July 25, 2012
(Medical Xpress) — Many people, whether they know it or not, are philosophical dualists. That is, they believe that the brain and the mind are two separate entities. Despite the fact dualist beliefs are found in virtually all human cultures, surprisingly little is known about the impact of these beliefs on how we think and behave in everyday life.
But a new research article forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that espousing a dualist philosophy can have important real-life consequences.
Across five related studies, researchers Matthias Forstmann, Pascal Burgmer, and Thomas Mussweiler of the University of Cologne, Germany, found that people primed with dualist beliefs had more reckless attitudes toward health and exercise, and also preferred (and ate) a less healthy diet than those who were primed with physicalist beliefs.
Furthermore, they found that the relationship also worked in the other direction. People who were primed with unhealthy behaviors – such as pictures of unhealthy food – reported a stronger dualistic belief than participants who were primed with healthy behaviors.
Overall, the findings from the five studies provide converging evidence demonstrating that mind-body dualism has a noticeable impact on people’s health-related attitudes and behaviors. Specifically, these findings suggest that dualistic beliefs decrease the likelihood of engaging in healthy behavior.
These findings support the researchers’ original hypothesis that the more people perceive their minds and bodies to be distinct entities, the less likely they will be to engage in behaviors that protect their bodies. Bodies are ultimately viewed as a disposable vessel that helps the mind interact with the physical world.
Evidence of a bidirectional relationship further suggests that metaphysical beliefs, such as beliefs in mind-body dualism, may serve as cognitive tools for coping with threatening or harmful situations.
The fact that the simple priming procedures used in the studies had an immediate impact on health-related attitudes and behavior suggests that these procedures may eventually have profound implications for real-life problems. Interventions that reduce dualistic beliefs through priming could be one way to help promote healthier – or less self-damaging – behaviors in at-risk populations.
Provided by Association for Psychological Science
Source: medicalxpress.com
Filed under brain health mind-body problem neuroscience psychology science dualism
Reverse-Engineered Irises Look So Real, They Fool Eye-Scanners
The work goes a step beyond previous work on iris-recognition systems. Previously, researchers have been able to create wholly synthetic iris images that had all of the characteristics of real iris images — but weren’t connected to real people. The images were able to trick iris-recognition systems into thinking they were real irises, though they couldn’t be used to impersonate a real person. But this is the first time anyone has essentially reverse-engineered iris codes to create iris images that closely match the eye images of real subjects, creating the possibility of stealing someone’s identity through their iris.
“The idea is to generate the iris image, and once you have the image you can actually print it and show it to the recognition system, and it will say ‘okay, this is the [right] guy,’” says Javier Galbally, who conducted the research with colleagues at the Biometric Recognition Group-ATVS, at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, and researchers at West Virginia University.
Filed under science neuroscience Biometric identification eye iris recognition recognition synthetic iris
Rodents Seem Depressed from Dim Light at Night, but It Can Be Reversed
While hamsters exposed to light at night for four weeks showed evidence of depressive symptoms, those symptoms essentially disappeared after about two weeks if they returned to normal lighting conditions.
Even changes in the brain that occurred after hamsters lived with chronic light at night reversed themselves after returning to a more normal light cycle.
These findings add to the growing evidence that suggest chronic exposure to artificial light at night may play some role in the rising rates of depression in humans during the past 50 years, said Tracy Bedrosian, lead author of the study and doctoral student in neuroscience at Ohio State University.
Filed under science neuroscience brain psychology depression
Filed under science neuroscience technology algorithm pulse health
Yoga Reduces Stress; Now It’s Known Why
Six months ago, researchers at UCLA published a study that showed using a specific type of yoga to engage in a brief, simple daily meditation reduced the stress levels of people who care for those stricken by Alzheimer’s and dementia. Now they know why.
“The goal of the study was to determine if meditation might alter the activity of inflammatory and antiviral proteins that shape immune cell gene expression,” said Lavretsky. “Our analysis showed a reduced activity of those proteins linked directly to increased inflammation.
“This is encouraging news. Caregivers often don’t have the time, energy, or contacts that could bring them a little relief from the stress of taking care of a loved one with dementia, so practicing a brief form of yogic meditation, which is easy to learn, is a useful too.”
Filed under alzheimer alzheimer's disease brain caregivers dementia meditation neuroscience psychology science stress yoga
New vision therapy for stroke victims
The innovative vision therapy tool will be used to evaluate and train people with a vision deficit caused by a brain injury or dysfunction.
Each year about 220,000 Australians suffer from an acquired brain injury caused by strokes, car accidents and trauma. Of those, about 30 to 35 per cent acquire neurological vision impairments as a result of damage to the brain, not the eyes, causing many patients to only see half an image.
The software, developed by MDPP Research Associate Dr Fabian Lim, will be trialled by NVT Systems as a new therapeutic product for their clients.
The touch screen tool features five visual tasks with varying degrees of difficulty, including a line-tracing exercise and a shopping catalogue task where the object is to match images in the catalogue with a shopping list.
Dr. Lim said the software would give health care providers a “quantitative measure” for assessing vision deficit, tracking improvements and targeting specific impediments, offering a more effective alternative to traditional pen and paper assessments.
“By repeatedly practicing these exercises patients learn how to scan their surroundings and look for things that might not be in their field of view, and ultimately improve their visual sense,” Dr. Lim said.
NVT Systems is now trialling the simulator software with patients from organisations such as Guide Dogs SA.NT.
NVT Systems Manager Training and Research, Mrs Allison Hayes, said the fantastic work by the Medical Device Partnering Program had enabled the company to expand its product range for local and international markets.
“One of the great things about this new tool is that we will be able to measure important parameters that could be used by carers to map improvements in performance and target specific deficits,” Mrs. Hayes said.
“The visual skills taught using the touch screen device can be transferred to functional activities of daily living, helping our clients to carry out important everyday activities in the home and community.”
Filed under science neuroscience brain psychology stroke vision
New research suggests that patients whose mobility has been limited by stroke may one day use their imagination and a computer link to move their hands.
Leuthardt
In patients, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown they can detect the brain simply thinking about moving a partially or completely paralyzed hand. The half of the brain that normally thinks such thoughts and moves the hand can no longer do so because of stroke damage. Instead, the signal comes from the undamaged half of the brain.
The new study suggests it may be possible to harness these signals to restore a fuller range of movement in the patient’s limbs.
“We’ve known for some time that the brain can reroute or otherwise adapt its circuits to cope with an injury,” says senior author Eric Leuthardt, MD, associate professor of neurosurgery, of biomedical engineering and of neurobiology. “Now we have proof-of-principle that we can use technology to aid that process.”
To demonstrate the potential to help restore movement, scientists connected brain signals detected by an electrode-studded cap to the movements of a cursor on a computer screen. In 30 minutes or less, patients learned to control the movement of the cursor with thoughts of moving their impaired hand. Researchers are now working on a motorized glove that will make the imagined movements a reality.
The results are available online in The Journal of Neural Engineering.
Leuthardt, who is director of Washington University’s Center for Innovation in Neuroscience and Technology, is a pioneer in the field of brain-computer interfaces, or devices that allow the brain to communicate directly with computers to restore abilities lost to injury or disease.
Much of Leuthardt’s research has focused on patients with epilepsy who are undergoing surgery to remove the part of the brain where their seizures originate. He uses the electrode grids temporarily implanted on the surface of the brain to pinpoint areas where the seizures begin. With the patients’ permissions, Leuthardt also uses the implants to gather and analyze detailed information on brain activity for future use in brain-computer interfaces. This approach laid the foundations for the technique now being applied to the stroke population.
In the new research, first author David Bundy, a graduate student, worked with four patients who had suffered strokes that caused extensive damage on one side of the brain. All were experiencing paralysis or significant difficulty moving the hand on the opposite side of the body.
The brain signals that control movement are low-frequency signals, which makes them relatively easy to detect with electrodes on the outside of the skull. Researchers fitted patients with an electrode-studded cap connected to a computer, and asked them to perform a finger-tapping activity. Depending on a cue flashed on a screen in front of them, the patients either tapped the fingers of their unimpaired hand or imagined tapping the fingers of the impaired hand. Scientists used the cap to identify signals in healthy part of the brain that accompanied the imaginary movements.
The researchers are now developing motorized braces that can be controlled by similar signals, with the goal of restoring full movement in weak or paralyzed limbs.
“This is an exciting development that opens up new opportunities to help even more patients overcome limitations imposed by brain damage or degeneration,” Leuthardt says.
Source: Washington University in St. Louis
Filed under science neuroscience brain psychology stoke paralysis movement brain-computer studies brain damage
Californian biotech firm Life Technologies is the first team to register for the $10 million (£6.4m) Archon Genomics X Prize, which will be a race to sequence the genomes of 100 centenarians.
The prize was first announced in 2006, and is a joint effort between the X Prize Foundation and geneticist J Craig Venter. It’s supposed to stimulate the development of less expensive sequencing technologies, and establish a clinical standard for DNA research.
Interested parties have until May 2013 to register. Late that year, in September, each team will have 30 days to sequence the genomes of 100 people, at a cost of $1,000 (£643) or less.
The DNA has been donated by 100 100 year old people from all over the world, to make the competition “scientifically valuable and more meaningful to the general public”. That way, the prize can double up as medical research into the science of healthy aging and longevity.
Life Technologies’ secret weapon is the Ion Proton Sequencer, which it describes as a “semiconductor device that enables chemical signals to be directly translated into digital information for the first time” — a bit like the CMOS imager in an iPhone, which turns photons into electrons.
"It would have cost $100 million and taken 33 years to meet this challenge when the competition was announced in 2006," said Jonathan Rothberg, CEO and founder of Life Technology’s Ion Torrent brand. "The Ion Proton sequencer is designed to sequence a human genome for $1,000 in just a few hours."
Source: Wired
Filed under Archon Genomics X prize DNA biology genetics genomics ion proton sequencer medicine neuroscience psychology research science technology X prize foundation ageing
Using Virtual Reality an Arm Up to Three or Even Four Times the Length of a Real Arm Can Be Felt as If It Was the Person’s Own Arm
The authors of the article have added another dimension to this illusion of body ownership. Using virtual reality they have shown that a virtual body with one very long arm can be incorporated into body representation. An arm up to three or possibly even four times the length of a person’s real arm can be felt as if it was the person’s own arm. This is notwithstanding the fact that having one such long arm introduces a gross asymmetry in the body. An extended body space (a body with longer limbs occupies more volume than a normal body) affects also the special space surrounding our body that is called peripersonal space — a space that when violated by objects or other people can be experienced as a threat or intimacy, depending on the context.
In the experiment 50 people experienced virtual reality where they had a virtual body. They put on a head-mounted display so that all around themselves they saw a virtual world. When they looked down towards where their body should be, they saw a virtual body instead of their real one. They had their dominant hand resting on a table with a special textured material that they could feel with their real hand, but also see their virtual hand touching it. So as they moved their real hand over the surface of this table they would see the virtual hand doing the same.
The results of the study were analysed by using a questionnaire to assess the subjective illusion that the virtual arm was part of the person’s body; a pointing task, where the arm that did not grow in length was required to point towards where the other hand was felt to be (with eyes shut), and a response to a threat task, in which a saw fell down towards the virtual hand (figure E, F) and it was measured whether people would move their real hand in an attempt to avoid it.
Based on these data, researchers found that people did have the illusion that the extended hand was their own. Even when the virtual arm was 4 times the length of the corresponding real arm, still 40-50% of participants showed signs of incorporation of the virtual arm as part of their body representation. It was also found that vision alone is a very powerful inducer of the illusion of virtual arm ownership — those who experienced the inconsistent condition where the virtual hand did not touch the table, even though the real hand felt the table top, had a strong illusion of ownership over the virtual arm.
These results show how malleable is our body representation, even incorporating strong asymmetries in the body shape, which do not correspond at all to the average human shape. This type of research will help neuroscientists to understand how the brain represents the body, and ultimately may help people overcome illnesses that are based on body image distortions.
Filed under brain illusion neuroscience perception psychology science virtual reality peripersonal space body image vision
July 24, 2012
A new class of drug developed at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine shows early promise of being a one-size-fits-all therapy for Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis and traumatic brain injury by reducing inflammation in the brain.
Northwestern has recently been issued patents to cover this new drug class and has licensed the commercial development to a biotech company that has recently completed the first human Phase 1 clinical trial for the drug.
The drugs in this class target a particular type of brain inflammation, which is a common denominator in these neurological diseases and in traumatic brain injury and stroke. This brain inflammation, also called neuroinflammation, is increasingly believed to play a major role in the progressive damage characteristic of these chronic diseases and brain injuries.
By addressing brain inflammation, the new class of drugs — represented by MW151 and MW189 — offers an entirely different therapeutic approach to Alzheimer’s than current ones being tested to prevent the development of beta amyloid plaques in the brain. The plaques are an indicator of the disease but not a proven cause.
A new preclinical study published today in the Journal of Neuroscience, reports that when one of the new Northwestern drugs is given to a mouse genetically engineered to develop Alzheimer’s, it prevents the development of the full-blown disease. The study, from Northwestern’s Feinberg School and the University of Kentucky, identifies the optimal therapeutic time window for administering the drug, which is taken orally and easily crosses the blood-brain barrier.
"This could become part of a collection of drugs you could use to prevent the development of Alzheimer’s," said D. Martin Watterson, a professor of molecular pharmacology and biological chemistry at the Feinberg School, whose lab developed the drug. He is a coauthor of the study.
In previous animal studies, the same drug reduced the neurological damage caused by closed-head traumatic brain injury and inhibited the development of a multiple sclerosis-like disease. In these diseases as well as in Alzheimer’s, the studies show the therapy time window is critical.
Read more …
Filed under MS alzheimer alzheimer's disease brain brain injury drug medication neuroscience parkinson parkinson's disease psychology science disease neuroinflammation
![Reverse-Engineered Irises Look So Real, They Fool Eye-Scanners
The work goes a step beyond previous work on iris-recognition systems. Previously, researchers have been able to create wholly synthetic iris images that had all of the characteristics of real iris images — but weren’t connected to real people. The images were able to trick iris-recognition systems into thinking they were real irises, though they couldn’t be used to impersonate a real person. But this is the first time anyone has essentially reverse-engineered iris codes to create iris images that closely match the eye images of real subjects, creating the possibility of stealing someone’s identity through their iris.
“The idea is to generate the iris image, and once you have the image you can actually print it and show it to the recognition system, and it will say ‘okay, this is the [right] guy,’” says Javier Galbally, who conducted the research with colleagues at the Biometric Recognition Group-ATVS, at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, and researchers at West Virginia University.](http://41.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7qgvpPxyA1rog5d1o1_500.jpg)
