Steve Connor Scientists have identified a genetic mutation in one of the 23,000 human genes that can double the risk of a stroke, which kills more than six million people worldwide each year and is the second top cause of death in developed countries. A study of thousands of stroke patients in Britain and Germany found a link between the most common type of stroke – a blocked blood vessel leading to the brain – and a genetic variation in a gene known as HDAC9. Although strokes are known to run in families, this is one of the first studies to identify a precise DNA variant in the human genetic code that doubles a person's risk of developing a blocked artery supplying vital oxygen to the brain. The HDAC9 gene was already known to be involved in the formation of muscle tissue and the development of the heart, but the latest research suggests it is also implicated in a particular kind of illness called large-artery ischaemic stroke. Scientists said the DNA variation occurs on about 10 per cent of the chromosomes carrying the HDAC9 gene. People who inherit two copies of the variant, one from their mother and one from their father, face twice the risk of developing this type of stroke than people with no copies of the gene variant, they said. The study, published in Nature Genetics and funded by the Wellcome Trust charity, used a relatively new scientific technique of genome-wide association studies to compare the DNA of some 10,000 stroke patients with the DNA of 40,000 people who have not had a stroke. © independent.co.uk

Keyword: Stroke; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 16348 - Posted: 02.06.2012

By MELISSA FAY GREENE In May 1999, Donnie Kanter Winokur, 43, a writer and multimedia producer, and her husband, Rabbi Harvey Winokur, 49, beheld the son of their dreams, the child infertility denied them. Andrey, a pale dark-eyed 1-year-old in a cotton onesie, held in a standing position by a caregiver, appeared in a short videotape recorded in a Russian orphanage. If the couple liked the little boy, they could begin the legal process of adopting him. They liked the little boy very much. Four months later, the Winokurs flew to Russia from their home in Atlanta to adopt Andrey, whom they renamed Iyal, and to adopt an unrelated little girl two days younger, whom they named Morasha. All four appear in another orphanage video: the beaming new parents on the happiest day of their lives, the toddlers passive in the arms of the strangers cradling and kissing them. In August 1999, the family arrived home to congratulations, gifts and helium balloons. “Sometime after their 3rd birthdays, our wonderful fairy tale of adopting two Russian babies began to show cracks,” said Donnie Winokur, who is now 55. She is pert and trim, with cropped brown hair and a pursed-lips, lemony expression softened by wearying experience. Unlike bright and cheery Morasha, Iyal grew oppositional and explosive. He was a sturdy, big-hearted boy with a wide and open face, shiny black hair in a bowl cut and a winning giggle. But, triggered by the sight of a cartoon image on a plastic cup, or an encounter with Morasha’s Barbie dolls, he threw tantrums that shook the house. He stuffed himself at mealtimes with an inexplicable urgency. In a fast-moving car, he unfastened his seat belt and tried to jump out. He awoke every night in a rage. “I had panic attacks in the night when I heard him coming,” she said. “I assumed everything was my fault, that I was not a good-enough mother.” © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 16347 - Posted: 02.06.2012

Robert H. Lustig, Last September, the United Nations declared that, for the first time in human history, chronic non-communicable diseases such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes pose a greater health burden worldwide than do infectious diseases, contributing to 35 million deaths annually. This is not just a problem of the developed world. Every country that has adopted the Western diet — one dominated by low-cost, highly processed food — has witnessed rising rates of obesity and related diseases. There are now 30% more people who are obese than who are undernourished. Economic development means that the populations of low- and middle-income countries are living longer, and therefore are more susceptible to non-communicable diseases; 80% of deaths attributable to them occur in these countries. Many people think that obesity is the root cause of these diseases. But 20% of obese people have normal metabolism and will have a normal lifespan. Conversely, up to 40% of normal-weight people develop the diseases that constitute the metabolic syndrome: diabetes, hypertension, lipid problems, cardiovascular disease andnon-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Obesity is not the cause; rather, it is a marker for metabolic dysfunction, which is even more prevalent. The UN announcement targets tobacco, alcohol and diet as the central risk factors in non-communicable disease. Two of these three — tobacco and alcohol — are regulated by governments to protect public health, leaving one of the primary culprits behind this worldwide health crisis unchecked. Of course, regulating food is more complicated — food is required, whereas tobacco and alcohol are non-essential consumables. The key question is: what aspects of the Western diet should be the focus of intervention? © 2012 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 16346 - Posted: 02.06.2012

By Daisy Yuhas This has been a big week in Alzheimer's news as scientists put together a clearer picture than ever before of how the disease affects the brain. Three recently published studies have detected the disease with new technologies, hinted at its prevalence, and described at last how it makes its lethal progress through the brain. The existence of two forms of Alzheimer's—early- and late-onset—has long baffled scientists. Of the estimated five million Americans who suffer from Alzheimer's, only a few thousand are diagnosed with an early-onset form of the affliction, which affects people before the age of 65. This rare early-onset form is thought to be hereditary and scientists have associated multiple genetic mutations contributing to its occurrence. Late-onset Alzheimer's, although more common, has been the bigger mystery. One variant of the APOE gene-—sometimes known as the Alzheimer's gene—is linked to the late-onset disease. But the APOE gene, unlike dominant early-onset genes, does not determine whether a person will ultimately have dementia. Now there's evidence that late-onset Alzheimer's has a genetic basis similar to that of early-onset Alzheimer's. By sequencing select genes associated with the latter, along with frontotemporal dementia, researchers at Washington University in Saint Louis and other institutions found that patients with late-onset Alzheimer's carry some of the same genetic mutations as those with the early-onset form. The evidence, published on Wednesday in PLoS ONE, bolsters the argument that the forms of Alzheimer's that appear at different life stages should be classified as the same disease. As to why the disease appears earlier in some cases, the scientists speculated that those patients diagnosed relatively early in life carry more genetic risk factors for the disease. © 2012 Scientific American,

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 16345 - Posted: 02.06.2012

By Katherine Harmon A car accident, a rough tackle, an unexpected tumble. The number of ways to bang up the brain are almost as numerous as the people who sustain these injuries. And only recently has it become clear just how damaging a seemingly minor knock can be. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is no longer just a condition acknowledged in military personnel or football players and other professional athletes. Each year some 1.7 million civilians will suffer an injury that disrupts the function of their brains, qualifying it as a TBI. About 8.5 percent of U.S. non-incarcerated adults have a history of TBI, and about 2 percent of the greater population is currently suffering from some sort of disability because of their injury. In prisons, however, approximately 60 percent of adults have had at least one TBI—and even higher prevalence has been reported in some systems. These injuries, which can alter behavior, emotion and impulse control, can keep prisoners behind bars longer and increases the odds they will end up there again. Although the majority of people who suffer a TBI will not end up in the criminal justice system, each one who does costs states an average of $29,000 a year. With more than two million people in the U.S. currently locked up—and millions more lingering in the justice system on probation or supervision—the widespread issue of TBI in prison populations is starting to gain wider attention. © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 16344 - Posted: 02.06.2012

By Antonio Damasio, Special to CNN (CNN) -- How do living organisms become conscious of what is happening to them and around them? How is it that I as well as you, reader of these words, can be conscious of our respective existences and of what is going on in our minds — in my case, ideas about how the brain generates consciousness, about the fact that I was asked to prepare this particular text for a specific deadline, along with the fact that I happen to be in Paris, at the moment, not Los Angeles, and that I am writing this on a cold January day. The biological mechanisms behind the phenomena of consciousness remain unclear although it is fair to say that recently our understanding has made remarkable progress. What are we are certain of understanding and where is it that our understanding fails? On the side of understanding, we can point to the process of sensory representation as an important part of consciousness. Most of what we are conscious of (conceivably all that we are conscious of) consists of representations of objects and events in the sensory modalities in which our brains trade, for example, vision, hearing, touching, smelling, taste, sensing the state of our body's interior. Mapping, in other words. Our brains, at all the levels of their organization, are inveterate makers of maps, simple and not so simple, and as far as I can gather, we only become conscious of the things and actions that the sensory systems help us map. CNN© 2012 Cable News Network.

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 16343 - Posted: 02.06.2012

For the first time, scientists have tracked the activity, across the lifespan, of an environmentally responsive regulatory mechanism that turns genes on and off in the brain's executive hub. Among key findings of the study by National Institutes of Health scientists: genes implicated in schizophrenia and autism turn out to be members of a select club of genes in which regulatory activity peaks during an environmentally-sensitive critical period in development. The mechanism, called DNA methylation, abruptly switches from off to on within the human brain's prefrontal cortex during this pivotal transition from fetal to postnatal life. As methylation increases, gene expression slows down after birth. Epigenetic mechanisms like methylation leave chemical instructions that tell genes what proteins to make –what kind of tissue to produce or what functions to activate. Although not part of our DNA, these instructions are inherited from our parents. But they are also influenced by environmental factors, allowing for change throughout the lifespan. “Developmental brain disorders may be traceable to altered methylation of genes early in life,” explained Barbara Lipska, Ph.D., a scientist in the NIH’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and lead author of the study. “For example, genes that code for the enzymes that carry out methylation have been implicated in schizophrenia. In the prenatal brain, these genes help to shape developing circuitry for learning, memory and other executive functions which become disturbed in the disorders. Our study reveals that methylation in a family of these genes changes dramatically during the transition from fetal to postnatal life – and that this process is influenced by methylation itself, as well as genetic variability. Regulation of these genes may be particularly sensitive to environmental influences during this critical early life period.”

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16342 - Posted: 02.04.2012

by Michael Marshall In one of philosophy's greatest facepalm moments, the normally quite intelligent Arthur Schopenhauer wrote that "women are defective in the powers of reasoning and deliberation". If you find it hard to believe that a well-educated and original thinker could hold such a view, his essay Of Women leaves no doubt about it. Oddly enough, he never married. However, Schopenhauer might have had a point, if only he had been a three-spined stickleback living in Lake Mývatn in Iceland. In this one population, the males have brains much larger than those of the females. They are the only species known where there is such a big disparity between the two sexes' brains. What's surprising is that there aren't more animals like this. Species differ enormously in brain size, after all, and males and females often have different lifestyles that make different demands on their brains. Why do these few fish buck the trend? Most three-spined sticklebacks live in the sea and only visit fresh water to breed, but others – like the Mývatn population – spend all their lives in fresh water. Behavioural scientists have studied them for decades because of their elaborate mating rituals. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 16341 - Posted: 02.04.2012

Andy Coghlan, reporter Ever wondered what's going on in the brain of a mouse? Now brain cells have been captured sending and receiving signals in high resolution for the first time, essentially showing its brain in action. To make the tiniest anatomical details of neurons visible, Katrin Willig and her team at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany, gave mice an extra gene that generates a yellow glow. When their brains were viewed with a special microscope through a glass-sealed window in the skull, the signal junctions in neurons lit up. At these intersections, tiny spines sprout from longer branching fibers, called dendrites, and exchange signals by linking up with spines on neighbouring cells. The movie spans a 20 to 30 minute period, during which a live mouse was anaesthetised. The spines physically move and wobble at the top and base as they form and break connections with neighbouring spines. "There are always connections breaking and forming and it's the natural movement of the spine," says Willig. "It may be the mouse thinking". Brain cells have been imaged in live animals before, but the latest movie is the first to reveal parts of neurons in such fine detail - down to a resolution of 70 nanometers. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 16340 - Posted: 02.04.2012

by Andy Coghlan A simple, cheap procedure for repairing damaged nerves in the leg can help paralysed rats walk normally within a few days – a dramatic reduction in recovery time. Within minutes of the rats waking up after the operation, they began to move their damaged limb, and 98 per cent of them had recovered 60 to 70 per cent of leg function within two to four weeks. Conventional treatments would never give the rats such a level of recovery. After a nerve is severed it is important to reconnect the two ends as quickly as possible, because the disconnected section withers away after a few days of isolation. The usual technique is to stitch the loose ends together – but the body's own repair system can stand in the way of a successful mend. Earlier studies by George Bittner of the University of Texas at Austin and his team revealed where the fault lies: it's with the tiny spheres called vesicles that the body creates in the nerve stumps. "Normally, the vesicles would repair each of the two cut ends," says Bittner. But if they do so before the two ends can be brought back into contact, the vesicles simply seal the two stumps off, making it difficult to create a connection between them later on. If calcium is excluded from the injury site, though, the vesicles don't form and the body's self-repair process is aborted. This leaves the damaged nerve ends unsealed and in a better state for surgical reattachment. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Regeneration
Link ID: 16339 - Posted: 02.04.2012

Caitlin Stier, video intern The animation, created by Douglas Reedy of Dublin, Ohio, is based on a static illusion developed by Baingio Pinna from the University of Sassari in Italy and Lothar Spillmann from University Hospital Freiberg in Germany. The illusion is created due to the tilt of tiny squares that make up the outline of each circle. When they lean in opposite directions in alternating rings, a spiral is perceived. Tweaking their angle of inclination creates a spiral with a different orientation. The squares in a circle also alternate in colour, which seems to intensify the effect compared to the same pattern in a uniform colour. When the squares are shifted upright, the illusion vanishes. The effect is stronger at the edges of your gaze compared to the center, which gives insight into how it works. Alvin Raj from the Perceptual Science Group at MIT and his team have been investigating the phenomenon by testing a denser version of the illusion with more squares and rings. Raj suggests that the way we size up the image in our peripheral vision causes a calculation error that accounts for the perceived swirl. "Some of the strange things you see might be a by-product of your visual system losing some information and trying to make the best of it," explains collaborator Benjamin Balas of North Dakota State University. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 16338 - Posted: 02.04.2012

Christof Koch We moderns believe that our momentary, subjective experience is intimately linked to events in the brain. One set of neurons fires, and we perceive an apple's colour, while a different population of cells gives rise to its taste. Yet the self is also stable: turn the brain off, as happens during heart surgery when the body is cooled to frigid temperatures, and on recovery, the patient's character, personality, habits and long-term memories remain intact. It is these stable aspects of the self, rather than the ebb and flow of our thoughts and percepts, that physicist-turned-neuroscientist Sebastian Seung seeks to explain in Connectome. Seung argues intelligently and powerfully that the self lies in the totality of the brain's wiring — the eponymous 'connectome', the word used by neuroscientists to denote all the fibre bundles (the white matter) of the human brain. These insulated nerve axons have a total length of around 150,000 kilometres. Seung hails a new science, 'connectomics', as the key to understanding the brain and its pathologies. This view is grounded in a older doctrine known as connectionism, which postulates that neurons are simple devices and that their connections determine their functions. Cataloguing the links among neurons therefore charts the mind. The heart of Connectome deals with how nervous systems can be reconstructed using electron microscopy. To do this, neural tissue is cut into slices 40–50 nanometres thick, and then imaged to a resolution of a few nanometres. Imaging 1 cubic millimetre of cortex generates 1 petabyte of data, or about a billion photo images from a typical digital camera. © 2012 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 16337 - Posted: 02.04.2012

By Diane Mapes The specter of a burned-out Baby Boomer using hard drugs way into middle age may conjure images of addiction, destruction and death. That certainly can be true, but it’s not the complete picture, at least according to a new study from researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who found that people who occasionally use drugs like cocaine, amphetamines and opiates over the course of their lives are more common than anyone might suspect. “When you think of a drug user, you often think of someone strung-out, using every day, and in deep trouble, but national data shows that that's not the most common thing you see," says Dr. Stefan Kertesz, an associate professor in the UAB Division of Preventive Medicine. “The most common pattern is illicit drug use at lower levels." In other words, these sporadic drug users are “dabblers,” says Kertesz, lead author of the study that followed more than 4,300 people from four cities recruited between the ages of 18 to 30 in 1985 and 1986 -- and then tracked them for almost 20 years. He confirmed what he suspected from his experience in clinical care: that some perfectly functional middle-agers still turn to the drugs of their youth. "I meet people who use harder drugs on an intermittent basis," says Kertesz, who was trying to find ways doctors can better help patients who use drugs recreationally. © 2012 msnbc.com

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 16336 - Posted: 02.04.2012

By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News Abnormalities in the brain may make some people more likely to become drug addicts, according to scientists at the University of Cambridge. They found the same differences in the brains of addicts and their non-addicted brothers and sisters. The study, published in the journal Science, suggested addiction is in part a "disorder of the brain". Other experts said the non-addicted siblings offered hope of new ways of teaching addicts "self-control". It has long been established that the brains of drug addicts have some differences to other people, but explaining that finding has been more difficult. Experts were unsure whether drugs changed the wiring of the brain or if drug addicts' brains were wired differently in the first place. This study, funded by the Medical Research Council, attempted to answer that by comparing the brains of 50 cocaine or crack addicts with the brain of their brother or sister, who had always been clean. Both the addicts and the non-addict siblings had the same abnormalities in the region of the brain which controls behaviour, the fronto-striatal systems. The suggestion is that these brains may be "hard-wired" for addiction in the first place. Lead researcher Dr Karen Ersche said: "It has long been known that not everyone who takes drugs becomes addicted." BBC © 2012

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Brain imaging
Link ID: 16335 - Posted: 02.04.2012

By Gary Stix Concussion, the most common among traumatic brain injuries, which occurs 1.7 million times a year in the U.S., represents a major public-health problem. It occurs when there is a sudden acceleration or deceleration of the head, a process depicted here in this animation. A blow can produce a brief loss of consciousness, headaches and impaired cognition, among other symptoms. Symptoms can last for days or sometimes longer. And a person who experience one risks another and may find recovery takes longer. Scientists continue to learn more about the nefarious consequences of repeated concussions. In the February issue of Scientific American, writer Jeffrey Bartholet details in “The Collision Syndrome evidence for yet another neurodegenerative disorder that can result from concussions. © 2012 Scientific American,

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 16334 - Posted: 02.04.2012

by Jon Cohen As the father-to-son exchange in the old Cat Stevens song advised, "take your time, think a lot, ... think of everything you’ve got." Turns out the mellow ’70s folkie had stumbled upon what may explain a key feature of our brains that sets us apart from our closest relatives: We unhurriedly make synaptic connections through much of our early childhoods, and this plasticity enables us to slowly wire our brains based on our experiences. Given that humans and chimpanzees share 98.8% of the same genes, researchers have long wondered what drives our unique cognitive and social skills. Yes, chimpanzees are smart and cooperative to a degree, but we clearly outshine them when it comes to abstract thinking, self-regulation, assimilation of cultural knowledge, and reasoning abilities. Now a study that looks at postmortem brain samples from humans, chimpanzees, and macaques collected from before birth to up to the end of the life span for each of these species has found a key difference in the expression of genes that control the development and function of synapses, the connections among neurons through which information flows. As researchers describe in a report published online today in Genome Research, they analyzed the expression of some 12,000 genes—part of the so-called transcriptome—from each species. They found 702 genes in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) of humans that had a pattern of expression over time that differed from the two other species. (The PFC plays a central role in social behavior, working toward goals, and reasoning.) By comparison, genes in the chimpanzee PFC at various life stages had only 55 unique expression patterns—12-fold fewer than found in humans. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Evolution
Link ID: 16333 - Posted: 02.02.2012

By Laura Sanders After surviving a bout of virulent bird flu, mice’s brains show short-term reductions of a key brain chemical and long-lasting signs of infection, a new study finds. The research suggests this type of flu might leave people more vulnerable to brain disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. While most people think of influenza as a disorder of the body, certain kinds of flu also infect the brain. Recent studies have found that the bird flu virus known as H5N1, which kills about half the people it infects, can set up shop in the brain. But exactly what happens next has been a mystery. In the new study, scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., examined the brains of mice that had survived an initial H5N1 infection. As in people, the virus kills about half of mice affected. “The first goal with H5N1 was to characterize the neurological effects,” says study coauthor Richard Smeyne. After being infected with H5N1 isolated from a Vietnamese boy who died from the flu, some mice initially got very sick, but then seemed to recover completely after about 21 days. Yet the story wasn’t so simple in the brain, the team reports in the Feb. 1 Journal of Neuroscience. Nerve cells that make one of the brain’s key messengers — the neurotransmitter dopamine, which helps regulate movement — shut down production about 10 days after infection. These nerve cells, which are the same cells that degenerate in people with Parkinson’s disease, “basically take a time out,” Smeyne says. “All efforts are to survive.” © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 16332 - Posted: 02.02.2012

By GINA KOLATA Alzheimer’s disease seems to spread like an infection from brain cell to brain cell, two new studies in mice have found. But instead of viruses or bacteria, what is being spread is a distorted protein known as tau. The surprising finding answers a longstanding question and has immediate implications for developing treatments, researchers said. And they suspect that other degenerative brain diseases like Parkinson’s may spread in a similar way. Alzheimer’s researchers have long known that dying, tau-filled cells first emerge in a small area of the brain where memories are made and stored. The disease then slowly moves outward to larger areas that involve remembering and reasoning. But for more than a quarter-century, researchers have been unable to decide between two explanations. One is that the spread may mean that the disease is transmitted from neuron to neuron, perhaps along the paths that nerve cells use to communicate with one another. Or it could simply mean that some brain areas are more resilient than others and resist the disease longer. The new studies provide an answer. And they indicate it may be possible to bring Alzheimer’s disease to an abrupt halt early on by preventing cell-to-cell transmission, perhaps with an antibody that blocks tau. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 16331 - Posted: 02.02.2012

By The Editors The dangers of life in the National Football League made headlines in 2009, when a study commissioned by the NFL found that retired players were 19 times more likely than other men of similar ages to develop severe memory problems. The obvious culprit: continued play after repeated head injuries. Indeed, head injury can imitate many types of neurodegenerative disease, including Parkinson’s disease and, as journalist Jeffrey Bartholet reports in “The Collision Syndrome,” on page 66, perhaps even amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease. The problem is not unique to professional sports. About 144,000 people aged 18 and younger are treated every year in U.S. hospital emergency rooms for concussions, according to a December 2010 analysis in the Journal of Pediatrics. Nearly a third of these injuries occur while kids are playing organized sports. Forty percent of pediatric concussions seen in emergency rooms involve high school students. The figure is slightly higher—42 percent—for younger children. Overall, concussions are most common in football and ice hockey, followed by soccer, wrestling and other sports, and slightly more boys than girls suffer concussions. Despite the prevalence of brain injury from kindergarten to high school, relatively little research on the long-term health consequences of concussion has been conducted on child athletes, compared with those in college and in the pros. Scientists have an incomplete understanding of what happens when a child’s brain slams up against the inside of the skull during a blow to the head and how this affects neurological development. As participation in sports continues to grow (1.5 million youngsters now play on football teams in the U.S.), more head injuries are inevitable, making pediatric concussions an emerging public health crisis. © 2012 Scientific American,

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16330 - Posted: 02.02.2012

by Helen Thomson When you read this sentence to yourself, it's likely that you hear the words in your head. Now, in what amounts to technological telepathy, others are on the verge of being able to hear your inner dialogue too. By peering inside the brain, it is possible to reconstruct speech from the activity that takes place when we hear someone talking. Because this brain activity is thought to be similar whether we hear a sentence or think the same sentence, the discovery brings us a step closer to broadcasting our inner thoughts to the world without speaking. The implications are enormous – people made mute through paralysis or locked-in syndrome could regain their voice. It might even be possible to read someone's mind. Imagine a musician watching a piano being played with no sound, says Brian Pasley at the University of California, Berkeley. "If a pianist were watching a piano being played on TV with the sound off, they would still be able to work out what the music sounded like because they know what key plays what note," Pasley says. His team has done something analogous with brain waves, matching neural areas to their corresponding noises. How the brain converts speech into meaningful information is a bit of a puzzle. The basic idea is that sound activates sensory neurons, which then pass this information to different areas of the brain where various aspects of the sound are extracted and eventually perceived as language. Pasley and colleagues wondered whether they could identify where some of the most vital aspects of speech are extracted by the brain. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Language; Robotics
Link ID: 16329 - Posted: 02.02.2012