When A Subconscious Mind Is Exposed

A subject we don't talk about enough but it sure impacts every waking moment of our day.  Today, I'm exposing what happens in a subconscious mind.   Please know, that this is not a scientific and fact based discussion, but one that comes from my own learning and experience in this area.

Neuroscience these days is doing wonderful work in research as they study the brain from all aspects.  It is a subject that I share a strong interest in and find very fascinating.  What happens in a subconscious mind is anything but boring to me.

We don't talk enough about the subconscious mind either.  We go through our day with our busy moments and list of things to do, but we fail to see the impact of our subconscious mind upon every waking moment we live.  It's there, whether you see it or not, feel it or not, or even want to acknowledge it.

Subconscious and Awareness...

The subconscious mind is one that stores data and input from many different experiences and moments of life.  It is the part that automatically knows what to do given any situation that arises.  It is the rapid response team.  It is the way you respond to situations that match up to your conscious mind and awareness.  It is responsible for the basic functions in life, including habits.

The subconscious mind controls or helps your reactions when it comes to emotions, feelings, actions, thoughts and words.  It knows where you feel comfortable in your responses and works to keep all of that in line.

You can also think of this part of your mind as anything that is not in your conscious thought.  Conscious thought may be a problem you are working on, while the concussions mind would be gathering data to help you solve that problem.  The conscious mind would help you in dealing with a client while the unconscious mind would be pulling in many scenarios from your life where you did something similar while doing a compare and contrast to help you in dealing with that client.

Your conscious mind does not think of your body temperature every second, but your subconscious mind knows that it needs to maintain a balance and so will activate other body systems to make sure this happens.  If you focus on your breathing, your conscious mind will know that it is breathing, but every minute of the day, your subconscious mind keeps your breathing operating at the rate which is needed to maintain life and functions.

Conscious and Unconscious Mind...

Our conscious mind and unconscious mind play critical roles in not only our survival but how we function each day.  It is in understanding more about these parts that we can better live our life to the fullest.  Failing to learn and comprehend more about our subconscious mind is only going to hold us back.

The more we can begin to understand all that is going on behind the scenes, gives us power to move through our days.  The more we understand and expose what is hidden deep within, the more we will consciously become aware so as to make better choices in our life.  Without knowing what is impacting us, it is like taking a shot in the dark.  You may hit something, but it might not be what you want to hit.

Exposing the subconscious mind allows us to let go of the baggage we have carried from all the experiences of our life.  We may not even be aware that we are carrying them, but they become like familiar weights we drag along each day.  Only when we expose these things can we decide if they are still needed or we can choose to let them go.

It is all part of our path and journey in life where we learn more about who we are than we knew the day before.  It is about getting to know our innermost thoughts, so that we become the empowered beings that we are meant to be.  Exposing the subconscious is truly growth.

Further Reading:

1. When A Subconscious Mind Is Exposed (Sep 13, 2016)
2. Subconscious Mind Impacted By Past Experiences (Sep 14, 2016)
3. Subconscious Disconnected By Numbing (Sep 15, 2016)
4. Connect To The Subconscious Mind (Sep 16, 2016)

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2016 by Don Shetterly

• Permission required before any part of this blog post is reprinted, reworded or used in any form. 
• You are welcomed to share the LINK to this blog post.  

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Neuroscience In The News On Aug 22

These are articles that I found of interest relating to news about Neuroscience.  In this issue, I have highlighted a more personal moment of neuroscience and how it relates to my own healing journey from Conversion Disorder to the present moment.

Please check out the article links below and feel free to comment with other information related to these subjects.  I enjoy learning as much as I can about the brain and passing this information on to everyone else that shares these passions.

This is for the week beginning August 22, 2016.

Please come back each week and hopefully I will have some more highlights.  Feel free to share with me ones that you have found and I may highlight those as well.

Feel free to check out the highlighted articles from August 15, 2016

My Thoughts On Neuroscience

I continue to be amazed at what we are learning in Neuroscience each day.  Some of the research studies coming out are taking us light years into the future.  While some of the things we think we know, are not yet established, there is so much we don't know.

Personally, I've been through enough trauma in a lifetime and it has affected my brain, body, and everything I do, feel, think, and say.  There is no escaping it completely that I have found, although I have found some body centered therapy to drastically help in my own healing and recovery.

If you have read other blog posts or even my first book, you will see that I went through Conversion Disorder in 1991.  It was before a person could search on the internet and understand what it was.  While it seems like a distant memory now, I know that my brain was not in contact with my body and even if it tried, my body did not listen.

In the body centered therapy that I have gone through, I've learned how to feel and connect in my body, knowing that as I do this, I am recovering more of who I truly am.  It is the essence of who I am.  While we often discount therapy that is not in the mainstream medical world, I know without a doubt what this body centered therapy has done to change my life.  I have seen it change many others.

Neuroscience is helping to put together what happens in the body and the mind.  There is no denying that the two need to be connected for optimal health, life, and happiness.  The more we understand about our minds, nervous systems, and all the parts inbetween, the more we can reclaim that which was lost during traumatic experiences of our past.  May we all find a way to work together towards this common goal.

If you would like to speak to me further about my own experiences, please contact me.  I am always happy to shed the light of what I have learned and share how I came through my horrible past into the person that I am now.

You can also check out more on my book which is on Amazon.  The title is, Hope And Possibility Through Trauma by Don Shetterly

Neuroscience In The News On Aug 15

These are articles that I found of interest relating to news about Neuroscience.  In this issue, I have highlighted an article about how past experiences shape who we are.

Please check out the article links below and feel free to comment with other information related to these subjects.  I enjoy learning as much as I can about the brain and passing this information on to everyone else that shares these passions.

This is for the week beginning August 15, 2016.

Please come back each week and hopefully I will have some more highlights.  Feel free to share with me ones that you have found and I may highlight those as well.

Feel free to check out the highlighted articles from August 8, 2016

Past Experience Shapes Us

Even though we don't want to believe it most of the time, what happened in the past does affect who we are today.  In the latest research article discussed on MindBodyThoughts.com, Behar Gholipour of the Huffington Post wrote, The Things You Don't Remember Shape Who You Are. There are so many things that we often don't remember and it always amazes me how they impact our every moment of every day.  We can run from them, hide from them, and try to ignore them, but they are still running as tapes in our minds, bodies, and tissues.

In our early years, it sets us up for what happens later in life.  We all have experiences that impact us one way or another and some of us have more difficult experiences which really brings this front and center.  To read more of the details of the study, please look at the following article, The Things You Don't Remember Shape You Who You Are as I have discussed on Mind Body Thoughts.com  [click to read more]

Neuroscience In The News On Aug 8

These are articles that I found of interest relating to news about Neuroscience.  In this issue, I have highlighted an article about hypnotherapy and the brain.

Please check out the article links below and feel free to comment with other information related to these subjects.  I enjoy learning as much as I can about the brain and passing this information on to everyone else that shares these passions.

This is for the week beginning August 8, 2016.

Please come back each week and hopefully I will have some more highlights.  Feel free to share with me ones that you have found and I may highlight those as well.

Feel free to check out the highlighted articles from August 1, 2016

Building Memory In The Brain

I really enjoy reading and learning about how the brain forms memories.  It is fascinating to me since I have struggled after Conversion Disorder to regain my memory.  In addition, there are many traumatic memories that resurface from time to time and take me down.  Learning about building memory in the brain, helps me to understand myself more.  At the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto along with the University of Toronto and Sanford University, the research they are doing is just beginning to scratch the surface.  To read more of the details of the study, please look at the following article, How The Brain Builds Memory Chains as I have discussed on Mind Body Thoughts.com  [click to read more]

Neuroscience In The News On Aug 1

These are articles that I found of interest relating to news about Neuroscience.  In this issue, I have highlighted an article about hypnotherapy and the brain.

Please check out the article links below and feel free to comment with other information related to these subjects.  I enjoy learning as much as I can about the brain and passing this information on to everyone else that shares these passions.

This is for the week beginning August 1, 2016.

Please come back each week and hopefully I will have some more highlights.  Feel free to share with me ones that you have found and I may highlight those as well.

Feel free to check out the highlighted articles from July 25, 2016

Hypnotherapy And The Brain

Our brain is a wonderful thing, but when we understand how it connects to our body, it can really help us heal physically in life and conquer things we thought were too great.  This article discusses some current research that helps provide credibility to hypnotherapy through a study at Stanford University.  I have also included some of my experiences being hypnotized and how beneficial that has been to my life.  To read more of the details of the study, please look at the following article, Hypnotherapy And The Brain [click to read more]

Neuroscience In The News On July 25

These are articles that I found of interest relating to news about Neuroscience.  In this issue, I have highlighted an article about the multi-sensory process in the brain for merging senses.

Please check out the article links below and feel free to comment with other information related to these subjects.  I enjoy learning as much as I can about the brain and passing this information on to everyone else that shares these passions.

This is for the week beginning July 25, 2016.

Please come back each week and hopefully I will have some more highlights.  Feel free to share with me ones that you have found and I may highlight those as well.

Feel free to check out the highlighted articles from July 18, 2016

Multi-sensory Process In The Brain

It is often hard to detect all that happens in our brain during the course of a day, let alone a minute.  New research studies being done on how the brain processes multi-sensory input will shed new light on areas we can barely dream of in our lifetime.  The brain takes in so much sensory input such as sound and visual stimuli and somehow the brain knows what to put together and what doesn't belong together.  It does this with such speed an accuracy.  Fortunately researchers at Bielefeld University are coming to understand how this happens and the role it could play with Autism, robotics, and artificial perception.  To read more of the details of the study, please look at the following article, Merging Of Senses In The Brain [click to read more]

Neuroscience In The News On July 18

These are articles that I found of interest relating to news about Neuroscience.  In this issue, I have highlighted an article about bullying and neuroscience.

Please check out the article links below and feel free to comment with other information related to these subjects.  I enjoy learning as much as I can about the brain and passing this information on to everyone else that shares these passions.

This is for the week beginning July 18, 2016.

Please come back each week and hopefully I will have some more highlights.  Feel free to share with me ones that you have found and I may highlight those as well.

Feel free to check out the highlighted articles from July 11, 2016

Bullying and Neuroscience

Through research, they are finding that bullying gives the bully a feeling of reward.  The more they bully others, the more reward they get. While there are areas in the brain that deal with such as the lateral habenula and basal forebrain, there is a chemical called GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) that is a primary inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain.  It is responsible for reducing the excitation of surrounding neurons and making them less active. While there is so much more to read on this topic, I hope that this research will help begin to stop bullying.  An estimated 28 percent of kids between 12 and 18 are bullied in school.  This needs to stop and if neuroscience can help solve this horrible plague upon our society, than I am all for it!  You can read more on this topic, Neuroscience of Bullying.   [click to read more]

Neuroscience In The News On July 11

These are articles that I found of interest relating to news about Neuroscience.  In this issue, I have highlighted an article about the brain and multitasking.

Please check out the article links below and feel free to comment with other information related to these subjects.  I enjoy learning as much as I can about the brain and passing this information on to everyone else that shares these passions.

This is for the week beginning July 11, 2016.

Please come back each week and hopefully I will have some more highlights.  Feel free to share with me ones that you have found and I may highlight those as well.

Feel free to check out the highlighted articles from July 4, 2016

The Brain and Multitasking

While we all want to believe that multitasking is great for all and makes us out to be a super hero in our jobs, there is research suggesting that this is anything but positive for us.  The more we do, especially challenging tasks and projects at the same time, the more detrimental and stressful it is to our body and our brain.  Stress builds up and when stress builds up, there is no real creativity or problem solving going on.  It exhausts the brain and the body in the process.  The following link takes you to more information and the source on the brain and multitasking.  [click to read more]

Neuroscience In The News On July 4

These are articles that I found of interest relating to news about Neuroscience.  In this issue, I have highlighted articles about star-shaped brain cells, songbirds and neuroscience, and a biased imbalanced in neuroscience research.

Please check out the article links below and feel free to comment with other information related to these subjects.  I enjoy learning as much as I can about the brain and passing this information on to everyone else that shares these passions.

This is for the week beginning July 4, 2016.

Please come back each week and hopefully I will have some more highlights.  Feel free to share with me ones that you have found and I may highlight those as well.

Feel free to check out the highlighted articles from June 27, 2016

Star-Shaped Brain Cells

A molecule that enables strong communication between our brain and muscles appears to also aid essential communication between our neurons, scientists report.

On the surface of our numerous star-shaped brain cells called astrocytes, they have found the molecule LRP4 is important in ensuring healthy levels of a brain chemical that enables learning and memory

The brain chemical, or neurotransmitter, is glutamate, the most important excitatory neurotransmitter in the brain, which essentially means it is passed between neurons to help one activate the next. It was known that astrocytes could regulate or modulate brain cell communication by adjusting levels of glutamate. [read more]

Article Link:

• Scientists learn more about how star-shaped brain cells help us learn
• Source:  www.eurekalert.org
• Dr. Xiang-Dong Sun, Dr Lei Li - Augusta University

(click image to read article)

Songbirds And Neuroscience

Certain songbirds have a pretty human-sounding way of learning their special tunes: They listen to their fathers.

Scientists have known that zebra finches — one of the most oft-studied songbirds — learn their songs by listening to their dads, but a new study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications takes that a step further. Researchers are hunting for the neural pathways that allow the young finches to figure out how to sing.

This may seem like pretty esoteric work, but research into song learning in birds could teach us about our own neurological development.

Check out the video from this study [read more]

Article Link:

• Scientists are using neuroscience to unlock the secrets of songbirds
• Source:  mashable.com
• Study Source:  Auditory experience-dependent cortical circuit shaping for memory formation in bird song learning.
• Shin Yanagihara, Yoko Yazaki-Sugiyama, Okinawa Institute Of Science And Technology

(click image to read article)

Biased Imbalance In Neuroscience?

Lately, when I look at the current research trends in neuroscience, a question has been lurking at the back of my mind. Clicking on and reading abstracts after abstracts of journal articles, I found myself asking if there could be a motivation bias behind the remarkable endeavours of researchers.

More specifically, has there been a considerable amount of attention paid to the appealing cerebral cortical regions rather than those which maintain and regulate fundamental survival and autonomic functions, thereby striking a subtle imbalance of focus? There seems to be much expert concentration on our high-level mental capacities of cognition, reasoning, memory, decision-making, executive control and emotion. They make up the main chapters of behavioural neuroscience textbooks and probably shine the spotlight away from those which we cannot do without such as involuntary physiological processes: breathing, heart rate and swallowing, which are mostly taken care of by the hindbrain region of the brainstem. [read more]

Article Link:

• Letter: Is there a biased imbalance in neuroscience research?
• Source:  ubyssey.ca
• By Rowena Kong (4th Year Psychology student at UBC)

(click image to read article)

Neuroscience In The News On June 27

These are articles that I found of interest relating to news about Neuroscience.  In this issue, I have highlighted articles about the neuroscience of pain, why do our minds wander, and brain signatures of spontaneous thoughts.

Please check out the article links below and feel free to comment with other information related to these subjects.  I enjoy learning as much as I can about the brain and passing this information on to everyone else that shares these passions.

This is for the week beginning June 27, 2016.

Please come back each week and hopefully I will have some more highlights.  Feel free to share with me ones that you have found and I may highlight those as well.

Feel free to check out the highlighted articles from June 20, 2016

Neuroscience Of Pain

A primer on the neurobiology of pain pathways.

The sensation of pain is a necessary function that warns the body of potential or actual injury. It occurs when a nociceptor fiber detects a painful stimulus on the skin or in an internal organ (peripheral nervous system).1 The detection of that signal is “picked up” by receptors at the dorsal horn of the spinal cord and brainstem and transmitted to various areas of the brain as sensory information.

The facilitators of this pathway are known as neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters are endogenous chemical messengers that transmit signals across a chemical synapse, from one neuron to another “target” neuron, muscle cell, or gland cell.2 Some neurotransmitters are excitatory, facilitating transmission of messages, while others are inhibitory neurotransmitters, impeding transmission.2 These chemical messages are critical in the modulation of pain.

Article Link:

• The Neuroscience of Pain
• Source:  www.practicalpainmanagement.com
• Robert J. Gatchel, PhD, ABPP, Christopher T. Ray, PhD, Kiayra Spights, Tyler Garner, MS, Emily Beggs, Ryan Hulla, BA, BS, Eric Salas, MA, Meghan Humphrey and Alyssa Castro

(click image to read article)

Why Do Our Minds Wander?

Sometimes the mind wanders. Thoughts pop into consciousness. Ideas or images are present when just a moment before they were not. Scientists recently have been turning their attention to making sense of this.

One natural picture of the phenomenon goes something like this. Typically, our thoughts and feelings are shaped by what we are doing, by what there is around us. The world captures our attention and compels our minds this way or that. What explains the fact that you think of a red car when there is a red car in front of you is, well, the red car. And similarly, it is that loud noise that causes you to orient yourself to the commotion that is producing it. In such cases, we might say, the mind is coupled to the world around it and the world, in a way, plays us the way a person might play a piano.

But sometimes, even without going to sleep, we turn away from the world. We turn inward. We are contemplative or detached. We decouple ourselves from the environment and we are set free, as it were, to let our minds play themselves.

Article Link:

• Why Do Our Minds Wander?
• Source:  www.npr.org
• Alva Noë, University of California, Berkeley

(click image to read article)

Brain Signatures of Spontaneous Thoughts

Without prompting, they fill our stream of consciousness–Sudden amusement at a joke you heard yesterday, or a flash of panic over an important meeting that slipped your mind. Spontaneous thoughts constitute the majority of our mental landscape, yet little is known about how they arise. Because these events are harder to predict, manipulate or monitor than other experiences like seeing, speaking or paying attention, they pose unique challenges to studying in the lab. Recently, a team of Canadian researchers led by Kalina Christoff devised a clever approach to unveiling the neural underpinnings of a wandering mind. By tapping into the heightened internal awareness of experienced meditators, they unraveled the temporal progression of brain activity underlying the generation and evaluation of spontaneous thoughts.

Mindfulness meditators are exquisitely adept in their introspective abilities. Because of their exceptional accuracy at monitoring their internal experience, they are an ideal population in which to study conscious thoughts. Therefore, Christoff and her colleagues used fMRI to image the brain activity of 18 experienced (>3000 training hours) mindfulness meditators during a simple awareness task. In one condition, the meditators responded when they detected a word on the screen, while in another they indicated when a spontaneous thought arose. In both conditions, they classified the word or thought as an image, narrative, emotion or sensation.

Article Link:

• Brain signatures of spontaneous thoughts
• Source:  blogs.plos.org
• Emilie Reas, UC San Diego

(click image to read article)

Neuroscience In The News On June 20

These are articles that I found of interest relating to news about Neuroscience.  In this issue, I have highlighted articles about having good vibes for a learning culture, empathy is a cognitive process, and how neuroscience helps understand emotional control in teens.

Please check out the article links below and feel free to comment with other information related to these subjects.  I enjoy learning as much as I can about the brain and passing this information on to everyone else that shares these passions.

This is for the week beginning June 20, 2016.

Please come back each week and hopefully I will have some more highlights.  Feel free to share with me ones that you have found and I may highlight those as well.

Feel free to check out the highlighted articles from June 13, 2016

Good Vibes Learning Culture

Essentially, our energy influences other people and ultimately the environments we work in. That energy can either create an atmosphere that’s conducive to learning and productivity, or it can create one that is negative and stress-inducing – causing our brains to release hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. Vermeulen said these chemicals block electrical transmission, sap our energy and make it hard to think and to learn.

Our brains produce electricity – what’s more, we generate and conduct electricity.
People can feel the energy you’re emanating just as your subconscious mind registers the energy of people around you.

Article Link:

• The Connection Between Neuroscience, Good Vibes And Learning Culture
• Source:  www.clomedia.com
• Bravetta Hassell, Associate Editor at Chief Learning Office

(click image to read article)

Empathy Is A Cognitive Process

The ability to understand and empathize with others’ pain is grounded in cognitive neural processes rather than sensory ones, according to the results of a new study led by University of Colorado Boulder researchers.

The findings show that the act of perceiving others’ pain (i.e., empathy for others’ pain) does not appear to involve the same neural circuitry as experiencing pain in one’s own body, suggesting that they are different interactions within the brain.

“The research suggests that empathy is a deliberative process that requires taking another person’s perspective rather than being an instinctive, automatic process,” said Tor Wager, the senior author of the study, director of the Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory and Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at CU-Boulder.

Article Link:

• Empathy For Other’s Pain Rooted in Cognition Rather Than Sensation
• Source:  www.sciencedaily.com
• Tor Wagner, Professor of Psychology at University Of Colorado Boulder

(click image to read article)

Emotional Control In Teens

In the midst of all the apparent tumult, intense emotion, and occasional reckless behavior characterizing the teenage years, the brain is, in fact, evolving and developing the neural circuits needed to keep emotions in check. Research in the June 8, 2016 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience describes how the ability to control emotions moves from one brain area to another as teens mature into adults, offering an opportunity to understand how disorders related to emotional control emerge.

"Our study opens the way for a better understanding of the neurobiology behind adolescent behavior in emotionally arousing situations," said study author Anna Tyborowska of Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands.

Previous research links the spike in sensation-seeking and impulsive behavior during adolescence to the delayed maturation of the prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain involved in reasoning, planning, and decision-making. Study authors Inge Volman, Ivan Toni, and Karin Roelofs previously demonstrated the importance of the anterior prefrontal cortex in emotional control in adults. However, it has not been clear whether and how the delayed development of the prefrontal cortex affects emotional control during adolescence.

Article Link:

• Study charts development of emotional control in teens
• Source:  www.sciencedaily.com
• Anna Tyborowska of Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands

(click image to read article)

Neuroscience In The News On June 13

These are articles that I found of interest relating to news about Neuroscience.  In this issue, I have highlighted articles about the signaling network of the brain, making and breaking a habit in the brain, and Trauma and Neuroscience learning.

Please check out the article links below and feel free to comment with other information related to these subjects.  I enjoy learning as much as I can about the brain and passing this information on to everyone else that shares these passions.

This is for the week beginning June 13, 2016.

Please come back each week and hopefully I will have some more highlights.  Feel free to share with me ones that you have found and I may highlight those as well.

Feel free to check out the highlighted articles from June 6, 2016

Signaling Network Of The Brain

Researchers have taken an important step toward deciphering the brain's complex neuroelectric communication system that could underlie sleep disorders and conditions such as Alzheimer's, epilepsy and schizophrenia.

The complex communication network connects groups of neurons that can be identified and studied by imaging the brain while a person rests using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Because the brain's resting state is not biased by any particular task, the approach provides a way to study its "intrinsic functional organization," said Zhongming Liu, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering and electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University.

"Data related to blood flow are different from the language used by the neurons themselves," said Liu, whose research is also affiliated with the Purdue Institute for Integrative Neuroscience. "The neurons use electrical signals to talk to each other, and these electrical signals happen much faster than blood flow. So we are translating those slow blood-flow signals into the fast signals the neurons use."

Article Link:

• Research yielding insights into brain's signaling network
• Source:  www.purdue.edu
• Zhongming Liu, Perdue University

(click image to read article)

Making And Breaking A Habit

Not all habits are bad. Some are even necessary. It's a good thing, for example, that we can find our way home on "autopilot" or wash our hands without having to ponder every step. But inability to switch from acting habitually to acting in a deliberate way can underlie addiction and obsessive compulsive disorders.

The study is published in Neuron and was led by Christina Gremel, assistant professor of psychology at the University of California San Diego, who began the work as a postdoctoral researcher at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism of the National Institutes of Health.

The study provides the strongest evidence to date, Gremel said, that the brain's circuits for habitual and goal-directed action compete for control -- in the orbitofrontal cortex, a decision-making area of the brain -- and that neurochemicals called endocannabinoids allow for habit to take over, by acting as a sort of brake on the goal-directed circuit.

Article Link:

• How the brain makes, and breaks, a habit
• Source:  www.sciencedaily.com
• Christina Gremel, University of California San Diego

(click image to read article)

Trauma and Neuroscience Learning

“We have a reasonable understanding of the negative spectrum of emotions like fear and stress responses, but we don’t know much about the positive side. What regulates joy? Where is our sense of resilience? Optimism?” Vaidya asks. “And all of these are clearly regulated by our brain.” Her lab at TIFR is one of the few in India to explore these complex questions.

Vaidya finds it fascinating how we all develop such unique circuitry, and, consequently, such different ways of responding to trauma despite sharing an identical neurological architecture. “It’s like this,” she explains. “In the beginning, an architect designs all the flats in a building identically. But after people start living in them, the homes will look extremely different because they bring in their own personal flavour. Similarly, genetically, our brains are designed on a blueprint, we all have prefrontal cortex in the same place, and yet in the micro details we vary.”

A study from her lab showed proof of this. “We showed that when you have traumatic events happen in the early window of life you actually show ageing-related effects two years down the road. The ability of the hippocampus [a part of the brain] to make new neurons drops abnormally in trauma. This tells us that if there is a traumatic early event, you may not see effects right away but there are effects down the road waiting for you.”

Article Link:

• It’s Time to Get Cerebral About Trauma – a Neuroscientist Leads the Way
• Source:  thewire.in
• Vidita Vaidya, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai 

(click image to read article)

Neuroscience In The News On May 30

These are articles that I found of interest relating to news about Neuroscience.  In this issue, I have highlighted articles about fighting addictions through the gut-brain axis, information processing through the cannabinoid receptor in the hippocampus and the neuroscience secret to happiness.

Please check out the article links below and feel free to comment with other information related to these subjects.  I enjoy learning as much as I can about the brain and passing this information on to everyone else that shares these passions.

This is for the week beginning May 30, 2016.

Please come back each week and hopefully I will have some more highlights.  Feel free to share with me ones that you have found and I may highlight those as well.

Feel free to check out the highlighted articles from May 23, 2016

Addiction Through Gut-Brain Axis

“We are what we eat”. This piece of folk knowledge is true in more ways than one. In fact, it is well known that food, through action on the enteric system, has direct effects on the brain. The mechanisms underlying this exchange are no longer a mystery since a large body of scientific literature highlights the functional crosstalk between the periphery and the brain. In particular, the so-called gut-brain axis consists of bidirectional communication between the brain and the enteric system, linking the emotional and cognitive centers of the brain with peripheral intestinal functions (and vice versa). Insights into the gut-brain crosstalk have revealed an extremely fascinating communication system that is thought to be involved in many routine functions and systems within the healthy body, as well as in many diseases.

Article Link:

• Fighting addiction through the gut-brain axis…the future?
• Source:  www.eurekalert.org
• Plos Neuro Community Blog, Giuseppe Gangarossa

Information Processing in Cannabinoid Receptor

In the brain, there is a delicate interplay of signaling substances and cellular activity. Scientists of the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin have now identified another key player within this ensemble. In a laboratory study they found that the “cannabinoid type 2 receptor” influences information processing inside the hippocampus. This area of the brain plays a crucial role in the generation of long-term memories.

Article Link:

• Neuroscientists discover previously unknown function of cannabinoid receptor
• Source:  www.healthcanal.com
• Professor Dietmar Schmitz, Neuroscience Research Center of the Charité.

Neuroscience Secret To Happiness

In his book, The Art of Happiness, the Dalai Lama wrote: “We need to learn how to want what we have, not to have what we want in order to get steady and stable happiness.” And the wise man might have been proved right by science.

According to neuroscientist Jaak Panskepp, it is the road to happiness, rather than the act of reaching the destination, which makes us happy. The neuroscientist claims that the fulfillment of desires may not cause happiness in the long run.

Article Link:

• Neuroscience’s secret to happiness
• Source:  www.deccanchronicle.com

Neuroscience In The News On May 23

These are articles that I found of interest relating to news about Neuroscience.  In this issue, I have highlighted articles about Neuroscience and pattern completion in the brain, how the brain remembers bad experiences and one activity that may engage your brain more than any other.

Please check out the article links below and feel free to comment with other information related to these subjects.  I enjoy learning as much as I can about the brain and passing this information on to everyone else that shares these passions.

This is for the week beginning May 23, 2016.

Please come back each week and hopefully I will have some more highlights.  Feel free to share with me ones that you have found and I may highlight those as well.

Feel free to check out the highlighted articles from May 16, 2016

Neuroscience and Pattern Completion

Recently, scientists at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) discovered a new learning rule for a specific type of excitatory synaptic connection in the hippocampus. These synapses are located in the so-called CA3 region of the hippocampus, which plays a critical role for storage and recall of spatial information in the brain. One of its hallmark properties is that memory recall can even be triggered by incomplete cues. This enables the network to complete neuronal activity patterns, a phenomenon termed pattern completion.

Article Link:

• Neuroscientists discover new learning rule for pattern completion
• Source:  www.eurekalert.org
• Institute of Science and Technology Austria, Peter Jonas and Team

Remembering Bad Experiences

Bad experiences can cause people to strongly remember the negative content itself but only weakly remember the surrounding context, and a new UCL study funded by the Medical Research Council and Wellcome Trust has revealed how this happens in the brain. The study, published in Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, has important implications for understanding conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

"When we presented people with negative content alongside neutral content, the brain areas involved in storing the negative content were more active while those involved in storing the surrounding context were less active," explains lead author Dr James Bisby (UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience). "When we experience a new event, we not only store the contents of the event in memory, such as the people we met, but we also form associations with the context in which the event took place.

Article Link:

• Why bad experiences are remembered out of context
• Source:  medicalxpress.com
• Professor Neil Burgess, Director of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience

Brain Activated Most By This Activity

Your brain fires for every reason imaginable — walking, talking, remembering what you went into that room for, even doing nothing at all.

But neuroscientists think one activity might activate your brain more than any other, and you do it every day: eating!

Dr. Gordon Shepherd, a neuroscientist at Yale, coined the term "neurogastronomy" in 2006 to describe how the brain creates flavors that make eating food pleasurable.

"Flavor engages more of the brain in relation to how it determines what we eat than almost any other behavior. "But in the case of flavor ... you're engaging not only all of the sensory systems in the brain (vision, taste, smell, and even hearing) ... [but also] emotion, memory, language in describing to ourselves and to others the flavor, the motivations to eat. It's virtually the entire brain."

Article Link:

• One activity may engage your brain more than any other
• Source:  www.techinsider.io
• Author:  Rebecca Harrington

Neuroscience In The News On May 16

These are articles that I found of interest relating to news about Neuroscience.  In this issue, I have highlighted articles about free will and the brain, identifying your brain print, and Neuroscience and visual stereotyping.

Please check out the article links below and feel free to comment with other information related to these subjects.  I enjoy learning as much as I can about the brain and passing this information on to everyone else that shares these passions.

This is for the week beginning May 16, 2016.

Please come back each week and hopefully I will have some more highlights.  Feel free to share with me ones that you have found and I may highlight those as well.

Feel free to check out the highlighted articles from May 9, 2016

Free Will And The Brain

In a classic paper published almost 20 years ago, the psychologists Dan Wegner and Thalia Wheatley made a revolutionary proposal: The experience of intentionally willing an action, they suggested, is often nothing more than a post hoc causal inference that our thoughts caused some behavior. The feeling itself, however, plays no causal role in producing that behavior. This could sometimes lead us to think we made a choice when we actually didn’t or think we made a different choice than we actually did.

In a study just published in Psychological Science, Paul Bloom and I explore a radical—but non-magical—solution to this puzzle. Perhaps in the very moments that we experience a choice, our minds are rewriting history, fooling us into thinking that this choice—that was actually completed after its consequences were subconsciously perceived—was a choice that we had made all along.

Article Link:

• What Neuroscience Says About Free Will
• Source:  blogs.scientificamerican.com
• Author:  Adam Bear

Identify Your Brain Print

The team, headed by Dr. Sarah Laszlo of the Binghamton University’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, recorded the brain activity of 50 people wearing an electroencephalogram (EEG) headset while they looked at a series of images designed to elicit unique responses from person to person.

The scientists found that participants’ brains reacted differently to each image, enough that a computer system was able to identify each volunteer’s ‘brainprint’ with 100% accuracy.

Article Link:

• Neuroscientists Can Identify You By Your Brainprint With 100% Accuracy
• Source:  www.sci-news.com
• Dr. Sarah Laszlo, Binghamton University

Neuroscience and Visual Stereotyping

The stereotypes we hold can influence our brain's visual system, prompting us to see others' faces in ways that conform to these stereotypes, neuroscientists at New York University have found.

"Our findings provide evidence that the stereotypes we hold can systematically alter the brain's visual representation of a face, distorting what we see to be more in line with our biased expectations," explains Jonathan Freeman, an assistant professor in NYU's Department of Psychology and the senior author of the paper, which appears in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Article Link:

• Neuroscientists find evidence for visual stereotyping
• Source:  www.ScienceDaily.com
• Ryan Stolier, New York University

Neuroscience In The News On May 2

These are articles that I found of interest relating to news about Neuroscience.  In this issue, I have highlighted articles about the brain anatomy and sensation seeking behavior, how the brain responds to reading and wisdom being measured and influenced by heart rate variability.

Please check out the article links below and feel free to comment with other information related to these subjects.  I enjoy learning as much as I can about the brain and passing this information on to everyone else that shares these passions.

This is for the week beginning May 2, 2016.

Please come back each week and hopefully I will have some more highlights.  Feel free to share with me ones that you have found and I may highlight those as well.

Feel free to check out the highlighted articles from April 25, 2016

Sensation Seeking Behavior Linked To Brain Anatomy

This study builds on well-established links between impulsivity, sensation-seeking, and substance abuse. Prior research indicates genes play a role in these behaviors. Other studies conclude substance use can affect brain anatomy and function over time. Scientists don't know the extent to which brain abnormalities, present prior to drug-taking, contribute to the likelihood that a person will develop a substance abuse disorder.

The strongest links occurred in brain areas related to the ability to regulate emotions and behaviour, the anterior cingulate and middle frontal gyrus. Changes in those brain structures also correlated with participants' self-reported tendency to act on impulse and with heightened use of alcohol, tobacco, or caffeine.

Article Link:

• Research Links Sensation Seeking Behavior To Brain Anatomy
• Source:  www.scicasts.com
• Avram Holmes, Psychologist at Yale University

The Brain And Reading

Neuroscientists at UC Davis have come up with a way to observe brain activity during natural reading. It’s the first time researchers have been able to study the brain while reading actual texts, instead of individual words, and it’s already helping settle some ideas about just how we read.

Until now, neuroscientists have only measured brain activity as a volunteer fixes his or her attention on individual words. The signals of brain activity from functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, last for several seconds — too slow to keep up with natural reading, which processes several words a second.

Article Link:

• How Do Our Brains Respond To Reading
• Source:  www.laboratoryequipment.com
• John Henderson, Professor Of Psychology, UC Davis Center

Wisdom Influenced By The Heart

While many individuals believe such aspects are solely driven by cognitive functioning, the team notes that some behavioral scientists have suggested the heart may also play a role in wisdom.

Participants were required to take part in a series of tasks, including a social reasoning task and an attributional judgement task. As part of these tasks, subjects were required to offer their opinion on social issues they felt strongly about, from both a first- and third-person perspective.

The participants' resting heart rates were measured during each task using an electrocardiogram (ECG).

Article Link:

• Wisdom Influenced By Heart Rate Variability
• Source:  www.medicalnewstoday.com
• Professor Igor Grossman, University Of Waterloo, Canada

Neuroscience In The News On April 25

These are articles that I found of interest relating to news about Neuroscience.  In this issue, I have highlighted articles about how the brain processes emotions, the natural forgetting of long-term memories and the neuroscience of how to fix creative block.

Please check out the article links below and feel free to comment with other information related to these subjects.  I enjoy learning as much as I can about the brain and passing this information on to everyone else that shares these passions.

This is for the week beginning April 25, 2016.

Please come back each week and hopefully I will have some more highlights.  Feel free to share with me ones that you have found and I may highlight those as well.

Feel free to check out the highlighted articles from April 18, 2016

How The Brain Processes Emotions

Some mental illnesses may stem, in part, from the brain’s inability to correctly assign emotional associations to events. For example, people who are depressed often do not feel happy even when experiencing something that they normally enjoy.

A new study from MIT reveals how two populations of neurons in the brain contribute to this process. The researchers found that these neurons, located in an almond-sized region known as the amygdala, form parallel channels that carry information about pleasant or unpleasant events.

Learning more about how this information is routed and misrouted could shed light on mental illnesses including depression, addiction, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder, said Kay Tye, the Whitehead Career Development Assistant Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and a member of MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory.

Article Link:

• How the Brain Processes Emotions
• Source:  www.Biosciencetechnology.com
• Anna Beyeler, Praneeth Namburi, MIT

Natural Forgetting Of Long-Term Memories

"Our study looks at the biological processes that happen in the brain when we forget something."

Typically, the process of forgetting is seen as a failure of one or more basic memory functions such as acquisition, encoding, maintenance and retrieval.

However, in this latest study of rats, Dr. Hardt and colleagues suggest that forgetting may involve a well-organized process of active deletion rather than simply failure to remember.

Article Link:

• Brain study yields clues about 'natural forgetting of long-term memories
• Source:  www.MedicalNewsToday.com 
• Dr. Oliver Hardt, University Of Edinburgh

Neuroscience Fix For Creative Block

“When [people] are improvising, there tends to be a pattern of activation where they have decreased activation in a part of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex,” Berlin says. “And that part of the brain has to do with your sense of self, your sort of inner critic, making sure that your behavior conforms to social norms.”

Translation? When you’re at your most creative, “basically you lose your sense of self,” Berlin says. “You kind of release your inhibition. The second you become too self-aware that comes back online and you lose that flow state.”

Article Link:

• Creative Block?  Here's the neuroscience of how to fix that
• Source:  Pri.Org  (Public Radio International)

Neuroscience In The News On April 18

These are articles that I found of interest relating to news about Neuroscience.  In this issue, I have highlighted articles about the antimatter and the discovery of antimemory, the discovery of a potential new source for pain inhibition, and nerve terminals and nerve signaling.

Please check out the article links below and feel free to comment with other information related to these subjects.  I enjoy learning as much as I can about the brain and passing this information on to everyone else that shares these passions.

This is for the week beginning April 18, 2016.

Please come back each week and hopefully I will have some more highlights.  Feel free to share with me ones that you have found and I may highlight those as well.

Feel free to check out the highlighted articles from April 11, 2016

Antimatter and Discovery of Antimemory

In trying to understand the effects of imbalance, scientists reached the conclusion that there must be a second process in learning that acts to rebalance the excitation caused by the new memory and keep the whole system in check. The theory is that, just as we have matter and antimatter, so there must be an antimemory for every memory. This precise mirroring of the excitation of the new memory with its inhibitory antimemory prevents a runaway storm of brain activity, ensuring that the system stays in balance. While the memory is still present, the activity it caused has been subdued. In this way, antimemories work to silence the original memory without erasing it.

Article Link:

• Discovery of Antimemories could Revolutionize Neuroscience
• Source:  The Conversation

Potential New Source For Pain Inhibition

According to Dr. Ted Price, associate professor in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, the discovery of neuroligin-2 as a cause exacerbating chronic pain is significant for the research community.

Normally, a GABA neurotransmitter acts to inhibit neuronal activity, such as pain. However, when pain becomes chronic there is strong evidence that a process called GABAergic plasticity can cause GABA to lose its inhibitory activity, sometimes making the pain even worse.

“When you hit your hand with a hammer, almost everybody has the same reflex reaction — that is, to rub your finger which, in turn, helps to reduce pain. The reason that works is because it increases GABAergic inhibition in the spinal cord,” Price said. “However, people who have chronic pain — if they do the same thing — find that rubbing it actually makes the pain worse. That’s because the GABAergic system loses its efficacy and, in fact, can become excitatory.”

Article Link:

• Neuroscientist Discovers Potential New Source for Pain Inhibition
• Source:  www.UTDallas.edu 
• Dr. Ted Price, University Of Texas

Nerve Terminals and Brain Signalling

This spectacular image – which took the best part of a year to create – shows the fine structure of a nerve terminal at high resolution, revealing, for the very first time, an intricate network of fine filaments that controls the movements of synaptic vesicles.

The brain is soft and wet, with the consistency of a lump of jelly. Yet, it is the most complex and highly organized structure that we know of, containing hundreds of billions of neurons and glial cells, and something on the order of one quadrillion synaptic connections, all of which are arranged in a very specific manner.

This high degree of specificity extends down to the deepest levels of brain organization. Just beneath the membrane at the nerve terminal, synaptic vesicles store neurotransmitter molecules, and await the arrival of a nervous impulse.

Article Link:

• Nerve terminal nanofilaments control brain signalling
• Source:  TheGuardian.Com
• Reference:  Cole, A. A., et al. (2016). A Network of Three Types of Filaments Organizes Synaptic Vesicles for Storage, Mobilization, and Docking. J. Neurosci. 36: 3222–3230 [Abstract]

Neuroscience In The News On April 11

These are articles that I found of interest relating to news about Neuroscience.  In this issue, I have highlighted articles about the more than one road to fear in the brain, exercise slows down mental health decline, and using stem cells for spinal regrowth.

Please check out the article links below and feel free to comment with other information related to these subjects.  I enjoy learning as much as I can about the brain and passing this information on to everyone else that shares these passions.

This is for the week beginning April 11, 2016.

Please come back each week and hopefully I will have some more highlights.  Feel free to share with me ones that you have found and I may highlight those as well.

Feel free to check out the highlighted articles from April 4, 2016

More Than One Road To Fear In The Brain

The results of that experiment, described in the March 23 Journal of Neuroscience, add to evidence that the amygdalae, small, almond-shaped brain structures tucked deep in the brain, aren’t the only bits of the brain that make a person feel afraid. “Overall, this suggests multiple different routes in the brain to a common endpoint of the experience of fear,” says cognitive neuroscientist Stephan Hamann of Emory University in Atlanta.

Article Link:

• Brain Holds More Than One Road To Fear
• Stephan Hamann, Emory University

Exercise Slows Mental Health Decline

In this study, 876 people at an average age of 71 who were a part of the Northern Manhattan Study, a group of people considered for stroke and for the potential to have a stroke, were asked how long and how often they exercised in the two weeks before their in-person interview.

Among the participants, 90 percent reported light exercises, such as walking and gardening, or no exercise at all. Those people were placed in the low activity group. The remaining 10 percent reported moderate to high-intensity exercises, such as running and aerobics, and were put in the high activity group.

Article Link:

• Exercise might slow rate of mental decline by 10 years for older people
• Study Details posted on Neurology.org
• Dr. Clinton Wright, Associate Professor of Neurology, University Of Miami

Stem Cell Therapy Enables Spinal Regrowth

Researchers at the University of California-San Diego School of Medicine and Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System, with colleagues in Japan and Wisconsin, collaborated to investigate the feasibility of using corticospinal neurons for this purpose.

Dr. Tuszynski says that this was the first time for the team to use neural stem cells to find out whether they would support regeneration, where other cell types had not.

He had been skeptical that therapies could be developed to improve function in humans, but the possibility of regenerating "the most important motor system for humans," now looks more likely. 

Article Link:

• Stem Cell Therapy Enables Spinal Regrowth
• Source:  Medical News Today.com
• Senior Study Author, Dr. Mark Tuszynski, UC-San Diego

Neuroscience In The News On April 4

These are articles that I found of interest relating to news about Neuroscience.  In this issue, I have highlighted articles about the how dance may help Huntington's Disease and the role of altruism and brain activity.  Last but not least is how a bird dances to a beat and the insights that are learned from this for neuroscience.

Please check out the article links below and feel free to comment with other information related to these subjects.  I enjoy learning as much as I can about the brain and passing this information on to everyone else that shares these passions.

This is for the week beginning April 4, 2016.

Please come back each week and hopefully I will have some more highlights.  Feel free to share with me ones that you have found and I may highlight those as well.

Feel free to check out the highlighted articles from March 14, 2016

Can Dance Help Huntington's Disease?

Huntington's disease is an inherited disease that causes the progressive degeneration of nerve cells in the brain. It has a broad impact on a person's functional abilities and usually results in movement, thinking and psychiatric disorders.

Dennis, of Amherst, says dance can help in the maintenance of balance and posture, coordination of voluntary movements, motor learning, cognition and emotional well being.

Article Link:

• Umass Professor Believes Dance Can Help Huntington's Disease
• Paul A. Dennis, Assistant Professor of Dance, University of Massachusetts

Altruism and Brain Activity

However, subjects who showed the greatest activity in areas of the brain linked to pain perception, emotion and imitating others gave away an average of 75% of their funds. The researchers say this behavior can be referred to as "prosocial resonance" - a type of mirroring impulse that they believe is a key driver for altruism.

Based on their results, the researchers suggest we may be hard-wired for altruism. What is more, they believe the results indicate that it may be possible to make people less selfish and more generous toward others.

"This is potentially groundbreaking," says Christov-Moore. Senior author Marco Iacoboni, a psychiatry professor at UCLA

Article Link:

• Altruism Could Be Increased By Reducing Specific Brain Activity
• Leonardo Christov-Moore, University Of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
• Source:  Medical News Today

The Beasts That Keep The Beat

For Irena Schulz, one of those moments happened on an otherwise ordinary day in August, 2007.  Schulz was someone who already had a deep appreciation for the intelligence and myriad talents of birds. She had even seen some parrots sway and bob to music. But Spudic’s claims seemed a bit hyperbolic. “We were humoring him, saying, ‘Sure, sure,’” Schulz recalls. Later that evening, she and her husband popped Spudic’s CD into the computer in their living room. “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)” by The Backstreet Boys started playing. Immediately, Snowball, who was perched on Schulz’s arm, began kicking up his feet and bouncing his head with great zeal — and precision.

Make sure you check out the video posted in the story.

Article Link:

• The Beasts That Keep The Beat, New Insights From Neuroscience
• John Iversen and Aniruddh Patel at Neurosciences Institute, La Jolla CA.
• Source:  Quanta Magazine