The Brain that Changes Itself Flashcards
(127 cards)
1
Q
Who is Cheryl Schiltz?
A
A woman who the feeling that she was perpetually falling, due to damage to her vestibular apparatus. Damage was caused by The into biotic gentamicin used to treat an infection after a routine hysterectomy. She has been effectively cured by neuroplasticity treatment by Bach-y-Rita.
2
Q
What is the Vestibular apparatus?
A
A sense organ that consists of three semi circular canals in the inner ear, The canals contain tiny hairs in a fluid bath and the fluid to stirs the hairs as we move
3
Q
What is the Vestibular nuclei?
A
A specialized clump of neurons in our brain which process information sent from the vestibular apparatus. Also links to the visual system and eye movement.
4
Q
Who is Paul Bach-y-Rita?
A
One of the pioneers of neuroplasticity who created a device for a patient Cheryl to wear as an external vestibular apparatus. The external device was attached to electrodes on her tongue. He is both a basic scientist and a rehabilitation physician.
5
Q
What is Gentamicin?
A
A cheap and effective antibiotic whose side effects include hearing loss ringing in the ears and devastation to the balance system
6
Q
Who are Wobblers?
A
A self-defined group of people who cannot move without feeling they are going to fall due to damage to their vestibular system
7
Q
How does the visual system function to tell us we are upright?
A
We search for horizontal lines to indicate that we are standing upright so if no horizontal lines are present we can be confused when we do not have vestibular apparatus function
8
Q
What are falls in the Elderly and why do they matter?
A
According to an article in the New York Times old people are more frightened of falling up and being mugged and over a third of the elderly fall, which leads to staying at home and limit disuse and subsequent frailty.
9
Q
What is the Bach-y-Rita 1969 Nature Article?
A
Talked about the invention of the device which allowed to blind people to see by using a two dimensional array of electrodes which stimulated the tactile nerves on the individuals backs. This worked even on people who were blind from birth. The device used more intense vibration for dark parts of a scene and the less vibration for brighter parts.
10
Q
What is a Congenital defect?
A
One of which has been afflicting a patient from birth.
11
Q
Who is Twiggy?
A
An anorexic supermodel of the 1960s.
12
Q
What is Localizationalism?
A
The doctrine in the neuroscience which stated that each part of the brain performed a specific function and exists in a genetically predetermined or hardwired location
13
Q
Who is William Harvey?
A
Born in 1578 died in 1657 studied anatomy in Pauda, Italy discovered how are blood circulates through bodies and demonstrates that the heart functions like a pump.
14
Q
What model for the nervous system did René Descartes propose?
A
The model that argued that the nervous system functions like a pump with our nerves as two and fluid redirected from our sense organs to the brain and back, The entire system was mechanistic.
15
Q
What is sensory substitution?
A
When the function of one sentence can take over for and compensate for loss of function of another sense.
16
Q
How can the skin substitute for a retina?
A
Since both the skin and a retina involve sensing on a two-dimensional plane that two-dimensional plane can be used to perceive an image when one knows the input is visual in nature.
17
Q
Who is Paul Broca?
A
He had a stroke patient who could only utter a single word, tan. Once the patient died he dissected his brain and found that there was damage to a very specific part of the brain. This was confirmed in the other patients as well and at the area is now called Broca’s area. This area was presumed you to coordinate the movements of the muscles of the lips and tongue.
18
Q
Who is Carl Wernicke?
A
He connected damage in one brain area to the inability to understand language. This area came to be known as “Wernicke’s area”
19
Q
Who is Jules Cotard?
A
He studied children in 1868 who had a massive brain disease where the left hemisphere wasted away but the children could still speak normally.
20
Q
What is Broca’s area?
A
The area where part of the left hemisphere of the brain presumably used for coordination of the movement of the lips and tongue to produce intelligible speech.
21
Q
Who is Otto Soltmann?
A
The man who in 1876 removed the motor cortex from infant dogs and rabbits but found they were still able to move.
22
Q
What experiment convinced Bach-y-Rita to think that localizationism was wrong?
A
An experiment that was studying electrical discharge from the visual processing area of a cats brain. They found that the visual processing area sent off electric spikes when the cat’s paw was stroked and when the cat heard sounds.
23
Q
Who is Vernon Mountcastle?
A
The man responsible for the discovery that the visual, auditory, and sensory cortices all have a similar six layer processing structure. Micromapped brains with microelectrodes in the 1950’s.
24
Q
Who is Marie-Jean-Pierre Flourens?
A
Showed in 1820 that the brain could reorganize itself?
25
Who is Ragnar Granit?
Bach-y-Rita's mentor, received the Nobel Prize in physiology in 1965 for his work on the retina.
26
Why is the tongue an ideal brain machine interface?
Because the tongue has no insensitive layer of dead skin surrounding it and so it's nerves are more exposed and easier to access
27
Who is Pedro Bach-y-Rita?
The father of Bach-y-Rita, suffered a stroke and was unable to speak. Was diagnosed with no hope of recovery but was successfully rehabilitated by his son Who used teaching methods similar to how you would teach a baby to walk. He made a full and miraculous recovery. His brain was autopsied after his death and was found to have massive damage despite his recovery. 97% of the nerves that ran from his cerebral cortex to his spine were destroyed.
28
Who is Shepherd Ivory Franz?
An American psychologist who showed of the patients who had been paralyzed for 20 years were capable of making late recoveries with brain stimulating exercises in 1915.
29
Who is Mriganka Sur?
A neuroscientist surgically rewired the brain of a young ferret so that the optic nerve ran to the auditory cortex instead of the visual cortex and found that the ferret was able to learn to see.
30
Who is Barbara Arrowsmith Young?
A patient whose most debilitating problem was the inability to understand relationships between the concepts and symbols. Designed exercises for herself to intentionally attempt to improve areas in which she had disabilities and later founded the Arrowsmith school, which used similar treatments to improve brain function in specific areas.
31
What is Kinesthetic perception?
This sense allows us to be aware of where our body or limbs are in space enabling us to coordinate our movements and recognize objects by touch.
32
What is Mirror writing?
The disability of the causes one to write from right to left.
33
Who is Aleksander Luria?
A Russian psychoanalyst Born in 1902 who wanted to develop object of methods to assess Freudian ideas. Had one patient, Lyova Zazetsky, Who sustained a bullet wound deep in the left side of his head. He was unable to understand grammar that dealt with relationships, he was also unable to read clocks.
34
What is the Temporal lobe?
The lobe that normally processes sound and language in the left hemisphere.
35
What is the Occipital lobe?
The lobe that normally processes visual images
36
What is the Parietal lobe?
The lobe that normally processes spatial relationships and integrates information from multiple senses.
37
Who is Mark Rosenzweig?
A professor at the University of California at Berkeley studied rats in stimulating versus non-stimulating environments and found differences in brain neurotransmitters, weight, and blood supply. Showed that activity could produce physical changes in the structure of the brain.
38
What is the Left premotor cortex?
Believed to be the location where our brain converts symbols into a sequence of movements made by our tongue and lips to generate speech.
39
What have we lost in modern education?
We used to put a huge emphasis on rote memorization of foreign texts which likely strengthened our auditory cortex, and huge attention to handwriting, which promotes motor cortex function.
40
How does the number of synapses vary in the young brain?
Young children have approximately 50% more synapses then adults between their neurons.
41
What is a sensory system?
A system which represents the state of an organism and its environment, in humans organized in the temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes (behind the frontal lobe)
42
What is a Motor system?
One that organizes and generates physical actions.
43
What is an Associational system?
One that links the sensory and motor sides of the nervous system allowing for attention, cognition, emotions, rational thinking, and other complex brain functions
44
What is Reticular theory?
The theory that nerve cells are connected by protoplasmatic links forming a continuous nerve cell network or reticulum, championed by Camillo Golgi.
45
Who is Michael Merzenich?
The man who theorized that brain plasticity can be as useful as drugs for treating defects and that it lasts us our entire life, developed FastForWord and helped to develop the Cochlear implant. Did an experiment on monkeys where he cut the medial nerve and waited, and then found the brain map for the medial nerve had been taken over by that of the radial and ulnar nerves. Found out later that these maps appeared immediately. Also amputated a monkey's middle finger, and found that the brain map responsible for the middle finger disappeared and was taken over by the adjacent fingers. Also sewed monkeys fingers together and found the maps merged.
46
Who is Wilder Penfield?
The man who, at the Montreal Neurological Institute in the 1930's discovered that when he touched cancer patients brains with an electrode it caused them to experience movement or sensory input. Discovered the topographical nature of sensory and motor maps in the brain.
47
What is the Critical Period?
Discovered by David Hubel and Torsten Weisel in the micromapping of the visual cortex of kittens. They discovered shutting one eye of a kitten during the first few weeks of development prevented proper visual development in that eye for the kitten's entire life. Also discovered that the part normally responsible for the closed eye instead processed input from the one good eye. Received the Nobel Prize for this.
48
Who is Konrad Lorenz?
The man who found that goslings would bond to a person instead of their mother when exposed between their first 15 hours and 3 days of life. Coined the word "imprinting".
49
Who are Graham Brown and Charles Sherrington?
The people who Showed in 1912 that stimulating one point in an animal's brain one day caused bending of the leg, and another day caused straightening of the leg. They found that maps were dynamic.
50
Who is Donald O. Hebb?
A Canadian behavioral psychologist who proposed the idea of "those that fire together, wire together", articulated by Carla Schatz.
51
How did Merzenich demonstrate maps became topographical?
He showed that since we do things spatially close in time, the maps we create for similar spatial areas are necessarily wired together, or at least closer together. Brain maps work by grouping temporal events together spatially in the brain.
52
How do new skills develop on a neuronal level?
First, the brain maps used to execute those skills grow in size, increasing their cortical real estate, and then the individual neurons within the map form more connections together, becoming more efficient, and the map decreases in size. Additionally, as neurons become more efficient they can process information faster.
53
Why is paying close attention important to developing new skills?
Because paying close attention is crucial for retention of the brain maps created by developing a new skill. Tasks done automatically will not make permanent new brain maps. Multitasking = bad.
54
What is the journal article published in Science about FastForWord.?
An article published where two groups of children, identical for IQ and language processing skills were tested. One was the control, and played a video game similar to FastForWord that didn't train temporal processing, the other used FastForWord. No changes were observed in the control group, but the FastForWord group improved standard speech, language, and auditory processing, and achieved normal or above-normal scores on language tests. These gains were kept after six weeks.
55
What is autism?
Many aspects of autistic children are hindered developmentally: intelligence, perception, socializing skills, language, and emotion. Autistic people are often unable to recognize or treat others as human beings like themselves, and typically have an IQ of of undifferentiated brain maps, the result of massive early release of BDNF. Environmental factors, such as the omnipresence of white noise may contribute to autism.
56
What are the four ways in which BDNF makes changes in the critical period?
BDNF is released when neurons fire together, and helps to consolidate connections. It also promotes the growth of mylein sheaths around the axons of neurons. Additionally, it turns on the nucleus basalis and keeps it on throughout the critical period. It also closes down the critical period once brain maps become sufficiently differentiated to put a brake on radical brain change. Effortless learning is ended.
57
What is the Nucleus Basalis?
The Nucleus Basalis is a part of the brain, that, when activated, allows us to pay close attention and remember what we are experiencing. It allows effortless differentiation of undifferentiated brain maps, and plays a crucial role in the critical period. It works by secreting acetylcholine
58
How did Merzenich induce a form of autism in rat pups? How did he fix it?
He exposed them to pulses of white noise in infancy throughout the critical period. White noise activates so many neurons that massive releases of BDNF occurs, strengthening random neuronal connections and ending the critical period early, while the stimulus (white noise) doesn't do anything to help the brain maps differentiate. After this, he slowly exposed them to one sound at a time, allowing the brain maps to differentiate properly.
59
How did Michael Kilgard and Merzenich re-open the critical period in adult rats?
They stimulated the nucleus basalis with electric current and exposed the rats to a 9Hz stimulus. They found that the brain map of that stimulus, even when no learning rewards were present, was massively increased.
60
What are some risk factors for early strokes?
A family history of strokes, high cholesterol, and diabetes.
61
Who is Edward Taub?
Founder of the Taub Clinic which uses constraint-incude(CI) motor therapy.
62
What was Behaviorism in the 1930's?
Behaviorism was essentially a reaction to the Freudian focus on the unconscious mind which emphasized focusing on what could be measured about humans and animals: their behavioral response to stimulus. It was believed this could tell us much more than any form of psychoanalysis.
63
What is deafferenation?
Developed by Nobel Prize winner Sir Charles Sherrington in 1895, deafferenation is the process of cutting sensory nerves (afferent nerves) that send input to the brain so that no input from a deafferenated limb could be received.
64
What is the reflexological theory of movement?
The reflexological theory of movement states that all movement is caused by the manipulation of simple reflexes, that only the spinal cord was responsible for the generation of movement, and there was no such thing as voluntary movement. This theory was based on experiments where monkey's afferent nerves of one limb were cut, but not their motor nerves. The monkeys stopped using their limbs, and it was concluded afferent nerves were part of the necessary reflex cycle of movement.
65
What is the experiment by Edward Taub on monkeys that disproved the reflexological theory of movement?
Taub deafferenated one arm of a monkey and then constrained the other normal arm, and found that the monkey used the deafferenated arm to feed itself, disproving that reflexes were a necessary part of movement. He also deafferenated both arms of a monkey and found that it still used both, and deafferenated the entire spinal cord and found it still moved.
66
Who is Nicole von Reuden?
A patient who suffered from paralysis on her right side after intense doses of radiation for brain cancer treatment. She underwent CI therapy at the Taub clinic and radically improved.
67
What is the largest amount of re-wiring to have been mapped for neuroplastic change?
14mm in one of the Silver Spring monkeys, expanded from the facial cortex to the brain area responsible for the hand that had been deafferenated.
68
Who is Jefferey M. Schwartz?
The man who discovered the neurological basis for OCD and successfully developed a neuroplastic treatment for it based on that information.
69
What is the neurological basis of OCD?
Mistakes are detected in the orbital frontal cortex, a part of the frontal lobe just beneath our eyes. This cortex sends a signal to the cingulate gyrus, which triggers anxiety and dread in response to a realized mistake. Typically the caudate nucleus will then signal for a shift in mood to move onto something else once the mistake is corrected. However, in individuals with OCD the caudate is unable to shift the individual's attention, and the orbital frontal cortex and cingulate gyrus stay active.
70
What is the treatment Schwartz developed for OCD?
Schwartz attempts to first shift patient's focus from the content of their OCD, such as germs, to the symptoms or the OCD itself and their malfunctioning brain machinery. He tries to get patients to take a step back and relabel their anxiety and dread as part of their condition, not the content they are concerned about. He then tells them to immediately focus on something pleasurable, to create a new neural circuit or "manually shift" the caudate nucleus to moving away from the content of the OCD. This bypasses the neural circuit of the condition and creates a new one.
71
Who is Vilayanur Subramanian Ramachandran?
He is an Indian-born neurologist who loves using nineteenth-century technology to solve modern problems. His notable work was on phantom limbs, where he often successfully used optical illusions to cure phantom pain.
72
What is the neurobiological basis of phantom limb pain?
When one has a limb or organ amputated, the cortical area responsible for the sensations of that limb still exists, and often is stuck in the state it was in immediately before the amputation. When this cortical real estate is repurposed by the adjacent brain tissue, sensations can be mixed between the amputated limb and the invading brain area. Additionally, when the brain gives commands such as "contract" to a phantom hand, the brain never receives feedback that the command was carried out, and sends out continually increasing signals, perceived as pain.
73
How is sensation is "projected"?
Essentially, sensations that we feel something "in our leg" is an artificial projection of sensation onto our leg by our brain. You can "feel" pain from things that are not your body, such as demonstrated by V.S. Racachandran with a fake hand or a tabletop.
74
What is the neurological basis of acupuncture to prevent pain?
Acupuncture stimulated pain "gates", which are essentially areas in the nervous system which allow the passage of a pain signal to the central nervous system. If these "gates" are blocked with electrical stimulation or a needle, one cannot feel pain in the region specified.
75
What are Pascual-Leone's braille-reading experiments and their significance?
His experiments were used to determine that the mapping of braille-reading individual's brains were different immediately after learning something than after a break, and that the "Monday" maps corresponded better to the creation of new brain maps. His experiments used TMS to block activity of the visual cortex in patients who read braille, and found that they were then unable to read it with their finger, and unable to even feel the finger they read with.
76
What is the experiment done in the mid-1990's by Miguel Nicolelis and John Chapin?
A rat was trained to push a bar attached to a water-releasing mechanism, and then 46 microelectrodes were inserted into the rats brain. The computer recording the activity of the microelectrodes learned when the rat wanted to push the bar, and eventually the rat learned that all it had to do to get water was think about pushing the bar.
77
What is deafferenation?
Developed by Nobel Prize winner Sir Charles Sherrington in 1895, deafferenation is the process of cutting sensory nerves (afferent nerves) that send input to the brain so that no input from a deafferenated limb could be received.
78
What are the discoveries of Eric Kandel?
He showed that as we learn, our neurons physically change and alter their synaptic connections with other neurons. He won the Nobel Prize for this work. He studied the snail Aplysia and hoped to "trap" a neural response. He showed that the snail's neurons were altering their structure as it learned to associate a stimulus with pain.
79
Why it is important to pet snails gently when they are young?
Because if you do this, the snails will learn when their neuroplasticity is at its height that your hand is not associated with pain, so they will be happy or at least uncaring when you pet them.
80
Who is Nicole von Reuden?
A patient who suffered from paralysis on her right side after intense doses of radiation for brain cancer treatment. She underwent CI therapy at the Taub clinic and radically improved.
81
What is the largest amount of re-wiring to have been mapped for neuroplastic change?
14mm in one of the Silver Spring monkeys, expanded from the facial cortex to the brain area responsible for the hand that had been deafferenated.
82
Who is Jefferey M. Schwartz?
The man who discovered the neurological basis for OCD and successfully developed a neuroplastic treatment for it based on that information.
83
What is the neurological basis of OCD?
Mistakes are detected in the orbital frontal cortex, a part of the frontal lobe just beneath our eyes. This cortex sends a signal to the cingulate gyrus, which triggers anxiety and dread in response to a realized mistake. Typically the caudate nucleus will then signal for a shift in mood to move onto something else once the mistake is corrected. However, in individuals with OCD the caudate is unable to shift the individual's attention, and the orbital frontal cortex and cingulate gyrus stay active.
84
What is the treatment Schwartz developed for OCD?
Schwartz attempts to first shift patient's focus from the content of their OCD, such as germs, to the symptoms or the OCD itself and their malfunctioning brain machinery. He tries to get patients to take a step back and relabel their anxiety and dread as part of their condition, not the content they are concerned about. He then tells them to immediately focus on something pleasurable, to create a new neural circuit or "manually shift" the caudate nucleus to moving away from the content of the OCD. This bypasses the neural circuit of the condition and creates a new one.
85
Who is Vilayanur Subramanian Ramachandran?
He is an Indian-born neurologist who loves using nineteenth-century technology to solve modern problems. His notable work was on phantom limbs, where he often successfully used optical illusions to cure phantom pain.
86
What is the neurobiological basis of phantom limb pain?
When one has a limb or organ amputated, the cortical area responsible for the sensations of that limb still exists, and often is stuck in the state it was in immediately before the amputation. When this cortical real estate is repurposed by the adjacent brain tissue, sensations can be mixed between the amputated limb and the invading brain area. Additionally, when the brain gives commands such as "contract" to a phantom hand, the brain never receives feedback that the command was carried out, and sends out continually increasing signals, perceived as pain.
87
How is sensation is "projected"?
Essentially, sensations that we feel something "in our leg" is an artificial projection of sensation onto our leg by our brain. You can "feel" pain from things that are not your body, such as demonstrated by V.S. Racachandran with a fake hand or a tabletop.
88
What is the neurological basis of acupuncture to prevent pain?
Acupuncture stimulated pain "gates", which are essentially areas in the nervous system which allow the passage of a pain signal to the central nervous system. If these "gates" are blocked with electrical stimulation or a needle, one cannot feel pain in the region specified.
89
What is the experiment done by John Donoghue from Brown University in 2006?
Conducted an experiment on a paralyzed human being by implanting a 100-electrode array in his brain and recording the information. During the experiment the patient was able to learn to control a robotic arm, adjust volume control, move the dial on a TV, and some other cool stuff.
90
What is the experiment done by Pascual-Leone on darkness and its implications?
He blinded sighted people for a week and found that their visual cortex began being used to process tactile information.
91
Explain the operator theory of brain function and who it was proposed by?
The operator theory of brain function essentially states that the brain does not have individual corticies responsible for different senses, but process information in a more abstract and relational sense, such as using shapes and spatial relations.
92
What is the difference between declarative memory and implicit memory?
Implicit, or procedural, memory functions when we learn automatic processes and nonverbal emotional memories, and does not require conscious attention to develop. Infants rely primarily on this form of memory. Declarative, or explicit, memory begins to develop at around 2 years, and allows us to recall specific times, events, and memories by time and place. It is also how we learn and use language. Thus we can have implicit memories from much earlier than we can remember our first memories (when we were infants).
93
What is the potential significance of dreams?
Due to the downregulation of the prefrontal cortex during dreaming, scenarios and memories that are otherwise suppressed by the prefrontal cortex are allowed to emerge and be remembered during dreaming.
94
How does psychoanalysis can act as a neuroplastic treatment?
It presumably does so through learning, by producing changes in gene expression that alter the strength of synaptic connections, and structural changes that alter the anatomical pattern of interconnections between nerve cells of the brain, thus acting as a neuroplastic treatment.
95
What was Freud's argument against localizationism?
Since reading and writing were not 'innate', but were learned, and yet we had structures in our brain dedicated to language, our brain must dynamically restructure itself.
96
How does Freud's technique of free association related to neuroplasticity?
The idea of "neurons that fire together wire together" was central to Freud's conception of free association, since discovering which neurons were firing together in an individual's personal lives was critical to getting them to "un-wire" the defective patterns.
97
What was Freud's view of memory?
Memory was plastic: subjects frequently re-transcribed events in their memories that had happened years before, or assigned new meaning to something than they had before. Memory was thus malleable, not fixed. Freud argued that to change negative unconscious memories that were affecting us we first had to make them conscious and then re-transcribe them.
98
What is the right orbitofrontal system?
The part of our brain directly behind our right eye, is important in recognizing and regulating emotions and relationships. Typically developed during childhood by emotional education, typically from the mother.
99
What are the differences between the left and right hemispheres, and how and when do they develop in children?
Much of speech is a left-hemispheric function, while visual-spatial processing is a right-hemispheric function, a phenomenon called "hemispheric asymmetry." This restructures as we age and learn, and the hemispheres also inhibit and regulate each other.
100
How do mothers communicate emotional literacy to their children?
A mother implicitly educates her children emotionally by simply taking care of them. When she says "let me burp you" when a child is having trouble eating, it conveys to the child that their distress is caused by something: the need to be burped, and that others can help them with their problems: in this case their mother.
101
Who was H.M.?
A man who suffered from severe epilepsy and so had both sides of his hippocampus removed, after this he could not form explicit memories any time after his surgery.
102
Who was Mr. L and how was he treated?
He was a patient whose mother died when he was very young and received very little emotional education and never truly "accepted" his mother's death internally.
103
What is regression?
This is a form of emotional release wherein a patient repeats behavior from a period in their lives that may have caused them great emotional distress, such as when Mr. L. cried like a baby and moved his tongue in and out of his mouth.
104
What is the relationship between sleep and plastic change?
Scores of studies show that sleep helps us consolidate learning and memory and effects plastic change. When we learn a skill during the day, we will be better at it the next day if we have a good night's sleep. It especially enhances neuroplasticity during the critical period.
105
Who is Gerald Marks?
Deprived kittens of REM sleep and found that the neurons in their visual cortex were physically smaller than in kittens not deprived of REM sleep.
106
How does earl trauma affect the hippocampus?
Early childhood trauma radically shrinks the size of the hippocampus, disallowing new memories to form easily. This is done by the stress hormone glucocorticoid, which prevents the hippocampus from forming long-term memories. Excessive amounts of glucocorticoid in youth also lead to a sensitivity to the stress hormone later in life as well.
107
What are some things that release glucocorticoids?
Depression, stress, and childhood trauma all release glucocorticoids and kill cells in the hippocampus. The longer this goes on, the more the hippocampus shrinks.
108
How do antidepressants affect the hippocampus?
They greatly increase the number of stem cells which become neural cells in the hippocampus, increasing the cell count of the hippocampus by 70% in rats that were given Prozac for three weeks.
109
What is the plastic paradox?
The fact that the same plasticity which allows us to make changes to our behavior and our brains also fosters the creation of rigid behaviors and neural patterns. Unvaried repetition continually reinforces specific neural circuits and makes them increasingly difficult to change as we use them more. Do new things!
110
Who is Fernando Nottebohm?
He is a bird specialist, and was struck by the fact that songbirds sing new songs each season. He examined their brains and found that every year, during the season when the birds do the most singing, they grow new brain cells in the area of the brain responsible for song learning.
111
Who is Gerd Kempermann?
He raised aging mice in enriched environments, filled with mice toys such as balls, tubes, and running wheels, for only forty-five days. Upon examining their brains, he found they had a 15 percent increase in the volume of their hippocampi and forty thousand new neurons, also a 15 percent increase, compared with mice raised in standard cages.
112
What are the most effective ways to increase the number of neurons in the brain?
There are two ways to increase the number of neurons in the brain. First, by increasing neurogenesis which can be done by exercising, and second by increasing the lifespan of current neurons, which can be done by learning and stimulating your brain.
113
Why is neurogenesis necessary?
Neurogenesis is necessary to allow us to adapt to new environments: and this makes sense because it is stimulated by exercise. When we move, we are likely to encounter new environments and will benefit the most from learning, while when we are the same environment, we would not.
114
How do exercise and environmental stimulation compliment each other?
Exercise promotes neurogenesis, and helps to create additional neurons, while environmental stimulation helps existing neurons to survive.
115
Who is Michelle Mack?
Her left hemisphere simply never developed. Her doctors speculated that her left carotid artery, which supplies blood to the left hemisphere, may have become blocked. However, she was still able to develop a largely normal life in spite of only having half a brain.
116
Who is Jordan Grafman and what are the four types of plasticity he identified?
He gave a woman named Renata intensive physical therapy five years after her brain damage, and she managed to miraculously recover. He identified four types of neuroplasticity. The first is "map expansion," described above, which occurs largely at the boundaries between brain areas as a result of daily activity. The second is "sensory reassignment," which occurs when one sense is blocked, as in the blind. When the visual cortex is deprived of its normal inputs, it can receive new inputs from another sense, such as touch. The third is "compensatory masquerade," which takes advantage of the fact that there's more than one way for your brain to approach a task. Some people use visual landmarks to get from place to place. Others with "a good sense of direction" have a strong spatial sense, so if they lose their spatial sense in a brain injury, they can fall back on landmarks. The fourth kind of plasticity is "mirror region takeover." When part of one hemisphere fails, the mirror region in the opposite hemisphere adapts, taking over its mental function as best it can.
117
How does IQ affect the ability to recover from neural trauma?
People with a higher IQ tend to recover better from neural trauma.
118
How was Michelle able to survive with only half a brain? What would happen if an adult had half their brain removed?
Her brain was able to organize itself from birth, since many of her important functions were not assigned when she was born her brain was allowed to make connections that would not be present in an adult. An adult who had half their brain removed would die.
119
Why does Michelle's have savant ability to remember dates?
Because her right hemisphere responsible for recalling information about times was completely unregulated and uninhibited by the left.
120
What are some hemispheric interactions of the brain?
Hemispheres tend to lateralize in a complementary fashion in addition to inhibiting each other when needed.
121
Who are the sea gypsies? Why are they significant?
The sea gypsies are a tribe of people who live at sea and are amazingly adapted to the sea. They are able to see and swim at 70 feet underwater, a feat normal humans would think of as miraculous, all due to neuroplasticity.
122
Who is Anna Gislen?
She studied the Sea Gypsies' ability to read placards under water and found that they were more than twice as skillful as European children. The Gypsies learned to control the shape of their lenses and, more significantly, to control the size of their pupils, constricting them 22 percent.
123
How can we sublimate our animal instincts?
We can do this by intertwining neural circuits that would not otherwise be there: our violent tendencies into violent sports, our sexual drive into a social pursuit of those of the gender we are attracted to, etc.
124
Who is Merlin Donald?
He argued in 2000 that culture changes our functional cognitive architecture, meaning that, as with learning to read and write, mental functions are reorganized. This is true.
125
What does "the medium is the message" mean?
This means that while the content of information we consume alters our brain through learning, the medium of the content changes our brain equally as much if not more. Visual media enlarges the brain area we have responsible for visual processing, the radio auditory, etc.
126
In what ways does culture alter the balance of our senses?
It does this based on what our culture has in it: if we are all users of smartphones much of the time, the portion of our brain responsible for our thumbs expands massively. If our culture teaches us that happiness is derived from the approval and adoration of others, then that adoration becomes the source of our happiness.
127
What effects does television have on the brain and body?
Much of the harm from this and other electronic media, such as music videos and computer games, comes from their effect on attention. Children and teenagers who sit in front of fighting games are engaged in massed practice and are incrementally rewarded.
