports. When directly assessing whether such experience-related abilities correspond to fundamental and non-specific cognitive laboratory measures such as processing speed and attention, studies have shown moderate effects leading to the conclusion that their special abilities are context-specific. We trained 308 observers on a complex dynamic visual scene task void of context and motor control requirements3 and demonstrate that professionals as a group dramatically differ from high-level amateur athletes, who dramatically differ from non-athlete university students in their capacity to learn such stimuli. This demonstrates that a distinguishing factor explaining the capacities of professional athletes is their ability to learn how to process complex dynamic visual scenes. This gives us an insight as to what is so special about the elite athletes’ mental abilities, which allows them to express great prowess in action.
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(Image: Getty)
Filed under professional athletes visual system motion perception perception performance psychology neuroscience
Genome-wide Atlas of Gene Enhancers in the Brain On-line
Future research into the underlying causes of neurological disorders such as autism, epilepsy and schizophrenia, should greatly benefit from a first-of-its-kind atlas of gene-enhancers in the cerebrum (telencephalon). This new atlas, developed by a team led by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is a publicly accessible Web-based collection of data that identifies and locates thousands of gene-regulating elements in a region of the brain that is of critical importance for cognition, motor functions and emotion.
“Understanding how the brain develops and functions, and how it malfunctions in neurological disorders, remains one of the most daunting challenges in contemporary science,” says Axel Visel, a geneticist with Berkeley Lab’s Genomics Division. “We’ve created a genome-wide digital atlas of gene enhancers in the human brain – the switches that tell genes when and where they need to be switched on or off. This enhancer atlas will enable other scientists to study in more detail how individual genes are regulated during development of the brain, and how genetic mutations may impact human neurological disorders.”
Visel is the corresponding author of a paper in the journal Cell that describes this work. The paper is titled “A High-Resolution Enhancer Atlas of the Developing Telencephalon.”
Filed under brain genome atlas genetic mutations cerebral cortex gray matter genetics genomics neuroscience medicine science
What’s Your Fish Thinking?
Studying the links between brain and behavior may have just gotten easier. For the first time, neuroscientists have found a way to watch neurons fire in an independently moving animal. Though the study was done in fish, it may hold clues to how the human brain works.
"This technique will really help us understand how we make sense of the world and why we behave the way we do," says Martin Meyer, a neuroscientist at King’s College London who was not involved in the work.
The study was carried out in zebrafish, a popular animal model because they’re small and easy to breed. More important, zebrafish larvae are transparent, which gives scientists an advantage in identifying the neural circuits that make them tick. Yet, under a typical optical microscope, neurons that are active and firing look much the same as their quieter counterparts. To see what neurons are active and when, neuroscientists have therefore developed a variety of indicators and dyes. For example, when a neuron fires, it is flooded with calcium ions, which can cause some of the dyes to light up.
Still, the approach has limitations. Traditionally, Meyer explains, researchers would immobilize the head or entire body of a zebrafish larvae so that they could get a clearer picture of what was happening inside the brain. Even so, it was difficult to interpret neural activity for just a few neurons and over a short period of time. Researchers needed a better way to study the zebrafish brain in real time.
Enter Junichi Nakai of Saitama University’s Brain Science Institute in Japan. He and colleagues selected a glowing marker known as green fluorescent protein (GFP) and linked it to a compound that would light up in the presence of large amounts of calcium. The researchers then inserted the DNA that codes for this marker into the zebrafish genome, tying it to a specific protein only found in neurons. This means that only actively firing neurons would fluoresce, and scientists could track neural activity without applying dye. Because the signal was stronger and clearer, researchers didn’t have to immobilize the larvae.
To test the setup, Nakai and colleagues sent the genetically engineered zebrafish larvae hunting for food. When the larvae see a swimming single-celled animal called a paramecium, they engage in what animal behaviorists call a prey capture response: They turn their heads toward the paramecium, swim at it, and finally eat it.
Using their newly developed imaging system, Nakai and colleagues associated the sight of moving paramecium and prey capture behavior with the activation of a group of neurons in the optic tectum, the visual center of the zebrafish brain. The neurons pulsed in tandem with the movements of the paramecium—a sudden dart of the one-celled organism caused a bright flash of neural activity in the zebrafish tectum. The tectum went silent if the paramecium stilled. Only moving prey interested the larvae, the team reports today in Current Biology. These particular neurons, Nakai proposes, are part of a specific visual-motor pathway that links the sight of moving prey with swimming behavior.
"It’s a good proof of principle study," Meyer says. "The most important thing is that they showed [the technique worked] on freely behaving fish."
Filed under zebrafish neuron neural activity animal model green fluorescent protein neuroscience science
‘Petri dish lens’ gives hope for new eye treatments
A cure for congenital sight impairment caused by lens damage is closer following research by scientists at Monash University.
Associate Professor Tiziano Barberi and Dr Isabella Mengarelli from the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute (ARMI) at Monash University are closer to growing parts of the human eye in the lab. They have, for the first time, derived and purified lens epithelium - the embryonic tissue from which the lens of the eye develops. The purity of the cells paves the way for future applications in regenerative medicine.
Further, the researchers caused these precursor cells to differentiate further into lens cells, providing a platform to test new drugs on human tissue in the lab.
Pluripotent stem cells have the ability to become any cell in the human body including, skin, blood and brain matter. Once the stem cells have begun to differentiate, the challenge for researchers is to control the process and produce only the desired, specific cells.
Using a technology known as fluorescence activated cell sorting (FACS), Associate Professor Barberi and his team were able to identify the precise combination of protein markers expressed in the lens epithelium that enabled them to isolate those cells from the rest of the cultures. Most markers are common to more than one type of cell, making it challenging to determine the exact mix of markers unique to the desired cells.
Associate Professor Barberi said this breakthrough would eventually help cure visual impairment caused by congenital cataracts or severe damage to the lens from injury, through lens transplants.
"The lens has to some extent, the ability to heal well following surgical intervention. However, with congenital cataracts, the fault is wired into the DNA, so the lens will re-grow with the original impairment. This problem is particularly prevalent in developing countries," he said.
Combined with advances in producing pluripotent stem cells from fully-differentiated adult cells, the research will also progress treatments for eye diseases.
"In the future, we will be able to take adult skin cells, for example, and turn back the clock to produce stem cells. From there, using processes like we have developed for lens epithelium, we will be able to produce diseased cells - an invaluable asset for medical research," Associate Professor Barberi said.
The researchers will now focus on creating a lens more closely resembling a human eye in the lab.
"The lens cells that we created in the petri dish are organised differently to those in a human eye. The next challenge is mimicking nature more perfectly," Associate Professor Barberi said.
Published in Stem Cells Translational Medicine, the study was partly funded by the Australian Research Council.
Filed under lens epithelium lens cells stem cells pluripotent stem cells eye diseases regenerative medicine science
Can you feel my pain? Middle-aged women sure can
Looking for someone to feel your pain? Talk to a woman in her 50s.
According to a new study of more than 75,000 adults, women in that age group are more empathic than men of the same age and than younger or older people.
"Overall, late middle-aged adults were higher in both of the aspects of empathy that we measured," said Sara Konrath, assistant research professor at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research and co-author of an article on age and empathy forthcoming in the Journals of Gerontology: Psychological and Social Sciences.
"They reported that they were more likely to react emotionally to the experiences of others, and they were also more likely to try to understand how things looked from the perspective of others."
Konrath and colleagues Ed O’Brien and Linda Hagen of U-M and Daniel Grühn of North Carolina State University analyzed data on empathy from three separate large samples of American adults, two of which were taken from the nationally representative General Social Survey.
They found consistent evidence of an inverted U-shaped pattern of empathy across the adult life span, with younger and older adults reporting less empathy and middle-aged adults reporting more.
According to O’Brien, U-M doctoral student in social psychology, this pattern may result because increasing levels of cognitive abilities and experience improve emotional functioning during the first part of the adult life span, while cognitive declines diminish emotional functioning in the second half.
But more research is needed in order to understand whether this pattern is really the result of an individual’s age, or whether it is a generational effect reflecting the socialization of adults who are now in late middle age.
Filed under empathy middle-aged adults gender women psychology neuroscience science
Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological conditions worldwide, and it is well known that it is significantly more prevalent in poorer countries and rural areas. The study of more than half a million people in five countries of sub-Saharan Africa is the first to reveal the true extent of the problem and the impact of different risk factors.
The study - conducted at International Network for the Demographic Evaluation of Populations and Their Health (INDEPTH) demographic surveillance sites in Kenya, South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania and Ghana - screened 586 607 residents and identified 1711 who were diagnosed as having active convulsive epilepsy.
These individuals, along with 2033 who did not have epilepsy, were given a questionnaire to complete about their lifestyle habits. The team also took blood samples to test for exposure to malaria, HIV and four other parasitic diseases that are common in low-income countries.
The team found that adults who had been exposed to parasitic diseases were 1.5 to 3 times more likely to have epilepsy than those who had not. Epilepsy has previously been linked with various parasite infections, but this is the first study to reveal the extent of the problem.
Professor Charles Newton from the Wellcome Trust programme at the Kenyan Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) and the Department of Psychiatry at Oxford University, who led the study, said: “This study demonstrates that many cases of epilepsy could be entirely preventable with elimination of parasites in Africa, some of which - for example, onchocerciasis - have been controlled in some areas. In some areas the incidence of epilepsy could be reduced by 30-60 per cent with appropriate control measures.”
In children, the greatest risk factors for developing epilepsy were complications associated with delivery and head injury. Interventions to improve antenatal and perinatal care could substantially reduce the prevalence of epilepsy in this region, say the authors.
The study focused on people with convulsive epilepsies as they are the most reliably detected and reported and there remains a substantial stigma attached to patients with the disease.
“Facilities for diagnosis, treatment and ongoing management of epilepsy are virtually non-existent in many of the world’s poorest regions, so it’s vital that we take these simple steps to try and prevent as many cases of this debilitating disease as possible,” Professor Newton added.
The findings were published today in the journal ‘Lancet Neurology’. The study was funded by the Wellcome Trust, with support from the University of the Witwatersrand and the South African Medical Research Council.
(Source)
Filed under epilepsy parasitic diseases risk factors neurological conditions sub saharan africa neuroscience science
Scientists Uncover a Previously Unknown Mechanism of Memory Formation
It takes a lot to make a memory. New proteins have to be synthesized, neuron structures altered. While some of these memory-building mechanisms are known, many are not. Some recent studies have indicated that a unique group of molecules called microRNAs, known to control production of proteins in cells, may play a far more important role in memory formation than previously thought.
Now, a new study by scientists on the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute has for the first time confirmed a critical role for microRNAs in the development of memory in the part of the brain called the amygdala, which is involved in emotional memory. The new study found that a specific microRNA—miR-182—was deeply involved in memory formation within this brain structure.
“No one had looked at the role of microRNAs in amygdala memory,” said Courtney Miller, a TSRI assistant professor who led the study. “And it looks as though miR-182 may be promoting local protein synthesis, helping to support the synapse-specificity of memories.”
In the new study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, the scientists measured the levels of all known microRNAs following an animal model of learning. A microarray analysis, which enables rapid genetic testing on a large scale, showed that more than half of all known microRNAs are expressed in the amygdala. Seven of those microRNAs increased and 32 decreased when learning occurred.
The study found that, of the microRNAs expressed in the brain, miR-182 had one of the lowest levels and these decreased further with learning. Despite these very low levels, its overexpression prevented the formation of memory and led to a decrease in proteins that regulate neuronal plasticity (neurons’ ability to adapt) through changes in structure.
These findings suggest that learning-induced suppression of miR-182 is a main supporting factor in the formation of long-term memory in the amagdala, as well as an underappreciated mechanism for regulating protein synthesis during memory consolidation, Miller said.
Further analysis identified miR-182 as a repressor of proteins that control actin—a major component of the cytoskeleton, the scaffolding that holds cells together.
“We know that memory formation requires changes in dendritic spines on the neurons through regulation of the actin cytoskeleton,” Miller said. “When miR-182 is suppressed through learning it halts, at least in part, repression of actin-regulating proteins, so there’s a good chance that miR-182 exerts important control over the actin cytoskeleton.”
Miller is now interested in whether or not high levels of miR-182 accumulate in the aging brain, something that would help to explain a tendency toward memory loss in the elderly. She also notes that other research has shown that animal models lacking miR-182 had no significant physical or cellular abnormalities, suggesting that miR-182 could be a viable target for drug discovery.
(Image: stockfresh)
Filed under protein synthesis memory memory formation animal model neuron amygdala neuroscience science
Researchers at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) led by Carmela Abraham, PhD, professor of biochemistry, along with Cidi Chen, PhD, and other collaborators, report that the protein Klotho plays an important role in the health of myelin, the insulating material allowing for the rapid communication between nerve cells. These findings, which appear online in Journal of Neuroscience, may lead to new therapies for multiple sclerosis (MS) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD), in which white matter abnormalities are also common but have been largely ignored.
MS is an inflammatory disease which damages the fatty myelin sheaths around the axons of the brain and spinal cord. This destruction, loss or scarring of the sheaths results in a broad spectrum of symptoms. Disease onset usually occurs in young adults, most commonly women.
In MS the myelin is attacked by the immune system and may not be completely restored by myelin-producing cells (mature oligodendrocytes). The researchers discovered that the addition of Klotho protein to immature oligodendrocytes causes them to mature and manufacture proteins needed for the production of healthy myelin.
"These results taken together indicate that Klotho could become a drug target for multiple sclerosis and other white matter diseases, including AD," explained Abraham.
Abraham and her colleagues have identified, and are working on optimizing, a number of small molecules that could form the basis for the development of therapeutic drugs, which would increase the amount of Klotho protein in the brain.
Since Klotho is not only an age suppressor but also a tumor suppressor, as shown by other research groups, interventions with Klotho-enhancing drugs may solve some of the most treatment-resistant human ailments according to Abraham.
Klotho was named after the Greek Goddess and daughter of Zeus, who spins the thread of life. Abraham’s lab was the first to publish (in 2008) that Klotho levels in the brain decrease with age.
(Source)
Filed under MS alzheimer's disease nerve cells therapeutic drugs white matter neuroscience science
Testosterone and its derivatives could constitute an efficient treatment against myelin diseases such as multiple sclerosis, reveals a study by researchers from the Laboratoire d’Imagerie et de Neurosciences Cognitives (CNRS/Université de Strasbourg), in collaboration in particular with the “Neuroprotection et Neurorégénération: Molécules Neuroactives de Petite Taille” unit (Inserm/Université Paris-Sud). Myelin composes the sheaths that protect the nerve fibers and allow the speed of nerve impulses to be increased. A deficit in the production of myelin or its destruction cause serious illnesses for which there is no curative treatment. The researchers have shown that in mice brains whose nerve fibers have been demyelinated, testosterone and a synthetic analog induce the regeneration of oligodendrocytes, the cells responsible for myelination, and that they stimulate remyelination. This work is published on January in the journal Brain.
(Source)
Filed under MS testosterone myelination CNS hormone levels nerve fibers neuroscience science
Brain activity study lends insight into schizophrenia
Magnetic fields produced by the naturally occurring electrical currents in the brain could potentially be used as an objective test for schizophrenia and help to better understand the disease, according to new research published today.
A team of researchers from Plymouth and Spain have used the non-invasive magnetoencephalogram (MEG) technique to find two spectral features that are significantly different in schizophrenia patients compared to healthy control subjects.
Furthermore, they found that there were four spectral features in the brain signals of schizophrenia patients that changed with age compared to healthy control subjects, suggesting that schizophrenia affects the way in which brain activity evolves with age.
The study has been published today, Thursday 31 January, in the journal Physiological Measurement.
Schizophrenia is a serious psychiatric disorder, usually starting in late adolescence, which is characterised by a range of positive and negative symptoms, including hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, cognitive impairment, social withdrawal, self-neglect and loss of motivation and initiative.
It has no objective test and is currently diagnosed by clinicians who assess patients using a defined set of criteria.
Lead author of the study Dr Javier Escudero said: “At present, there is no blood, cerebrospinal fluid, brain imaging or neurophysiological test for schizophrenia in routine clinical practice. The diagnosis relies on the interpretation of symptoms and clinical history according to consensus criteria.
"The advent of an objective marker for schizophrenia would significantly facilitate the diagnosis and offer a better understanding of the neurobiological basis of the disease."
In this study, the frequency spectrum of the MEG background activity was analysed in 15 schizophrenia patients with positive symptoms and 17 age-matched healthy control subjects.
A range of spectral features from the MEGs were analysed to provide a holistic view of the brain activity of each subject. The MEG produced 148 values for each subject, which were subsequently divided into five different groups representing different parts of the brain, and were statistically analysed.
The researchers also investigated whether the spectral features could be used to distinguish between schizophrenia patients and the healthy controls. They showed that they were able to classify patients with 71 per cent accuracy.
"The long-term vision is to develop a low-cost, non-invasive and objective test to aid the diagnosis of this and other brain diseases. The magnetoencephalogram is able to provide very detailed information about the brain activity; however, it is expensive. Therefore, we aim to transfer these developments to electroencephalogram recordings in the future, as this technique meets those requirements of reduced cost, high availability and non-invasiveness," continued Dr Escudero.
(Image: Shutterstock)
Filed under brain activity brain signals frequency spectrum schizophrenia MEG neuroscience science
![What’s Your Fish Thinking?
Studying the links between brain and behavior may have just gotten easier. For the first time, neuroscientists have found a way to watch neurons fire in an independently moving animal. Though the study was done in fish, it may hold clues to how the human brain works.
"This technique will really help us understand how we make sense of the world and why we behave the way we do," says Martin Meyer, a neuroscientist at King’s College London who was not involved in the work.
The study was carried out in zebrafish, a popular animal model because they’re small and easy to breed. More important, zebrafish larvae are transparent, which gives scientists an advantage in identifying the neural circuits that make them tick. Yet, under a typical optical microscope, neurons that are active and firing look much the same as their quieter counterparts. To see what neurons are active and when, neuroscientists have therefore developed a variety of indicators and dyes. For example, when a neuron fires, it is flooded with calcium ions, which can cause some of the dyes to light up.
Still, the approach has limitations. Traditionally, Meyer explains, researchers would immobilize the head or entire body of a zebrafish larvae so that they could get a clearer picture of what was happening inside the brain. Even so, it was difficult to interpret neural activity for just a few neurons and over a short period of time. Researchers needed a better way to study the zebrafish brain in real time.
Enter Junichi Nakai of Saitama University’s Brain Science Institute in Japan. He and colleagues selected a glowing marker known as green fluorescent protein (GFP) and linked it to a compound that would light up in the presence of large amounts of calcium. The researchers then inserted the DNA that codes for this marker into the zebrafish genome, tying it to a specific protein only found in neurons. This means that only actively firing neurons would fluoresce, and scientists could track neural activity without applying dye. Because the signal was stronger and clearer, researchers didn’t have to immobilize the larvae.
To test the setup, Nakai and colleagues sent the genetically engineered zebrafish larvae hunting for food. When the larvae see a swimming single-celled animal called a paramecium, they engage in what animal behaviorists call a prey capture response: They turn their heads toward the paramecium, swim at it, and finally eat it.
Using their newly developed imaging system, Nakai and colleagues associated the sight of moving paramecium and prey capture behavior with the activation of a group of neurons in the optic tectum, the visual center of the zebrafish brain. The neurons pulsed in tandem with the movements of the paramecium—a sudden dart of the one-celled organism caused a bright flash of neural activity in the zebrafish tectum. The tectum went silent if the paramecium stilled. Only moving prey interested the larvae, the team reports today in Current Biology. These particular neurons, Nakai proposes, are part of a specific visual-motor pathway that links the sight of moving prey with swimming behavior.
"It’s a good proof of principle study," Meyer says. "The most important thing is that they showed [the technique worked] on freely behaving fish."](http://40.media.tumblr.com/57d8e0f46011840b9cc259e779df793f/tumblr_mhi9fvSsbG1rog5d1o1_500.jpg)
