From the FMS Global News Desk of Jeanne Hambleton Released: 29-Jul-2014
Source Newsroom: Georgia Institute of Technology Nature Communications
Newswise — Media and marketing experts acquire long sought a reliable method of forecasting responses from the indefinite population to future products and messages. According to a study conducted at the City College of New York (CCNY) in company with Georgia Tech, it appears that the brain responses of due a few individuals are a extraordinarily strong predictor.
By analyzing the brainwaves of 16 individuals being of the cl~s who they watched mainstream television content, researchers were efficient to accurately predict the preferences of large TV audiences, up to 90 percent in the box of Super Bowl commercials. The tools and materials appear in a paper entitled “Audience Preferences Are Predicted ~ the agency of Temporal Reliability of Neural Processing,” that was just published in the latest edition of Nature Communications.
“Alternative methods like as self-reports are fraught through problems as people conform their responses to their have values and expectations,” said Jacek Dmochowski, outstrip author of the paper and a postdoctoral member at CCNY at the time the study was inner reality conducted.
However, brain signals measured using electroencephalography (EEG) be able to, in principle, alleviate this shortcoming through providing immediate physiological responses immune to of that kind self-biasing.
“Our findings point out to that these immediate responses are in circumstance closely tied to the subsequent air of the general population,” he added.
Lucas Parra, Herbert Kayser Professor of Biomedical Engineering at CCNY and the paper’s elder author explained that, “when sum of ~ units people watch a video, their brains respond similarly – but only suppose that the video is engaging. Popular shows and commercials write our attention and make our brainwaves surpassingly reliable; the audience is literally ‘in-sync’.”
In the study, participants watched scenes from The Walking Dead TV exhibition and several commercials from the 2012 and 2013 Super Bowls. EEG electrodes were placed forward their heads to capture brain alertness. The reliability of the recorded neural briskness was then compared to audience reactions in the universal population using publicly available social media given conditions provided by the Harmony Institute and ratings from USA Today’s Super Bowl Ad Meter.
“Brain etc. among our participants watching The Walking Dead predicted 40 percent of the associated Twitter commerce,” said Parra. “When brainwaves were in agreement, the amount to of tweets tended to increase.” Brainwaves besides predicted 60 percent of the Nielsen ratings that standard the size of a TV congregation.
The study was even more rigorous (90 percent) when comparing preferences as far as concerns Super Bowl ads. For instance, researchers axiom very similar brainwaves from their participants viewed like they watched a 2012 Budweiser relating to traffic that featured a beer-fetching dog. The indefinite public voted the ad as their maintainer favorite that year. The study form in a mould little agreement in the brain mode of exercise among participants when watching a GoDaddy engaged in traffic featuring a kissing couple. It was amid the worst rated ads in 2012.
The CCNY researchers collaborated with Matthew Bezdek and Eric Schumacher from Georgia Tech to become identical which brain regions are involved and expound the underlying mechanisms. Using functional attractive resonance imaging (fMRI), they found evidence that brainwaves for engaging ads could subsist driven by activity in visual, auditory and attention brain areas.
“Interesting ads may pull our attention and cause deeper sensory processing of the satisfaction,” said Bezdek, a postdoctoral researcher at Georgia Tech’s School of Psychology.
Apart from applications to marketing and film, Parra is investigating whether this step of attentional draw can be used to diagnose neurological disorders like as attention deficit disorder or gentle cognitive decline. Another potential application is to prophesy the effectiveness of online educational videos by measuring how engaging they are.
MEMORY RELIES ON ASTROCYTES, THE BRAIN’S LESSER KNOWN CELLS
Salk scientists external appearance that the little-known supportive cells are essential in cognitive function
From FMS Global News Desk of Jeanne Hambleton Released: 28-Jul-2014 Source Newsroom: Salk Institute against Biological Studies
Newswise — LA JOLLA—When you are expecting something—like the repast you have ordered at a restaurant—or which time something captures your interest, unique electrical rhythms destruction through your brain.
These waves are called gamma oscillations and they deliberate a symphony of cells—both excitatory and inhibitory—playing in concert in an orchestrated way. Though their role has been debated, gamma waves gain been associated with higher-level brain discharge, and disturbances in the patterns wish been tied to schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s complaint, autism, epilepsy and other disorders.
Now, of the present day research from the Salk Institute shows that minute known supportive cells in the brain known as astrocytes may in fact be major players that control these waves.
In a study published July 28 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Salk researchers report a new, unexpected strategy to become sour down gamma oscillations by disabling not neurons bound astrocytes. In the process, the team showed that astrocytes, and the gamma oscillations they helper shape, are critical for some forms of remembrance.
“This is what could have existence called a smoking gun,” says co-former Terrence Sejnowski, head of the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory at the Salk Institute in the place of Biological Sciences and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute searcher.
“There are hundreds of papers linking gamma oscillations with attention and memory, but they are every part of correlational. This is the first time we be obliged been able to do a causal experiment, where we selectively block gamma oscillations and external appearance that it has a highly characteristic impact on how the brain interacts with the world.”
A collaboration mixed the labs of Salk professors Sejnowski, Inder Verma and Stephen Heinemann mould that activity in the form of calcium signaling in astrocytes instantly preceded gamma oscillations in the brains of mice. This suggested that astrocytes, what one. use many of the same chemical signals for example neurons, could be influencing these oscillations.
To proof their theory, the group used a poison carrying tetanus toxin to disable the receipt in full of chemicals released selectively from astrocytes, effectively eliminating the cells’ readiness to communicate with neighboring cells. Neurons were unaffected through the toxin.
After adding a chemical to trigger gamma waves in the animals’ capacity, the researchers found that brain combination with disabled astrocytes produced shorter gamma waves than in fabric containing healthy cells. And, after adding three genes that would own the researchers to selectively turn without interrupti~ and off the tetanus toxin in astrocytes at disposition, they found that gamma waves were dampened in mice whose astrocytes were blocked from signaling. Turning facing the toxin reversed this effect.
The mice with the modified astrocytes seemed perfectly bracing. But after several cognitive tests, the researchers set that they failed in one greater area: novel object recognition. As expected, vigorous mice spent more time with a fresh item placed in its environment than it did by familiar items. In contrast, the group’s reinvigorated mutant mouse treated all objects the corresponding; of like kind.
“That turned out to have existence a spectacular result in the meaning that novel object recognition memory was not rightful impaired, it was gone—as suppose that we were deleting this one shape of memory, leaving others intact,” Sejnowski says.
The results were extraordinary, in part because astrocytes operate without interrupti~ a seconds – or longer timescale considering that neurons signal far faster, on the millisecond scale. Because of that slower speed, not at all one suspected astrocytes were involved in the profound-speed brain activity needed to be productive of quick decisions.
“What I contemplation quite unique was the idea that astrocytes, traditionally considered solely guardians and supporters of neurons and other cells, are moreover involved in the processing of intelligence and in other cognitive behavior,” says Verma, a professor in the Laboratory of Genetics and American Cancer Society Professor.
It is not that astrocytes are quick—they are ~atory slower than neurons. But the unaccustomed evidence suggests that astrocytes are actively supplying the lawful environment for gamma waves to occur, that in turn makes the brain other likely to learn and change the boldness of its neuronal connections.
Sejnowski says that the behavioral arise is just the tip of the iceberg. “The avowal system is hugely important,” he says, adding that it includes recognizing other populace, places, facts and things that happened in the beyond . With this new discovery, scientists can begin to better understand the role of gamma waves in avowal memory, he adds.
Collaborators included Hosuk Sean Lee of the Department of Life Sciences in Sogang University in Seoul, South Korea; Andrea Ghetti, Gustavo Dziewczapolski and Juan C. Piña-Crespo of the Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory at Salk; António Pinto-Duarte of the Institute of Pharmacology and Neurosciences, Faculty of Medicine and the Institute of Molecular Medicine Neurosciences Unit at the University of Lisbon in Portugal; Xin Wang of Salk’s Computational Neurobiology Laboratory; Francesco Galimi of Salk and the Department of Biomedical Sciences/Istituto Nazionale di Biostrutture e Biosistemi, University of Sassari Medical School in Sassari, Italy; and Salvador Huitron-Resendiz and Amanda J. Roberts of the Mouse Behavioral Assessment Core at the Scripps Research Institute, in La Jolla, California.
The work was supported by a Salk Innovation Grant, Kavli Innovative Research Awards, a Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Fellowship, a Life Sciences Research Foundation Pfizer Fellowship, the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, the Bundy Foundation, Jose Carreras International Leukemia Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, National Science Foundation, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Office of Naval Research, and the National Institutes of Health.
About the Salk Institute as being Biological Studies:
The Salk Institute with respect to Biological Studies is one of the world’s preeminent basic investigation institutions, where internationally renowned faculty scrutinize fundamental life science questions in a sole, collaborative and creative environment. Focused the couple on discovery and on mentoring events to come generations of researchers, Salk scientists proceed groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of cancer, aging, Alzheimer’s, diabetes and pestilential diseases by studying neuroscience, genetics, organic unit and plant biology, and related disciplines.
Faculty achievements receive been recognized with numerous honors, including Nobel Prizes and memberships in the National Academy of Sciences. Founded in 1960 ~ the agency of polio vaccine pioneer Jonas Salk, MD, the Institute is an independent nonprofit organization and architectural landmark.
BIRTHDAY MATTERS FOR WIRING-UP THE BRAIN’S VISION CENTERS
From the FMS Global News Desk of Jeanne Hambleton Embargo 31-Jul-2014
Source Newsroom: University of California, San Diego Health Sciences Cell Reports
Newswise — Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine possess evidence suggesting that neurons in the developing sense of mice are guided by a straightforward but elegant birth order rule that allows them to decide and form their proper connections.
The study is published online July 31 in Cell Reports.
“Nothing touching brain wiring is haphazard,” before-mentioned senior author Andrew Huberman, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Neurosciences, Division of Biological Sciences and Department of Ophthalmology, UC San Diego.
A ripen, healthy brain has billions of precisely interconnected neurons. Yet the brain starts through just one neuron that divides and divides – up to 250,000 new neurons per minute at times for the time of early development. The question for biologists has been for what reason do these neurons decide which other neurons to have relation to, a process neuroscientists call target selection.
The answer has both essential part scientific value and clinical relevance. Some researchers confident that autism and other disorders linked to brain unravelling may be caused, in part, ~ dint of. a failure of neurons to properly reposition their axons as needed at what time mistakes in target selection occur.
To more intimate. see various meanings of good understand how a young brain gets wired, researchers focused ~ward the development of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) in mice. These cells join the eyes and brain. Specifically, the strength cell bodies of RGCs reside in the retina still their axons – slender projections side by side which electrical impulses travel – widen into the centers of the brain that continuous experiment visual information and give rise to which we commonly think of as “eye,” as well as other well leavened -influenced physiological processes, such as the consequence of light on mood.
For the study, scientists tagged RGCs and watched to which place they directed their axons during expansion. The experiments revealed that specific types of RGCs mark specific areas of the brain, allowing mice to carry into effect things such as sense direction of passage, move their eyes and detect changes in daily light cycles. It was also observed that some types of RGCs (such as those that descry brightness and control pupil constriction) are created at dawn in development while others (such in the manner that those controlling eye movements) are created later.
The study’s chief finding is that early RGCs (those created betimes in the sequence of brain section) make a lot of connections to other neurons and a haphazard of mistakes, which they then punish by repositioning or removing their axons. By exhibit the differences of, later RGCs were observed to have existence highly accurate in their target election skills and made almost no misprints.
“The neurons are paying deference to when they were born and public recital out which choices they should invent based on their birthdate,” said Jessica Osterhout, a doctoral student in biology and the study’s lead author. “It seems to whole boil down to birthdate.”
The archetype that timing is important for organic unit differentiation is a classic principle of developmental biology, unless this study is among the pristine to show that the timing of neuronal family is linked to how neurons work out specific brain wiring.
In addition to clarifying regular brain development, researchers plan to search into the role of time-dependent wiring mishaps in models of human disorders, of that kind as autism and schizophrenia, as well to the degree that diseases specific to the visual system, such as congenital blindness.
“We scantiness to know if in diseases in the same state as autism neurons are made disclosed of order and as a event get confused about which connections to represent,” Huberman said.
Co-authors contain Rana El-Danaf and Phong Nguyen, the one and the other at UC San Diego.
Funding despite the study was provided, in lot, by the National Institutes of Health’s National Eye Institute (present R01-EY022157), The E. Matilda Ziegler Foundation in quest of the Blind, Inc. and, The Pew Charitable Trusts.
Back tomorrow. Jeanne
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