Category Archives: Neuroscience

Neuroscience

UK Neuroscience Research Priority Area Brings Diverse Groups Together to Advance Studies – UKNow

LEXINGTON, Ky. (June 30, 2021) The University of Kentuckys Neuroscience Research Priority Area (NRPA) supports a "collaborative matrix," bringing together diverse groups of investigators, trainees and research groups from nine different colleges across the University of Kentucky campus.

The key underlying strategy of the NRPA is to provide broad-based support for basic, translational and clinical neuroscience-related research across campus, said NRPA Co-Director Dr. Larry Goldstein, Ruth Louise Works Endowed professor and chairman of UK College of Medicines Department of Neurology. We can uniquely bring together investigators from different laboratories or groups to develop synergies advancing collaborations and supporting trainees, particularly those from underrepresented groups.

The NRPA members collaborate as well as utilize valuable resources within the NRPA, including statistical support and UKs NeuroBank. The NeuroBank, one of the initial NRPA initiatives, collects a variety of biospecimens from subjects being evaluated and treated for neurologic conditions at the UK's Albert B. Chandler Hospital and the Kentucky Neuroscience Institute.

Dr. Tritia Yamasaki,assistant professor of neurology, focuses her research on Parkinson's disease and related neurodegenerative conditions. As a movement disorder specialist, she sees individuals in clinic with these conditions and shes in charge of UKs NeuroBank.

My role in NeuroBank has allowed me to work with a great group of people to promote research utilizing human samples, Yamasaki said. There is amazing research going on across campus by hundreds of neuroscientists.

Yamasaki meets with investigators to hear about the research they are conducting, and her team then helps figure out how to best support their projects with human samples. Often this involves thinking creatively about how to integrate sample collection into the clinical workflow to obtain the material needed for the research.

She says they do this by approaching patients in the ambulatory clinic and various hospital settings. Additionally, they work with the pathology department, neurosurgeons, the clinical laboratory, and the epilepsy monitoring unit to obtain patient consent and participation.

There are thousands of patients with neurologic diseases being seen by physicians in our hospitals and clinics daily, some with rare types of conditions about which very little is known, or others who are in desperate need of effective therapies to halt neurodegenerative conditions, Yamasaki said.

The NeuroBank leader says being able to combine resources in UKs clinical settings with the vast research community on campus, is an extremely effective way to advance their work in understanding neurological diseases and developing therapies. Animal models are a crucial part of research, but the ultimate test for any discovery about human disease will be whether the same phenomenon is also seen in the human condition, which is much more complex, given the interplay of genetic and environmental influences, said Yamasaki.

Ramon Sun, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of neuroscience in the UK College of Medicine and works with the Markey Cancer Center, Sanders-Brown Center on Aging (SBCoA) and Spinal Cord and Brain Injury Research Center (SCoBIRC). He is one of the researchers who knows firsthand the value of being a part of the NRPA and having access to resources in the NeuroBank.

The highly collaborative nature of the investigators in the NRPA allows for transdisciplinary, high-impact, cutting-edge research, Sun said. The rich resources of the NRPA that include equipment, banked human specimens, and core services allow for rapid advances in both basic and clinical research in neuroscience.

The collaborative work cultivated within the NRPA recently led Sun and Matthew Gentry, Ph.D., professor of molecular and cellular biochemistry and director of the Lafora Epilepsy Cure Initiative at the UK College of Medicine, to discover that glucose the sugar used for cellular energy production was not the only sugar contained in glycogen in the brain. Brain glycogen also contained another sugar called glucosamine. Thefull study was recently published in Cell Metabolism.

While looking at various components, factors and diseases of the human brain is what most people might think of when they hear neuroscience research, there is much more that plays into the far-reaching category including the Western honey bee.

It is a species with a deep behavioral research history, extensive neuroscience and genomics tools, and it has one of the most sophisticated social lives on the planet, said Clare Rittschof, Ph.D., assistant professor, UK College of Agriculture, Food, and Environment'sDepartment of Entomology.

Rittschofs research is focused on brain metabolic regulation, its links to behavior in the honeybee, and its links to human brain health. She says the NRPA has given her an exciting opportunity to grow a new and unusual area of her research.

Brain metabolic processes are best studied in a medical context as they are associated with neurodegenerative disease and dementia, Rittschof said. However, they are also tied to honeybee aggression, a behavior I have studied for about 10 years.

Thanks to the NRPA, Rittschof has been collaborating with colleagues in the UK College of Medicine, and together they have discovered that honeybee brain metabolism shares many of the features of metabolism in the brains of mammals and humans. However, there also may be key differences that can be leveraged to improve human brain function.

Working at a large research university with a medical college has been invaluable for me, said Rittschof. There are resources, and most importantly, scientists at UK that would not be available on a smaller, less diverse campus. I love working on projects that span discipline boundaries in unusual ways.

Rittschof and others like Josh Morganti, Ph.D., an assistant professor of neuroscience who works with SBCoA and SCoBIRC, also acknowledge the important role the NRPA plays in providing funds for the groundwork of their various research projects that then allows them to seek funding for their ideas from resources such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Morgantis lab recently received a large R01 grant from the National Institute on Aging of the NIH to examine how inflammatory responses of glia regulate age-related neurodegeneration following traumatic brain injury.

Being a part of the NRPA has allowed a great facilitation for collaboration and collaborative projects, which has helped in terms of funding as well as project completion using cutting-edge approaches across multiple labs, said Morganti.

While Morganti has been collaborating at UK for a few years now, the NRPA also benefits new researchers on campus like Lauren Whitehurst, Ph.D., assistant professor, College of Arts andSciences'Department of Psychology.

The offerings of this office are really invaluable to the development of new faculty members like me, she said.

Whitehurst, who just completed her first year as a faculty member at UK, studies the importance of sleep for our health and well-being, while also trying to understand how stress and sleep interact to affect how we think, learn and remember information. In her first year, she says shes already engaged within the NRPA in multiple ways.

I submitted two pilot grants to support some new research in my lab examining sleeps role in neurodegenerative disease and its impact on memory in trauma-exposed women, Whitehurstsaid. I have also been fortunate to mentor an undergraduate student who received funding through the NEURO summer fellowship sponsored by the NRPA, as well.

Each of these researchers ongoing projects and personal experiences exemplify exactly what the NRPA was established for to build upon and leverage existing strengths and relationships while providing infrastructure and support to promote research collaborations and raise internal and external recognition of the depth of neuroscience-related research atUK. The NRPA is doing all of this with the goals of growing extramural support, increasing academic productivity, enhancing recruitment of faculty and trainees, and providing new knowledge to address the needs of the citizens of the Commonwealth and beyond.

The NRPA is a valuable part of the UK research community because it provides an infrastructure and resources that benefit neuroscience research broadly across the campus, said NRPA Co-Director Linda Van Eldik, Ph.D., SBCoA director, professor of neuroscience, and Dr. E. Vernon Smith and Eloise C. Smith Alzheimer's Research Endowed Chair. The NRPA is facilitating exciting new collaborations and interactions between basic/translational and clinical teams.

The NRPA is part of the UK Research Priorities Initiative, funded by the Office of the Vice President for Research. This initiative encompasses seven priority areas: cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes & obesity, diversity & inclusion, energy, neuroscience, and substance use disorder. These areas were chosen based onlocal relevance,existing funding strength, sustainability and disciplinary scholarly diversity.

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health under Award Numbers R35NS116824 and P01NS097197, the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health under Award NumbersR01AG066653,R01AG062550 and R01AG070830, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes ofHealth under Award Number R01DK27221, andtheNational Cancer Instituteof the National Institutes of Health under AwardNumberP30CA177558. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

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UK Neuroscience Research Priority Area Brings Diverse Groups Together to Advance Studies - UKNow

Neuroscience

Neuroscience reveals social distancing effects on the brain – Fast Company

With COVID-19 vaccines working and restrictions lifting across the country, its finally time for those now vaccinated whove been hunkered down at home to ditch the sweatpants and reemerge from their Netflix caves. But your brain may not be so eager to dive back into your former social life.

Social distancing measures proved essential for slowing COVID-19s spread worldwidepreventing upward of an estimated 500 million cases. But, while necessary, 15 months away from each other has taken a toll on peoples mental health.

In a national survey last fall, 36% of adults in the U.S.including 61% of young adultsreported feeling serious loneliness during the pandemic. Statistics like these suggest people would be itching to hit the social scene.

But if the idea of making small talk at a crowded happy hour sounds terrifying to you, youre not alone. Nearly half of Americans reported feeling uneasy about returning to in-person interaction regardless of vaccination status.

So how can people be so lonely yet so nervous about refilling their social calendars?

Well, the brain is remarkably adaptable. And while we cant know exactly what our brains have gone through over the last year, neuroscientists like me have some insight into how social isolation and resocialization affect the brain.

Humans have an evolutionarily hardwired need to socializethough it may not feel like it when deciding between a dinner invite and rewatching Schitts Creek.

From insects to primates, maintaining social networks is critical for survival in the animal kingdom. Social groups provide mating prospects, cooperative hunting, and protection from predators.

But social homeostasisthe right balance of social connectionsmust be met. Small social networks cant deliver those benefits, while large ones increase competition for resources and mates. Because of this, human brains developed specialized circuitry to gauge our relationships and make the correct adjustmentsmuch like a social thermostat.

Social homeostasis involves many brain regions, and at the center is the mesocorticolimbic circuitor reward system. That same circuit motivates you to eat chocolate when you crave something sweet or swipe on Tinder when you crave . . . well, you get it.

And like those motivations, a recent study found that reducing social interaction causes social cravingsproducing brain activity patterns similar to food deprivation.

So if people hunger for social connection like they hunger for food, what happens to the brain when you starve socially?

Scientists cant shove people into isolation and look inside their brains. Instead, researchers rely on lab animals to learn more about social brain wiring. Luckily, because social bonds are essential in the animal kingdom, these same brain circuits are found across species.

Another important region for social homeostasis is the hippocampusthe brains learning and memory center. Successful social circles require you to learn social behaviorssuch as selflessness and cooperationand recognize friends from foes. But your brain stores tremendous amounts of information and must remove unimportant connections. So, like most of your high school Spanishif you dont use it, you lose it.

Several animal studies show that even temporary adulthood isolation impairs both social memory, like recognizing a familiar face, and working memory, like recalling a recipe while cooking.

And isolated humans may be just as forgetful. Antarctic expeditioners had shrunken hippocampi after just 14 months of social isolation. Similarly, adults with small social circles are more likely to develop memory loss and cognitive decline later in life.

So, human beings might not be roaming the wild anymore, but social homeostasis is still critical to survival. Luckily, as adaptable as the brain is to isolation, the same may be true with resocialization.

Though only a few studies have explored the reversibility of the anxiety and stress associated with isolation, they suggest that resocialization repairs these effects.

One study, for example, found that formerly isolated marmosets first had higher stress and cortisol levels when resocialized but then quickly recovered. Adorably, the once-isolated animals even spent more time grooming their new buddies.

Social memory and cognitive function also seem to be highly adaptable.

Mouse and rat studies report that while animals cannot recognize a familiar friend immediately after short-term isolation, they quickly regain their memory after resocializing.

And there may be hope for people emerging from socially distanced lockdown as well. A recent Scottish study conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic found that residents had some cognitive decline during the harshest lockdown weeks but quickly recovered once restrictions eased.

Unfortunately, studies like these are still sparse. And while animal research is informative, it likely represents extreme scenarios since people werent in total isolation over the last year. Unlike mice stuck in cages, many in the U.S. had virtual game nights and Zoom birthday parties (lucky us).

So power through the nervous elevator chats and pesky brain fog, because un-social distancing should reset your social homeostasis very soon.

Kareem Clark is a postdoctoral associate in neuroscience at Virginia Tech.

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Neuroscience reveals social distancing effects on the brain - Fast Company

Neuroscience

The neuroscience behind why your brain may need time to adjust to ‘un-social distancing’ – The Conversation US

With COVID-19 vaccines working and restrictions lifting across the country, its finally time for those now vaccinated whove been hunkered down at home to ditch the sweatpants and reemerge from their Netflix caves. But your brain may not be so eager to dive back into your former social life.

Social distancing measures proved essential for slowing COVID-19s spread worldwide preventing upward of an estimated 500 million cases. But, while necessary, 15 months away from each other has taken a toll on peoples mental health.

In a national survey last fall, 36% of adults in the U.S. including 61% of young adults reported feeling serious loneliness during the pandemic. Statistics like these suggest people would be itching to hit the social scene.

But if the idea of making small talk at a crowded happy hour sounds terrifying to you, youre not alone. Nearly half of Americans reported feeling uneasy about returning to in-person interaction regardless of vaccination status.

So how can people be so lonely yet so nervous about refilling their social calendars?

Well, the brain is remarkably adaptable. And while we cant know exactly what our brains have gone through over the last year, neuroscientists like me have some insight into how social isolation and resocialization affect the brain.

Humans have an evolutionarily hardwired need to socialize though it may not feel like it when deciding between a dinner invite and rewatching Schitts Creek.

From insects to primates, maintaining social networks is critical for survival in the animal kingdom. Social groups provide mating prospects, cooperative hunting and protection from predators.

But social homeostasis the right balance of social connections must be met. Small social networks cant deliver those benefits, while large ones increase competition for resources and mates. Because of this, human brains developed specialized circuitry to gauge our relationships and make the correct adjustments much like a social thermostat.

Social homeostasis involves many brain regions, and at the center is the mesocorticolimbic circuit or reward system. That same circuit motivates you to eat chocolate when you crave something sweet or swipe on Tinder when you crave well, you get it.

And like those motivations, a recent study found that reducing social interaction causes social cravings producing brain activity patterns similar to food deprivation.

So if people hunger for social connection like they hunger for food, what happens to the brain when you starve socially?

Scientists cant shove people into isolation and look inside their brains. Instead, researchers rely on lab animals to learn more about social brain wiring. Luckily, because social bonds are essential in the animal kingdom, these same brain circuits are found across species.

One prominent effect of social isolation is you guessed it increased anxiety and stress.

Many studies find that removing animals from their cage buddies increases anxiety-like behaviors and cortisol, the primary stress hormone. Human studies also support this, as people with small social circles have higher cortisol levels and other anxiety-related symptoms similar to socially deprived lab animals.

Evolutionarily this effect makes sense animals that lose group protection must become hypervigilant to fend for themselves. And it doesnt just occur in the wild. One study found that self-described lonely people are more vigilant of social threats like rejection or exclusion.

Another important region for social homeostasis is the hippocampus the brains learning and memory center. Successful social circles require you to learn social behaviors such as selflessness and cooperation and recognize friends from foes. But your brain stores tremendous amounts of information and must remove unimportant connections. So, like most of your high school Spanish if you dont use it, you lose it.

Several animal studies show that even temporary adulthood isolation impairs both social memory like recognizing a familiar face and working memory like recalling a recipe while cooking.

And isolated humans may be just as forgetful. Antarctic expeditioners had shrunken hippocampi after just 14 months of social isolation. Similarly, adults with small social circles are more likely to develop memory loss and cognitive decline later in life.

So, human beings might not be roaming the wild anymore, but social homeostasis is still critical to survival. Luckily, as adaptable as the brain is to isolation, the same may be true with resocialization.

Though only a few studies have explored the reversibility of the anxiety and stress associated with isolation, they suggest that resocialization repairs these effects.

One study, for example, found that formerly isolated marmosets first had higher stress and cortisol levels when resocialized but then quickly recovered. Adorably, the once-isolated animals even spent more time grooming their new buddies.

Social memory and cognitive function also seem to be highly adaptable.

Mouse and rat studies report that while animals cannot recognize a familiar friend immediately after short-term isolation, they quickly regain their memory after resocializing.

And there may be hope for people emerging from socially distanced lockdown as well. A recent Scottish study conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic found that residents had some cognitive decline during the harshest lockdown weeks but quickly recovered once restrictions eased.

Unfortunately, studies like these are still sparse. And while animal research is informative, it likely represents extreme scenarios since people werent in total isolation over the last year. Unlike mice stuck in cages, many in the U.S. had virtual game nights and Zoom birthday parties (lucky us).

So power through the nervous elevator chats and pesky brain fog, because un-social distancing should reset your social homeostasis very soon.

[Understand new developments in science, health and technology, each week. Subscribe to The Conversations science newsletter.]

Read more:
The neuroscience behind why your brain may need time to adjust to 'un-social distancing' - The Conversation US

Neuroscience

The NIHs Diversity Obsession Subverts Science – The Wall Street Journal

The National Institutes of Health supports a multidisciplinary neuroscience initiative to expand understanding of the brain. Research applications include treatments for Alzheimers, Parkinsons, autism and depression. On June 10, NIH director Francis Collins announced a new requirement for participating in the brain initiative. Neurologists, molecular biologists and nanophysicists seeking NIH funding must now submit a plan showing how they will enhance diverse perspectives throughout their research. Scores on the plan for enhancing diverse perspectives will inform funding decisions.

This new requirement is part of Dr. Collinss continuing effort to atone for what he calls biomedical sciences stain of structural racism. The NIH already supports more than 60 diversity and inclusion initiatives, but those have apparently failed to eradicate NIHs own systemic and structural racism.

Each plan for enhancing diverse perspectives must show how the principal investigator will empower individuals from groups traditionally underrepresented in biomedical research, such as blacks, the disabled, women and the poor. Institutions are also covered by the diversity mandate. Researchers working on an NIH neuroscience grant should be drawn from institutions that are traditionally underrepresented in biomedical research, including community-based organizations.

Dr. Collins provided no evidence for structural racism other than demographic data on NIHs grant applicants and recipients. Black applicants are present in far fewer numbers compared with their representation in the US population, 13.4%, according to Dr. Collinss announcement. In 2020 black scientists made up 2.3% of the 30,061 funding applications the NIH received. Less than 2% of NIH grants go to black principal investigators.

To Dr. Collins and his academic peers, such disparities are virtually irrefutable evidence of discrimination, though grant reviewers dont see an applicants race. But the use of population data as a benchmark for assessing institutional racism ignores racial disparities in academic skills, achievement and study practices that the NIH didnt cause and couldnt possibly do anything to remedy.

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The NIHs Diversity Obsession Subverts Science - The Wall Street Journal

Neuroscience

AMSA and Sunovion Neuroscience Peer Teaching Program Reaches More Than 400 Students Over Three Years – Business Wire

MARLBOROUGH, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Advanced Math & Science Academy Charter School (AMSA) and Sunovion Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Sunovion) today announced completion of the third year of a program to help students understand Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) life science career paths within a pharmaceutical company, gain professional skillsets and foster a deeper knowledge of neuroscience. More than 400 students have participated in the program, including 16 AMSA seniors and juniors who were coached by Sunovions team for their peer teaching roles to deliver neuroscience content to seventh grade students at AMSA between 2019 and 2021.

The AMSA high school students developed lesson plans about the central and peripheral nervous systems that they taught seventh grade students at AMSA via video or in-person classroom settings, with the goal to enhance and complement their existing biology class curriculum. This neuroscience content was developed in consultation with a cross-functional team from Sunovion with a range of expertise. The students also received coaching from Sunovion related to potential career paths, presentation development and delivery skills, as well as other skillsets for professional work environments.

AMSA students are benefitting from the immediate and longer-term impacts of this program with Sunovion, which has not only helped to enhance our science education but also has provided professional skillsets that will empower them to succeed in the workplace, said Ellen Linzey, Executive Director, AMSA. We are proud of this programs alignment with our focus on instilling a love for learning, as well as the integrated curriculum that we have developed in partnership with students, faculty and the Sunovion team.

With Sunovions leadership in the Central Nervous System (CNS) area, we feel a responsibility to impart this knowledge to next generation innovators. The passion and commitment of AMSA peer teachers and students to gain an understanding of the complexities of neurobiology is impressive and our employee coaches have been delighted to share their expertise, said Ken Koblan, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer, who serves as Sunovions executive sponsor of the program with AMSA. Seeing the positive impact of this program over three years is rewarding and we value the close collaboration with AMSA administration and faculty to help inspire the futures of these students.

The 2021 Sunovion-AMSA program student teachers, five seniors and two juniors, were honored during a virtual ceremony on May 27, 2021. Upon completion of their Capstone Project, seniors were provided with certificates of completion and scholarships to encourage their academic careers and consideration of further learning in healthcare, the life sciences and neurobiology. The program was initiated in 2019 through the collaboration of Mark Vital, Community Outreach Manager, AMSA and Wendy Scoppa, Senior Manager, Community Relations, Sunovion. A video of the ceremony and project can be viewed here.

About Advanced Math & Science Academy (AMSA)

Ranked as the #3 public high school in Massachusetts by U.S. News & World Report, The Advanced Math & Science Academy Charter School (AMSA) was chartered by the Massachusetts Department of Education in February 2004 and opened in September 2005. AMSAs teaching model is centered on rigorous college-oriented education for all students. AMSAs teaching philosophy involves starting challenging abstract learning, typically expected for high school students, early in the middle school grades. AMSA creates an atmosphere of celebration of knowledge where children of all backgrounds and abilities excel in all subjects, especially in math, science and technology, empowering them to succeed in the workplace in our modern, high-tech world. AMSA's core values are collective and individual values: Model Integrity, Pursue Your Excellence and Foster Community. Learn more about AMSA at http://www.amsacs.org and join AMSA on social media at http://www.amsacs.org/social.

About Sunovion Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Sunovion)

Sunovion is a global biopharmaceutical company focused on the innovative application of science and medicine to help people with serious medical conditions. Sunovions vision is to lead the way to a healthier world. The companys spirit of innovation is driven by the conviction that scientific excellence paired with meaningful advocacy and relevant education can improve lives. With patients at the center of everything it does, Sunovion has charted new paths to life-transforming treatments that reflect ongoing investments in research and development and an unwavering commitment to support people with psychiatric, neurological and respiratory conditions. Headquartered in Marlborough, Mass., Sunovion is an indirect, wholly-owned subsidiary of Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma Co., Ltd. Sunovion Pharmaceuticals Europe Ltd., based in London, England, and Sunovion Pharmaceuticals Canada Inc., based in Mississauga, Ontario, are wholly-owned direct subsidiaries of Sunovion Pharmaceuticals Inc. Additional information can be found on the companys web sites: http://www.sunovion.com, http://www.sunovion.eu and http://www.sunovion.ca. Connect with Sunovion on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube.

Originally posted here:
AMSA and Sunovion Neuroscience Peer Teaching Program Reaches More Than 400 Students Over Three Years - Business Wire

Neuroscience

OU Professor Barbara Oakley named one of ’35 Highly Influential Women in Engineering’ – 2021 – School of Engineering and Computer Science – News – OU…

Oakland University Professor Barbara Oakley has been selected as one of the 35 Highly Influential Women in Engineering Today by AcademicInfluence.com.

It was very much a surprise to be honored as one of the highly influential women in engineering, said Oakley, a distinguished professor of engineering at OU. All I can say is that Oakland University has clearly been a great intellectual home for me, allowing me to look with fresh, interdisciplinary perspectives at the best of what science, and especially neuroscience, has to help us reseat education on a solid scientific foundation.

The list also includes groundbreaking roboticists, founders of high-tech companies, CEOs, astronauts, medical experts, and pioneers in engineering sub-disciplines like computer science and electrical engineering, as well as revolutionary thinkers in areas like nano-medicine and nuclear power.

Engineering has a reputation as a mostly male profession, said Dr. Jed Macosko, academic director of AcademicInfluence.com and professor of physics at Wake Forest University. We want to set the record straight and let more people know that women engineers are not only growing in number; but are also driving the field forward in new and creative ways. They bring innovative thinking and bold solutions that make their professions better; and more people need to know who they are and see why they are the vanguard of a new era in engineering.

Professor Oakley is both a revolutionary and true innovator in the area of pedagogy and is recognized as one of the worlds leading experts in learning, especially in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines, and in the design of high-quality online pedagogical materials.

Since joining Oakland University in 1998, she has made significant contributions as a productive scholar in the areas of STEM pedagogy, neuroscience and social behavior. Her books have been translated into over 20 different languages around the world.

She has also pioneered important work that has significantly helped the Academy understand what impacts a persons interest in subject matter, along with what affects their ability to master mentally difficult material. Of the 10,000 MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) currently available worldwide, her course,Learning How to Learn, is one of the worlds most popular with over 3 million registered learners from over 200 countries.

My goal is to open career doors for all students when it comes to engineering, especially those coming from disadvantaged backgrounds, Oakley said.

In recognition of her exemplary course materials and approach, Oakley was honored as Courseras Inaugural Innovation Instructor in 2015, is the recipient of the IEEE William E. Sayle II Award for Achievement in Education, the Theo C. Pilkington Award for Biomedical Engineering Education, Michigan Distinguished Professor of the Year, and the Oakland University Teaching Excellence Award. She was appointed to the rank of distinguished professor in February 2021.

For more information about this years 35 Highly Influential Women in Engineering Today, visit academicinfluence.com/rankings/people/influential-women-engineers.

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OU Professor Barbara Oakley named one of '35 Highly Influential Women in Engineering' - 2021 - School of Engineering and Computer Science - News - OU...

Neuroscience

How do babies perceive the world? – MIT Technology Review

Its Ursulas third time in the functional MRI machine. Heather Kosakowski, a PhD student in cognitive neuroscience, is hoping to get just two precious minutes of data from her session. Even though Ursula has been booked to have her brain scanned for two hours, its far from a sure thing. Her first two sessions, also booked for two hours each, yielded only eight minutes of usable material combined.

The task verges on the impossible. Kosakowski needs Ursula to stay both awake, watching projected images of faces and scenes, and very still, ideally for seconds or even minutes at a time. Every twitch and wiggle blurs the MRIs scan, obscuring the image and rendering it useless. But Ursula tends to squirm and then, inevitably, fall asleepexactly what you would expect from a six-month-old baby.

Scanning infants brains while theyre awake is incredibly difficult and time consuming, and theres always a risk that a session will produce no data at all. A motivated adult is capable of staying perfectly still for two hours, yielding brain images that read like an open book. Ursulas sessions produce something more akin to a book thats been torn up and thrown in a river. Kosakowski, who is jointly advised by cognitive neuroscience professors Nancy Kanwisher 80, PhD 86, and Rebecca Saxe, PhD 03, needs to carefully fish out the usable sections and stitch them together before she can read the story they reveal.

Heather is probably the most skilled person alive today at getting high-quality functional MRI data from human infants, says Kanwisher, the Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience.

If Kosakowski doesnt get the two minutes of still brain images she needs, its possible Ursulas two previous visits will have been for nothing. But if she can get a clear fMRI reading, she will be one step closer to answering one of the most profound questions in modern neuroscience: What are the physical underpinnings of the human mind?

Kosakowski is no stranger to overcoming obstacles. Her childhood was characterized by the sort of instability that made any kind of higher education feel unattainable. Her father was in the military, so her family moved around a lot. Then her parents divorced, and the difficulties multiplied. When she was about seven, she and her mother moved into a homeless shelter, and at 11, Kosakowski was put into foster care in Western Massachusetts. Having a bachelors degree was always my dream, she says, but she calls her first attempt at college a dismal failure.

RACHEL FRITTS

I dropped out, I was homeless and had no job, and then I totaled my car and I was like, what am I going to do with my life? she recalls. She decided to enter the Marine Corps but hoped she might someday get a second shot at college.

After several years in the military, Kosakowski left the Marines and returned to Massachusetts, enrolling part time at Massachusetts Bay Community College. Maybe, she thought, a bachelors degree wasnt so far out of reach after all. She set her sights on Smith College, where she was admitted. But around the time she received that piece of news, she also got another: she was pregnant.

Kosakowski didnt go to college anywhere that fall, but her eagerness to learn persisted. Her natural curiosity found an outlet in her baby, Hannah, who was born that October. She watched Hannah experience grass for the first time in the spring, delighting at how she reacted to this strange new material covering the ground. As Hannah explored her environment, Kosakowski kept wondering what things looked like from her perspective. What was she experiencing? How was she making sense of the world around her?

When Hannah was two, Kosakowski got a job at a nonprofit that was working to speed up research on multiple sclerosis, giving her the opportunity to attend a neuroscience conference. After that I was kind of hooked, she says. I was like, okay, the thing I really want to be doing is research, and in order to do research I need a degree. I have to go back to school.

Kosakowski was accepted to Wellesley Collegea school she had written off years before because it was so competitive. She became fascinated with neuroscience, peppering her professors with questions until one said, Heather, some of the questions you ask, nobody knows the answer. You should get a PhD.

Just as Kosakowski graduated from Wellesley, Saxe was looking for a manager for her lab, which happened to be one of the only labs in the world studying babies in MRIs while they are awakeand consequently one of the only ones that could answer Kosakowskis questions about the nature of infant cognition. She applied for the position and got it.

When her foster sister had a baby, Kosakowski went to Saxe and asked if she could learn how to use the fMRI to scan the infants brain. I think she thought Id just scan my niece and be done with it, Kosakowski says. But I just kept scanning, and she never told me to stop. Saxe, impressed with Kosakowskis work and determination, agreed to take her on as a graduate student. In 2017, she left her job as lab manager and began her first semester as a PhD candidate at MIT.

Kanwisher still remembers the first time she saw Kosakowski scan a baby in the MRI. She was considering working with Kosakowski and Saxe on their infant study, but at first she was highly skeptical. This kid is squealing like crazy. The mom is nervous. The whole thing is stressful. And this goes on and on and Heathers not giving up, she says. Thenboom. The clouds part, the kid smiles, Heather pops the kid into the MRI scanner, and like a minute later she scans beautiful data. Just the persistence, the skill, is spectacular.

Kosakowskis current study focuses on how the brains of babies just two to nine months old respond to short videos of faces or bodiesand how that differs from their response to scenes without people. She is the first to find evidence of this kind of specialization in children under five years old. The information shes after can only be measured with fMRI. Magnetic resonance imaging allows researchers to take high-resolution pictures of cross-sections of the brain. Functional MRI adds another layer to this, recording images of brain activity in real time. When neurons in one section of the brain are particularly active, blood flow increases to fuel that region. This shows up as a bright spot on fMRI scans.

Researchers have spent decades using fMRI to prove that sections of the adult brain are highly specialized for certain tasks, and to pinpoint exactly which areas are specialized for which functions. The mind and brain have all this structure. Were not just generically smart. Were smart in very particular ways about very particular things that humans do, Kanwisher says. If you look at the structure, you see this set of dozens of regions of the brain, each that does a very distinctive, different thing Its impossible to look at that and not wonder, How did that structure get wired up?

When adults look at faces, for instance, a section of the brain called the fusiform face area, or FFA, lights up. In other words, if researchers put adults in MRI machines and show them images of both faces and objects, the FFA will only respond to faces. The parahippocampal place area (PPA), meanwhile, responds most strongly to depictions of scenes. Kanwisher herself named the FFA after leading the team that discovered it in 1997, and she led the effort to pinpoint and describe the PPA in 1998. She and her colleagues also discovered the brain section known as the extrastriate body area (EBA), which responds strongly to pictures of body parts, in 2001.

[Heather is] scanning the youngest awake humans that anybody can scan and asking what structure is in the brain within a few months of birth, Kanwisher says. And thats just one of the most thrilling questions in all of psychology, neuroscience, and deep philosophy: What is the structure of our minds and where does it come from?

Preliminary results from Kosakowskis study provide some of the strongest evidence yet that some functions of our brain may be innate rather than learned. Babies also have selective responses for faces, bodies, and scenes in the FFA, EBA, and PPA, Kosakowski says. Nobody has ever found that before. And it was completely not expected that we would find that.

HEATHER KOSAKOWSKI

The covid-19 pandemic, though, has brought its own set of challenges. The fMRI sessions had to be put on hold, and she has spent much of the last year analyzing her data at home. Covid-19 has greatly impacted me in that I am working from home full time and also a single parentthe same way its impacted lots of families with children, Kosakowski says. She hopes to have the opportunity to scan more infantsto begin studying their auditory processing before graduating in May 2022. But Ursulas session in late 2019 turns out to have been one of her last chances to get precious data for her dissertation.

In that session, Ursula had fallen asleep in the scanner, but Kosakowski was in high spirits as it wrapped up. She was pretty sure shed managed to get the dataand shed later confirm she was right. As Ursulas mother left to change out of MRI-friendly scrubs, Kosakowski scooped up the groggy baby and held her as she sat in front of a computer. The unflappable grad student has an uncanny ability to keep babies happy and relaxeda skill no PhD program will teach you, but one thats invaluable when every extra second of clean data helps.

Finally, she pulled up the image shed been looking for, pointing toward the screen as Ursulas gaze followed her finger. Someday, thanks to their combined efforts, we might have a better understanding of how Ursula perceived the image before her. Look! Kosakowski told the baby in her arms. Thats your brain!

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How do babies perceive the world? - MIT Technology Review

Neuroscience

UCI Podcast: The perils and benefits of dream incubation – UCI News

It sounds too crazy to be true: Corporations and scientists using sounds and smells to influence peoples dreams. But targeted dream incubation is not limited to the realm of science fiction. Scientists use the method to help patients overcome addictions such as smoking, and corporations have launched advertising campaigns that encourage willing participants to participate in having their dreams shaped.

Sara Mednick, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at UCI, is worried about the potential misuse of dream incubation and recently joined about 40 other sleep and dream scientists in signing an open letter voicing their concerns. In this episode of the UCI Podcast, Professor Mednick discusses how dream incubation works, and how sleep keeps people healthy.

In this episode:

Sara Mednick, professor of cognitive neurosciences

Sleep and Cognition Lab, Professor Sara Mednicks lab

Advertising in Dreams is Coming: Now What? an open letter signed by about 40 sleep and dream scientists raising concerns about dream incubation, as used for advertising

Spend Saturday Night Dreaming With Zayn Malik, a press release from February 2021 announcing an advertising campaign by Molson Coors to encourage people to participate in targeted dream incubation

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AARON ORLOWSKI, HOST

When the sleeping mind hears certain sounds or smells certain odors, the landscape of dreams shifts. Some memories are reinforced, while others grow dim. By manipulating sounds and smells, scientists and corporations are able to influence our dreams and thus our waking lives.

What are the dangers and benefits of this kind of targeted dream incubation? And how do our dreaming hours keep us healthy?

From the University of California, Irvine, Im Aaron Orlowski and youre listening to the UCI Podcast. Today, Im speaking with Sara Mednick, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at UCI.

Professor Mednick, thank you for joining me today on the UCI Podcast.

SARA MEDNICK

Thanks for having me, Aaron

ORLOWSKI

So you, along with about 40 other sleep and dream scientists, recently signed an open letter raising some alarms about a new type of advertising called targeted dream incubation. Listeners might have heard of this because Molson Coors, the beer company, generated a lot of headlines about this back in January and February when they announced a plan to use this advertising method around the Super Bowl. So I want to ask you: What is dream incubation and how does it work?

MEDNICK

The first thing to kind of understand is that sleep is a time when we are processing our recent experiences and were folding them away and putting them into long-term storage areas where they can be safe and not overwritten by the next days experiences. The idea that you could kind of interfere with this memory processing time or this sleep time has been talked about for a century, at least. But it wasnt until about 15 years ago, 10 years ago, when researchers realized that if you pair the thing that you want to remember with a specific sound while youre trying to learn it.

So if youre trying to learn the position of a lot of different objects and where they go in a puzzle and each puzzle piece has an objects face on it like a cat or a tea kettle or a dog or a car. And all of these objects have a specific sound. The cat sounds like a meow and the dog sounds like a ruff, right? And every time you place that cat puzzle piece in the specific position it goes into the puzzle, you hear the meow sound. So you tie that sound to that position in the puzzle. When you then go to sleep, you play the meow sound, right? And you play say, maybe theres a hundred puzzle pieces. Maybe you play only 50 of those puzzle pieces. And then you wake up the next day and you see how many of those puzzle pieces do you remember their location? It turns out that those sounds that you played in the middle of the night, biased that memory processing to actually only focus on the puzzle pieces that had the sound played. It reactivated specific memories, and it made the memory process focus on only those memories.

And so what happens is your performance for just the memories that you reactivated during sleep. Well, Coors decided that they could use this idea in order to make you have an association between the Coors beer and very specific sounds that were the sounds of a mountain stream or birds chirping or beautiful like very refreshing feelings and sounds. And then when they went to sleep, the subjects were played those sounds again, and woken up, right after they were probably dreaming for awhile with those sounds in their heads. And they asked them, well, what were you dreaming about? And they were dreaming about Coors.

ORLOWSKI

Wow. So this could work for any variety of objects or subjects or ?

MEDNICK

Yeah, anything you can pair a sound to. But it doesnt just have to be a sound. It could be a smell. If there was a specific thing that you wanted somebody to associate, we could use targeted memory reactivation, where we target specific memories to be reactivated during sleep. And we can increase peoples memories. But its also been shown that we can actually make people forget certain memories by doing this targeted memory reactivation. So its like a targeted forgetting, very similar to the Spotless Mind movie, where people were trying to take out memories of long lost loves that they missed, their heartbreaks. And you could actually take out that memory. Well, this is exactly that idea that you can actually during sleep, instead of remember things more, you can actually delete things.

ORLOWSKI

That is crazy. And the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was quite trippy. And if I remember the characters wanted to reverse their forgetting in the end.

MEDNICK

Yeah. Its, I mean, theres just a whole bunch of potential things that it can be used for, that some of them are really great. Theres beautiful research looking at people who are smokers who want to stop smoking. And during sleep, they send in the smell of cigarette smoke into the noses of the sleeping subjects. And at the same time, they pair that smoke with the smell of rotting fish. And what they find is that that creates a negative association with the smoking. And when people wake up in the morning, they dont want to smoke.

ORLOWSKI

So this sort of dream manipulation and memory adjustment, can be used for different purposes, helping an addict overcome their smoking addiction. But also we just talked about Coors using it to encourage people to want to drink more beer. So why are you concerned about this method being used by corporations?

MEDNICK

You know, back in the day before we knew about subliminal messaging manipulating people unconsciously to buy products, there was a lot of advertisements that were sent very quickly through films and you couldnt even see them and suddenly youve got the urge to drink Coke, you know, or eat more popcorn, or whatever it was. And that was outlawed because its unfair. Its unfair that people unconsciously are being driven to do things that they dont even realize that theyre being manipulated to do. So thats, thats that thats been regulated by this point. And those rules only really actually applied to waking experience. And the thing about the law is that you need to actually be very specific or people will get around it. You need to really say, okay, you cant do the subliminal messaging, either in wake or sleep.

And particularly because sleep, youre actually even more vulnerable to messaging than you are during wake, because youre sleeping. You dont remember anything. Subjects never remember that they had sounds played or smells played. And so you have no sense of when youre being manipulated or not. The Nest system has an algorithm that knows when people are sleeping in that room. And if thats the case, then they could also play music, they can play whatever sounds that they want. And so its not a far shot to say that if you know when someones asleep, you can add information into their sleep that would be unbeknownst to them.

ORLOWSKI

Well, so weve been talking a lot about the potential nefarious uses of this type of messaging in peoples dreams, but maybe we can talk a little bit more about why people dream in the first place. What function does it serve for people to have dreams?

MEDNICK

Its a great question. And if you find out the answer, I hope Im the first person that you tell. Nobody knows. Weve been trying to figure out this question for centuries. And its one of the earliest questions known to man and woman, because weve always dreamed. Evolution hasnt pushed it away and we still dream. And we still dont know why. Theres many hypotheses. You know, Im a cognitive scientist, so I look, maybe those dreams that are helping you rehearse the information that you just learned during the day. And that may help you with that long-term storage mechanism I was talking about.

You know, dreams also have emotional content to them. And so theres an idea that while youre dreaming, youre actually rehearsing and playing out certain kinds of scenarios. Maybe youre saying, well, what would I do if an ax murderer was running after me? Like, hmm, let me see that again you know, like these recurring nightmares. Like, what would I do in this case where somebody dumps me or whatever it is. And so you have these kinds of recurrent scenarios in your mind to see, like, what are different potential strategies and outcomes that I could choose?

At the neuroscience level, the idea is that with emotional experiences, we are uncoupling the emotional areas of the brain from the memory areas. And over time, these experiences that are at first rather really emotional actually become less emotionally charged and more kind of cognitively charged, where we can start to think about them a little more rationally over time. And thats a very natural process that happens with emotional experiences and it requires sleep to have a natural progression such that, you know, eventually that breakup that you thought youd never recover from in a month, youre like, yeah, all right, well, I did this wrong or, you know, she did that wrong, or whatever it was that you want to say.

ORLOWSKI

Yeah. Unless youre in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in which case you just regret it eternally,

MEDNICK

And then you just keep making the same mistakes over and over and over.

ORLOWSKI

Yeah. Well, so it sounds like sleeping and dreaming essentially helps us heal. So how does our mood change after weve slept or after weve dreamed?

MEDNICK

Theres obviously the idea of sleep on it youll feel better in the morning. And it turns out that sleep may help you feel worse in the short term and better in the long-term. And you could imagine why, right? If something happened to you while you were walking home, you know, you decided to take the darker route home, and something happened to you, you dont want to just forget that thing. Its actually really protective to have a strong, emotional response to a negative experience. And what has happened is you actually have a stronger emotional response right after you wake up in those first few days. Youre really living inside that emotional response. And then over time that emotional response starts to waiver or just decrease. And what you get is this stronger and stronger cognitive response. Those are really natural protective mechanisms that teach us not to do these things that didnt work out anymore.

ORLOWSKI

Yeah. Well, you mentioned earlier that we are especially vulnerable to messaging while were asleep and, and more so than when were waking. And I guess on one level that seems kind of intuitive, but can you tell us more about why thats the case?

MEDNICK

Many people wake up and they have no idea what they dreamed, right? Your hippocampus is a brain area that takes in new information. And sometimes its, its on, a of the times its on during sleep, but the part of the brain that really connects to the long-term memory and to really storage and to holding on the information, is also the frontal cortex. And the frontal cortex when youre sleeping is totally turned off. So you may have this connections to what recently happened and then what happened 10 years ago to you, and you have these dreams that are making wild connections between all these different experiences and that recent thing that just happened to you.

But when you wake up in the morning, you dont remember any of these things. And thats probably a good idea, right? Because you really want to focus on the things that are real. And the dream time may be some subconscious practice that youre getting through, some process that youre working through. But you dont want to hold onto your dreams per se, more than your waking life. So its actually sort of evolutionarily better to not necessarily be carrying your dreams around all day, but that also means that you dont know what happened to you in the middle of the night, if your dreams were suddenly full of Coors commercials.

ORLOWSKI

Yeah. You might not know how that got there, how those arrived.

MEDNICK

Yeah, you definitely wouldnt.

ORLOWSKI

Yeah, well, and I want to ask you one final thing. If I just want to get good sleep, what steps should I take? Youve studied many people or many components of sleeping and how to increase quality sleep. So what are the best actions to take?

MEDNICK

Theres so many different things that can be done. And theres a whole list of any website will tell you what sleep hygiene tips to take. But some of the ones that dont necessarily get recommended, but I recommend is getting to sleep early. Because the sleep that you get in the first part of the night is different than the sleep that you get in the morning. So the idea that you can get to sleep late and then sleep a little bit later in the morning, youre not actually getting the sleep thats the really good sleep. Whats called slow-wave sleep happens in the first part of the night. And thats the stuff that does all the clearance of toxins from the brain. And when people get older, they have less and less slow-wave sleep and more and more buildup of these toxins that can lead to the plaques that develop with Alzheimers. And also a lot of this memory consolidation stuff that weve been talking about all happens during slow-wave sleep. So really getting to sleep early, Im talking like 10 p.m., is very important for getting that early deep sleep that is the most restorative that we have.

Another thing is to make sure that when you wake up in the morning, you go outside and you get some sun. We are rhythmic animals and the sun is the strongest whats called entrainer, basically. Its the downbeat for our day. And when you get bright light early in the morning, that sets you up to actually be ready for sleep at night. And if you dont have bright light, maybe its the winter time and youre on the East Coast or something, get one of these really strong all spectrum lights and just have it for 15 minutes on while youre having your breakfast in the morning. I could go on and on, but reduce blue screens after 6 p.m. The blue light is really strong inhibitors of melatonin, which is a sleep hormone. And so you want to make sure that after 6 p.m., youre really trying not to get in front of any fluorescent lights or any lights that dont have some filters on them.

ORLOWSKI

Professor Mednick, thank you so much for joining me today on the UCI Podcast.

MEDNICK

Thanks for having me. It was super fun.

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UCI Podcast: The perils and benefits of dream incubation - UCI News

Neuroscience

A new class of memory cells discovered in the brain – Tech Explorist

How the brain recognizes the faces of familiar individuals has been important throughout the history of neuroscience. But the proposed cells that link visual processing to person memory are not found yet.

A new study reported the discovery of such cells in the brains temporal pole region that links face perception to long-term memory. Scientists from the Rockefeller University have a new class of memory cells that collectively remembers faces.

Scientists used fMRI as a guide to zoom in on the TP regions of two rhesus monkeys. They then recorded the electrical signals of TP neurons as the macaques watched images of familiar faces and unfamiliar faces that they had only seen virtually on a screen.

When subjects had seen familiar faces, their neurons in the TP region were highly selective. After processing the image, these neurons found to fastdiscriminating between known and unknown faces.

Strangely, these cells responded threefold more strongly to familiar over unfamiliar faces despite the fact that the subjects had seen the unfamiliar many times on screens.

Neuroscientist Sofia Landi, first author on the paper, said, This signifies the importance of knowing someone in person. Given the tendency nowadays to go virtual, it is important to note that faces that we have seen on a screen may not evoke the same neuronal activity as faces that we meet in person.

Winrich Freiwald, professor of neurosciences and behavior at The Rockefeller University, said,The cells of the TP region behave like sensory cells, with reliable and fast responses to visual stimuli. But they also act like memory cells that respond only to stimuli that the brain has seen beforein this case, familiar individualsreflecting a change in the brain due to past encounters. Theyre these very visual, very sensory cellsbut like memory cells. We have discovered a connection between the sensory and memory domains.

The discovery of the TP region at the heart of facial recognition means that we can soon start investigating how those cells encode familiar faces. We can now ask how this region is connected to the other parts of the brain and what happens when a new face appears. And of course, we can begin exploring how it works in the human brain.

In the future, the findings may also have clinical implications for people suffering from prosopagnosia, or face blindness, a socially isolating condition that affects about one percent of the population. Face-blind people often suffer from depression. It can be debilitating because in the worst cases, they cannot even recognize close relatives.

This discovery could one day help us devise strategies to help them.

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A new class of memory cells discovered in the brain - Tech Explorist

Neuroscience

There’s A Simple Way To Feel Happier, According To The New Science Of Emotion : Shots – Health News – NPR

Back in the fall, Michelle Shiota noticed she wasn't feeling like herself. Her mind felt trapped. "I don't know if you've ever worn a corset, but I had this very tight, straining feeling in my mind," she says. "My mind had shrunk."

Shiota is a psychologist at Arizona State University and an expert on emotions. When the COVID-19 crisis struck, she began working from home and doing one activity, over and over again, all day long.

"I will be honest, for the past 14 months, I have spent most of my waking hours looking at a screen, either my laptop, my phone or a TV screen," she says, often from the same sofa, in the same room in her San Francisco home. All that isolation and screen time had taken a toll on Shiota.

During the pandemic, many people have felt their mental health decline. The problem has hit essential workers and young adults, ages 18 to 24, the worst, the Kaiser Family Foundation reported in May. The percentage of adults with signs of anxiety or depression has grown threefold, from about 10% to 30%.

Although some people are starting to test the waters of public life again, planning vacations and socializing more, others may still have lingering signs of what psychologists call languishing. They may feel an emptiness or dissatisfaction in day-to-day life. Or feel like they're stuck in weariness or stagnation.

Luckily, an emerging area of brain science has a new way to help lift yourself out of languishing and bring more joy into your life. It worked for Shiota.

"I had to expand my consciousness," she says. And she did it by intentionally cultivating a particular emotion.

Explore ways to cultivate well-being with NPR's Joy Generator.

For thousands of years, there's been a common belief in Western culture about emotions that they are hard-wired and reflexive, psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett writes in the book How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. "When something happens in the world ... our emotions come on fast and uncontrollable, as if somebody flipped a switch," she writes.

But when researchers look at what's going on inside the brain and inside the body during specific emotional states, the theory doesn't hold up.

Over the past decade, neuroscientists have begun to shift how they think emotions arise. Rather than being inevitable, hard-coded experiences, researchers now think emotions are malleable, and people have more influence over them than previously thought.

Say for example, you're walking in the woods, and you see a grizzly bear, says neuroscientist Anil Seth at the University of Sussex. "You recognize it's a bear," he says, "and then what happens?"

Previously researchers thought the emotion comes first. "You see a bear and then you feel afraid," Seth says. "Because you're afraid, your brain then jacks up your adrenaline levels."

Your heart rate rises. Your breath quickens. Your pupils dilate. And blood rushes to your skeletal muscles. The old theory was that "the fear sets in train all kinds of flight and fight responses so that you are well-prepared to run away and live another day," he adds. In other words, the emotion (i.e., fear) triggers the physiological responses (i.e., an adrenaline rush).

But according to the latest research, the human body probably works the other way around, Seth says. "The brain registers a grizzly bear, and that perception sets in train all the physiological responses." You get an adrenaline rush. Your heart rate goes up. You start breathing faster. Blood rushes to your muscles. And then the emotion comes.

The brain senses these physiological changes and decides which emotion to conjure up. The emotion is an interpretation of what's going on both inside the body (the adrenaline rush) and the outside of the body (the sight of the bear). "The brain has to figure out what caused the sensory signals," Seth says.

The chosen emotion not only helps the brain make sense of these signals, but it also helps the brain predict better the immediate future and how to handle the situation at hand. Which emotion would be most useful? Which emotion will help me survive?

To figure that all out, Seth says, the brain uses one more piece of information and this part is key. The brain takes into account your past experiences, your memories.

Let's return back to that encounter with the grizzly bear. If your past experiences with bears come largely through news reports of attacks and maulings, then your brain will likely interpret your bodily sensations raised heart rate, raised blood pressure, sweaty palms as fear. Lots of fear! And this emotion will help drive you away from the bear. "So you can live another day," Seth says.

But what if your family hunts for a living? And your past encounters with a bear ended in a wonderful feast for you and your neighbors. Then your brain may interpret the adrenaline rush the heavy breathing and raised heart rate as excitement. This positive emotion will help drive you forward toward the bear, while all the physiological changes help you bring home dinner.

"Your brain uses memories from the past in order to create the present," says Barrett, who also does neuroscience research. "It's bringing knowledge from the past to make sense of the immediate future, which then becomes your present."

Neuroscientists call this "the predictive brain." Understanding how these predictions work is "very powerful knowledge," Barrett says. It means that emotions aren't hard-wired reactions to particular situations, which are out of your control (i.e., you see a bear and therefore you must feel afraid). But rather it's the opposite. "You can, in fact, modify what you feel in very direct ways," she says.

It's not about trying to force a happier or less fearful feeling in the moment, Barrett says. But rather, it's all about planning ahead. You can stack the deck in favor of your brain, choosing positive, uplifting emotions in two major ways, she says.

The first one is a no-brainer: You can take care of your body physically. According to this new theory, the brain constructs emotions based largely on physiological signals and other sensations from your body. So by boosting your physical health, you can decrease the chance your body will send unpleasant signals to your brain and, in turn, increase the chance, your brain will construct positive emotions instead of negative ones. "You can get more sleep. You can eat properly and exercise," she says.

The second approach to influencing your emotions may be less familiar but likely just as impactful: You can "cultivate" the emotions you want to have in the future.

"If you know that your brain uses your past in order to make sense [of] and create the present, then you can practice cultivating [positive] emotions today so that your brain can automatically use that knowledge when it's making emotions tomorrow," Barrett says.

By practicing particular emotions, you can "rewire" your brain, she says. "Your brain grows new connections that make it easier for you to automatically cultivate these emotions in the future." So when you start to feel a negative emotion, such as sadness or frustration, you can more easily swap that negative feeling for a positive one, such as awe or gratitude.

"For example, when I am video chatting with somebody in China, I can feel irritated very easily when the connection isn't very good," Barrett says. "Or I can feel awe at the fact that someone can be halfway around the world, and I can see their face and hear their voice, even if it is imperfect, and I can be grateful for that ability."

In this way, emotions are a bit like muscle memory. If you practice the finger patterns for a chord on the piano, a few minutes each day, eventually your fingers can play those chords with little thought. The chords become second nature.

The same goes for emotions. To help pull out of the pandemic blues, it's time to start "practicing" positive emotions and it won't take as much as learning all the chords.

All you need is about five to 10 minutes, says psychologist Belinda Campos at the University of California, Irvine. "Hopefully it wouldn't take people as much effort as it does to eat healthier or to exercise," she says. "Positive emotions feel good. I think people will find them rewarding enough to return to them and keep doing them."

Scientists say this practice is helpful to prevent or work with everyday doldrums and weariness. It isn't intended as a replacement for treatments, such as counseling and medication, for serious mood disorders or anyone going through intense or prolonged bouts of depression.

A few decades ago, scientists used to lump together all kinds of positive emotions into one concept: happiness. Since then, a group of psychologists, including Campos and Shiota, figured that there is a whole "family tree" of positive emotions, including pride, nurturant love, contentment, nostalgia, flow, gratitude and awe.

One reason these emotions often make us feel good is they shift our focus away from the self that is "me and my problems" and onto others, Campos says. "They help put the self in its balanced place, of not being absolutely the highest thing on the to-do list. They help us focus on the joys that relationships can bring."

She adds, "In this way, positive emotions are part of what helps you to put others before the self." And helping others often makes people feel good. "So, for example, people report levels of higher well-being when they're giving to others, and it can feel better to be on the giving end rather than the receiving end," she says. "I think that's more evidence that focusing on others can be really good for us."

The idea of cultivating positive emotions is pretty simple. Choose one of these emotions and then do a specific action regularly that helps evoke it. Psychologists have devised suggestions for how to get started, but it can be as simple as taking time to notice and appreciate the small things around you that uplift you. (Read three tips to get started at the end of this piece.)

Over time, your brain will start to use these emotions more often and turn to negative emotions less frequently.

Take, for instance, gratitude.

For the past year and a half, Dr. Sriram Shamasunder has been on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. Shamasunder is a physician at the University of California, San Francisco, and he spends about half his time in low-income communities around the world.

To help bring more "light" into his life, Shamasunder started to keep a gratitude journal. It was part of a project for the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

Each day, Shamasunder simply jotted down things around him for which he was grateful. "So not necessarily spending a whole lot of time racking my mind, but just everyday occurrences that were powerful or meaningful or just simple and beautiful," Shamasunder told The Science of Happiness podcast. He jotted down the doctors and nurses working on Sunday, "the unseen hands who created a vaccine," "the evening light, magical and orange and blue," and a tree outside that provides refuge to birds, ants and squirrels.

By intentionally cultivating gratitude, for even a short period each day, Shamasunder found it easier to evoke positive feelings throughout the day. "The act of naming the gratitudes carried into the next day and the next, where I became more aware of things in my life that I should cherish in the moment, or I need to cherish."

Back in the fall, when Shiota, the Arizona State psychologist, felt her mind shrinking, she knew exactly which emotion she needed to cultivate.

She got up off the couch, drove West from her San Francisco home and ended up at the edge of the ocean. "I am trying to reconnect with the vast natural world, with the universe beyond my professional and personal responsibilities, and beyond this moment in time," Shiota writes in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. "I am searching for awe."

Shiota is a world expert on awe. She says the emotion is difficult to define, "but I think that what we are dealing with is a change that happens in our mind and in our bodies and in our feelings when we encounter something so extraordinary that we can't explain it."

That encounter can be with something grand, such as a panoramic view of a red sun dipping into the Pacific Ocean. It can be with something minuscule, such as the black spots on a ladybug. (How did they get so perfectly round?) It can be a scent, a taste or sound. "It can be a very complex and powerful song that you've never heard before or even a scene in a TV show," Shiota says.

Whatever it is, the extraordinariness of the event makes you pause, for a bit, Shiota says, and try to figure it out. How does a rose smell like a lemon? Why does a perfectly ripened peach taste so good? "We simply slow down our body, slow down," Shiota says.

And this pause calms your body. "I've found evidence that the activation of our fight-flight sympathetic nervous system dials back a little bit."

The feeling of awe also widens your perspective, she says which Shiota desperately needed after spending so much time looking at screens. "I had to consciously force myself to look further away. I had to let my senses my sight, my sound, take in a broader scope of what was going on around me."

In addition to going to the beach, Shiota also simply walked around her neighborhood, looking for unexpected and inspiring things.

"There was this amazingly elaborate, chalk drawing in recognition of somebody's birthday. There was a couple, in which one person was clearly helping the other learn to roller-skate on the San Francisco hills. And they're clinging on to each other for dear life," she says with a chuckle. "Then the flowers! If you look closely at flowers, in a way that you never take the time to do, you'll see how incredibly intricate they are.

"So the opportunities for awe are there," she says. "Look for what moves you, what pushes your sense of boundaries of what is out there in the world."

It took a little time and patience Shiota says, but eventually these "awe walks" helped her recover from her pandemic funk. Practicing awe released her mind from that constraining "corset."

"Then my mind was able to spread out and take up the space that it needs to take to feel OK," she says. And once her mind released, her body followed. "When you take off the corset, your whole body goes, 'Oh, oh! That's much better.' "

Psychologists say you can improve your well-being if you recognize moments of positive feelings, value them and seek them out more often. Below, find a few other ideas for cultivating positive emotions and turning happiness into a habit. To explore more ideas, check out NPR's Joy Generator.

1) Share some appreciation: Campos recommends this simple practice. Get together with some friends and write out on cards three things that you're grateful for in the other person. Then share the cards with each other.

"We're using this task right now in my laboratory, and it seems to be very evocative of positive emotion," she says. And though the data is preliminary, she says, "what we see so far is that people enjoy writing what they appreciate in others, and they enjoy sharing it with the other person. It seems to be affirming bonds." Sometimes it even ends in hugs.

2) Take an awe walk: Take a five-minute walk outside each day where you intentionally shift your thoughts outward. Turn off your cellphone or even better don't bring it with you. "Focus your attention on small details of the world around you," psychologist Piercarlo Valdesolo at Claremont McKenna College suggests. Look for things that are unexpected, hard to explain and delightful.

For example, take a moment and find a crack in the sidewalk, where a weed is poking out, Barrett says. And let yourself feel awe at the power of nature. "Practice that feeling over and over again," she says. "Practice feeling awe at colorful clouds, an intricate pattern on a flower or the sight of a full moon."

3) Listen to a calm concert: A recent meta-analysis from the University of Michigan found that sounds of nature, including birdsongs and water sounds, lower stress, promote calmness and improve mood. Find a bench in your neighborhood under a tree or near water. Sit down, close your eyes and consciously listen to the natural sounds around you. Listen for birdsongs, rustling wind or trickling water. Try sitting for at least five minutes whenever you get a chance. Allow and enjoy calm to wash over you.

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There's A Simple Way To Feel Happier, According To The New Science Of Emotion : Shots - Health News - NPR