UCLA Celebrates Brain Awareness Week

UCLA hosts an annual Brain Awareness Week in recognition of the global campaign to increase public awareness of neuroscience and the progress of brain research. The event is organized by a current NSIDP graduate student, who coordinates Project Brainstorm, an outreach group within the Brain Research Institute that makes weekly visits to low-income, low-opportunity K-12 schools all over Los Angeles to teach students about neuroscience.

This year for Brain Awareness Week, 250 5th to 12th graders visited UCLA, where they enjoyed interactive activities hosted by UCLA neuroscience undergraduate and graduate students! Participants explored fundamental neuroscience concepts, such as the different lobes of the brain, synaptic transmission and brain injury, observed sheep brain dissections to learn about parts of the brain as well as brain evolution, and learned popular neuroscience topics, such as the phantom limb syndrome, reflexes versus reaction times, the stroop effect and more! Students also visited different UCLA neuroscience laboratories, interacted with current scientists, and learned about the research process and the principles of various areas of ongoing research.

Brain Awareness Week 2016 could not have been possible without the efforts of previous coordinators, graduate students from neuroscience and other departments, undergraduates from Project Brainstorm, and members from Psych in Action, Interaxon and Project Synapse. The event has received much positive feedback from both the evaluations students filled out at the end of each day as well as verbal comments. Schools have even begun inquiring about participating in next years Brain Awareness Week!

For more information: http://neuroscience.ucla.edu/outreach

Link:
UCLA NSIDP - Neuroscience

Neuroscience investigates the human brain, from the functional organization of large scale cerebral systems to microscopic neurochemical processes. Topics include the neural substrates of perception, attention, memory, language, learning, neurological disorders, affect, stress and motivation. A variety of experimental techniques are used, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electro/magneto-encephalogry (EEG/MEG), and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).

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Neuroscience | Department of Psychology

Could an attacker guess your PIN number or your email password by reading your brain?

A Canadian researcher called Melanie Segado explained to us the extent to which your brain activity could be used for malicious purposes, to find out, for example, what youre thinking or to guess your PIN.

Melanie, who is finishing her doctorate in neuroscience in Montreal and is co-founder of the NeurotechX community, differentiated the techniques that are used for measuring brain activity, which allows for the interpretation of the signals that emitted due to stimuli.

She and other researchers in the field are trying to determine the capabilities and limitations of this technology in the context of security.

Firstly, there is theelectrocorticography(ECoG) technique, in which electrodes are placed on the exposed surface of the brain to record the electrical activity of the cerebral cortex. However, because this requires a surgical incision in the skull, it is an invasive procedure.

There is also theelectroencephalogram technique, in which electrodes are placed on the scalp and send electrical signals to a recorder, which then converts them into wave-like patterns. The person must remain still with their eyes closed because any movement can alter the results.

Secondly, there arefunctional magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI) andfunctional near-infrared spectroscopy(fNIRS) studies, which provide real-time monitoring of tissue oxygenation in the brain while the subject performs a task or receives a stimulus. This allows brain functions such as attention, memory, and problem solving to be analyzed while the individual performs a cognitive task.

Thirdly, there is thepositron emission tomography(PET) technique, which identifies changes at a cellular level to detect the early onset of a disease.

According to Melanie, all of these brain activity measurement techniques can be used to observemovements, senses(is the person seeing, tasting, touching, or hearing?), cognition (memories, intentions), biometric components, language (words), and emotions.

But could they be used maliciously to guess what we are thinking? Well, there are a number of considerations to take into account before assuming this is possible. Some techniques are invasive, others are very expensive; some require physical access to the person who must remain still in a scanner, and others do not provide very high-quality data.

Yes, it is true that some fMRI procedures have produced records that were used to reconstruct what the personwas seeing(a face, a plane), but the cost is very high (about $600 per hour, according to Melanie) and takes an average of between one to three hours to complete.

So, this procedure is unlikely to be used maliciously; and in any case, it only shows what the person is actually seeing in that particular place,not a reconstructionof their most secret thoughts or memories.

Measurements aimed at reading language-related signals, using yes/no response experiments, are extremely useful for communicating with someone who cannot speak for themselves, but are equally useless for malicious purposes. The same is true forlie detection techniques, which operate on the basis of familiarity and the distinctive behavior of the brain when the option presented generates an emotion in the person.

Perhaps the only electroencephalogram method that could be useful for an attacker would be theN400 wave, which is related to semantic processing and is mainly activated due to unexpected words in sentences, such as John smeared the hot bread with a sock.

The magnitude of the signal varies according to how familiar it is to the subject; words, faces, images, or numbers can be used. So if the subject is shown many PIN numbers, they will react differently tothe combination they recognize.

However, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that the signal will intensify due to any significant stimulus, i.e. any combination of numbers that refers to something known to the person, which may not be their PIN or whatever is to be determined at that particular moment. Again, there are more limitations and costs involved than there are possible returns.

It is still extremely difficult for an attacker to exploit these signals, especially those that only show stimuli. If they had enough individual data from someone, they could build a model for generating signals that look like those individuals, butit would take a lot of computational power,which is currently impractical for an attacker, Melanie clarified.

Brain activity is unique for every individual, so you can never be fully anonymous, Melanie warned. So, if your patterns are in a database because you did an MRI scan, for example, you would beeasily identifiable.

And so the real concern should lie in the interpretation and protection of our data. Who has access to it? Is the clinic where you had your CT or MRI scan careful enough with your brain activity records? Or could they be compromised and used to identify you?

Of course, we still do not know what can be predicted with brain activity records, as they can beinterpreted in many waysand can vary over time for many reasons. For example, if you are in a car accident, the reaction you have to a car stimulus will be very different to the one you had before the accident.

Something that Melanie strongly recommends is to not contribute to the confusion of those who believe that our thoughts will soon be monitored, or that we will be able to control technology without physically interacting with it.

In fact, she does not think thatFacebooks projectto control computers with our brains is very feasible. This year, one of the companys divisions announced that it would be creating silent speech software that would allow you to type 100 words per minute by detecting brain waves, without the need for invasive surgery. But again, this is not very likely.

In conclusion, and as Melanie envisaged from the title of her talk, your thoughts remainsafe and private, for now.It is just a matter of taking care of who can access your brain activity data because, after all, it is as personal and sensitive as your DNA.

Author Sabrina Pagnotta, ESET

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Neuroscience and security: your thoughts are safe (for now) - We Live Security (blog)

Research into the interplay between the discipline of neuroscience which studies the brain and the nervous system and marketing could help to explain how people make decisions, how they react to stimuli and what triggers might amplify or diminish the impulses that drive social interactions or even innovation in a business setting. Such research also raises ethical questions on how those insights might be used, and how to prevent them from getting into the wrong hands.

Those are the opportunities and challenges for the Wharton Neuroscience Initiative, which was launched in September 2016, according to Michael Platt, its director. Platt, a neuroscientist, is also a Penn Integrates Knowledge professor with appointments at the University of Pennsylvanias Perelman School of Medicine, the department of psychology in the School of Arts and Sciences, and the marketing department at Wharton. Creating the neuroscience initiative at the intersection of medicine and business is a provocative idea, said Platt. But he is convinced that it sends a clear signal to business schools, universities and people in industry that neuroscience is here, and the future of business is in neuroscience.

Technological developments in the space also make it an opportune time for such an initiative, according to Elizabeth (Zab) Johnson, who is managing director and senior fellow of the Wharton Neuroscience Initiative. She pointed to the huge boom in wearable neurotech, and the proliferation of devices such as heartbeat monitoring watches, sleep monitoring gadgets and brainwave headbands. [Students] need to know how to tell hype from whats practical, she said. We need them to be savvy about that. Platt and Johnson were previously colleagues at Duke Universitys Institute for Brain Sciences.

Platt and Johnson discussed the intersection of neuroscience and business on the Marketing Matters show on Wharton Business Radio on SiriusXM channel 111. (Listen to the podcast at the top of this page.)

How We Tick, Why We Tick

Businesses and marketers need to get up to speed on the use of neuroscience in advertising and marketing, according to Catharine Hays, executive director of the Wharton Future of Advertising program, who co-hosts the Marketing Matters show. The essence of the initiative is grounded in helping people, understanding how we tick, why we tick, and then using that information to make sure that we tick well, she said. It helps that Penn has a large neuroscience community, she noted.

Platt expanded on Hayss comments and said, Knowing something more about how we tick as individuals and how we tick together sometimes and sometimes we dont could impact the way we do business and educate the next generation of students.

According to Platt, the tremendous strides in neuroscience over the last couple of decades will help people with brain disorders like Alzheimers disease. Those same advances in neuroscience will also help businesses and individuals reach their maximum potential to create value for society, he added.

The Wharton Neuroscience Initiative this year started an Introduction to Brain Science for Business course. It essentially uses business as a vehicle to teach students neuroscience, and also a means to convey some of the emerging areas for applications, said Platt. Some of those are in the area of marketing, to test the effectiveness of advertising such as engaging people and predicting sales, he explained. The idea is to broaden the domain of neuroscience beyond attention or decision-making to social neuroscience or studies of creativity, he added.

The brain is trying to figure out ambiguity, and is trying to find solutions for what we see and what we perceive. Elizabeth (Zab) Johnson

Takeaways for Businesses

Research being conducted by Platt and Johnson could find numerous applications in the world of business. Johnsons research includes studies in vision and color vision. For example, she would examine why different people identify the same color differently, such as some seeing blue as black or white as gold. She pointed to applications, for example, in the cosmetics industry. We spend a lot of time looking at whether or not we can make ourselves more attractive by adding different colors, she said.

Johnson saw big opportunities for research into those varying perceptions of color. People had very emotional responses when they realized that what their friends saw was different from what they saw, even though it is same [color], she said. The neuro-scientific explanation for people seeing colors differently is still being probed, she added.

Inherently what you perceive is all in your head, which as neuroscientists we always knew, Johnson said. We also know that the brain is trying to figure out ambiguity, and is trying to find solutions for what we see and what we perceive. She has also begun to research how colors on peoples faces change depending on their emotional state and the signals that we might be getting but we dont think about, such as when people blush.

Hays noted that 80% of the decisions or choices people make are based in their subconscious. [In] bringing them to the fore and making them explicit, the business applications are mind boggling, she said.

Platt said his research includes trying to understand at a very deep level aspects of interpersonal interactions. That begins with how people perceive each other to higher-order processes such as how that might prompt people to be kind or deceptive, he explained.

We are working out the circuitry [and] trying to understand how we might turn up the volume on some of those signals and turn down the volume on some others, Platt said. So, could you do various kinds of nudges to promote more social behavior, to make us more attentive to each other, or [to become] better able to read social cues and be better listeners?

Could you do various kinds of nudges to promote more social behavior, to make us more attentive to each other, or [to become] better able to read social cues and be better listeners? Michael Platt

A Measured, Cautious Approach

Penn research is focused on using those insights to test new therapies to treat people with disorders, including both medicines and non-invasive brain stimulation, Platt explained. We need to do research to figure out how to do it right, and how to do it safely. Some of those therapies are being put into practice at the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, he added.

Platts research extends to studying decision-making and how people weigh trade-offs between continuing to exploit something they know well versus taking risks to explore new ways of doing things. That is where the spark of innovation comes from, he added. As that research advances, it will also try to uncover the mechanisms of that process, measure it on individuals unobtrusively through a wearable device or stimulate that circuitry on people whose job it is to be innovative. The research work will also extend to innovating on devices at an ideas lab to improve quality and make them cheaper so they can be used more in everyday lives.

Platt acknowledged that such research raises important ethical questions, but clarified that they are not specific to neuroscience in a business context. He said that among other resources to grapple with those issues, he wants to tap into the deep expertise in bioethics at Penn. Johnson called for continuing debate on these issues to come up with the right applications.

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What Insights Lie at the Intersection of Neuroscience and Marketing? - Knowledge@Wharton

Neuroscience Concentration Description

All students enrolled in the Neuroscience program will work towards obtaining a Ph.D. degree through the College of Medicine. Every student in the Neuroscience concentration is required to have at least one published or in press peer-reviewed, original research article pertaining directly to the students dissertation prior to graduating. Each student must have at least one member on his/her dissertation committee who holds a primary appointment in the Department of Neuroscience.

The Neuroscience curriculum is designed to complement the research interests of our graduate students. After completing the courses required in the fall semester of the first year, each student must complete a total of 12 credits of advanced graduate course work. All students enrolled in the Neuroscience concentration are required to take and successfully complete at least two of the courses in List A (below) or they may choose to take all of them. Successful completion means obtaining a 3.0 grade point average. Most students enrolled in the program complete their advanced course work by the end of the second year.

The Neuroscience concentration offers five (5) advanced courses annually (see List A) and additional elective courses annually or biennially. Students may also select their elective advanced courses from those offered by other doctoral programs. In some cases, students may choose to take courses offered by programs outside of the College of Medicine. Each students selection of courses must be approved by the students advisory/dissertation committee and the Neuroscience Graduate Program Directors.

Finally, each student is required to participate in the Neuroscience Graduate Research Seminars (GMS 6792), the Neuroscience Department Seminars (GMS 7794), and one journal club each Fall and Spring semester starting in their second year. The topics of the journal clubs are tailored to the specific educational needs of our students and vary each semester.

For a list of faculty members in the Neuroscience advanced program, please click here. Faculty names link to faculty web pages.

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Neuroscience Concentration Graduate Program in Biomedical ...

Two alarm fire on North Jameson in Lima By Joseph Sharpe Digital Content Manager 2017-06-29T02:38:35Z

Thick black smoke billowed over Limaearlier this evening, as a city home goes up in flames.

The City of Lima just got a bit bigger in hopes of future development.

A three car accident snarls traffic at the intersection of Spencerville and Wapak Road.

Lima Municipal Court has earned final certification from the Ohio Supreme Court's commission on specialized dockets.

The Putnam County Commissioners dealing with a new lawsuit filed against them regarding the improvements done to County Road 5.

Heat from a garage fire caused damage to cars and surrounding buildings.

Marathon now has a distribution network to ship materials from the Utica Shale Region to other parts of Ohio and beyond.

Authorities in Van Wert County are searching for an inmate who didn't return to jail, after a medical furlough.

Since it was first identified in the United States more than 30 years ago, expanded treatment options for HIV have dramatically improved the lives of those affected.

A free manufacturing training course will be held at Rhodes State College starting July 10th.

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Neuroscience Symposium at St. Rita's - Your News Now

Princeton University neuroscientist Sabine Kastner comes prepared for a meeting with her youngest collaborators, packing a model of the human brain, a collection of preserved animal brains and a video demonstrating a single neuron in action.

Those collaborators fifth-graders at Riverside School in Princeton, shown in the video above are prepared, too, with questions, ideas and enthusiasm.

Kastner, a professor of psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, has come not just to teach the students but also to enlist their help as peer reviewers for Frontiers for Young Minds, an academic journal that features articles written by professional researchers and reviewed for clarity and readability by members of the target audience: children ages 8 to 15.

The finished articles are available free to all on the journal's website, bringing the latest science on topics including astronomy, biodiversity, Earth science, health, mathematics and neuroscience to any student with access to the internet. Kastner serves as the chief editor of the "Understanding Neuroscience" section.

"The way I was brought up as a scientist in an academic environment was to do laboratory work, make discoveries and share those discoveries with our peers," said Kastner, who also invites the students to tour the Princeton Neuroscience Institute. "But I think the time has come for scientists to give back. Doing this outreach with kids is just one way to do it."

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Kastner opens frontiers for young minds - Princeton University

MARTIN MORAN: ON THE BOTTLE

June 25 2017, 12:01am,The Sunday Times

Martin Moran

The book goes into great detail about the airflow through the nose, and the differences between sniffing in and exhaling out through the nose, or the retronasal flow

When it comes to wine tasting, the human brain is right in there with the nose and mouth in deciding whether we like something or not. Assessing wine may be primarily about smell and taste but all the senses are involved, and all are interlinked.

I have written previously about the effect of sound on wine tasters, as demonstrated by Jo Burzynska and her oenosthetic events. But now it seems our eyes too, with a little help from our brains, can trick us in dramatic ways while tasting.

Spanish winemaker Campo Viejo Rioja is running its 2017 Tapas Trail (campoviejotapastrail.ie) from now until June 30. As part of the launch event in Dublin, journalists (including myself) were invited to taste wines in a colour lab.

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The neuroscience of wine tasting is not to be sniffed at - The Times (subscription)

Playing video games may cause changes in many brain regions, according to a new review of previous research.

Palaus et al collected and summarized studies looking at how video games can shape our brains and behavior. Image credit: Olichel Adamovich.

Nowadays, video gaming is a highly popular and prevalent entertainment option, its use is no longer limited to children and adolescents. The average age of gamers has been increasing, and was estimated to be 35 in 2016.

Changing technology also means that more people are exposed to video games. Many committed gamers play on desktop computers or consoles, but a new breed of casual gamers has emerged, who play on smartphones and tablets at spare moments throughout the day, like their morning commute.

So, we know that video games are an increasingly common form of entertainment, but do they have any effect on our brains and behavior?

Over the years, the media have made various sensationalist claims about video games and their effect on our health and happiness.

Games have sometimes been praised or demonized, often without real data backing up those claims, said lead author Marc Palaus, from the Open University of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain.

Moreover, gaming is a popular activity, so everyone seems to have strong opinions on the topic.

Palaus and his colleagues from the Open University of Catalonia and the Massachusetts General Hospital wanted to see if any trends had emerged from the research to date concerning how video games affect the structure and activity of our brains.

The authors collected the results from 116 scientific studies, 22 of which looked at structural changes in the brain and 100 of which looked at changes in brain functionality and/or behavior.

The studies show that playing video games can change how our brains perform, and even their structure.

For example, playing video games affects our attention, and some studies found that gamers show improvements in several types of attention, such as sustained attention or selective attention.

The brain regions involved in attention are also more efficient in gamers and require less activation to sustain attention on demanding tasks.

There is also evidence that video games can increase the size and efficiency of brain regions related to visuospatial skills. For example, the right hippocampus was enlarged in both long-term gamers and volunteers following a video game training program.

Video games can also be addictive, and this kind of addiction is called Internet gaming disorder.

Researchers have found functional and structural changes in the neural reward system in gaming addicts, in part by exposing them to gaming cues that cause cravings and monitoring their neural responses. These neural changes are basically the same as those seen in other addictive disorders.

We focused on how the brain reacts to video game exposure, but these effects do not always translate to real-life changes, Palaus said.

As video games are still quite new, the research into their effects is still in its infancy. For example, we are still working out what aspects of games affect which brain regions and how.

Its likely that video games have both positive (on attention, visual and motor skills) and negative aspects (risk of addiction), and it is essential we embrace this complexity, he said.

The review was published recently in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

_____

Marc Palaus et al. Neural Basis of Video Gaming: A Systematic Review. Front. Hum. Neurosci, published online May 22, 2017; doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2017.00248

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Video Games May Change Brain and Behavior, Review Finds ... - Sci-News.com

Tens of thousands of Americans die from drug overdoses every year around 50,000 in 2015 and the number has been steadily climbing for at least the last decade and a half, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Yet a team of Stanford neuroscientists and legal scholars argues that the nations drug policies are at times exactly the opposite from what science-based policies would look like.

Professor Keith Humphreys is one of the leaders of the Stanford Neuroscience Institutes Neurochoice Big Idea initiative. (Image credit: L.A. Cicero)

Drug policy has never been based on our scientific understanding, said Robert Malenka, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and a coauthor on the paper. Instead, it is based mostly on culture and economic necessities and a misguided desire to punish drug users harshly.

The time has come, he and coauthors write June 22 in the journal Science, to do better.

We have an opioid epidemic that looks like its going to be deadlier than AIDS, but the criminal justice system handles drug addiction in almost exactly opposite of what neuroscience and other behavioral sciences would suggest, said Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and one of the leaders of the Stanford Neurosciences Institutes Neurochoice Big Idea initiative.

A central problem, the authors argue, is that drug use warps the brains decision-making mechanisms, so that what matters most to a person dealing with addiction is the here and now, not the possibility of a trip up the river a few months or years from today.

We have relied heavily on the length of a prison term as our primary lever for trying to influence drug use and drug-related crime, said Robert MacCoun, a professor of law. But such sanction enhancements are psychologically remote and premised on an unrealistic model of rational planning with a long time horizon, which just isnt consistent with how drug users behave.

What might work better, Humphreys said, is smaller, more immediate incentives and punishments perhaps a meal voucher in exchange for passing a drug test, along with daily monitoring.

The environment in which individuals live matters, too, Humphreys said especially when that environment pushes alcohol, cigarettes and prescription painkillers hard. Cigarette advertising, for example, works to make smoking seem like a pleasant escape from the grind of daily life. Meanwhile, drug companies advertising campaigns helped push American doctors to prescribe painkillers at much higher rates than in other countries, a fact that has likely contributed to the countrys growing epidemic of opioid addiction.

The scientists argue that basing policy on science rather than on a desire to punish addicts would improve lives, including victims of drug-related crime.

To learn that addictive drugs distort the choice process is not the same as showing that addicts are incapable of making choices. Addicts already know full well that their behavior is inappropriate and stigmatized, MacCoun said. But mostly I think questions of morality distract from very practical questions about what works and what doesnt work to reduce drug-related harm.

And, the researchers say, the costs of current policy are staggering: on average 78 Americans die every day from opioid overdoses.

The new commentary is timed to appear four days before a much-anticipated report from a presidential commission on drug addiction. While it may not have an impact on that particular report, Humphreys and his coauthors say they hope the commentary and the Neurochoice Initiative it is part of will make a difference in a critical area of public policy.

To that end, Neurochoice brings together neuroscientists, psychologists, public policy scholars and others to tackle drug addiction and find better treatments and policies for dealing with the problem. It has already produced some intriguing results. Professor of Psychology Brian Knutson and colleagues, for example, recently showed that brain scans could help predict which adolescents would initiate excessive drug use in the future. Those are the kinds of results, the authors write, that might guide better laws and practices in the future.

Each of the authors is a member of the Stanford Neurosciences Institute and its NeuroChoice project, which funded the research. Malenka is a member of Stanford Bio-X and the Nancy Friend Pritzker Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science. Knutson is a member of Bio-X and an affiliate of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. MacCoun is a senior fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the James and Patricia Kowal Professor of Law.

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U.S. drug policy needs a dose of neuroscience | Stanford News - Stanford University News