The New Brain - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

The New Brain

By Richard Restak

Presentation by Emily Warren & Holli Leug

• Originally believed that the brain became fixed in its structure and function by adolescence.
• Thoughts, feelings, and actions determine the health of our brain.
• The brain can change in short intervals, even daily.

• May not necessarily look different (as compared to an infants), but through skillful use of neuroimaging the changes can be seen.
• Leslie G. Ungerleider of the National Institute of Health used images and sequences of finger movements over the course of a few weeks to show exactly what areas of the brain were controlling them, and over time the functional areas changed.

• People with extraordinary ability use their brains differently than the rest of us.
• Chess experts use their frontal and parietal cortices (long-term memory).
• Chess novices used their medial temporal lobes (short-term memory).
• There are no special inherited qualities that distinguish people with special abilities.

• The 10-Year Rule
• “The highest levels of performance and achievement appear to require at least around 10 years of intense prior preparation.”
• “Genius is about 99 percent perspiration and 1 percent inspiration.” - Thomas Edison
• General intelligence is linked to the amoung of grey matter in the brain.

• The technology around us can play a role in out brain plasticity (for better and worse).
• ADD and ADHD affect many adults, in addition to children.
• Attention Deficit Disorder
• Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

• ADD and ADHD have three main areas for diagnosis:
• Motor Control
• Impulsivity
• Difficulties in organization and focus
• Typically an inherited disorder, however, it is becoming more common to see “culturally” induced ADD and ADHD as a result of increasing demands on our attention and focus.

• Society is forcing people to essentially become ADD/ADHD to survive and be successful.
• Largely influenced by technology.
• Example- The scrolling text on the bottom of the screen during news broadcasts.
• Example- Smart phones and their multitasking abilities.

• Recent research has shown that there are harmful effects produced by images of horror and mayhem.
• Recent research shows that it can activate sensitive areas of the brain that change their long-term responses.
• These images essentially replay in the mind over and over.

• All emotional responses and perceptions can be related to cortical and subcortical neurons.
• Important in mediating between violence and aggression (personal space and territory)
• J.L. Downer Study
• Showed that deprivation of use of the amygdala causes an individual to lose their ability to interpret and appropriately respond to potential threat.
• Immature brains cannot differentiate between real violence and images.

• Humor exerts a positive effect on general functioning.
• Decreases stress
• Boosts immune defenses
• Relaxes muscle tension
• Decreases blood pressure
• Modulates pain
• Frontal lobe is responsible for processing laughter.

• People with damage to their frontal lobe have difficulty laughing spontaneously, appreciating humor, and they tend to smile and laugh less.
• Brain modifications can sometimes take unusual directions or develop in unexpected ways.
• Non-musicians who were trained to notice subtle pitch changes required only a small amount of training to respond in ways typically only seen in professional musicians.

• “In essence, a person can only lie when he knows the correct answer but chooses to pretend that he doesn’t.”
• “You have to know the truth in order to deceive.”
• Brain Fingerprinting
• Detects changes in the brains electrical activity, which varies depends on if something is recognized.

• Reading Minds
• Win or lose, the brain displays greatest activity in the medial frontal cortex.
• Activity showed the greatest dips after loses.
• “Losses loom greater than gains.”
• Advances in neuroscience will allow us to clarify the role of emotions in some ethical and moral dilemmas.

• Became prominent in the 1990’s to treat depression.
• Prozac
• Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor’s (SSRI’s)
• “… the neuron associated with depression looks like a tree in winter: the dendrites (the receiving “antennae” of the neuron) are shortened and lacking branches.”

• Antidepressants prevent stress-induced changes like:
• Hippocampal volume
• Brain metabolism
• Cell proliferation
• Other behavioral activities that can be treated:
• Shyness
• Social Phobia

• Neuroscientists once believed brain development ceased during young adulthood, but we now know the brain can rewire its circuitry at almost any age.
• Reconfiguring the brain-
• After a stroke the brain undergoes a complex pattern of reorganization

• Constraint Induced (CI) Movement Therapy
• Strong side (arm) is constrained so that only the weak can be used
• Goal is to reorganize brain circuits to reinstate the patient’s lost movements
• Treatment results in a reversal of a “learned non-use”

• Finger/Toe Stimulation

• Sensory Substitution
• Brain works on whatever information it has available, i.e. deprived of sound, it will rely on sight and vice versa
• Again, brain has to complete reorganization to accomplish this

• Many new applications of neuroscience likely to occur in next decade
• Advances will be based on new developments in imaging- ways of looking at or measuring the brain
• CT Scans (Computed Tomography)
• PET Scans (Positron Emission Tomography)
• MEG (Magnetocephalogram)
• fMRI (functional MRI)
• MSI (Magnetic Source Imaging)

• Mental operations in “real time”, i.e. measurement of what the brain processes during learning, language, emotional experiences, and thinking
• Predicting human behavior
• Genetics for specific cognitive abilities (intelligence, attention, and memory)
• Brain changes over a lifetime
• No two brains are the same, not even twins
• Brain differs in same person during life’s developmental stages (infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age)

• Will functions by computers equal or beat the human brain capacity?
• Implantation technologies to enhance brain power
• A device already used to prevent epileptic seizures and alleviate depression

• Neuroethics- the moral and ethical issues arising
• from new brain-related scientific findings
• TECHNOLOGICALLY we can do it, but
• ETHICALLY should we do it?

• So How Does This Relate?
• Our environment is essentially making us ADD and increasing our ability to multitask.
• Leadership needs to take advantage of the ability to focus on multiple projects at once.