Neuroscience

A Reading List About the Neuroscience of Reading – Longreads

I learned to read when my older sisters returned from elementary school and practiced with our family. I remember sitting on the left side of my mom, fingers running over pictures of ladybugs and small golden dogs, while my sister sat on her right side and read the story aloud. She could read more words than I could, but I was getting there. By the time I was 9, I hid books under my bed and pulled them out in the middle of the night to read one more chapter. By the time I was 18, packing my things for college, I puzzled over what to do with my floor-to-ceiling, overflowing bookshelf. Everything I read became a part of my identity, and everything I could keep (or steal) became a member of the sprawling crowd of voices that eventually converged into my own.

When you look up the key features of a civilization, most historians agree that a group of people must implement a system of writing in order to be civilized. Reading makes us human.

But what if I told you that humans were never meant to read in the first place?Our brains come hard-wired with the ability to hear and speak language (from a place called Wernickes area in the temporal lobe) and the ability to understand and remember symbols (the parietal lobe). There is no specific area in the brain that is meant to read; thats why children have to be taught to read, and why some people have an easier time learning than others. Every time a reader starts a new story, they are taking advantage of a system that is both brand-new and generations in the making. As humans evolved, our brains learned to combine the use of multiple regions and a process called neuronal recycling to repurpose the skills we already have. Its a miracle.

Reading a new book, learning a new language, and even speaking our own language to communicate with friends and loved ones are the results of a multifaceted, living system. Learning that reading and writing are far from natural changed the way I read my favorite books. As a writer, I can treat myself with more patience knowing the lengths to which my brain has gone so I have the chance to write anything at all. As a reader, I value every word more knowing that it has traveled through countless geographical locations and definitions so it can hold that exact spot in one specific sentence.

The reading list below is a selection of works that explain in more depth how we got to where we are today an age when literacy is not just considered an essential skill but an outlet for escapism, obsession, and self-expression. Spoiler alert: This process hasnt finished yet. For as long as we read and write, our brains and our language influence one another and adapt to the literary climate. It is our gift to not only learn how this process takes place but to take advantage of the positive changes it could make for ourselves and our society.

Wolf is the author of many books about reading, including Proust and the Squid and Reader, Come Home. Although she works as a neuroscientist at the University of California San Francisco, she has a gift for explaining complicated processes like neuronal recycling to audiences unfamiliar with high-brow academic jargon. This essay speaks to book lovers, analyzing the process that allows readers to step into another persons clothes. Wolf explains how this experience, at first appearing straightforward, is actually the product of several different parts of your brain (semantic and grammatical systems) working together to attach symbols to words. When we mature as readers, the cognitive process expands and we begin to feel what we read, truly living through words. As it turns out, Wolf reveals, the long process that has led to symbol comprehension is only just the beginning.

Human beings invented reading, and it took them thousands of years of cognitive breakthroughs to go from simple markings called tokens to text encoded in writing systems like Sumerian, Chinese, or the Greek alphabet. Reading has expanded the ways we are able to think and altered the cultural development of our species; still, it is a wholly learned skill, one that effects deep and lasting neurological changes in the individual.

Living in literature changes us emotionally, but the effects of reading fiction at a close level are apparent cognitively, too. Here, Pawlik pulls together a variety of sources that discuss and interrogate what happens to us when we read fiction. Does literature actually pose a benefit to society beyond the individual route of escapism? Summaries of various cognitive studies reveal that reading does activate parts of the brain that are involved in interpreting social cues. More than that, Pawlik interrogates these effects on a societal level. Fiction readers are more tolerant, more empathetic, and even more likely to accept new technologies like robots.

A study, conducted by Martina Mara and Markus Appel, looked at whether science fiction can change our feelings towards robots. They had people read either a science fiction story or a non-fiction pamphlet, before interacting with a human-like robot. The participants who read the sci-fi story reported reduced feelings of eeriness, which didnt occur when people read the same information in the form of a leaflet. This led the authors to suggest that science fiction may provide meaning for otherwise unsettling future technologies.

But what happens to your brain if youre not one to sit and binge-read novels? Even though understanding, interpreting, and speaking language are natural parts of our brains, something magical still happens when we learn to speak a new language. Saga Briggs writes about how people who recently learned a language show increased activity in the parts of their brains responsible for auditory processing, memory, and grammatical comprehension. Here, Briggs lays out a step-by-step process: what happens to your brain as you learn a new language, how we measure language learning, and what this means for new language-learners. It takes a lot of the scare away from learning a new language, and for us monolingual speakers out there, it helps us appreciate just how wonderful it is that we know one language already and what the benefits could be of two.

Theres an important lesson to be gleaned from the neuroscience of language learning, then, one we can keep in mind as we tackle our next target language: our brains are adaptable, and we can trust them to take on the challenge.

In this beautiful examination of the multiple faces of writing, Erik Gleibermann interviews eight bilingual writers about their writing processes and the writing relationship between their mother tongue and their adopted one.

Gleibermann explores the universe of the bilingual writer in this essay, bringing to light the way that bilingual writers use variations in tongue to resurface childhood memories or imply a tone of sexual whimsy. This piece also examines the reality of the bilingual writer in the Trump-administration era and upper-level American academia, during which times many bilingual writers were encouraged to silence their backgrounds and write only in English. In the end, though, bilingual writers support and inspire one another. Even if they speak (and write) completely different languages, they form an extended family that welcomes everyones stories.

Traveling back and forth can be a journey of both reconciliation and conflict.

In living this duality, these writers voice the daily experience of many bilingual immigrants around the world who are cooking breakfast, attending staff meetings, posing questions in class, and buying the weeks groceries. Collectively, bilingual writers play a formative cultural role in the United States, reflecting the lives of a growing community.

Outside of the human experience, though, even language itself is constantly evolving. Or rather, it is evolving because of the human experience, just as weve seen how reading changes the human brain. John McWhorter, linguist and author of several books, including Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue and Words on the Move, is a spirited tour guide for the spontaneous and sometimes baffling journey English words have gone through.

Throughout this essay, McWhorter never leaves readers by the wayside. He explains the nuances of definitions, the history of the English language, and something called a zombie-word. The survey on English language is precise and all-encompassing, not only examining new words but comparing English to other languages that may be (not-so) similar.

The central point is this: The fit between words and meanings is much fuzzier and more unstable than we are led to suppose by the static majesty of the dictionary and its tidy definitions. What a word means today is a Polaroid snapshot of its lexical life, long-lived and frequently under transformation.

Human language, as we can see, changes and adapts in its moving, complex relationship with humans themselves. This even includes parts of language that arent words! There are more ways we communicate over writing than just with letters, and our brains with their symbol-comprehension capabilities are prepared for that. Internet linguist (yes, thats a thing!) Gretchen McCulloch explains the growing use of emojis in this essay for Slate. According to McCulloch, writing is a technology that removes the body from the language, making it easier to communicate across distance and time but harder to convey tone of voice. She debunks the idea that emojis are a new language there isnt even a way to say emoji in emoji but asserts that they function either as elements of language called emblems or co-speech gestures.

McCulloch takes readers through her experience researching emojis in an informal, down-to-earth way, but she still takes the search for answers seriously. Like McWhorter, McCulloch presents linguistics in a way that is accessible to the regular person. She also honestly communicates her conversations with other linguists, including multiple perspectives and some computer analysis. McCulloch defines a specific function and purpose to the use of the emoji, and reveals that human beings continually seek connection despite time and distance.

When the world was wondering if emoji were a new kind of language, sequences that retold familiar stories in emoji got a lot of attention. Its easy to see how this fit in with the idea of emoji as gesture: Theyre like playing digital charades or pantomiming to a friend across a loud bar. But this is rarely the way that emoji combos interface with our casual written communication.

Neuroscience and linguistics are interesting, sure, but they matter outside of the classroom, too. Nothing is stable: not our own brains, and not the words in the language we create. Because of this, says Helen Rubinstein, we need to make new rules no more grammar police. A former copyeditor, Rubinstein reflects on her previous career and makes various arguments that acknowledge not just changing the landscape of English but the personal experiences of writers, such as those who speak with a dialect but are encouraged to use only proper English. This piece is hot and unapologetic: It takes into account the cultural scenes and power dynamics implicit in copyediting, challenging the practice.

I sense a kind of hysteria in these protests against fiddling with language, the same hysteria that led me to reject the work of copy editors with stridence. Yes, such changes are unbearably minor in the face of ongoing incarceration and murder; yes, they can resemble the peacocking of those corporate BLM statements that did little more than advertise corporations whiteness. But its absurd to insist that any choice about language be apolitical.

Melanie Hamon is a freelance writer, grant writer, and full-time student in Ohio. Her work has been published inNUVO IndyandIntrovert, Dear.

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A Reading List About the Neuroscience of Reading - Longreads

Neuroscience

How I wrote a popular science book about consciousness and why – Nature.com

Anil Seths public-engagement work includes a 2017 TED talk that has had more than 13 million views.Credit: Bret Hartman/TED

Anil Seth recalls standing in front of a bathroom mirror aged eight or nine, and suddenly understanding that he would die one day. That realization made him wonder about where he came from, and why he was who he was. Those childhood thoughts about consciousness developed in his teenage years, resulting in debates with friends about free will and the mind. Seth now investigates such questions as a neuroscientist, and is the author of the 2021 book Being You: A New Science of Consciousness (Faber & Faber). His 2017 TED Talk, Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality, has had more than 13 million views. Here he talks to Nature about his career and book, and about the other public-engagement activities he undertakes as professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the University of Sussex near Brighton, UK.

Consciousness is linked to subjective experience, which isnt the same as being intelligent or having language or writing poetry. I want people to understand that the science of consciousness is alive and well. It doesnt mean we will find the answer to it, but we can make a lot of progress in understanding it.

I make three arguments in the book. The first is that consciousness can be addressed by science. I divide it from one big scary mystery into a few smaller, more-tractable ones. For example, how can we explain the difference between various levels of consciousness such as between general anaesthesia and wakeful awareness or falling into a dream sleep, a psychedelic state and so on.

The second argument is based on how we perceive the world around us the idea that we live in a controlled hallucination and that our experiences of the world dont give us direct, unfettered access to whatevers out there. The neuroscience theory here is that the brain is continually generating predictions about our surroundings.

The third argument is that the self is another kind of controlled hallucination, whether its the experience of free will, of having a body of emotion, of mood all different kinds of perception.

At the end of the book, I explore some of these implications for consciousness in non-human animals, and question whether artificial intelligence will become not only intelligent, but also sentient.

Why women arent from Venus, and men arent from Mars

I like to talk about what I do and, perhaps unlike with some other areas of science, people are naturally curious about consciousness and more willing to listen. I have also always liked writing. When I was an undergraduate, I realized that writing is fulfilling. Through your academic career, you write more and more, be it papers, research grants or editing. I did some public-engagement work, initially giving talks, then writing short pieces for outlets such as New Scientist and The Guardian, which was extremely satisfying.

In 2016, I presented a Friday Discourse at the UK Royal Institution the most prestigious thing I had done. (These talks were set up in their current format in 1826 as informal conversations about science with the public.) I chatted to people who were working in public engagement, including geneticist and BBC broadcaster Adam Rutherford, and I just felt then that it was the appropriate moment to write the book.

I started doing physics at university, mainly because it is seen as the most fundamental of the sciences and the best way to plug any gaps in understanding. But I felt I was moving too far away from the mind, so I switched to psychology and, later, during my masters degree and PhD, to computer science and artificial intelligence.

After my PhD, a postdoctoral opportunity in brain-based robotics arose at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, California. I got the job, not because of my interest in consciousness, but because I could help to build biologically inspired robots.

How a grisly historical accident set one neuroscientist on the road to writing a book

At that time, in the early 2000s, the institute was one of the few places where it was acceptable to study consciousness. There was a sense that the field was still predominantly philosophical and that it might be a poor career choice, because people didnt really know what consciousness was or how it worked. However, things changed when senior academics began to talk about consciousness and to set up dedicated research institutions. I ended up staying at the institute for more than six years, working on diverse projects (it ceased its research operations in 2018). Also, living in San Diego is not bad, learning to surf and all.

It was an inspiring time, with the feeling that I had found an intellectual community. I started attending meetings of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness an international non-profit organization co-founded by the German philosopher Thomas Metzinger in 1994. The community includes some of the smartest and most interesting people I have met, from disciplines across philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, medicine and computer science. I thought, this is the work that I want to do.

I think we are all interested in ourselves, how we work and who we are, so I am grateful that I have been able to make a career out of my interest in these fundamental questions.

With difficulty. One struggle is that universities want academics to do public engagement, but do not give much credit in terms of time or teaching remission. Sometimes, the attitude is that if it is fun, then you should do it in your spare time. Good public engagement takes time, and is very important for inspiring new generations of scientists and increasing the impact of your work.

Collection: Science communication

Luckily, I had an Engagement Fellowship from the UK research funder Wellcome that provided me with a break from teaching duties. However, I was still writing the book mainly in the evenings and at weekends. The rest was done ad hoc by setting myself deadlines. If you write 1,000 words every couple of days, you will soon have a book.

A key challenge was balancing what I wanted to say with what people will want to read, which is where having a good editor really helps. I was worried that, having put lots of effort into the book, it would sink like a stone and go unnoticed. However, the reception was extraordinary and exceeded my expectations.

One current project is Dreamachine, which brought together scientists, philosophers, architects, musicians and digital designers to develop a collective, immersive art experience. It is based on the neuroscience concept that fast, flickering lights on closed eyes give rise to visual hallucinations. Last year, the installation formed part of the UNBOXED festival, a UK-wide event featuring ten creative projects that straddled the arts, sciences, technology and mathematics. During the festival, more than 30,000 people experienced Dreamachine, which is amazing. Hopefully it is reigniting peoples curiosity in the brain.

Another focus is the Perception Census, a big online citizen-science survey overseen by the University of Sussex and the University of Glasgow, UK. Were asking members of the public to take part in a series of online, interactive tasks from the comfort of their own homes, so we can try to learn more about perceptual diversity.

Collection: Spotlight on neuroscience

Over the past decade or so, there has been much emphasis on neurodiversity, the idea that there are many different ways of experiencing the world, and that this cognitive and perceptual variation enriches society. However, the neurodiversity label has come to be associated with specific conditions, such as autism or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, ironically reinforcing the idea that if you dont identify with a neurodivergent condition, then you experience the world as it is, in a neurotypical way.

But perceptual diversity exists among all of us. Two people might experience different colours when they look up at the sky, but they wont know it because they will use the same descriptive words. Its also because the differences they see are not enough to influence behaviour, and, crucially, because perceptual experience seems to be a window on to objective reality, rather than a brain-based construction. Im now very interested in mapping out this hidden perceptual diversity. I want to know about the middle, not the extremes. Our Perception Census project is doing exactly this. If we can recognize that everyone literally sees the world in a different way, then it might become easier to accommodate the fact that others might see, and therefore believe, different things.

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How I wrote a popular science book about consciousness and why - Nature.com

Neuroscience

Neuroscience: You will Never Lack Motivation Again – New Trader U

By learning to access pleasure from a tasks effort, you can improve your motivation and develop discipline for hard work. For many people, hard work can be a daunting task that is often avoided. However, when working towards a monetary, career goal, or social purpose, individuals may feel compelled to put in the necessary effort. The benefits of learning to access pleasure from effort extend beyond just motivation. By developing the discipline to work hard, you can improve your ability to take on challenging tasks and achieve your goals. This can be especially beneficial when external rewards are not immediately present, such as in long-term projects, weight loss, fitness, or personal growth efforts.

A classic experiment was done at Stanford University many years ago in which children in Nursery School and kindergarten drew pictures.

The children were then randomly assigned to one of the following conditions:

Expected reward. In this condition, children were told they would get a certificate with a gold seal and ribbon if they took part.Surprise reward. In this condition, children would receive the same prize as above but werent told about it until after the drawing activity was finished.No reward. Children in this condition expected no reward and didnt receive one.

Each child was invited into a separate room to draw for 6 minutes, afterward either given their reward or not, depending on the condition.

Then, the children were watched through one-way mirrors over the next few days to see how much they would continue drawing independently.

The expected reward had decreased the childrens spontaneous interest in drawing, and there was no statistically significant difference between the no reward and surprise reward group.

Those who had previously liked drawing and had a high intrinsic motivation were less motivated once they expected to be rewarded for the activity.

The expected reward reduced the spontaneous drawing the children did by half.

Judges also rated the pictures the children drew, expecting a reward as less aesthetically pleasing.

The study demonstrates both the dangers of extrinsic motivation and the power of intrinsic motivation. [1]

The researchers started rewarding the kids for drawing, such as a gold star. But when they stopped giving the gold star, the children had a higher tendency not to want to draw on their own. This activity was something the children had learned previously to enjoy intrinsically and chose to do. This relates to the concept of intrinsic versus extrinsic reinforcement. When we receive rewards, even if we give ourselves rewards for something, we associate less pleasure with the activity that evoked the prize. This doesnt mean all rewards are bad, but its essential to understand that dopamine underlies our motivation for action.

Dopamine controls our perception of time. When we engage in an activity, such as hard work or exercise, because of the reward we will receive at the end, we extend the time we analyze or perceive that experience. Because the external reward comes at the end, we start dissociating the neural circuits for dopamine and the reward that would have been active during the activity. As a result, we experience less and less pleasure from that particular activity while doing it. The opposite of this is a growth mindset, which is the mindset of striving to be better.

The growth mindset delivers tremendous performance results. People with growth mindsets perform very well because theyre focused on the effort itself. All of us can cultivate growth mindsets by learning to access the rewards from effort and doing.

To develop a growth mindset, you must learn to access the rewards of effort and action. This can be challenging because it requires engaging your brains prefrontal component of the mesolimbic circuit. You must be able to tell yourself that the effort youre putting in is fun and enjoyable, even if youre experiencing physical discomfort while exercising or studying.

The most beneficial thing that can serve as a motivational amplifier on all endeavors, especially challenging ones, is not to start layering in other sources of dopamine to get started but to subjectively attach the feeling of friction and effort to an internally generated reward system. This system exists in the human mind and has existed for hundreds of thousands of years. Its not just pursuing innately pleasurable things, like food, sex, warmth, or water, but rather accessing pleasure from effort.

This approach is accessible to all of us. To do this, you need to start telling yourself that the pain of the moment will lead to an increase in dopamine release later. You must also tell yourself that youre doing it by choice and because you love it. This is different from thinking about the reward that comes at the end. By doing this, you can associate dopamine release with friction and effort.

Accessing pleasure from the effort aspect of our dopaminergic circuitry is one of the most potent and essential aspects of dopamine in our biology. When we learn to spike our dopamine from the effort itself, we can experience an increase in energy and focus, which can help us to stay motivated and engaged in the activity.

Its crucial to note that we should not spike our dopamine before or after engaging in the effort, as this can undermine the overall process of accessing pleasure from the steps. When we only focus on the reward that comes after the effort, we associate the reward with the activity itself rather than the action we put in. An extrinsic reward system can make the activity less enjoyable and less efficient in the long run.

By focusing on the effort and learning to access the pleasure from it, we can develop a growth mindset and be more motivated to take on challenging tasks. This can also help us to maintain our motivation and avoid burnout, as were not relying solely on external rewards to drive our efforts.

Overall, spiking dopamine from effort is a powerful way to cultivate a growth mindset and achieve our goals. By embracing the effort and learning to find pleasure in action, we can develop greater resilience, motivation, and a deeper sense of satisfaction in our accomplishments.

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Neuroscience: You will Never Lack Motivation Again - New Trader U

Neuroscience

Getting Good Sleep Could Add Years to Your Life – Neuroscience News

Summary: Findings suggest up to 8% of deaths by any cause could be attributed to poor sleep patterns. Researchers say those who have healthier sleep habits are incrementally less likely to die early.

Source: American College of Cardiology

Getting good sleep can play a role in supporting your heart and overall healthand maybe even how long you liveaccording to new research being presented at the American College of Cardiologys Annual Scientific Session Together With the World Congress of Cardiology.

The study found that young people who have more beneficial sleep habits are incrementally less likely to die early. Moreover, the data suggest that about 8% of deaths from any cause could be attributed to poor sleep patterns.

We saw a clear dose-response relationship, so the more beneficial factors someone has in terms of having higher quality of sleep, they also have a stepwise lowering of all cause and cardiovascular mortality, said Frank Qian, MD, an internal medicine resident physician at Beth Israel Deaconess

Medical Center, clinical fellow in medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-author of the study. I think these findings emphasize that just getting enough hours of sleep isnt sufficient. You really have to have restful sleep and not have much trouble falling and staying asleep.

For their analysis, Qian and team included data from 172,321 people (average age 50 and 54% women) who participated in the National Health Interview Survey between 2013 and 2018. This survey is fielded each year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Center for Health Statistics to help gauge the health of the U.S. population and includes questions about sleep and sleep habits.

Qian said this is the first study to his knowledge to use a nationally representative population to look at how several sleep behaviors, and not just sleep duration, might influence life expectancy.

About two-thirds of study participants self-reported as being White, 14.5% Hispanic, 12.6% Black and 5.5% Asian. Because researchers were able to link participants to the National Death Index records (through December 31, 2019), they could examine the association between individual and combined sleep factors and all-cause and cause-specific mortality.

Participants were followed for a median of 4.3 years during which time 8,681 individuals died. Of these deaths, 2,610 deaths (30%) were from cardiovascular disease, 2,052 (24%) were from cancer and 4,019 (46%) were due to other causes.

Researchers assessed ve different factors of quality sleep using a low-risk sleep score they created based on answers collected as part of the survey.

Factors included: 1) ideal sleep duration of seven to eight hours a night; 2) difficulty falling asleep no more than two times a week; 3) trouble staying asleep no more than two times a week; 4) not using any sleep medication; and 5) feeling well rested after waking up at least five days a week. Each factor was assigned zero or one point for each, for a maximum of five points, which indicated the highest quality sleep.

If people have all these ideal sleep behaviors, they are more likely to live longer, Qian said. So, if we can improve sleep overall, and identifying sleep disorders is especially important, we may be able to prevent some of this premature mortality.

For the analysis, researchers controlled for other factors that may have heightened the risk of dying, including lower socioeconomic status, smoking and alcohol consumption and other medical conditions.

Compared to individuals who had zero to one favorable sleep factors, those who had all five were 30% less likely to die for any reason, 21% less likely to die from cardiovascular disease, 19% less likely to die from cancer, and 40% less likely to die of causes other than heart disease or cancer.

Qian said these other deaths are likely due to accidents, infections or neurodegenerative diseases, such as dementia and Parkinsons disease, but more research is needed.

Among men and women who reported having all five quality sleep measures (a score of five), life expectancy was 4.7 years greater for men and 2.4 years greater for women compared with those who had none or only one of the five favorable elements of low-risk sleep.

More research is needed to determine why men with all five low-risk sleep factors had double the increase in life expectancy compared with women who had the same quality sleep.

Even from a young age, if people can develop these good sleep habits of getting enough sleep, making sure they are sleeping without too many distractions and have good sleep hygiene overall, it can greatly benefit their overall long-term health, Qian said, adding that for the present analysis they estimated gains in life expectancy starting at age 30, but the model can be used to predict gains at older ages too.

Its important for younger people to understand that a lot of health behaviors are cumulative over time. Just like we like to say, its never too late to exercise or stop smoking, its also never too early. And we should be talking about and assessing sleep more often.

These sleep habits can be easily asked about during clinical encounters, and the researchers hope patients and clinicians will start talking about sleep as part of their overall health assessment and disease management planning.

One limitation of the study is that sleep habits were self-reported and not objectively measured or verified. In addition, no information was available about the types of sleep aid or medicine used or how often or long participants used them.

Future research is needed to understand how these gains in life expectancy might continue as people age, as well as further explore the sex differences that were observed.

Previous studies have shown that getting too little or too much sleep can negatively affect the heart. Its also been widely reported that sleep apnea, a sleep disorder that causes someone to pause or stop breathing while asleep, can lead to a number of heart conditions, including high blood pressure, atrial fibrillation and heart attacks.

Author: Nicole NapoliSource: American College of CardiologyContact: Nicole Napoli American College of CardiologyImage: The image is in the public domain

Original Research: The findings will be presented at the American College of Cardiologys Annual Scientific Session Together With the World Congress of Cardiology.

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Getting Good Sleep Could Add Years to Your Life - Neuroscience News

Neuroscience

Why you never forget how to ride a bike, explained by neuroscience – BBC Science Focus Magazine

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Why you never forget how to ride a bike, explained by neuroscience - BBC Science Focus Magazine

Neuroscience

School of Neuroscience and Department of Engineering Education … – Virginia Tech Daily

The Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost, in partnership with the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, has recognized the School of Neuroscience in the College of Science and the Department of Engineering Education in the College of Engineering with the 2022 University Exemplary Department or Program Award.

The award has been given annually since 1994 to honor excellence in teaching and learning among academic units. The School of Neuroscience and the Department of Engineering Education were selected based on the theme of "creating and sustaining support for early career faculty to develop as effective teachers and/or to contribute to the scholarship of teaching and learning."

After its formation in 2016, the School of Neuroscience experienced an astronomical growth spurt, going from zero to nearly 800 undergraduate majors in seven years. The vast majority of its faculty qualify as early career. "I am incredibly impressed with school leadership and their ability to plan, develop, and support a faculty that is almost exclusively at the assistant professor level," said Dean Kevin Pitts of the College of Science.

Among the School of Neuroscience's accomplishments to support early career faculty as teachers are the following:

Creating an Assistant Professor School.To onboard new faculty recruits, Associate Director Sarah Clinton created the Assistant Professor School in 2018 with sessions dedicated to topics such as effective teaching and pedagogy; hiring, recruiting, and mentoring; grant writing; and building a lab. The course was so successful that the College of Science soon adopted the model for all newly recruited faculty college-wide.

Sharing teaching resources. When an integral faculty member unexpectedly died in 2021 a few weeks before the fall semester, the School of Neuroscience scrambled to cover his large Cognitive Neuroscience course. Since then, the school has created an online repository to store and share course materials, including syllabi, course objectives, assignments, and lecture material a valuable resource for recently recruited faculty crafting new classes.

Applying pedagogical innovations. Neuroscience classrooms often build in fresh approaches such as a flipped-classroom model, process-oriented guided inquiry learning, or interactive online participation tools. Several School of Neuroscience faculty members have received or been nominated for Virginia Tech teaching awards.

Designing spaces for student learning. As part of the renovation of Sandy Hall, the School of Neuroscience created student-centered learning and community spaces with small conference rooms, study spaces, rolling whiteboards, and a graduate student lounge stocked with snacks. The emphasis on student learning has created a vibrant community in the schools four popular majors.

For thousands of students in the College of Engineering, the Department of Engineering Education's courses are a standard point of departure. "Excellent teaching is central to our departmental mission," said Senior Instructor Jenny Lo on behalf of the departments honorifics committee. "We have a strong history in teaching first-year engineering courses, and as the College of Engineering has expanded its enrollments, we have made key adjustments to deliver high-quality teaching at scale."

Engineering Education has gone from teaching primarily first-year engineering courses to teaching courses for the innovation minor, engineering capstone design courses, and graduate courses. With more than a dozen faculty members in the first three years of their careers, the department has had ample opportunity to create and sustain support for their teaching. Some of its achievements include the following:

Evaluating new faculty teaching. The assistant department head for undergraduate programs conducts peer observations of classroom teaching for all new faculty member in their first semesters at Virginia Tech, then provides constructive feedback one on one. Peer evaluations help faculty identify strengths and clarify expectations around teaching.

Mentoring early career faculty. New faculty are paired with more experienced faculty who, in many cases, have taught the same course. Theyre invited to sit in on the faculty members classes and are placed in nearby offices so the mentor can easily answer questions. In 2021, the Department of Engineering Education piloted a summer mentorship program for visiting and new collegiate faculty specifically because they wanted to ask questions about their teaching responsibilities, even before their official start date.

Creating a collaborative culture of teaching. A shared drive offers early career faculty access to sample Canvas sites, templates for syllabi, rubrics for common assignments, sample assignments, activities, and customized assessment tools that they can use to craft their own courses. Theres also a departmental Slack channel that new faculty often use to ask questions about courses. Such tools underscore the departments teaching objective of consistency with autonomy.

Offering new instructor orientation. The department's first-year coordinator leads an orientation session for new faculty members that covers teaching fundamentals, from high-level pedagogical strategies to activities and resources available in the shared repository. Instructors can also participate in an ongoing monthly colloquium series that covers the latest research on enhancing teaching, with presentations on topics from inclusive classrooms to team management to large classroom instruction.

Presented annually since 1994, the University Exemplary Department or Program Award was developed as a part of Virginia Tech's Faculty Rewards Project, which sought to define appropriate rewards for faculty members accomplishments. The 2022 honorees will be officially recognized at a reception during the spring semester.

The theme for the 2023 award will be "developing and implementing creative solutions to supporting transfer students (into Virginia Tech and/or into new majors)." For more information on the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning or the University Department or Program Awards, visit the center's website or contact teaching@vt.edu.

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School of Neuroscience and Department of Engineering Education ... - Virginia Tech Daily

Neuroscience

Researchers Record Long-Term Electrical Activity in a Single Brain … – Neuroscience News

Summary: In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers developed an electronic implant that collected information about brain activity from a single neuron for over one year.

Source: Harvard

When a person experiences a happy or sad mood, which brain cells are active?

To answer that question, scientists need to understand how individual brain cells contribute to a larger network of brain activity and what role each cell plays in shaping behavior and overall health. Until now, its been difficult to get a clear view of howbrain cellsin living animals behave over extended periods of time.

But Jia Lius group at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) has developed an electronic implant that collected detailed information about brain activity from a single cell of interest for more than a year.

Their findings, based on research in mice, are reported inNature Neuroscience.

This research solves a fundamental issuethe challenge of creating a brain-electronic interface that does not disturbbrain functionor degrade over time, says Liu, who is an assistant professor of bioengineering at SEAS, where he leads a lab dedicated to bioelectronics.

Neuroscientists have long sought better tools to study different cells in the brain, including neurons (which transmit electrical and chemical messages) and microglia (immune cells responsible for maintaining brain health).

A single neuron is very smallonly 10 to 100 micrometersand when it fires, its action potential (the spike inelectrical activity) only lasts about two milliseconds, Liu says.

Certain techniques can detect brain activity from specific cells of interest for short-lived experiments in small areas of the brain, either in tissue recently removed from animals or by using probes or optogenetic techniques to capture activity in situ.

But these conditions are not true to life and they dont provide detailed enough information about electrical activity in individual cells to understand how activity changes with age and otherlife experiences, Liu says. Behaviors, memories, and disease all build up over the course of days, weeks, months, and years.

Much of the difficulty to date, he says, has been due to a mismatch in mechanical properties between livingbrain tissueand electronic recording devices. This has prevented long-term, precise recording of how neurons and microglia behave over time.

The brain is very soft, like the texture of tofu or pudding. In contrast, electronics are rigid. Any small movement of the brain can cause conventional sensors to drift and move in living brain tissue. That mismatch in structure can cause cells around the implantation site to degrade.

To circumvent the problem, Lius team, which specializes in engineering nanoelectronics or cyborgs to bridge the gap between living tissue and electronics, developed an implantable device and minimally invasive technique for delivering it safely into the brain.

The mesh-like, flexible nanoelectronic sensor is designed to be inserted into brain tissue using a water-soluble polymer shuttle. Prior to implantation, the device and its delivery shuttle are connected lithographically. Once the implant is in the brain, a simple saline solution is applied to dissolve the shuttle, leaving only the mesh electronic sensor behind.

In mouse studies, when Lius team implanted their nanoelectronic sensors into multiple areas of the brain, the implantation process and presence of the sensors resulted in minimal disturbance to brain tissue. Then, targeting single neurons for analysis, they used the devices to record the electrical activity of those same cells over the course of the mices adult lives.

Even after one year, we didnt see any degradation of the individual neurons or proliferation of the microglia we were interested in recording with the devices, Liu says. Theres no other technology out there that can track single-cellaction potentialfrom the same cells in active animals over the course of a few months and a year.

Looking ahead, Liu plans to further develop the technique so thatbrain activitycan be transmitted in real time from the biological neural network to an artificial neural network in a computer for analysis. And, he wants to explore how the mesh nanoelectronic sensors can be used to study phenomena such as neural representation.

When you watch a movie or see a car drive down the road, your brain generates electrical activity to represent those images, he says. During that process of neural representation, the brain encodes sensory information and thoughts into a model of external stimuli.

Liu says that, for example, moods are influenced byneural representation, and hes especially interested in studying how changes of neural representations and brain states impact mood fluctuations over time.

Maybe one day its cold and gray outside, and you feel unhappy and in a bad mood. Another day, its sunny and youre on the beach and youre in a great mood. How those representations change in the brain cannot be studied by current technology because we havent been able to stably track activity from the same neuron, he says. This research completely overcomes that limitation. Its the beginning of a new era of neuroscience.

An ultimate goal of Lius research is to develop diagnostic and therapeutic methods for neurological, cardiovascular and developmental diseases.

Author: Kat J. McAlpineSource: HarvardContact: Kat J. McAlpine HarvardImage: The image is credited to Liu Lab, Harvard SEAS

Original Research: Closed access.Tracking neural activity from the same cells during the entire adult life of mice by Siyuan Zhao et al. Nature Neuroscience

Abstract

Tracking neural activity from the same cells during the entire adult life of mice

Stably recording the electrical activity of the same neurons over the adult life of an animal is important to neuroscience research and biomedical applications. Current implantable devices cannot provide stable recording on this timescale.

Here, we introduce a method to precisely implant electronics with an open, unfolded mesh structure across multiple brain regions in the mouse.

The open mesh structure forms a stable interwoven structure with the neural network, preventing probe drifting and showing no immune response and neuron loss during the year-long implantation.

Rigorous statistical analysis, visual stimulus-dependent measurement and unbiased, machine-learning-based analysis demonstrated that single-unit action potentials have been recorded from the same neurons of behaving mice in a very long-term stable manner.

Leveraging this stable structure, we demonstrated that the same neurons can be recorded over the entire adult life of the mouse, revealing the aging-associated evolution of single-neuron activities.

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Researchers Record Long-Term Electrical Activity in a Single Brain ... - Neuroscience News

Neuroscience

Trained Brains Rapidly Suppress Visual Distractions – Neuroscience News

Summary: Following training, the brains visual center can suppress neuronal responses to pop-out distractors that are usually enhanced compared to other, non-distracting stimuli.

Source: KNAW

Have you ever found yourself searching for your keys or phone only to end up getting distracted by a brightly colored object that grabs your attention?

This type of attentional capture by objects that stand out from their surroundings is known as pop-out. Pop-out is often functional, for instance when we want people to pay attention to bright red road signs. It can however also distract us from our goals, for instance when a brightly colored binder prevents us from finding our keys on a cluttered desk.

Would it not be nice if pop-out for distracting items could somehow be blocked or suppressed to avoid distractions and help us find whatever we are looking for faster?

New research from the Vision and Cognition group at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, published in PNAS, demonstrates that this is indeed possible. After training, the visual brain can suppress neuronal responses to pop-out distractors that are usually enhanced compared to responses to other, non-distracting, items.

The researchers trained monkeys to play a video game in which they searched for a unique shape among multiple items, while a uniquely colored item tried to distract them. As soon as the monkeys found the unique shape, they made an eye movement to it to indicate their choice.

After some training, monkeys became very good at this game and almost never made eye movements to the distractor.

Neurons in area V4 of the visual cortex, a brain area that processes visual information relatively early after is is captured by the eyes, showed consistently enhanced responses to the shape target stimuli.

Responses to the distracting color stimuli on the other hand were only very briefly enhanced but became rapidly suppressed. It appears that the brain first briefly detects the presence of the distracting stimulus, and then quickly suppresses it to avoid that it will interfere with the search for the shape target.

The color pop-out signal that might cause distraction is thus essentially inverted into a kind of negative pop-out, or pop-in, to avoids distraction.

Researcher Chris Klink: Choosing what to attend to is very important for visual perception, and behavior in general. Even though the brain has impressive processing power, it simply cannot handle all available information at once. Attention needs to strike a balance between our own internally generated goals and whatever appears to be important in the environment.

Dealing with distraction in an efficient way is a crucial aspect of that process, that we now understand a little bit better.

Author: Eline FeenstraSource: KNAWContact: Eline Feenstra KNAWImage: The image is in the public domain

Original Research: Closed access.Inversion of pop-out for a distracting feature dimension in monkey visual cortex by Chris Klink et al. PNAS

Abstract

Inversion of pop-out for a distracting feature dimension in monkey visual cortex

During visual search, it is important to reduce the interference of distracting objects in the scene. The neuronal responses elicited by the search target stimulus are typically enhanced. However, it is equally important to suppress the representations of distracting stimuli, especially if they are salient and capture attention.

We trained monkeys to make an eye movement to a unique pop-out shape stimulus among an array of distracting stimuli.

One of these distractors had a salient color that varied across trials and differed from the color of the other stimuli, causing it to also pop-out. The monkeys were able to select the pop-out shape target with high accuracy and actively avoided the pop-out color distractor.

This behavioral pattern was reflected in the activity of neurons in area V4. Responses to the shape targets were enhanced, while the activity evoked by the pop-out color distractor was only briefly enhanced, directly followed by a sustained period of pronounced suppression.

These behavioral and neuronal results demonstrate a cortical selection mechanism that rapidly inverts a pop-out signal to pop-in for an entire feature dimension thereby facilitating goal-directed visual search in the presence of salient distractors.

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Trained Brains Rapidly Suppress Visual Distractions - Neuroscience News

Neuroscience

Neuroscience Tools Structure May Lead to Next Gen Versions – Newswise

Newswise In order to more fully understand how diseases arise in the brain, scientists must unravel the intricate way neurons relay messages (either chemical or electrical) along a complex web of nerve cells. One way is by using a tool called DREADDs, which stands forDesignerReceptorsActivated byDesignerDrugs.

When introduced to a nerve cell or neuron, DREADDs acts like a specialized lock that only works when a key in the form of a synthetic designer drug fits into that lock. DREADDs can enable researchers to turn specific cell functions on or off to examine groups of neurons in circuits more precisely.(see Animations)

Now, a University of Maryland School of Medicine researcher and his colleagues at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (UNC) have unveiled the structure of these DREADDs that will pave the way for creating the next generation of these tools. This step ultimately will bring them closer to an elusive goal understanding the underpinnings of brain disorders, such as schizophrenia, substance abuse, epilepsy, and Alzheimers, in order to develop more effective drugs to treat them.

The research team published their findings in a recent issue ofNature.

These findings provide atomic clarity into the nature of DREADD receptors bound to their drugs, resulting from the culmination of all these technologies converging at the right place and right time,said study authorJonathan Fay, PhD,Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at UMSOM. This knowledge will allow this tool to be further refined and optimized. We were previously limited in how to upgrade their designs because we didnt fully understand how they worked at the structural level.

Hundreds of labs around the world now use the DREADD tool, which was developed at UNC. Scientists there designed these receptor proteins to react only to uniquely designed drugs that are pharmacologically inert because they only bind to the DREADD protein receptor.

For this new study, researchers used a newer imaging technology, known as cryogenic electron microscopy, to determine the molecular structure of DREADD receptors with the drugs. This process flash-freezes the DREADDs in a way that does not form traditional ice crystals, but instead creates a sort of slurry that allows some movement in the molecules. This technique allowed researchers to determine the DREADDs structure when other older molecular imaging methods failed. The researchers observed inhibitory (turning off cell functions) or stimulatory (turning on cell functions) DREADD receptors bound to each of two different designer drugs.

The researchers also compared the structure of the natural brain receptor from which DREADDs originated to see how it differed from DREADDs. The original brain receptor, found in the cell membrane of neurons, traditionally binds to a molecule involved in learning and memory. By changing two of the natural receptors building blocks, the engineered DREADD receptor binds better to its own laboratory-designed drugs rather than to the original memory moleculea process they visualized through their experiments.

With this imaging technique,we could see that the genetic changes in the DREADDs opened up the space where the memory molecule normally binds, allowing the new designer drugs to slip in. We could see that shape of the space changed as well, contributing to why the new drugs fit better, said Dr. Fay.

The class of receptors from which DREADDs originated are often the intended targets of many therapeutics. However, various drugs bind to several kinds of receptors or activate others in unintended ways. The result might be a beneficial effect, but also can result in side effects.

Because of the precise way in which these designer drugs in DREADDs bind so specifically, it is likely possible that researchers will one day eventually develop targeted therapies for many of these other similar receptors without the cross-reactivity and unpleasant side effects,said UMSOM DeanMark T. Gladwin, MD, Vice President for Medical Affairs, University of Maryland, Baltimore, and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor.

Although the microscopy-related part of this study occurred at UNC, UMSOM also has high-tech structural biology capabilities in theirCenter for Biomolecular Therapeutics (CBT), where researchers determine the structures of the human bodys proteins to better develop new drugs to treat a variety of diseases. Dr. Fay plans to use CBTs facilities to analyze the structure of other brain receptors, as well as to continue his collaboration with UNC on potential DREADD 2.0 versions.

A major focus of UMSOMs research, as evidenced by the launch of the University of Maryland-Medicine Institute for Neuroscience Discovery(UM-MIND)in late 2022 includes neuroscience and brain-related diseases. Dr. Fays work directly contributes towards these institutional priorities.

This research study was funded by a National Institutes of Health - National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases grant (U24DK116194).

About the University of Maryland School of Medicine

Now in its third century, the University of Maryland School of Medicine was chartered in 1807 as the first public medical school in the United States.It continues today as one of the fastest growing, top-tier biomedical research enterprises in the world with 46 academic departments, centers, institutes, and programs, and a faculty of more than 3,000 physicians, scientists, and allied health professionals, including members of the National Academy of Medicineand the National Academy of Sciences, and a distinguished two-time winner of the Albert E. Lasker Award in Medical Research.With an operating budget of more than $1.3 billion, the School of Medicine works closely in partnership with the University of Maryland Medical Center and Medical System to provide research-intensive, academic, and clinically based care for nearly 2 million patients each year. The School of Medicine has nearly $600 million in extramural funding, with most of its academic departments highly ranked among all medical schools in the nation in research funding.As one of the seven professional schools that make up the University of Maryland, Baltimore campus, the School of Medicine has a total population of nearly 9,000 faculty and staff, including 2,500 students, trainees, residents, and fellows. The combined School of Medicine and Medical System (University of Maryland Medicine) has an annual budget of over $6 billion and an economic impact of nearly $20 billion on the state and local community. The School of Medicine, which ranks as the8thhighestamong public medical schools in research productivity (according to the Association of American Medical Colleges profile) is an innovator in translational medicine, with 606 active patents and 52 start-up companies.In the latestU.S. News & World Reportranking of the Best Medical Schools, published in 2021, the UM School of Medicine isranked #9among the 92 public medical schoolsin the U.S., and in the top 15 percent(#27) of all 192public and privateU.S. medical schools.The School of Medicine works locally, nationally, and globally, with research and treatment facilities in 36 countries around the world. Visitmedschool.umaryland.edu

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Neuroscience Tools Structure May Lead to Next Gen Versions - Newswise