Preschoolers at play show science skills

When kids incessantly ask “Why?,” mess around in the dirt and run their hands over everything within reach, they’re not just being kids. It turns out they’re also being scientists.

Until recently, preschoolers were widely believed to be irrational thinkers. For most of the 20th century, the prevailing theory pioneered by cognitive development expert Jean Piaget held that children roughly ages 2 through 7 cannot understand concrete logic or other people’s perspectives.

Although young children are the only ones who truly know what they ponder, research conducted over the past decade has led many psychologists to see infants and toddlers as, in fact, capable of thinking logically and abstractly.

"The main thing is that they’re drawing conclusions from data and evidence and experiences the same way scientists are - by making hypotheses, testing them, analyzing statistics and even doing experiments, even though when they do experiments, it’s called ‘getting into everything,’ " said Alison Gopnik, a UC Berkeley psychology professor and one of the field’s leading experts.

Better understanding of how children learn about the world could have important implications for their formal schooling, Gopnik argued in a recent paper published in the journal Science, which summarized studies by her and other researchers.

Brain Cooling to Treat Epilepsy Moves Closer to Human Application

Neuroscientists from Japan’s Yamaguchi University today reported during the 66th annual scientific meeting of the American Epilepsy Society (AES) that chronic focal brain cooling suppresses seizures during wakefulness and achieves the effect without significantly affecting brain function. Their research, and that of others in the field, provides critical evidence that this approach to seizure control has reached a stage where testing in humans will soon be possible.

Focal brain cooling is well established as an effective method for suppressing seizures. But the technology for creating a practical device with potential clinical application has only recently become available and tested in rodents. More evidence from large animals and humans is needed prior to testing in clinical trials for drug-resistant epilepsy.

The Yamaguchi researchers implanted two feline and two non-human primates with a titanium cooling plate, or heat exchanger. The brain cooling device was placed in contact with the brain surface over cortex areas responsible for movement and sensation. Seizures were then induced in the motor cortex. Brain wave recordings to assess seizure activity and temperature recordings were performed under wakefulness.

According to Masami Fujii, M.D.,Ph.D., and Takao Inoue, Ph.D., and Michiyasu Suzuki, M.D., Ph.D., who presented the report, seizure discharges were significantly suppressed at 15˚C (59˚F).

“The results of our study suggest that focal brain cooling has a strong effect to suppress the epileptiform seizures under the awake condition,” Dr. Fujii said. “Moreover, implantation of the device for at least five months did not result in detrimental changes in brain tissue subjected to cooling compared to tissue from a similar site in the opposing hemisphere.”

Extended sleep reduces pain sensitivity

A new study suggests that extending nightly sleep in mildly sleepy, healthy adults increases daytime alertness and reduces pain sensitivity.

"Our results suggest the importance of adequate sleep in various chronic pain conditions or in preparation for elective surgical procedures," said Timothy Roehrs, PhD, the study’s principal investigator and lead author. "We were surprised by the magnitude of the reduction in pain sensitivity, when compared to the reduction produced by taking codeine."

The study, appearing in the December issue of the journal SLEEP, involved 18 healthy, pain-free, sleepy volunteers. They were randomly assigned to four nights of either maintaining their habitual sleep time or extending their sleep time by spending 10 hours in bed per night. Objective daytime sleepiness was measured using the multiple sleep latency test (MSLT), and pain sensitivity was assessed using a radiant heat stimulus.

Results show that the extended sleep group slept 1.8 hours more per night than the habitual sleep group. This nightly increase in sleep time during the four experimental nights was correlated with increased daytime alertness, which was associated with less pain sensitivity.

In the extended sleep group, the length of time before participants removed their finger from a radiant heat source increased by 25 percent, reflecting a reduction in pain sensitivity. The authors report that the magnitude of this increase in finger withdrawal latency is greater than the effect found in a previous study of 60 mg of codeine.

According to the authors, this is the first study to show that extended sleep in mildly, chronically sleep deprived volunteers reduces their pain sensitivity. The results, combined with data from previous research, suggest that increased pain sensitivity in sleepy individuals is the result of their underlying sleepiness.

Scientists create road map to metabolic reprogramming for aging

In efforts to understand what influences life span, cancer and aging, scientists are building road maps to navigate and learn about cells at the molecular level.

To survey previously uncharted territory, a team of researchers at UW-Madison has created an “atlas” that maps more than 1,500 unique landmarks within mitochondria that could provide clues to the metabolic connections between caloric restriction and aging.

The map, as well as the techniques used to create it, could lead to a better understanding of how cell metabolism is rewired in some cancers, age-related diseases and metabolic conditions such as diabetes.

"It’s really a dynamic atlas for regulatory points in mitochondrial function — there are many interesting avenues that other scientists can follow up on," says John Denu, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of biomolecular chemistry and leader of the epigenetics theme at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery (WID). "It could take years for researchers to understand what it all means, but at least now we have a list of the most important players."

(Image Credit: © Alexander Raths - Fotolia.com)

Is “Deep Learning” a Revolution in Artificial Intelligence?

Can a new technique known as deep learning revolutionize artificial intelligence as the New York Times suggests?

The technology on which the Times focusses, deep learning, has its roots in a tradition of “neural networks” that goes back to the late nineteen-fifties. At that time, Frank Rosenblatt attempted to build a kind of mechanical brain called the Perceptron, which was billed as “a machine which senses, recognizes, remembers, and responds like the human mind.” The system was capable of categorizing (within certain limits) some basic shapes like triangles and squares. Crowds were amazed by its potential, and even The New Yorker was taken in, suggesting that this “remarkable machine…[was] capable of what amounts to thought.”

But the buzz eventually fizzled; a critical book written in 1969 by Marvin Minsky and his collaborator Seymour Papert showed that Rosenblatt’s original system was painfully limited, literally blind to some simple logical functions like “exclusive-or” (As in, you can have the cake or the pie, but not both). What had become known as the field of “neural networks” all but disappeared.

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Research shows brain hub activity different in coma patients

A team of French and British researchers has found that brain region activity for coma patients is markedly different than for healthy people. In their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes the differences found when comparing fMRI scans of people in a coma with healthy volunteers.

To gain a better understanding of what goes on in the brain when a person is in a coma, and perhaps the nature of consciousness, the researchers performed fMRI brain scans on 17 people who had recently become comatose due to medical conditions that led to blockage of oxygen to the brain. They then compared those scans to those taken of 20 healthy volunteers.

In analyzing the results the team found that global comparisons between the two groups revealed very few if any differences. Blood continued to flow to all of the parts of the brain. When focusing on the brain as a network however, they found very large differences.

To look at the brain as a network requires looking at its different parts as regions that communicate with one another, forming hubs. In healthy people, certain regions or hubs are busier than others as evidenced by more blood flow. But for the people in a coma, the team found, the normally busy hubs grew less busy, while other hubs grew busier, indicating a major change in the flow of information.

The researchers suggest that the brain scans reveal that the normally busy hubs in healthy people are centers of consciousness and their reduced role in communications in comatose patients suggests that they are most likely not conscious of their existence. They point to prior research that has suggested that being in a coma is more likely closer to the experience of being under anesthesia than being asleep. They add that the their research indicates that regions of the brain that are responsible for conscience thought likely require more oxygen rich blood, and are thus likely to be more sensitive to oxygen deprivation than other areas of the brain, which might explain why people go into a coma when those regions are harmed.