scholarly journals Neural Plasticity following Abacus Training in Humans: A Review and Future Directions

2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yongxin Li ◽  
Feiyan Chen ◽  
Wenhua Huang
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Neural Plasticity ◽  
Neural Mechanism ◽  
Imaging Findings ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Activation Patterns ◽  
Broad Variety ◽  
Average Control ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Environmental Demands

The human brain has an enormous capacity to adapt to a broad variety of environmental demands. Previous studies in the field of abacus training have shown that this training can induce specific changes in the brain. However, the neural mechanism underlying these changes remains elusive. Here, we reviewed the behavioral and imaging findings of comparisons between abacus experts and average control subjects and focused on changes in activation patterns and changes in brain structure. Finally, we noted the limitations and the future directions of this field. We concluded that although current studies have provided us with information about the mechanisms of abacus training, more research on abacus training is needed to understand its neural impact.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
pp. 3-12
Author(s):  
Riitta Hari ◽  
Aina Puce
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Fields ◽  
Human Brain ◽  
Brain Dynamics ◽  
Electric Currents ◽  
Electrical Currents ◽  
Activation Patterns ◽  
Neuronal Communication ◽  
Electrical Potentials ◽  
Electric And Magnetic Fields ◽  
The Brain

Neuronal communication in the brain is associated with minute electrical currents that give rise to both electrical potentials on the scalp (measurable by means of electroencephalography [EEG]) and magnetic fields outside the head (measurable by magnetoencephalography [MEG]). Both MEG and EEG are noninvasive neurophysiological methods used to study brain dynamics, that is temporal changes in the activation patterns, and sequences in signal progression. Differences between MEG and EEG mainly reflect differences in the spread of electric and magnetic fields generated by the same electric currents in the human brain. This chapter provides an overall description of the main principles of MEG and EEG and provides background for the following chapters in this and subsequent sections.

scholarly journals Transprocessing: a proposed neurobiological mechanism of psychotherapeutic processing

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrei Novac ◽  
Robert G. Bota
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Neural Plasticity ◽  
Underlying Mechanisms ◽  
The Brain

How does the human brain absorb information and turn it into skills of its own in psychotherapy? In an attempt to answer this question, the authors will review the intricacies of processing channels in psychotherapy and propose the term transprocessing (as in transduction and processing combined) for the underlying mechanisms. Through transprocessing the brain processes multimodal memories and creates reparative solutions in the course of psychotherapy. Transprocessing is proposed as a stage-sequenced mechanism of deconstruction of engrained patterns of response. Through psychotherapy, emotional-cognitive reintegration and its consolidation is accomplished. This process is mediated by cellular and neural plasticity changes.

scholarly journals Neurostimulation Reveals Context-Dependent Arbitration Between Model-Based and Model-Free Reinforcement Learning

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (11) ◽  
pp. 4850-4862 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Weissengruber ◽  
Sang Wan Lee ◽  
John P O’Doherty ◽  
Christian C Ruff
Keyword(s):  
Reinforcement Learning ◽  
Neural Mechanism ◽  
Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Control Behavior ◽  
Model Based ◽  
Model Free ◽  
Context Dependent ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Environmental Demands

Abstract While it is established that humans use model-based (MB) and model-free (MF) reinforcement learning in a complementary fashion, much less is known about how the brain determines which of these systems should control behavior at any given moment. Here we provide causal evidence for a neural mechanism that acts as a context-dependent arbitrator between both systems. We applied excitatory and inhibitory transcranial direct current stimulation over a region of the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex previously found to encode the reliability of both learning systems. The opposing neural interventions resulted in a bidirectional shift of control between MB and MF learning. Stimulation also affected the sensitivity of the arbitration mechanism itself, as it changed how often subjects switched between the dominant system over time. Both of these effects depended on varying task contexts that either favored MB or MF control, indicating that this arbitration mechanism is not context-invariant but flexibly incorporates information about current environmental demands.

scholarly journals The Molecular Basis of Depression: Implications of Sex-Related Differences in Epigenetic Regulation

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayako Kawatake-Kuno ◽  
Toshiya Murai ◽  
Shusaku Uchida
Keyword(s):  
Epigenetic Regulation ◽  
Neural Plasticity ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Clinical Findings ◽  
Epigenetic Alterations ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Males And Females ◽  
Genetic And Environmental Factors ◽  
The Brain

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a leading cause of disability worldwide. Although the etiology and pathophysiology of MDD remain poorly understood, aberrant neuroplasticity mediated by the epigenetic dysregulation of gene expression within the brain, which may occur due to genetic and environmental factors, may increase the risk of this disorder. Evidence has also been reported for sex-related differences in the pathophysiology of MDD, with female patients showing a greater severity of symptoms, higher degree of functional impairment, and more atypical depressive symptoms. Males and females also differ in their responsiveness to antidepressants. These clinical findings suggest that sex-dependent molecular and neural mechanisms may underlie the development of depression and the actions of antidepressant medications. This review discusses recent advances regarding the role of epigenetics in stress and depression. The first section presents a brief introduction of the basic mechanisms of epigenetic regulation, including histone modifications, DNA methylation, and non-coding RNAs. The second section reviews their contributions to neural plasticity, the risk of depression, and resilience against depression, with a particular focus on epigenetic modulators that have causal relationships with stress and depression in both clinical and animal studies. The third section highlights studies exploring sex-dependent epigenetic alterations associated with susceptibility to stress and depression. Finally, we discuss future directions to understand the etiology and pathophysiology of MDD, which would contribute to optimized and personalized therapy.

scholarly journals The Visual Arts and how Advanced Mathematics Affects Human Consciousness

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Computational Modeling ◽  
Creative Thinking ◽  
Neural Mechanism ◽  
Human Intelligence ◽  
Brain Anatomy ◽  
Advanced Mathematics ◽  
Cognitive Hierarchy ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

Computational Modeling and Advanced Mathematics: How it affects the encoding of memory in the brain. Computational modeling and advanced mathematical models defined the visual cognitive hierarchy that connects to human intelligence and creative thinking. The influential of human intelligence and the brain provides concretes images that neuroscience creates spatial abstraction and cultural creative thinking. The genes and the environment affects’ the plasticity and neuroplasticity of the human brain. The creative cognitive genome affects human intelligence. This stimulates the reconstruction and the plasticity of the brain. Consciousness is recreated by the momentum of time. And this affects the experiences of the events and frequency. The generation of consciousness and brain activity. The neural mechanism that retrieves consciousness and the significant of brain anatomy. Computational modeling and advanced mathematics affects the encoding and decoding of consciousness and memory. Therefore, it is true that advanced mathematics and computational analysis affects the encoding of memory in the human brain. The Encoding of Consciousness and Mathematics in the Human Brain. Encoding and Consciousness comes in many ways and visual mathematic patterns. It is the refraction to our human intelligence and creative thinking. It recreates our personal memories and it encodes the mind mapping abstraction as an algorithm. Perhaps, the mind is our biggest treasure and it recreates memories and experiences. Neuroscience provides findings and it chooses consciousness. What we recreate is not an illusion but a brain algorithm that happens through numerical figures. It is the surroundings of the impossible. Moreover, the possibility of a thinking pattern that helps believes our soul. Our language is not only based on neurons although it recognizes sound and it merges in the Broca’s area and the cerebral cortex. It is recognition of brilliance and creative thinking.

scholarly journals Towards Sentence-Level Brain Decoding with Distributed Representations

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 7047-7054
Author(s):  
Jingyuan Sun ◽  
Shaonan Wang ◽  
Jiajun Zhang ◽  
Chengqing Zong
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Comprehensive Evaluation ◽  
Brain Activation ◽  
Systematic Evaluation ◽  
Activation Patterns ◽  
Distributed Representations ◽  
Brain Decoding ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Brain

Decoding human brain activities based on linguistic representations has been actively studied in recent years. However, most previous studies exclusively focus on word-level representations, and little is learned about decoding whole sentences from brain activation patterns. This work is our effort to mend the gap. In this paper, we build decoders to associate brain activities with sentence stimulus via distributed representations, the currently dominant sentence representation approach in natural language processing (NLP). We carry out a systematic evaluation, covering both widely-used baselines and state-of-the-art sentence representation models. We demonstrate how well different types of sentence representations decode the brain activation patterns and give empirical explanations of the performance difference. Moreover, to explore how sentences are neurally represented in the brain, we further compare the sentence representation’s correspondence to different brain areas associated with high-level cognitive functions. We find the supervised structured representation models most accurately probe the language atlas of human brain. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first comprehensive evaluation of distributed sentence representations for brain decoding. We hope this work can contribute to decoding brain activities with NLP representation models, and understanding how linguistic items are neurally represented.

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Studies of Human Time Perception: A Primer

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 233-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Wiener
Keyword(s):  
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation ◽  
Human Brain ◽  
Time Perception ◽  
Magnetic Stimulation ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Noninvasive Technique ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Context Dependent ◽  
The Brain

The study of the neural basis of time perception has seen a resurgence of interest within the past decade. A variety of these studies have included the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a noninvasive technique for stimulating discrete regions of the surface of the brain. Here, the results of these studies are reviewed and their conclusions are interpreted within a context-dependent framework. However, the use of TMS as an investigatory technique has much unexplored potential that may be particularly beneficial to the study of time perception. As such, considerations are made regarding the design of TMS studies of time perception and future directions are outlined that may be utilized to further elucidate the neural basis of timing in the human brain.

scholarly journals Transprocessing: a proposed neurobiological mechanism of psychotherapeutic processing

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrei Novac ◽  
Robert G. Bota
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Neural Plasticity ◽  
Underlying Mechanisms ◽  
The Brain

How does the human brain absorb information and turn it into skills of its own in psychotherapy? In an attempt to answer this question, the authors will review the intricacies of processing channels in psychotherapy and propose the term transprocessing (as in transduction and processing combined) for the underlying mechanisms. Through transprocessing the brain processes multimodal memories and creates reparative solutions in the course of psychotherapy. Transprocessing is proposed as a stage-sequenced mechanism of deconstruction of engrained patterns of response. Through psychotherapy, emotional-cognitive reintegration and its consolidation is accomplished. This process is mediated by cellular and neural plasticity changes.

scholarly journals Human brain atlasing: past, present and future

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 504-519 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wieslaw L Nowinski
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
The State ◽  
Brain Atlas ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Human Connectome Project ◽  
Health And Disease ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Brain Atlases

We have recently witnessed an explosion of large-scale initiatives and projects addressing mapping, modeling, simulation and atlasing of the human brain, including the BRAIN Initiative, the Human Brain Project, the Human Connectome Project (HCP), the Big Brain, the Blue Brain Project, the Allen Brain Atlas, the Brainnetome, among others. Besides these large and international initiatives, there are numerous mid-size and small brain atlas-related projects. My contribution to these global efforts has been to create adult human brain atlases in health and disease, and to develop atlas-based applications. For over two decades with my R&D lab I developed 35 brain atlases, licensed to 67 companies and made available in about 100 countries. This paper has two objectives. First, it provides an overview of the state of the art in brain atlasing. Second, as it is already 20 years from the release of our first brain atlas, I summarise my past and present efforts, share my experience in atlas creation, validation and commercialisation, compare with the state of the art, and propose future directions.

Effects of Psychotherapy on Brain Activation Patterns in Anxiety Disorders

2016 ◽  
Vol 224 (2) ◽  
pp. 62-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Straube
Keyword(s):  
Anxiety Disorders ◽  
Neuronal Plasticity ◽  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Activation Patterns ◽  
New Learning ◽  
Analytical Strategies ◽  
Sample Characteristics

Abstract. Psychotherapy is an effective treatment for most mental disorders, including anxiety disorders. Successful psychotherapy implies new learning experiences and therefore neural alterations. With the increasing availability of functional neuroimaging methods, it has become possible to investigate psychotherapeutically induced neuronal plasticity across the whole brain in controlled studies. However, the detectable effects strongly depend on neuroscientific methods, experimental paradigms, analytical strategies, and sample characteristics. This article summarizes the state of the art, discusses current theoretical and methodological issues, and suggests future directions of the research on the neurobiology of psychotherapy in anxiety disorders.

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