Category Archives: Neuroscience

Neuroscience

Neurology care during the COVID-19 pandemic, an interventional neurologist’s perspective – Boca Newspaper

By: David DiPinoContributing Writer

Nils Mueller-Kronast, MD, an interventional neurologist with Palm Beach Neuroscience Institute (PBNI) continues to provide care during the COVID-19 Pandemic for a wide variety of neurological ailments and neurovascular diseases including stroke and brain aneurysm treatment.

At Dr. Nils Mueller-Kronasts PBNI office, safety protocols and guidelines continue to be in place and telehealth appointments are available. Those safety procedures include patient screening for fever and cough, following the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions (CDC) guidelines for social distancing by maintaining six-feet of distance between individuals in the waiting area and exam room and continuous wearing of masks by staff. In addition, Dr. Mueller-Kronast and his care staff wear gloves and masks during patient consultations, and the offices and waiting areas are routinely sanitized.

Healthcare providers take great efforts to ensure patient and staff safety during an office consultation by limiting the physical exam when appropriate, maintaining social distance during the consultation while wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) throughout the encounter. We also provide telehealth for new patients and follow-up appointments for added convenience and patient safety, said Dr. Mueller-Kronast.

Telehealth appointments may be appropriate when the neurological disease does not require a physical exam.

Bi-directional video and audio conferences provide an excellent patient experience without the inconvenience and perceived uncertainty of an in-person visit. If chosen for the correct patient and condition, there does not have to be a negative impact to not being in-person with the patient during the interaction and telehealth can allow us to determine the correct diagnosis and treatment, said Dr. Mueller-Kronast.

Additionally, Dr. Mueller-Kronast encourages going to the hospital for serious ailments and elective procedures.

In the hospital patients who are suspected of COVID-19, or are COVID-19 positive, are managed by separate staff in separate areas of the hospital. We also use telehealth to minimize staff exposure when feasible. All elective surgery patients are COVID-19 tested, said Dr. Mueller-Kronast.

As for the link between COVID-19 and stroke, Dr. Mueller-Kronast has seen rare occurrences.

Early during the first months of the epidemic, in certain hot spots, some hospitals reported a spike in embolic large vessel occlusion in COVID-19 positive patients. We have seen a few COVID-19 positive stroke patients with typically more severe disease but, as in many parts of the country, there appeared to be a hesitancy of patients to present to the emergency room, said Dr.Mueller-Kronast.

Lastly, Dr. Mueller-Kronast encourages our communities to continue making efforts in preventing the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

These are difficult times, and we have to take this disease seriously. Everyones efforts are required to minimize the risk of exposure for our most vulnerable members of society. I feel that wearing a mask to protect someone else from a potentially deadly disease is a small burden which I will happily shoulder, said Dr. Mueller-Kronast.

Dr. Nils Mueller-Kronast is an interventional neurologist with the Palm Beach Neuroscience Institute and is on-staff at Delray Medical Center in Delray Beach, St. Marys Medical Center in West Palm Beach and Florida Medical Center, a campus of North Shore located in Fort Lauderdale. In addition, Dr. Mueller-Kronast is the Regional Medical Director of Neurosciences for Tenet Healthcares Florida Region.

Dr. Mueller-Kronast specializes in stroke, vascular neurology office consultations, endovascular management of elective and ruptured aneurysm, endovascular management of vascular malformations (dural AV fistulas, arteriovenous malformations), intra-arterial stroke treatment, carotid, intracranial and other cerebrovascular stents. His Palm Beach Neuroscience Institutes offices are located in Boynton Beach, West Palm Beach and Sunrise, FL. Dr. Mueller-Kronasts Boynton Beach office is located at: 8756 Boynton Beach Blvd., Suite 2500, Boynton Beach, FL 33472. For more information visit: http://www.PBNI.com or call 561-499-7551.

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Neurology care during the COVID-19 pandemic, an interventional neurologist's perspective - Boca Newspaper

Neuroscience

Author David Eagleman wants you to think much more about the brain – Houston Chronicle

Renowned Baylor College of Medicine neuroscientist and best-selling author, Dr. David Eagleman, will present two lectures at San Jacinto College South on March 28.

Before David Eagleman presents a single sentence of his own construction in Livewired, he lets it be known that the book, subtitled, The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain, offers more than science. He does so with his choice of epigraph: Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one, written by philosopher Martin Heidegger.

Hopefully this book will open eyes to what it means to be a human, Eagleman says. We tend to think of ourselves as static. But in fact were changing all the time.

Eagleman has worked on Livewired over 10 years. The result is a text that is both probing, philosophical and playful, in which wounded British naval officer Horatio Nelson and tragic Spider-Man villain Dr. Otto Octavius appear in close proximity; where philosopher Ren Descartes and soulful country singer Ronnie Milsap are separated by just a few pages. With Livewired Eagleman hopes to educate about plasticity of the brain, a field of study he sees as equal to the deep study of DNA.

Heidegger out of the way, Eaglemans is a book that opens with hemispherectomy, a story about a child suffering from worsening seizures, whose family makes the fraught decision to have half of his brain removed.

by David Eagleman

Pantheon

320 pages, $28.95

I first started studying hemispherectomies 20 years ago and Im still stunned by the fact that we dont talk about this every day, Eagleman, 49, says. You watch the news every day Trump, weather patterns, things that are remarkable. But nothing like this. We dont know how to built technology like this. You cant tear circuitry out of a laptop and have it still function. You can do that with brains.

The books title is Eaglemans effort to put a recognizable name to further investigation into and discussion of the brain.

The brain is not, as we once thought, hardwired, he says. Its not hardware, its liveware.

We talk a lot about the heart. What the heart tells you, what your gut tells you. But its all brain. If you get a heart transplant, an artificial heart from the Texas Medical Center, youre still the same person. Change even a little bit of the brain and that can change a person entirely.

Long before he became a renowned neuroscientist, Eagleman was a literature student at Rice University, where he studied literature and its mechanisms for storytelling that hed later apply to his work. He studied at the Baylor College of Medicine and earned a PhD in neuroscience in 1998.

Immersed in research, Eagleman also found time for fiction. He wrote Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlives in 2009. The book well-reviewed and a strong seller was a deeply philosophical piece of speculative fiction. Two years later, he landed on various best-seller lists with a book of science that proved inviting rather than daunting: Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain.

Like other storytellers in his line of work, Eagleman cites Carl Sagans Cosmos as an early influence. I was so caught up in it, he says. Here was a guy, a real scientist who cares about communicating the beauty and magic of this to me, some random kid sitting in front of the TV in New Mexico. I always wanted to be able to do that.

In addition to his lit workload, Eagleman took several philosophy courses while a student at Rice. For the most part he found them frustrating.

It felt to me like wed argue a question until it ended up in a quagmire and then everyone would stop there, he says.

He found a doorway past those stalled debates in neuroscience.

With neuroscience, you could ask fundamental questions about ourselves, he says. You could do experiments and achieve answers.

The brain has informed Eaglemans work since. Hes published several books and developed and hosted a TV series about the brain. He spent 10 years as director of a neuroscience research lab at the Baylor School of Medicine for a decade. And hes earned enough honors and accolades to keep his shelves and walls cluttered with totems of recognition.

He left Houston in 2016 for Silicon Valley. There he works as an adjunct professor at Stanford University, while also working entrepreneurial territory with the companies BrainCheck and NeoSensory. The latter sounds like something out of a Christopher Nolan film, claiming on its site that the companys research began with the idea that our experience of reality can go beyond our sensory limitations.

Eagleman sees biology as drafting off engineering for centuries now, with remarkable devices engineers build.

He envisions a future in which that engineering is reversed so we build livewired devices. That we do this thing we know is possible because each of us carries three pounds of incredible computational material in our heads.

Eagleman says Livewired is both the beginning and the end of something. He says it represents everything Ive done in my science career over the past 20 years.

While that phrase suggests a culmination of research, he insists its really the doorway to what comes next, which is why he finds himself in Silicon Valley. Livewired is a Cosmos-esque take on his lifes work.

While plenty of papers have been written about brain plasticity, he thinks his is the first comprehensive text that offers an overarching account of a field of study he believes warrants the same attention that greeted the Human Genome Project.

This really is lifes other secret, the other half we need to understand, he says. I think this topic, this area is as important as when Darwin published his theory of evolution. Its a major stepping stone. We get how we end up here genetically. To my mind, brain plasticity is the next step of that. Genetics gets put into the world. Then the organism is shaped by what happens to it. Humans are this incredible plastic species, more so than our neighbors in the animal kingdom. And its like Mother Natures great trick, and also a bit of a gamble on her part: dropping the brain into the world half baked. Let it figure out what to do there.

Eagleman encircles that notion the brain figuring it out throughout Livewired. He shows a grasp for narrative and pacing that mirrors his immersion into neuroscience. So the science is presented with anecdotal stories that are at times remarkable, like that of Matt Stutzmann, who was born with no arms. As he grew older, Stultzmann determined the absence of arms to be an obstacle but not a prohibitive condition to becoming a masterful archer.

Livewired is populated by people and stories that speak to Eaglemans assertion that old beliefs about a compartmental brain with different regions solely responsible for different tasks is outdated. That the brain is instead a dynamic system, capable of remarkable change and adaptation. He outlines his concept of livewiring into seven principles, all of which speak to adaptation by the brain to the world around it.

Through this study, Eagleman has gotten closer to answers he couldnt find in his philosophy classes in the early 90s. Which explains why Heidegger, rather than a scientist, gets the first word in a book that seeks to explain who we are.

As Eagleman writes, There is no you without the external. Your beliefs and dogmas and aspirations are shaped by it, inside and out, like a sculpture from a block of marble. Thanks to livewiring, each of us is the world.

andrew.dansby@chron.com

Andrew Dansby covers music and other entertainment, both local and national, for the Houston Chronicle, 29-95.com and chron.com. He previously assisted the editor for George R.R. Martin, author of "Game of Thrones" and later worked on three "major" motion pictures you've never seen. That short spell in the film business nudged him into writing, first as a freelancer and later with Rolling Stone. He came to the Chronicle in 2004 as an entertainment editor and has since moved to writing full time.

Andrew dislikes monkeys, dolphins and the outdoors. He has no pets.

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Author David Eagleman wants you to think much more about the brain - Houston Chronicle

Neuroscience

Stimulation Technique Engages the Whole Brain for the First Time – Technology Networks

A new method of brain imaging analysis offers the potential to greatly improve the effectiveness of noninvasive brain stimulation treatment for Alzheimers, obsessive compulsive disorder, depression, and other conditions. Duke researchers developed the new method, which for the first time analyzed the whole brain network rather than a single region of the brain. This new method identified brain areas that exert the most control on network function. The study, published in The Journal of Neuroscience, has direct implications for improving the benefits of transcranial magnetic stimulation, which is currently used for major depression and obsessive compulsive disorder, and may soon lead to therapeutic treatment for memory disorders such as Alzheimers and dementia.Researchers at the Duke Brain Stimulation Research Center (BSRC) developed a method of analysis that relies on the concept of controllability, a network principle that helps to predict how one area of the brain influences a whole network involved in regulating behavior. The authors measured controllability using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to determine how much change TMS would induce as participants did a working memory task. In this task, individuals had to keep bits of information briefly in their memory and manipulate this information in their mind before answering questions about it. This task was used because of the importance of working memory in everyday life (like ordering your shopping list in your mind before walking through the grocery store) and because it is highly impacted by aging, particularly in conditions like Alzheimers and dementia.

Essentially, we look at the brain not as a set of discrete islands, but as a dense web of connections that have lots of mutual influence, said lead researcher Dr. Simon Davis, Assistant Professor of Neurology at Duke. Controllability allows us a framework for identifying which nodes in this web are most likely to be influenced by brain stimulation, and for that reason likely to show plasticity and improvement after TMS treatments.

The controllability measure, which is based on a static, structural image of the brain, was used to predict dynamic activity. Brain activity is like the spatial pattern of traffic in a city. Although the traffic pattern is ever-changing, it is always confined by the topology of the road network, said Lifu Deng, a Duke graduate student in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, and co-lead on the paper. Controllability links the stimulation at one location to the global pattern of brain activity. In our study, for instance, this is the activation patterns signifying better working memory.

Previously, there has not been a systematic way to identify which brain areas are the most likely to produce global chances, because most studies have focused on just one region. This study, however, advanced the field by considering the whole brain network.

While healthy adults participated in the study, the research likely has implications for memory disorders. Memory dysfunction as a network phenomenon that relies on multiple brain regions operating under coordinated dynamics. The typical focus on the TMS response at a single site represents a fundamental limitation in the approach of neurostimulation therapies because it neglects global impairments in whole network that underlies memory dysfunction, said Lysianne Beynel, a postdoctoral associate in the BSRC and first author on the study.

Ultimately, this non-invasive brain stimulation method will be used to promote healthy brain activity patterns and eventually enhance memory function, which has potential to enhance the efficacy of brain stimulation treatments for a range of cognitive disorders.Reference: Beynel L, Deng L, Crowell CA et al. Structural Controllability Predicts Functional Patterns and Brain Stimulation Benefits Associated with Working Memory. J Neurosci. 2020;40(35):6770-6778. doi: https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0531-20.2020This article has been republished from the following materials. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.

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Stimulation Technique Engages the Whole Brain for the First Time - Technology Networks

Neuroscience

Why Optical Illusions Trick Both Flies and Humans – Technology Networks

Why people perceive motion in some static images has mystified not only those who view these optical illusions but neuroscientists who have tried to explain the phenomenon. Now Yale neuroscientists have found some answers in the eyes of flies, they report in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.It turns out that flies are fooled by optical illusions as easily as humans.

It was exciting to find that flies perceive motion in static images the same way we do, said Damon Clark, associate professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology and of physics and of neuroscience at Yale.

The small brains of flies make it easy to track the activity of neurons in their visual system. Two members of Clarks lab, Margarida Agrochao and Ryosuke Tanaka, presented flies with optical illusions similar to the one above. They then measured the flies behavior to check whether the insects perceive the motion in this optical illusion the same way humans do. Flies instinctively turn their bodies toward any perceived motion; when presented with the optical illusion, the flies turned in the same direction as the motion that humans perceive in the pattern.

At the same time, the researchers examined specific neuron types that govern motion detection in flies and found a pattern of responses created by the static pattern. By turning those same neurons on and off, the researchers were able to change flies perception of illusory motion. By turning off two types of motion-detecting neurons, they eliminated the illusion entirely. By turning off just one of the two types, they created flies that perceived illusory motion in the opposite direction than they did with both neurons active. Based on this data the researchers theorized that the optical illusion results from small imbalances in how the different types of motion detectors contribute to how flies respond, or dont respond, to illusions.

Since there are similarities between fly and human visual processing, the researchers designed experiments to test whether the theory they developed for flies might also apply in humans. They asked 11 participants to tell them about the motion they saw in the visual illusion. Those experiments suggested not surprisingly that human visual systems are more complicated than flies, but the results suggested a similar mechanism underlies this illusion of motion in humans.

The last common ancestor of flies and humans lived a half billion years ago, but the two species have evolved similar strategies for perceiving motion, Clark said. Understanding these shared strategies can help us more fully understand the human visual system.

This article has been republished from the following materials. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.

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Why Optical Illusions Trick Both Flies and Humans - Technology Networks

Neuroscience

Monash University Malaysia: Evolve into a real-world researcher – Study International News

Where do aspiring researchers go if they want to evolve their critical thinking skills and tackle real-world challenges? They join the Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences (JCSMHS) at Monash University Malaysia.

To study at JCSMHS is to become an integral part of an internationally-recognised research university. On two of the most respected sources in global college rankings, Monash ranks in the top 80 globally 75th in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2020 and 55th in the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings 2021. In the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2020, the university was ranked at joint 31st in the world for Medicine and in the 51st-100th division for Psychology.

A member of the Group of Eight (Go8), an alliance of leading Australian universities recognised for their excellence in teaching and research, Monash has over the years earned a reputation of excellence at home and abroad.

Source: Monash University Malaysia, Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences

Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences (JCSMHS) prides itself for being part of the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences of Monash University, one of the leading research-intensive universities in Australia and worldwide. This means youll have the opportunity to experience both campuses and gain knowledge from industry experts in both Malaysia and Australia.

The cutting-edge research infrastructure here at JCSMHS includes various biomedical labs, the Monash-Agilent Microarray Service Centre, Clinical School Johor Bahru (CSJB), and the LC-MS/MS Laboratory. The school is also home to the renowned Brain Research Institute at Monash Sunway (BRIMS) and South East Asia Community Observatory (SEACO). BRIMS is an internationally-recognised platform for neuroscience research with a team of outstanding neuroscientists and extensive neuroscience facilities. SEACO is a health and demographic surveillance system (DHSS) that enabled the collaboration between researchers at Monash University with prestigious universities such as Harvard University and the University of Amsterdam.

The research activities happening at JCSMHS are building a vibrant and enterprising culture on campus, which enhances teaching and learning, benefits the community, and enriches the creativity and innovation of its staff. The five research priority areas of high impact at JCSMHS are:

Source: Monash University Malaysia, Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences

Various research opportunities for potential PhD/Masters (research) students are available within JCSMHS and school-associated research platforms.

Monash graduates worldwide exemplify the finest of what the Group of Eight (Go8) universities have to offer. They find full-time employment sooner, command higher salaries, and are more likely to move onto postgraduate studies than graduates from other universities.

Monash is an absolutely remarkable place to study its a home where I grew as a sound researcher and as an individual, said Master of Biomedical Science graduate Sultana Mehbuba Hossain who hails from Bangladesh. She has published several manuscripts on oncology and nanoparticles in indexed journals during her studies.

Source: Monash University Malaysia, Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences

I chose Monash because of its reputation for producing quality students and for the opportunity to obtain an Australian education without having to leave my home country, said Brandon Choo Kar Meng, a Malaysian who graduated from JCSMHS with a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD).

Brandon was part of a team that was awarded a silver medal at the International, Invention, Innovation & Technology Exhibition (ITEX 2019) for their research on Lanctos 75TM, a potent herbal supplement that helps to prevent neurodegenerative diseases and improve memory. He also co-authored six journal articles on epilepsy research and is currently working with zebrafish to evaluate the potential of novel curcumin compounds for the treatment of epilepsy and the effects of those compounds on learning and memory.

Brandon represents the calibre and success stories typical of JCSMHS graduates.The ideal collaborative learning environment offered by JCSMHS enables its students to build upon their problem-solving capabilities and produce groundbreaking research. At the Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences, you can get the best of both worlds: a Monash degree in the heart of Asia Pacific. Get in touch today email JCSMHS at mum-jcsmhs.grdegrees@monash.edu.

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Neuroscience

Scientists find similar visionary perception in flies and humans with optical illusion – Republic World – Republic World

Scientists have found that the flies get deceived with optical illusion as easily as humans. Theresearch was published on August 24, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal by the team of researchers at Yale University. The research was focused around theories that people perceived motion in some static imagesand neuroscientists attempted to explain the phenomenon from a flies eye view. Scientists found that flies visioned the illusions exactly like humans.

"It was exciting to find that flies perceive motion in static images the same way we do," said Damon Clark, associate professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology and of physics and of neuroscience at Yale.

The visual system in the flies eyes tricked it as researchers observed the activity of neurons. Clark lab member, Margarida Agrochao and Ryosuke Tanaka documented the research in a visual format as they studied the flies behaviour and motion when presented with the optical illusions. Flies instinctively turn their bodies toward any perceived motion; when presented with the optical illusion, the flies turned in the same direction as the motion that humans perceive in the pattern, the neuroscientists wrote in the research.

"The last common ancestor of flies and humans lived a half billion years ago, but the two species have evolved similar strategies for perceiving motion," Damon Clark, associate professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology and of physics and of neuroscience at Yale release. "Understanding these shared strategies can help us more fully understand the human visual system, he added.

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In the study, authors backed the neuron activity, saying, flies' perception of illusory motion altered using an on-off type of mechanism of its motion-detecting neurons. Small brains of flies made it easier to track the activity of neurons in their visual system. Scientists then documented the data in files with a detailed analysis of its perceived illusory motion. They compared the data of flies visual processing with humans in further experiments. Observation of as many as 11 participants suggested a similar mechanism as seen in flies, although in some the visionary perception was somewhat more complicated but similar.

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Scientists find similar visionary perception in flies and humans with optical illusion - Republic World - Republic World

Neuroscience

U of A researchers develop tool to help build better prosthetic limbs – Folio – University of Alberta

Prosthetic users have to look longer at the object they are interacting with than their able-bodied counterparts, according to University of Alberta research that illustrates just one of the intricacies involved in devising the next generation of prosthetic limbs.

There are prosthetic devices becoming available that are almost indistinguishable from real limbs, but the real problem is, if you think about how many different ways you can move your hand, each one of those would need a separate channel of information, said Craig Chapman, a U of A movement neuroscientist in the Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation.

They've engineered these beautiful hands, but it's very difficult to control them.

Chapman and his team, which includes Jacqueline Hebert, a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry working to bring osseointegration surgerythe permanent anchorage of artificial limbs to the human skeletonto the U of A, are interested in the kinds of movement decisions and the numerous computations we don't think about when we reach out to do something as simple as grabbing a doorknob to open the door.

To help dissect the processes behind each movement, Chapman mainly uses motion and eye tracking to gather data needed to understand what's going on inside the brain.

We thought, Hey, if we return a sense of touch to people, maybe that's the first thing that will be freed upmaybe they won't necessarily move differently, but maybe their eyes will tell us a story about how much extra information they can process, said Chapman, who is also a member of the Neuroscience and Mental Health Institute. That's really the hypothesis we've been chasing for about five years now.

Chapman and his team devised a tool called Gaze and Movement Assessment, or GaMA, as a way to track both body and eye movements, and put it all into a meaningful three-dimensional space.

Users are fitted with a head-mounted eye tracker that fits like a pair of glasses. At the same time, motion capture markers are placed on the upper limb being tracked, as well as on any other body parts of interest, like the head or torso.

They are then asked to perform two simple tasks that mimic chores prosthetic limb users would encounter in the real world. One is grabbing a box of Kraft Dinner and then moving it to three different shelf positions. A second has subjects moving around a cup filled with beads.

And while they sound like simple tasks, because they were designed with a clinician and occupational therapist, they challenge prosthetic users in unique ways, said Chapman.

Getting them to do the movement consistently is what allows us to look at averages and determine what part of a particular movement is so difficult.

Measures of hand movement, angular joint kinematics and eye gaze were compared with those from a different sampling of non-disabled adults who had previously performed the same protocol with different technology.

The research showed that the prosthetic limb user will continue to look at the device and the object, whereas able-bodied individuals look ahead to where they're going to put it down.

Their eyes are free to go to the next place and start planning a successful movement, he said.

Chapman said his studies show that participants will often overcompensate to complete the task. For example, users of a body-powered prosthetica cable-driven device that allows the user to open or close the device using different body motionsput extra strain on their shoulder and trunk because they have limited degrees of freedom at the wrist.

They will adapt their body to finish the movement, but maybe they're doing it in a way that might eventually cause some sort of fatigue injury.

He added, If they've been able to successfully navigate their world and do the things they want to do for everyday living, it's possible that an advanced prosthetic limb will actually interfere with that, and you just don't know.

Chapman noted that the broader impact outside of prosthetic limbs for GaMA is that it could help fill knowledge gaps in any number of sensory motor impairments.

If you imagine someone who's developing a tremor because they have Parkinson's, had a stroke or are aging, and is learning to recover their motor function we think we can actually tap into some underlying mechanisms to find out what precisely it is that theyre having an impairment with.

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U of A researchers develop tool to help build better prosthetic limbs - Folio - University of Alberta

Neuroscience

BCW, Lab of Misfits Are Using Neuroscience To Understand Consumer Behavior – PRovoke Media

NEW YORK BCW has partnered with consultancy Lab of Misfits on a new offering that uses neuroscience to understand what really makes people tick, in a bid to provide brands with better insights.

We want to understand the greatest depths of the way people think, feel and behave, BCW chief innovation officer Chad Latz said to PRovoke. Our goal here is to really understand whats driving people's motivations at the most fundamental level and use that information to drive greater connections between brands and audiences."

BCW NeuroLab Powered by Lab of Misfits, which focuses on studying perceptions, gleans that information through experiments that test and assess how participants brains react to stimuli such as language, ideas, images, emotions and events. Tech companies, for instance, could study what consumers frustration with technology looks like neurologically and adjust their positioning accordingly, Latz said.

BCW NeuroLab offers clients four services: using neuroscience to define brand purpose, marketplace strategy and positioning; creating experiments to better understand the perceptions and needs of stakeholders; studying the obstacles and opportunities associated with organizational change to drive better engagement and transformation; and applying principles of perception to create more effective marketing and communications experiences.

Experiments run the gamut from testing the brain activity of thousands of online participants to individual immersive experiences. Although a multitude of marketers leverage behavioral science in creating strategy, the NeuroLab goes further by focusing on the scientific drivers of consumer behaviors versus simply evaluating them, Latz said.

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BCW, Lab of Misfits Are Using Neuroscience To Understand Consumer Behavior - PRovoke Media

Neuroscience

The scientist behind #BlackInNeuro is building the hastag into a community – STAT

Angeline Dukes, a graduate student in neuroscience, didnt intend to organize an entire movement.

But she did have a question. She had noticed other Twitter movements highlighting Black scientists in fields like birding, astronomy, and physics. She wondered: Wheres neuroscience?

So in early July, Dukes, who is Black, tweeted: Sooo when are we doing a #BlackInNeuro week?

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Within days, a group of nearly two dozen neuroscientists banded together to found Black In Neuro. Like many such groups, it started out as a kind of Twitter club. Its first act: a weeklong virtual showcase of the field and a series of events on neuroscience research, racism, and mental health.

They pulled in sponsors to pay their speakers, including the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Stanford University. And theyre not stopping there: Now the group is making a list of Black neuroscientists, 300 and growing, for others to connect with as mentors or invite to present their research. Theyre hoping to eventually set up more formalized mentorships and travel awards.

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The goal: to develop a community for Black scientists who often feel alone or overlooked. Dukes has been there herself. She isnt always confident enough to lift up and showcase her own accomplishments. She still covers her computer and kitchen table with sticky notes of advice and encouragement shes heard along the way from mentors and colleagues, You can do this! and Make your voice heard!

Dukes said that her mentors and colleagues encouragement and support empowered her and now she wants to empower others.

Its important to know that we dont have to be pushed out of the field. We can keep going and we can find mentors and we can have this community, and we do belong here, Dukes told STAT.

Dukes, whos currently a student in the department of neurobiology and behavior at the University of California, Irvine, said it was wonderful to find a community of people who had not only succeeded, but overcome the same struggles shed experienced. She wanted to found the movement in part because of her own struggles as a Black scientist especially as she felt the mental health impact of the killings of unarmed Black people like Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd earlier this year.

In the summer of 2016, when the headlines focused on the police killings of Black men like Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Freddie Gray and 12-year-old Tamir Rice, no one in her lab at Vanderbilt University seemed affected by it, except her. Dukes was overwhelmed, empathizing with the family members of the victims seeking justice, and it affected her work in the lab.

I was so scared for myself and for my boyfriend and for my family and I didnt care about the science I wasnt paying attention, she said. Back then I felt like I was just an undergrad. Who am I to say anything or demand that you pay attention to this?

Earlier this year, Dukes demanded that her labmates pay attention. She spoke to her Ph.D. mentor, Christie Fowler, who is white, and they postponed an upcoming exam so she had time to focus on her mental health. Her mentors attitude helped her realize the power of support and how a broader community could offer more people the same attitude.

I did feel supported, and I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that Ive had professors and people in positions of power who were willing to try and fight for some kind of change to be made, she said.

In June, when her husband, who is also Black, was stopped without explanation by her own campus police officers, she was shaken. And though her mentor was supportive, and even rallied other faculty members to email university leadership, Dukes wanted to find a community of people who completely understood her experience. So she built it.

A part of me wanted Black In Neuro because I wanted something positive and I really needed a community that would understand without me having to explain why it was so upsetting, Dukes said.

I really needed a community that would understand without me having to explain why it was so upsetting.

Angeline Dukes, a graduate student in neuroscience who helped found #BlackInNeuro

Although Dukes describes herself as a small person who does like little things that maybe might make a change in a small sphere of influence, the people around her made it clear shes a natural fit to lead the group.

Dukes has experience organizing events shes the de facto party planner for the lab and even remembers everyones birthdays.

Shes also shown herself to be a powerful speaker about topics like racism in science. Dukes and two other neuroscientists at UC Irvine organized and led an anti-racism discussion this spring to teach others how to be a better mentor and ally to Black scientists, ultimately creating a better environment for Black colleagues. It was so successful that Nii Addy, an associate professor of psychiatry at Yale University who acts as an accessory mentor to Dukes, said the Society of Neuroscience highlighted it as a resource for the neuroscience community as a whole in July.

Just to be able to have an idea and to be able to run with it and implement it. Thats pretty remarkable, Addy said. Her leadership skills have been impressive to me, and her vision as well.

Dukes ability to turn an idea like Black In Neuro Week into a reality by organizing a group of scientists, finding sponsors, and scheduling speakers and events in a matter of three weeks speaks to more than just her leadership skills it demonstrates her perseverance, a quality that Fowler, Dukes Ph.D. mentor at UC Irvine, who is also an associate professor of neurobiology and behavior, emphasized.

When shes faced with challenges, she just pushes through and does amazingly well, she said.

Case in point: When a last-minute emergency kept Fowler from presenting at a conference in New Orleans in March, she asked Dukes to fill in and present research that was not her own.

Dukes, who was the only Black person in the room, was shaking.

I was absolutely terrified, she said. I guess [it was] just the imposter syndrome and feeling like I wasnt sure if Im qualified to talk about this

But Fowler said her colleagues in the audience thought she knocked it out of the park. Dukes was even offered a job by another researcher at the conference.

Several faculty in her department at UC Irvine recognize her as a force of nature. And they encourage it.

Fowler and another faculty member gave Dukes a painting of a black bird to recognize the important work she was doing as an advocate for Black scientists. She keeps it above her desk as a reminder to keep speaking up a more artistic version of the sticky notes on her kitchen table at home.

It just felt really nice to feel like they recognize the work that Im doing, said Dukes. And so this was just another form of validation for me that I am being heard and that my thoughts are being valued.

Black In Neuro also helped Dukes see herself as others do at least a little bit.

It makes me feel more secure that I do have a place here and I can make a positive impact in science, she said.

Dukes and her 21 co-organizers are still deciding whats next for Black In Neuro.

For now, they are focused on nurturing the community they created. They are gearing up to hold monthly socials, actively developing a list of Black neuroscientists, and profiling individual researchers. Other Black neuroscientists in the field think the increased exposure of Black students to successful neuroscientists like them will go a long way.

So those same folks can now say, OK, well, this theres this person here, this person here, this person here, that I can connect with, that looks like me, that I can relate to. Thats gonna go a long way, so that people arent dealing with imposter syndrome in isolation, Addy, Dukes Yale mentor, said.

Dukes was taken aback by the strength of the community she made. She teared up as she recalled a video meeting for Black women, late in the movements weeklong event in July, when she realized how similar her experiences were to everyone there.

Its so easy to feel like youre the only one and no one understands. And to just know there are people out there who get it, like 100%, they get it, and to not have to explain that, and just see how important that is for so many people. It really means a lot, she said.

It clearly did for the participants, too. Yasmin Hurd, the director of the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai and one of Dukes science idols, also attended. She, too, was moved by everyones experiences she even turned on her video camera despite her new haircut. But even more so, she was impressed with Dukes. Hurd said she had a way of making everyone feel special for who they are and the research they did.

Its this warm environment [where] people felt safe. And there were just a lot of emotions. And it brought out the raw emotions in me that a lot of these ladies are going through the same things that I went through, and that we havent really moved the dial enough, said Hurd.

Dukes wants to keep moving that dial, both with Black in Neuro and on her own. She participates in a biannual Saturday science event at her local church, where she teaches children, many of them Black, about things like what neurons do she said the students are always a bit freaked out that she works with mice.

At the end of it, I had at least one of them that was like, I think I can be a scientist! and I was like, Yes! Yes you can! Thats exactly what you can do, she said.

She wants to keep showing others that there is a place for them in research, if they want it. She intends to seek a professorship at a historically black college and university so that she can help other Black women see that a career in science, and specifically research, is an option.

I feel very certain that this is the career path for me, that this is what Im supposed to be doing, especially with all of the Black in Neuro stuff, I feel like this is really how I can make a difference, she said.

Elizabeth Cooney contributed to this report.

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The scientist behind #BlackInNeuro is building the hastag into a community - STAT

Neuroscience

Transfusions to possibly help the brain from stroke damage, recent WVU neuroscience research suggests – WBOY.com

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. A recent study conducted by neuroscientists from West Virginia University shows a potential step towards improving stroke therapy.

The study, which is believed to be the first, shows that blood substitution therapy rescues the brains of mice from ischemic damage. The idea is to eventually be able to use blood transfusions in humans who suffer from a stroke.

According to neuroscientists, most strokes (ischemic) occur when the blood supply to the brain is interrupted, usually by a blockage of the arteries leading to the brain. There is no known single medication for stroke, however, the only FDA-approved treatment for ischemic strokes is tPA, or tissue plasminogen activator, which dissolves the clot and improves blood flow.

Xuefang Sophie Ren, research assistant professor in the Department of Neuroscience and director of the WVU Experimental Stroke Core led the team in this study.

What we were able to demonstrate is that if you remove part of the blood from a subject undergoing stroke, and replace that blood from a subject thats never had a stroke, the outcomes of that stroke are profoundly improved, said Ren.

While tPA typically has to be administered within three hours of the stroke, Rens research indicates that blood transfusions can take place beyond that limited window. With a blood transfusion, it can take up to seven hours and still have a positive impact.

According to release, the study showed that replacing 20 percent of the blood in a mouse was enough to show a profound reduction in damage to the brain. The average adult holds around one-and-a-half gallons of blood in the body.

The idea is to change the immune response that happens after stroke, said James Simpkins, co-author of the study and director of the Center for Basic & Translational Stroke Research.

Simpkins is also a professor of the Department of Neuroscience. Heng Hu, postdoctoral fellow and Experimental Stroke Core surgeon, also helped co-author the study.

Following a stroke, the makeup of a patients blood changes, causing disruptions in the brain and how the body responds, explained by researchers. A type of white blood cell that helps lead the immune systems response, known as Neutrophils, play a role in increasing the levels of an enzyme called MMP-9, which can lead to blood-brain barrier leakage and degeneration in brain tissue.

The study concluded that blood replacement therapy removes inflammatory cells and decreases neutrophils and MMP-9 levels following a stroke.

The immune system doesnt recognize much of whats happening when theres a stroke. So the neutrophils go to the brain and try to clean up the damage that happens. But theres too much in the brain and those same neutrophils release MMP-9, which then exacerbates the damage.

What we learn is that stroke is simply not a cerebral vascular event. Its a whole-body event. Both the brain and the body get signals that somethings going on in the brain and as the immune system responds to try to help, it actually worsens the outcome. Therefore, by removing the blood and replacing it with the blood of those that have not experienced stroke, we get good outcomes.

Ren said that now, blood replacement therapy is a proven strategy that targets the pathological systemic responses to stroke, and could reduce the mortality of stroke patients.

In an ideal circumstance, a person having a stroke would show up to Ruby (Memorial) or any hospital. Theyd go through the proper protocol. We would remove their stroke blood and magically restore it with the right kind of blood that would tamp down this immune response theyre experiencing. If it works out, thats good for all of us, said Simpkins.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 795,000 Americans experience a stroke each year and 140,000 die from it.

Blood indeed saves our brains and lives from stroke damage, Ren said.

Full research article published on Nature Communications.

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Transfusions to possibly help the brain from stroke damage, recent WVU neuroscience research suggests - WBOY.com