Showing posts with label brain science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brain science. Show all posts
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Tired of poor eyesight? Try taping batteries to the back of your head.

Credit: © blackday / Fotolia

Brain stimulation temporarily improves visual acuity, according to new research.

As one who wears glasses, I know the dislocation experienced when I put on glasses with a new prescription.  It takes a bit of time to get used to the new vision.  Rather, it takes your brain a little time to reprogram itself to the new visual input.

If your brain can adapt rather quickly to this new experience, what can't the brain simply be stimulated to correct your vision without the need for lenses?

It can.  Using mild electrical stimulation to the visual cortex at the back of your head, researchers have learned that for several hours after the stimulation, people see better.  And, think better as well.

See where this is going?

Are we going to be able to implant devices inside the skull that permanently improve brain function without necessarily altering function?

Looks like it.

Here's the report with a link to the study in the attribution.
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A little spark for sharper sight
". . .those with worse vision see the most improvement."

Stimulating the visual cortex of the brain for 20 minutes with a mild electrical current can improve vision for about two hours, and those with worse vision see the most improvement, according to a Vanderbilt University study published this week in Current Biology.

"It's actually a very simple idea," said co-author Geoff Woodman, associate professor of psychology. "This kind of stimulation can improve cognitive processing in other brain areas, so if we stimulate the visual system, could we improve processing? Could we make someone's vision better -- not at the level of the eye, like Lasik or glasses, but directly at the level of the brain?"

Twenty young, healthy subjects with normal or near-normal vision were asked to evaluate the relative position of two identical vertical lines and judged whether they were perfectly aligned or offset. The test is more sensitive than a standard eye chart, and gave the researchers are very precise measurement of each subjects' visual acuity.

75 percent showed measurable improvement following the brain stimulation
The researchers then passed a very mild electric current through the area at the back of the brain that processes visual information. After 20 minutes, the subjects were asked to perform the test again, and about 75 percent showed measurable improvement following the brain stimulation.

The researchers performed several variations of this experiment to test the effects of different intensity levels, current directions and electrode placements. This third experiment was important because it confirmed that the electrodes had to be positioned specifically over the brain's visual processing center in order to affect the subjects' eyesight -- that the effect wasn't simply a response to stimulus anywhere in the brain.

They also measured how the stimulus changed the speed with which the brain processed visual information and whether the stimulation also improved the subjects' contrast sensitivity -- their ability to differentiate between multiple shades of gray.

The contrast experiment was notable because they found that the stimulation only improved contrast sensitivity at frequencies also associated with visual acuity, indicating that it was just the subjects' visual acuity that was being affected, not the contrast sensitivity.

Lead author Robert Reinhart, an incoming assistant professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Boston University who conducted this research as a Ph.D. student at Vanderbilt, said this finding had interesting implications for future basic science. "Now we have a new tool that could be valuable for researchers investigating fundamental questions about how the visual system works," he said.

For their last experiment, the researchers wanted to see if the improvement they saw in the first experiment was significant enough to translate into a real-world task -- reading a standard eye chart.

They found that the stimulation effects improved the subjects' vision by an average of 1 to 2 letters, though Reinhart noted that there was significant variation between subjects. "We saw that those who came in with poorer vision, who might be on their way to needing glasses, had these big leaps, while others who came in with excellent vision showed no change."

Reinhart speculated that these findings could be explained in several different ways.

  • The prevailing belief is that the current might simply be boosting the visual signals so certain neurons can process them more rapidly, but Reinhart thinks it's also possible that the current essentially injects white noise into the visual system, which drowns out extraneous information and enables the brain to capture visual information more easily.

The researchers stress that much more research needs to happen in a clinical setting in order to confirm the safety of the procedure and that members of the public should never attempt to replicate the experiment at home.

Story Source:  Materials provided by Vanderbilt University, original written by Liz Entman.  Robert M.g. Reinhart, Wenxi Xiao, Laura J. Mcclenahan, Geoffrey F. Woodman. Electrical Stimulation of Visual Cortex Can Immediately Improve Spatial Vision. Current Biology, June 2016

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Science vs. Religion: It's all in our heads

Credit: © IMG_191 / Fotolia  

Clashes between the use of faith vs. scientific evidence
to explain the world around us dates back centuries.


If I understand the research in this report and in other studies posted here, the seeming conflict between faith and science resides in each of us due in part to the structures of our brains combined with how each individual's brain is genetically constructed combined with the fact that of the twenty or so "modes" of our brain, only one can grab the attention of our conscious and aware self at a time.

Recent research (below in related stories) shows differences between conservative and liberal thought processes; conservatives tending to more dominant amygdala reactions and liberals tending to more frontal lobe responses.  (This is my extremely simplistic explanation of our immensely complex brains.)  The importance of this is that political views are as much genetically controlled as based on logical conclusion.

Now we get into the conflict between science and religion.

The latest research seems to say that this, too, is genetic in origin.  Or, perhaps, may be genetically controlled.

As some brain scientists theorize, free will is an illusion; we're all creatures of our genes even on the highest levels.

This research and the debate surrounding it is central to the work we do as writers.  We deal in human action and emotion at all levels.  Understanding the source of behavior and attitude only makes us more adept and realistic in character and story.

Here's the report with a link to the study in the attribution.
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Conflict between science, religion lies in our brains

". . .the more empathetic the person, the more likely he or she is religious.  
[R]eligious belief is associated with greater compassion, greater social
inclusiveness and greater motivation to engage in pro-social actions."

The conflict between science and religion may have its origins in the structure of our brains, researchers at Case Western Reserve University and Babson College have found.  Clashes between the use of faith vs. scientific evidence to explain the world around us dates back centuries and is perhaps most visible today in the arguments between evolution and creationism.
To believe in a supernatural god or universal spirit, people appear to suppress the brain network used for analytical thinking and engage the empathetic network, the scientists say. When thinking analytically about the physical world, people appear to do the opposite.
"When there's a question of faith, from the analytic point of view, it may seem absurd," said Tony Jack, who led the research. "But, from what we understand about the brain, the leap of faith to belief in the supernatural amounts to pushing aside the critical/analytical way of thinking to help us achieve greater social and emotional insight."

Jack is an associate professor of philosophy at Case Western Reserve and research director of the university's Inamori International Center of Ethics and Excellence, which helped sponsor the research.

"A stream of research in cognitive psychology has shown and claims that people who have faith (i.e., are religious or spiritual) are not as smart as others. They actually might claim they are less intelligent.," said Richard Boyatzis, distinguished university professor and professor of organizational behavior at Case Western Reserve, and a member of Jack's team.

"Our studies confirmed that statistical relationship, but at the same time showed that people with faith are more prosocial and empathic," he said.

In a series of eight experiments, the researchers found the more empathetic the person, the more likely he or she is religious.

That finding offers a new explanation for past research showing women tend to hold more religious or spiritual worldviews than men. The gap may be because women have a stronger tendency toward empathetic concern than men.

Atheists, the researchers found, are most closely aligned with psychopaths -- not killers, but the vast majority of psychopaths classified as such due to their lack of empathy for others.

Brain structure
The research is based on the hypothesis that the human brain has two opposing domains in constant tension. In earlier research, Jack 's Brain, Mind & Consciousness lab used functional magnetic resonance imaging to show the brain has an analytical network of neurons that enables us to think critically and a social network that enables us to empathize. When presented with a physics problem or ethical dilemma, a healthy brain fires up the appropriate network while suppressing the other.

"Because of the tension between networks, pushing aside a naturalistic world view enables you to delve deeper into the social/emotional side," Jack explained. "And that may be the key to why beliefs in the supernatural exist throughout the history of cultures. It appeals to an essentially nonmaterial way of understanding the world and our place in it."

Friedman said, "Having empathy doesn't mean you necessarily have anti-scientific beliefs. Instead, our results suggest that if we only emphasize analytic reasoning and scientific beliefs, as the New Atheist movement suggests, then we are compromising our ability to cultivate a different type of thinking, namely social/moral insight."

"These findings," Friedman continued, "are consistent with the philosophical view, espoused by (Immanuel) Kant, according to which there are two distinct types of truth: empirical and moral."

Experiments and results
The researchers examined the relationship between belief in God or a universal spirit with measures of analytic thinking and moral concern in eight different experiments, each involving 159 to 527 adults. Consistently through all eight, the more religious the person, the more moral concern they showed. But no cause and effect was established.

They found that both spiritual belief and empathic concern were positively associated with frequency of prayer, meditations and other spiritual or religious practices, but neither were predicted by church dinners or other social contact associated with religious affiliation.

While others theorize that mentalizing -- interpreting human behavior in terms of intentional mental states such as needs, desires or purposes -- has a positive association with belief, the researchers found none.

". . .analytic thinking discourages acceptance of spiritual or religious beliefs."

Like other studies, these experiments showed that analytic thinking discourages acceptance of spiritual or religious beliefs. But the statistical analysis of data pooled from all eight experiments indicates empathy is more important to religious belief than analytic thinking is for disbelief.

So why can the conflict between science and religion become so strong?

"Because the networks suppress each other, they may create two extremes," Boyatzis said. "Recognizing that this is how the brain operates, maybe we can create more reason and balance in the national conversations involving science and religion."

Using both networks


"Many of history's most famous scientists were spiritual or religious."

The researchers say humans are built to engage and explore using both networks.  "Far from always conflicting with science, under the right circumstances religious belief may positively promote scientific creativity and insight," Jack said. "Many of history's most famous scientists were spiritual or religious. Those noted individuals were intellectually sophisticated enough to see that there is no need for religion and science to come into conflict."

They refer to Baruch Aba Shalev's book 100 years of Nobel Prizes, which found that, from 1901 to 2000,

  • 654 Nobel laureates, or nearly 90 percent, belonged to one of 28 religions. The remaining 
  • 10.5 percent were atheists, agnostics or freethinkers.

"You can be religious and be a very good scientist," Jack said.

The researchers agree with the New Atheists that suspension of analytical thinking -- at the wrong time -- can be dangerous, and point to the historical use of religious differences to persecute or fight wars.

"Although it is simply a distortion of history to pin all conflict on religion," Jack said. "Non-religious political movements, such as fascism and communism, and quasi-scientific movements, such as eugenics, have also done great harm."

The researchers suggest, however, that taking a carefully considered leap of religious faith appears be an effective route to promoting emotional insight. Theirs and other studies find that, overall, religious belief is associated with greater compassion, greater social inclusiveness and greater motivation to engage in pro-social actions.

Jack said the conflict can be avoided by remembering simple rules:

  1. "Religion has no place telling us about the physical structure of the world; that's the business of science. 
  2. Science should inform our ethical reasoning, but it cannot determine what is ethical or tell us how we should construct meaning and purpose in our lives."

To dig deeper into belief, the researchers are planning studies to learn if individuals who increase their empathy then increase their religious or spiritual belief, or vice versa.

Related stories:
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT:
Attitude & Politics
The Brain - Is it Nurture? Or Nature?
Story Source: Materials provided by Case Western Reserve University. Anthony Ian Jack, Jared Parker Friedman, Richard Eleftherios Boyatzis, Scott Nolan Taylor. Why Do You Believe in God? Relationships between Religious Belief, Analytic Thinking, Mentalizing and Moral Concern. PLOS ONE, 2016.

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