Sure you could look for changes with enriched environment but it is not learning, it massively increased sensory stimulation with presumably more learning buried in there somewhere.
Ask a Neuroscience Professor
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Sure you could look for changes with enriched environment but it is not learning, it massively increased sensory stimulation with presumably more learning buried in there somewhere.
Yes there are many known developmental brain disorders, eg. the layers of the cortex are reversed. In general this would be very hard to treat as you would have to remake the brain.
Well I'm not a physician but I do know a bit about it. I assume your Drs. have explained what is happening as uncontrolled bouts "storms" of electrical activity in certain parts of your brain. The effects vary depending on what areas become involved in a given episode so for example if moter areas become involved you may still get sensory info but not be able to do anything motor. Don't know about the sleep thing and probably no one does since we know so little about why we need sleep.
In terms of molecular mechanisms I think the current drugs like tegratol target sodium channels to keep them longer in the closed state. Sodium channels are the primary drivers of electrical activity in neurons and closing them shuts off activity.
Animal models of epilepsy use something called kindeling. Basically this is produced by stimulating groups of neurons together over and over. Eventually the connections between them become so strong from this that you get runaway activity and seizures. We don't know exactly how this works at a molecular level.
I hope you are getting good control on whatever you are using because untreated seizures can lead to this kindeling type thing and produce more severe seizure activity. Take care.
Yes, its been a while since my last checkup (its on a yearly basis) but the explanation of "storms" just seemed a bit inadequete now
Yes the drug I take is Sodium Valproate and Valproic acid (some mixture to allow it to act on whatever). So the 'storms' sort of act as a signal and then stay open to long and pass on white noise, and then the next neuron passes it on and so on and so forth. (i'm thinking of a nuclear reactor, neutron cause a splitting and then release more neutron as well as energy, and can be stopped by a controller that absorbs the right amount of neutrons to keep it stable, does this analogy work?).
Intresting/Worrying, I take good control of myself and my medication, thankfully I have a girlfriend and family that worry a lot.
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Has there been much research done on how learning through reading and writing compares with learning through visual and audio means (e.g. online videos, real life instruction)?
Is research done on how humans learn information and develop various skills more in the realm of Neuroscience or other fields?
Is research done on how humans learn information and develop various skills more in the realm of Neuroscience or other fields?
Interesting question. I was just on a panel to review a unique center that combines computer scientists, psychologists, neuroscientists and mathematicians. The goal is to understand how timing is important for learning rather than what modality (ie visual vs auditory). The best thing they did was to study how humans move their eyes when learning, what the optimal time is between a correct answer and a reward is, and model this mathematically and implement this in a teaching robot that walks up to kids, talks to them, teaches them stuff with the right timing of reward and eye contact.
I know this isnt a direct answer but it gives you a flavor of how things are being combined across fields to do interesting stuff.
Starting at about minute 11, this guy talks about migraines. A lot of this is crossover to epilepsy, since the effects are rather similar.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/robert_fischell_on_medical_inventing.html
Hi Mark.
With the global economic crisis of 2008, there was a strong push for stimulatory spending. My impression was that there was supposed to be a 'surge' of scientific spending, but that it was a one-time infusion.
What's your feeling regarding the current status in neuroscience research? What did the surge in spending do? How're the current austerity pushes affecting either you or your colleagues? Basically, what did the bump in money, followed by restriction, do?
Finally, what new technology are you incorporating these days (in the last 2 years)? Are you still focusing on your speciality (IIRC, it's induced, localised gene KO, right?)? And does the PKMzeta story affect your work on memory?
With the global economic crisis of 2008, there was a strong push for stimulatory spending. My impression was that there was supposed to be a 'surge' of scientific spending, but that it was a one-time infusion.
What's your feeling regarding the current status in neuroscience research? What did the surge in spending do? How're the current austerity pushes affecting either you or your colleagues? Basically, what did the bump in money, followed by restriction, do?
Finally, what new technology are you incorporating these days (in the last 2 years)? Are you still focusing on your speciality (IIRC, it's induced, localised gene KO, right?)? And does the PKMzeta story affect your work on memory?
ArneHD
Just a little bit mad
How close are we to being able to directly connect our neural system to a machine, ala Mind Machine Interface in Alpha Centauri?
SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
Baby steps, but we're not doing that bad.
Anyway, do we have any approaches to stop glial tissue buildup from brain implants?
Singularity
Infinite Density
Are you familiar with the work of Edvard and May-Britt Moser from Norway into Spatial Mapping in the brain?
I didn't know about their research until this year even though I live in Norway(when they won an award from The Louis-Jeantet Foundation). I find it a very intriguing research into a particular part of our cognitive abilities and how it triggers our higher and lower brain functions when we're oriented and disoriented - and how it works in tandem with our senses and memories. Hopefully it can be branched out into a wide field of new neural science. I particularly liked the description of waking up in a hotel room and not knowing where you are - and how the brain is exploding into a neural firework of activity sending out queries to various parts of your brain trying to piece together all available clues to where you are tapping into your present spatial memories and how it correlates to all our senses of where we're waking up -- Until you eventually manage to orient yourself to where you are. It all happens in a matter of milliseconds(well for most of us). But we rarely use so much of our brain as we do in those situations.
Which leads me to a second question(hope it hasn't been asked before), how close is the academical cooperation between psychology and neural science? Do you have a lot of joint research with these slightly different schools of science?
I didn't know about their research until this year even though I live in Norway(when they won an award from The Louis-Jeantet Foundation). I find it a very intriguing research into a particular part of our cognitive abilities and how it triggers our higher and lower brain functions when we're oriented and disoriented - and how it works in tandem with our senses and memories. Hopefully it can be branched out into a wide field of new neural science. I particularly liked the description of waking up in a hotel room and not knowing where you are - and how the brain is exploding into a neural firework of activity sending out queries to various parts of your brain trying to piece together all available clues to where you are tapping into your present spatial memories and how it correlates to all our senses of where we're waking up -- Until you eventually manage to orient yourself to where you are. It all happens in a matter of milliseconds(well for most of us). But we rarely use so much of our brain as we do in those situations.
Which leads me to a second question(hope it hasn't been asked before), how close is the academical cooperation between psychology and neural science? Do you have a lot of joint research with these slightly different schools of science?
I don't know how that machine works.
I can give a really cool example of 'where we're at' on brain interface, though.
This youtube video shows the efforts of a monkey with a wireless brain implant. He can control the cursor with his brain, and the system has a 'feedback' signal into his sensory cortex, so he feels something when he touches the 'correct' circle. So, what he's doing is 'feeling' the different circles by mentally moving the cursor, and then when he gets to the correct circle, he feels feedback directly in his mind, and so he hovers the cursor over the right circle. (We don't know what the monkey is perceiving: we hope that it's a proxy for texture (e.g., 'rough' or 'smooth'), bur are not sure. The monkey doesn't find the experience unpleasant, though, since they do the task for reward.)
The idea is to create tactile feedback, so he can control a robot limb and perceive the response from sensors placed in the limb. So, where we're at is 'moving' something wirelessly and 'feeling' its feedback. Entirely through brain interface.
(Note: the sound and subtitles are for our benefit)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWWF6JInV0A
(and then, the final experiment)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Koso2ynrJCc&NR=1
Well I certainly have opinions about science $$. The stimulus spending did nothing for me personally and was I think not well used. What basic research needs is a consistent level of funding that can be counted on. The way the stimulus worked is that the agencies were given whatever it was like $10B and told you must spend this in 2 years. Here is the $$ today and it must all be gone in 2 yrs. Well. given that it takes 1 year from the time you submit a grant to actually get the $$ (forget conceiving the project and getting the preliminary data) you couldnt say lets fund some new work. So the different agencies did different things. My main agency funded already reviewed boarder line grants for 2 years. So I know one guy who got his grant funded at $450K/yr for 2 yrs as opposed to the 250K/yr for 5 yrs that is standard. It was his first grant and they called and said the $$ is coming literally next week. So he goes from $0 to $450K in 1 week and he has no one hired yet and all this $$ that he has to burn in 2yrs. Then he is right back where he started. Now if you want to hire good people you usually start 1-1.5 yrs in advance. There are not just really good trained people sitting on the street waiting to do cutting edge research on a highly specialized project. Well you get the picture. This doesnt work for basic science.
Now it will be a disaster. People are loosing their grants and the funding lines are below 10% and everyone says it will get worse. Dont go into science, go into banking young paduan.
I am trying to create an artificial neural representation. That is we are trying to see if we activate neurons in a certain pattern can we get it to mean something to the animal. For example, if we play a certain tone that will naturally activate neurons in the auditory cortex and other places throughout the brain. What if we could experimentally fire those same neurons in the correct way would it be the same to the animal as hearing the sound? Can we do this with more complex memory representations? We have some very fancy genetic technology for doing this and have a paper under review at Science on something related but not exactly this.
The PKMz story is interesting but I remain skeptical of some of the results. I am waiting to see the knockout animal.
I do not know about this but the wiki on it makes it sound like it does not have an evidence base. I do like behavioral therapies as opposed to the purely pharmacological approach that has taken over Psychiatry. EMDR is an example of a promising evidence based therapy for PTSD. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movement_desensitization_and_reprocessing.
Are you familiar with the work of Edvard and May-Britt Moser from Norway into Spatial Mapping in the brain?
I didn't know about their research until this year even though I live in Norway(when they won an award from The Louis-Jeantet Foundation). I find it a very intriguing research into a particular part of our cognitive abilities and how it triggers our higher and lower brain functions when we're oriented and disoriented - and how it works in tandem with our senses and memories. Hopefully it can be branched out into a wide field of new neural science. I particularly liked the description of waking up in a hotel room and not knowing where you are - and how the brain is exploding into a neural firework of activity sending out queries to various parts of your brain trying to piece together all available clues to where you are tapping into your present spatial memories and how it correlates to all our senses of where we're waking up -- Until you eventually manage to orient yourself to where you are. It all happens in a matter of milliseconds(well for most of us). But we rarely use so much of our brain as we do in those situations.
Which leads me to a second question(hope it hasn't been asked before), how close is the academical cooperation between psychology and neural science? Do you have a lot of joint research with these slightly different schools of science?
I know the Mosers work well. They are most known for finding a new type of cell thought to be involved in spatial mapping. I like their work and for this area and approach it is some of the best but I find the general area of just watching how neurons fire while an animal does something to be a bit ho hum. It is a huge branch of neural science and I understand why it is of interest as we are trying to figure out how these neurons are processing information but I still find it somewhat descriptive.
I consider Psychology a branch of Neuroscience. I am interested in learning and memory which is traditionally considered part of Psyc. but it is now more a part of neuroscience. These distinctions are just historical anachronisms anyway.
Singularity
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Thanks for the replies Mark1023, nice catch! I feared the 2-3 year old thread would sink back into oblivion
So, research into spatial mapping is still at an early stage if I understand you correctly. Which leaves a lot of room for interpretation I guess. Learning more about how we store and access memories should be in the core of neural science I would imagine even though it's more about observing what's happening and not so much understanding the finer details of it at the present.
Edit: Thinking about it. Can you compare advances in neural science in part to astronomy? It received a significant boost from improved tools of observation in the latest decades, like the Hubble Obervatory. Are we still improving our methods of detecting neural activity? I think I remember a news story recently about how we're slowly getting to the point where we can translate neural patterns to actual images of what the person is thinking.
So, research into spatial mapping is still at an early stage if I understand you correctly. Which leaves a lot of room for interpretation I guess. Learning more about how we store and access memories should be in the core of neural science I would imagine even though it's more about observing what's happening and not so much understanding the finer details of it at the present.
Edit: Thinking about it. Can you compare advances in neural science in part to astronomy? It received a significant boost from improved tools of observation in the latest decades, like the Hubble Obervatory. Are we still improving our methods of detecting neural activity? I think I remember a news story recently about how we're slowly getting to the point where we can translate neural patterns to actual images of what the person is thinking.
How does one get to be a professor, generally?
ArneHD
Just a little bit mad
Do you know anything about what causes Alzheimers or how to prevent it? I'm in a sort of at risk group you see, as my grandfather had Alzheimers.
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