Category: Science

Training the Brain’s Motivation Center

It will change your life! Read it carefully! Now you can achieve anything you want! Limitlessly! How? Just simply training regularly the brain centre responsible for motivation! 

Work hard! Play hard! Dream even harder!!!! 



Courtesy of https://rennickeassociates.wordpress.com/2016/04/25/training-the-brains-motivation-center/

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Matthew A. Scult

Matthew Scult is a PhD candidate in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. More about his research and writing can be found at http://www.matthewscult.com or follow him on Twitter @NeuroMatt1


My heart pounds as I sprint to the finish line. Thousands of spectators cheer as a sense of elation washes over me. I savor the feeling. But then, the image slowly fades away and my true surroundings come into focus. I am lying in a dark room with my head held firmly in place, inside an MRI scanner. While this might typically be unpleasant, I am a willing research study participant and am eagerly anticipating what comes next. I hold my breath as I stare at the bar on the computer screen representing my brain activity. Then the bar jumps. My fantasy of winning a race had caused the “motivation center” of my brain to surge with activity.

I am participating in a study about neurofeedback, a diverse and fascinating area of research that combines neuroscience and technology to monitor and modulate brain activity in real time. My colleagues, Katie Dickerson and Jeff MacInnes, in the Adcock Lab at Duke University, are studying whether people can train themselves to increase brain activity in a tiny region of the brain called the VTA. Notably, the VTA is thought to be involved in motivation—the desire to get something that you want. For example, if I told you that by buying a lottery ticket you would be guaranteed to win $1,000,000, you would probably be very motivated to buy the ticket and would have a spike in brain activity in this region of your brain. But while studies have shown that motivation for external rewards (like money) activate the VTA, until now, we didn’t know whether people could internally generate a motivational state that would activate this brain region.

(But we definitely will not hurt ourselves trying. I, for instance, always practice 5-10 min of watching (do not read as it is my main activity during a day and it is useful to switch for something else) visual stimuli related to my dream achievements every 2-4 hours while work. It always gives me energy to carry on. Always! It just works. End of story! That’s why I can easily work 12-15 hours a day being inspired and motivated – (OMP editor’s comment)

To see if people can self-activate the VTA, my colleagues are using neurofeedback, which falls under the broader umbrella of biofeedback. Biofeedback uses technology to give people information about the functioning of their bodies so that they can try to change their physiology. Studies on using the technique to control heart rate, breathing rate, muscle tension, and skin temperature have been around since the 1960s, and these types of biofeedback are often used to help people reduce anxiety, chronic pain, or psychological disorders, with varying degrees of efficacy.

The latest iteration of biofeedback is neurofeedback, which provides a person with information on their brain activity milliseconds to seconds after it happens. Neurofeedback can use either an EEG machine, which records the electrical activity of the brain and is very fast, but not very specific, or it can use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which records changes in blood flow in the brain and can better target specific brain regions, but is slower. The fMRI version of the technology has been around since as early as 1995 and its potential is slowly being realized. Studies on rtfMRI (the rt stands for “real-time”), have found that giving people feedback on their brain activity might be able to help them to control that activity. These studies both help us to better understand the functioning of the brain and can be used for clinical purposes. Perhaps the most common use to date has been for chronic pain, where people learn to decrease activation in regions of the brain that process pain perception. [For more information about neurofeedback see “How Real-Time Brain Scanning Could Alleviate Pain,” by Heather Chapin and Sean Mackey; Scientific American Mind, March 1, 2013.]


The study I’m participating in is about using the technology to better understand the functioning of the VTA and its relationship with internally generated motivation, with potential for clinical applications down the road. In animal models, artificially affecting functioning of the VTA can affect how much an animal eats or drinks, and can even affect its emotional responses. If people could learn to activate their VTAs deliberately, it could have important applications to anything from helping someone stick to a diet to helping with psychological disorders.

Back in the fMRI, I lie on the uncomfortable scanner bed, looking up at the giant machine that reminds me of something I might encounter on a spaceship. Katie Dickerson’s voice comes over the intercom and gives me suggestions of ways to try and activate my VTA. She says I could try to think of phrases, like “you can do it!” or “increase that signal!” and says that it might help to think of the task as a fun game. So I think “I can do this!” but to my dismay the bar remains pretty flat. I think about winning $1,000,000, but don’t get much of a jump for that either. Then I picture myself running with a cheering crowd and music playing, and the bar goes through the roof.

For the study, participants were placed in one of four groups. All four groups started out by getting in the scanner and trying to activate their brains using motivation strategies, but first without receiving any feedback. After doing this for several minutes, people in the first group (like me) would try again, but this time would see a thermometer on the computer screen in front of them. When activity in the VTA went up, the bar on the thermometer would rise. When activity in the VTA went down, the thermometer would drop. The other groups either got feedback from a different brain region, got fake feedback, or were shown a visual distraction. These groups were used as comparisons to ensure that it really was the signal from the VTA that was being registered in the neurofeedback group. Afterward, all four groups tried one more time without the feedback (real or fake). At the end of the study, all participants were debriefed about their group assignment and the purpose of the study.

The results were published recently in the journal Neuron. It turns out that the strategies people tried initially did not activate their VTAs very much—the same experience I had. In other words, what people thought of as motivating did not match up with activity in what we consider to be the “motivation center” of the brain. How could that be? One possible explanation is that it can be difficult to get a sense of just how motivated we are to do something. Consider times when you might have thought you were highly motivated (“I know I am going to stick to my diet/exercise regimen this year”), and didn’t follow through. Another interpretation is that while we might have some sense of how motivated we are in a given moment, our subjective perceptions might not translate to VTA activation. There might not even be a clear feeling associated with the activation at all, explains MacInnes. That’s where the feedback came in.

The study found that, like me, people were better able to activate their VTAs, on average, once they got neurofeedback compared to people who got false feedback or no feedback. And the learning stuck—once people knew the strategies that worked for them, they were effective even once the feedback was taken away. Overall, different strategies worked for different people and some people in the control groups were still able to activate their VTAs even without the neurofeedback. The take-home message is that there is still a lot to learn.

Perhaps the biggest unanswered question is what could result from an ability to better activate one’s VTA. One possibility is that internally generated VTA activation could allow people to have the extra oomph to better meet their goals. So maybe when I need to do errands, but am really not in the mood, I can think about winning a race and it will give me the drive to go to the grocery store. For others, enhanced VTA activation might be able to help with studying. After all, studies have found VTA activation associated with better memory performance. And given other studies showing VTA signaling being related to eating and mood, it’s possible that it could help people with eating disorders or depression. Time will tell whether this method will be useful clinically, but for now I can say for certain that it can be a lot of fun getting to know your brain—and for me at least, it seems that having fun is one of the keys to activating my VTA.

What is the connection between Music and the Brain?

Music is a powerful tool for the brain. Classical music has been studied for many years for its influence in the brain. Scientists have come to a conclusion that music is a valuable therapy for many diseases.


Norman Doidge has talked about Mozart music therapy in his book. He says it is a very useful therapy for Autism. Other studies have proven that music therapy is helpful in stress reduction and improvement of literacy skills in children.

Music has a harmony and frequency. These two attributes are important for the brain. The brain likes to hear certain frequencies at certain moments. When we are happy we can hear loud music and enjoy it. When we are angry we only accept to hear certain frequencies. Experiments show that in angry moments we like to hear classical music as it calms the brain down. It is very interesting to see the brain scans before and after listening to music, and the way they change. In a brain scan the red areas are the ones with a higher blood circulation, that show more stress. When a person listens to music these areas are reduced.

In his book Norman Doidge says that Mozart music can improve the symptoms of Autistic children. He mentions a physician who uses Mozart music as a therapy for healing Autistic children. He changes the frequency of the music a bit to make it more approachable to his goal. The therapy lasts and in certain days children listen to a certain frequency.

The frequency that the brain likes to hear the most is 90Hz to 110Hz. Norman Doidge thinks this therapy can be used for many brain illnesses as anxiety or depression.

The music therapy helps to make the myelin cover in n axon thicker, which helps to improve the firing of neurons faster, and releasing all toxins. After the therapy the scans of the brain showed that there was small amount of stress and anxiety and the person’s brain was healthier.

In conclusion music is a therapy for the brain. It helps the brain be more efficient. It helps the literacy and auditory skills in children if they are exposed to music in early years of their life.

https://myscience94.wordpress.com/2016/04/25/what-is-the-connection-between-music-and-the-brain/

How Neuroscientists Explain the Mind-Clearing Magic of Running

It is something of a cliché among runners, how the activity never fails to clear your head. Does some creative block have you feeling stuck? Go for a run. Are you deliberating between one of two potentially life-altering decisions? Go for a run. Are you feeling mildly mad, sad, or even just vaguely meh? Go for a run, go for a run, go for a run.


The author Joyce Carol Oates once wrote in a column for the New York Times that

in running the mind flees with the body … in rhythm with our feet and the swinging of our arms.

 Filmmaker Casey Neistat told Runner’s World last fall that running is sometimes the only thing that gives him clarity of mind.

 “Every major decision I’ve made in the last eight years has been prefaced by a run,”

he told the magazine. But I maybe like the way a runner named Monte Davis phrased it best, as quoted in the 1976 book The Joy of Running:

“It’s hard to run and feel sorry for yourself at the same time. Also, there are those hours of clear-headedness that follow a long run.”

A good run can sometimes make you feel like a brand-new person. And, in a way, that feeling may be literally true. About three decades of research in neuroscience have identified a robust link between aerobic exercise and subsequent cognitive clarity, and to many in this field the most exciting recent finding in this area is that of neurogenesis. Not so many years ago, the brightest minds in neuroscience thought that our brains got a set amount of neurons, and that by adulthood, no new neurons would be birthed. But this turned out not to be true. Studies in animal models have shown that new neurons are produced in the brain throughout the lifespan, and, so far, only one activity is known to trigger the birth of those new neurons: vigorous aerobic exercise, said Karen Postal, president of the American Academy of Clinical Neuropsychology. “That’s it,” she said. “That’s the only trigger that we know about.”

The other fascinating thing here is where these new cells pop up: in the hippocampus, a region of the brain associated with learning and memory. So this could help explain, at least partially, why so many studies have identified a link between aerobic exercise and improvement in memory.

If you are exercising so that you sweat — about 30 to 40 minutes — new brain cells are being born,

added Postal, who herself is a runner. “And it just happens to be in that memory area.”
Other post-run changes have been recorded in the brain’s frontal lobe, with increased activity seen in this region after people adopt a long-term habit of physical activity. This area of the brain — sometimes called the frontal executive network system — is located, obviously enough, at the very front: It’s right behind your forehead. After about 30 to 40 minutes of a vigorous aerobic workout – enough to make you sweat – studies have recorded increased blood flow to this region, which, incidentally, is associated with many of the attributes we associate with “clear thinking”: planning ahead, focus and concentration, goal-setting, time management.

But it’s this area that’s also been linked to emotion regulation, which may help explain the results of one recent study conducted by Harvard psychology professor Emily E. Bernstein. Like Postal, Bernstein is also a runner, and was curious about a pattern she saw in her own mind after a run.

I notice in myself that I just feel better when I’m active.

She started to become really interested in the intervention studies that have popped up in recent years that suggest if you can get people who are having trouble with mood or anxiety to exercise, it helps. “But why?” she wanted to know. “What is exercise actually doing?”

To find out, she did a version of a classic experiment among researchers who study emotion: She and her colleague — Richard J. McNally, also of Harvard — played a reliable tearjerker of a clip: the final scene of the 1979 film The Champ.

Before watching the film clip, some of the 80 participants were made to jog for 30 minutes; others just stretched for the same amount of time. Afterward, all of them filled out surveys to indicate how bummed out the film had made them. Bernstein kept them busy for about 15 minutes after that, and surveyed them again about how they were feeling. Those who’d done the 30-minute run were more likely to have recovered from the emotional gut-punch than those who’d just stretched — and, her results showed, the people who’d initially felt worse seemed to especially benefit from the run. Bernstein is currently doing a few follow-up research projects to determine exactly why this works the way it does.

running feet mezunoBut there’s another big mental benefit to gain from running, one that scientists haven’t quiet yet managed to pin down to poke at and study: the wonderful way your mind drifts here and there as the miles go by. Mindfulness, or being here now, is a wonderful thing, and there is a seemingly ever-growing stack of scientific evidence showing the good it can bring to your life. And yet mindlessness — daydreaming, or getting lost in your own weird thoughts — is important, too. Consider, for example, this argument, taken from a 2013 article by a trio of psychologists in the journal Frontiers in Psychology:

“We mind wander, by choice or by accident, because it produces tangible reward when measured against goals and aspirations that are personally meaningful. Having to reread a line of text three times because our attention has drifted away matters very little if that attention shift has allowed us to access a key insight, a precious memory or make sense of a troubling event. Pausing to reflect in the middle of telling a story is inconsequential if that pause allows us to retrieve a distant memory that makes the story more evocative and compelling. Losing a couple of minutes because we drove past our off ramp is a minor inconvenience if the attention lapse allowed us to finally understand why the boss was so upset by something we said in last week’s meeting. Arriving home from the store without the eggs that necessitated the trip is a mere annoyance when weighed against coming to a decision to ask for a raise, leave a job, or go back to school.

Just because the benefits of losing yourself in your own thoughts are not easily measured doesn’t mean they’re not of value, and there are few ways I know of that induce this state of mind more reliably than a long run. A handful of recent studies have tried to answer what every runner, whether pro or hobbyist, has no doubt been asked by friends and family: What on earth do you think about while you’re out there for so many miles? This, as the writer Haruki Murakami noted in his What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, is almost beside the point. Sometimes he thinks while on the run; sometimes, he doesn’t. It doesn’t really matter.

 I just run. I run in void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void.

April 21, 2016 12:51 p.m.

By Melissa Dahl

https://madridjournal.wordpress.com/2016/04/25/how-neuroscientists-explain-the-mind-clearing-magic-of-running/

How to postpone aging 

I recently attended an all day event at the USC Campus, specifically at the USC Davis School of Gerontology to learn about the latest science on healthy aging from several of the world’s top aging experts. I feel inspired to share with you all what I learned. Many of you may have come across the information that I am about to share, but in case you have not, it’s never too late to learn something new!

1) One of the “hottest” question presented was “Does caloric restriction extend lifespan?” Answer: only sometimes. But if you compare a low fat diet versus a Mediterranean diet (which includes nuts and olive oil), the Mediterranean diet wins! It was shown to prevent cognitive decline and heart problems.

2) Sitting is the new smoking! Incredible to believe but the more hours you spend sitting on a daily basis decreases your health span. It is important to use your break time to get away from your workspace. And if you don’t get any breaks? Get up and take a walk to the bathroom every hour or two. Sitting can cause a multitude of heart problems, whereas smoking can cause lung problems/lung cancer. I guess you pick and choose your poison, or avoid them altogether.

3) Ovaries removed after normal menopause lessens a woman’s risk for dementia. Ovaries removed before normal menopause increases a woman’s risk for dementia.

4) A low protein, high carbohydrate diet is recommended for everyone below 65 years of age. Once you reach 65 and older, moderate (not low!) protein intake is recommended.

5) If you want to live longer and spend your later years without getting a disease or being disabled in any way, adhering to a plant based diet that includes high levels of legumes, vegetables and healthy fats (olive oil, other monounsaturated fats, nuts) is recommended. Waist goals for men to have should be less than 40 inches, and less than 35 inches for women.

6) Take care of your teeth! Get regular dental checkups! Edentulousness (having no teeth) is directly related to nutritional issues and health problems.

7) Watch the BBC video: The Men Who Made Us Fat.
8) Recommended weight loss programs are: weight watchers and TOPS (Take Off Pounds Sensibly).

9) Create your own individualized diet/meal plan that takes into consideration your age, gender, weight, and activity levels.

http://foodhabitat.com/2016/04/24/healthy-aging/

What believing in God does to your brain

Humans suppress areas of the brain used for analytical thinking and engage the parts responsible for empathy in order to believe in god, research suggests.

They do the opposite when thinking about the physical world, according to the study.

“When there’s a question of faith, from the analytic point of view, it may seem absurd,” said Professor Tony Jack, who led the research.

“But, from what we understand about the brain, the leap of faith to belief in the supernatural amounts to pushing aside the critical/analytical way of thinking to help us achieve greater social and emotional insight.

The countries in the world with the most “convinced atheists.” Countries in grey were not surveyed.

belive in god independant

In an analysis of eight experiments, published in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers also found people with faith were more empathetic than those without.
The researchers examined the relationship between the belief in god and measures of analytic thinking and moral concern in eight experiments, each using between 159 and 527 adult participants.
Although both spiritual belief and empathic concern were positively associated with frequency of prayer or meditation, neither were predicted by social contact – such as church dinners – associated with religious affilation.
In earlier research, Professor Jack’s Brain, Mind & Consciousness laboratory used an fMRI machine to show the brain has an analytical network of neurons that enables humans think critically and a social network to empathise.

“Because of the tension between networks, pushing aside a naturalistic world view enables you to delve deeper into the social/emotional side,”

 Professor Jack explained.

“And that may be the key to why beliefs in the supernatural exist throughout the history of cultures. It appeals to an essentially nonmaterial way of understanding the world and our place in it.”

The researchers said the human brain explores the world using both networks. When presented with a physics problem or ethical dilemma, a healthy brain activates the appropriate network while suppressing the other.

Such suppression may lead to the conflict between science and religion, the researchers added.
“Because the networks suppress each other, they may create two extremes,” said Richard Boyatzis, professor of organisational behavior at Case Western Reserve University.

“Recognising that this is how the brain operates, maybe we can create more reason and balance in the national conversations involving science and religion.”

Source: Independent

https://scitechafrica.wordpress.com/2016/03/25/what-believing-in-god-does-to-your-brain/

Why you can not Get a Good Sleep in Someone Else’s Bed

Half of your brain may be staying awake to keep watch when you sleep in someone else’s bed…


Whether you’re staying in a hotel or having a sleepover, you never sleep quite as well on a bed that’s not your own.
That’s an observable fact. When scientists have people sleep in a lab for an experiment, they often toss out the first night of data because people sleep so poorly. But before now, they haven’t known why.
In a small new study published in Current Biology, researchers from Brown University found out what goes on in the brain when a person sleeps in an unfamiliar place. They measured brain activity during the deep sleep of 35 young, healthy people.

The researchers found evidence that something unique indeed goes on in the brain during the first night: one hemisphere of the brain, the left, shows wakefulness while the other shows sleep.

This alertness during sleep in half of the brain has been observed in other animals—including whales, dolphins and birds—and is thought to act as a kind of night watch.

“The environment is so new to us, we might need a surveillance system so we can monitor the surroundings and we can detect anything unusual,”

 says Masako Tamaki, one of the authors of the study and research associate at the Laboratory for Cognitive and Perceptual Learning at Brown University.

We’re most vulnerable when we’re asleep, in other words, and by staying partially awake, our brains might be trying to protect us.

Our brain remain active when we sleep. researchers also found that when they outfitted the people in the study with earphones, the left side showed a larger brain response to high-pitched sounds than the right—suggesting more vigilance in that hemisphere.

The study raises a lot of unanswered questions; researchers don’t yet know why they saw this effect in the left hemisphere and not the right. But interestingly, both of these asymmetries only occurred on the first night—something to keep in mind the next time you can’t fall asleep in a strange place.

Source: Time

https://scitechafrica.wordpress.com/2016/04/24/reason-you-cannot-get-a-good-sleep-in-someone-elses-bed/

Exploring the Myth of the Scientific vs. ArtisticMind

From Lifehacker Read the full article here-> http://ift.tt/1NE5ZB3

Exploring the myth of the Scientific vs. Artistic Mind
It’s a stereotype, but many of us have made the assumption that scientists are a bit rigid and less artistic than others. Artists, on the other hand, are often seen as being less rational than the rest of us. Sometimes described as the left side of the brain versus the right side–or simply logical thinking versus artistic creativity–the two are often seen as polar opposites.

Neuroscience has already shown that everyone uses both sides of the brain when performing any task. And while certain patterns of brain activity have sometimes been linked to artistic or logical thinking, it doesn’t really explain who is good at what–and why. That’s because the exact interplay of nature and nurture is notoriously difficult to tease out. But if we put the brain aside for a while and just focus on documented ability, is there any evidence to support the logic versus art stereotype?
Psychological research has approached this question by distinguishing between two styles of thinking: convergent and divergent. The emphasis in convergent thinking is on analytical and deductive reasoning, such as that measured in IQ tests. Divergent thinking, however, is more spontaneous and free-flowing. It focuses on novelty and is measured by tasks requiring us to generate multiple solutions for a problem. An example may be thinking of new, innovative uses for familiar objects.

Studies conducted during the 1960s suggested that convergent thinkers were more likely to be good at science subjects at school. Divergent thinking was shown to be more common in the arts and humanities.
However, we are increasingly learning that convergent and divergent thinking styles need not be mutually exclusive. In 2011, researchers assessed 116 final-year UK arts and science undergraduates on measures of convergent and divergent thinking and creative problem solving. The study found no difference in ability between the arts and science groups on any of these measures. Another study reported no significant difference in measures of divergent thinking between arts, natural science and social science undergraduates. Both arts and natural sciences students, however, rated themselves as being more creative than social sciences students did.

Going With the Flow

Studies have actually revealed considerable overlap in the cognitive processes supporting both scientific and artistic creativity. The psychological concept of “flow”, pioneered by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in the 1990s, describes a state of consciousness where one is completely absorbed and energized while performing an activity. Flow experience has been strongly linked to peak performance in many artistic and creative domains.

There is also substantial overlap in the use of visualization and mental imagery during scientific and artistic thinking. Great scientists such as Albert Einstein, Michael Faraday and Nikola Tesla all reported that they used mental imagery when describing their thought processes. Studies have also found that mental imagery plays a central role during the construction and evaluation of many scientific “thought experiments”, in which a scientist mentally assesses the implications of a particular hypothesis.

Perhaps more obviously, such mental imagery also features strongly in musical composition, painting and architectural design.
The Power of Stereotyping

Convergent and divergent thinking abilities aren’t necessarily innate. A recent study on creative stereotypes asked individuals to complete a divergent thinking task while adopting the perspective of either an “eccentric poet” or a “rigid librarian”.

Those who imagined being an “eccentric poet” performed significantly better on the creative task than those who imagined being a “rigid librarian”, suggesting that the activation of stereotypical views on creative thinking can enhance or inhibit individuals’ performance.

Despite such preconceptions of the ways in which logical and unstructured thinking styles are related to creativity, it is not difficult to find examples of individuals who do not fit the stereotype. Albert Einstein was a keen musician who enjoyed playing the piano and violin while Nobel Prize-winner Richard Feynman worked as an artist using the pseudonym “Ofey”. Musicians Brian May, Brian Cox and Greg Graffin all completed science PhDs.

Case studies of scientists engaging in art and vice versa are often presented as being unusual. However, psychologists recently conducted a comprehensive review of the extent to which Nobel Prize winners in the sciences, members of the Royal Society and US National Academy of Sciences, and members of the US public reported engaging in arts and crafts-based pursuits. They found that members of the Royal Society and National Academy of Sciences were almost twice as likely to report engaging in arts and crafts pursuits as the general public. Eminent Nobel laureate scientists were almost three times more likely to report such activities.

These findings clearly show that the stereotypical view that scientists and other logical thinkers are less likely to be artistic or creative fall wide of the mark. As Einstein himself noted: “The greatest scientists are artists as well.”

Exploding the Myth of Scientific vs. Artistic Minds | The Conversation
David Pearson is Reader of Cognitive Psychology, Anglia Ruskin University, having previously worked at the University of Aberdeen and the University of the Saarland in Germany. He is a Chartered Psychologist and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society, and a member of the Experimental Psychology Society. Image by Doggygraph (Shutterstock).
https://michellehunterart.wordpress.com/2016/04/22/brain-article-of-interest-exploring-the-myth-of-the-scientific-vs-artisticmind/