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July 29 2011
Use Your Brain to Brake, Not Your Leg
Scientists may soon give your braking leg a break. In a recent study in the Journal of Neural Engineering, researchers at the Berlin Institute of Technology monitored the brain signals of drivers and found that they could detect the study participants’ intent to stop before they actually stomped on the brakes. The findings could someday lead to automated braking technologies that help avoid devastating car crashes.
In the study, the researchers had 18 participants drive along virtual roads in a racing simulator that includes winding streets and oncoming traffic—the drivers had to maintain a certain distance behind the computer-controlled cars in front of them, which braked at random intervals. While the participants drove, the researchers tracked their brain signals using caps fitted EEG sensors.
With the EEG data, the researchers saw when the drivers were going to brake a whole 13 hundredths of a second (or 130 milliseconds) before they did it. At 65 mph, this tiny difference in reaction time can reduce braking distance by 12 feet. “While this may not seem [like] much, it may be enough to prevent accidents,” computer scientist and co-author Stefan Haufe told ABC News. The researchers are now planning to ...
July 01 2011
Love Is a Many-Splendored Painkiller
Artists and storytellers devote much time to showing the wondrous powers of love. And it seems that scientists are also attuned to studying love, and through such studies they’ve made an interesting discovery: love may shield you—at least partially—against pain because of the feelings of safety it provides.
In the new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, psychologist Naomi Eisenberger of the University of California, Los Angeles and her research team investigated how women in long-term relationships respond to pain while viewing pictures of their partners. The researchers scanned the women’s brains with an fMRI while jolting them with stinging shocks. As they were zapped, the women looked at photographs of their partners, strangers, or unrelated objects (like chairs). The researchers put a 20-point pain scale on the different images, and asked the 17 women to rate their pain after each shock.
As the researchers expected from their previous research, the women claimed less pain when they looked at pictures of their partners (their pain ratings for strangers and objects were roughly the same). The team checked these ratings against the fMRI scans, and saw that they correlated ...
June 06 2011
To Keep to Your Diet, Pretend You’re Constantly Breaking It
Is this milkshake better than yours?
Congratulating yourself on that calorie-conscious salad might just make you feel hungrier, scientists are now finding—better to close your eyes, take a bite, and pretend you’re eating ice cream.
We’ve already heard in recent years that eating imaginary M&Ms or cheese cubes can give you some of the satiety of the real thing: In a 2010 paper, researchers found that contrary to popular belief, imagining eating such foods in vivid detail actually made subjects eat fewer M&Ms, cheese chunks, and so on. Now, scientists have found that if you believe a shake is low in calories, you’ll feel less satisfied than people who think the shake was an indulgence, even when you’re both drinking the same shake. What gives?
The team (from Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity) told subjects that a 380-calorie shake had either an indulgent 620 calories or a prudent 140 calories. Then they checked to see what effect that had on subjects’ blood levels of ghrelin, a hormone that triggers hunger and is high before meals and low after. They found that ghrelin didn’t subside afterwards in people who thought they ...
February 24 2011
Scientist to Research Subject: Really, You Have 3 Arms
One day you might not have to ask someone to lend a helping hand–because you’ll have a third arm of your own. At least, that’s a possible application of a mental trick scientists performed on 154 healthy volunteers: These men and women were made to feel as if they had three arms.
To pull off this ruse, the researchers placed a prosthetic arm next to a volunteer’s two real arms, and they touched the subject’s right hand and the rubber hand in exactly the same place at the same time. Because the taps were synchronized, the volunteer’s brain was tricked into feeling them both. According to Science Daily:
“What happens then is that a conflict arises in the brain concerning which of the right hands belongs to the participant’s body,” says Arvid Guterstam, one of the scientists behind the study. “What one could expect is that only one of the hands is experienced as one’s own, presumably the real arm. But what we found, surprisingly, is that the brain solves this conflict by accepting both right hands as part of ...
January 20 2011
Ping Pong Night at the Museum: Grab Your Paddle and Talk Science
It wasn’t your typical American Museum of Natural History crowd: yesterday evening, a handful of kids and the standard science nerds were joined in the Hall of Ocean Life by ping pong aficionados.
Five ping pong tables—courtesy of co-host SPiN ping pong club—were set up in the hall for the event, “This is Your Brain on Ping Pong.” The evening included time for guests to practice the sport, as well as a panel discussion moderated by museum icthyologist Melanie Stiassny.
The evening’s attempts to connect ping pong and science were, well, a little weak. Stiassny ran through a brief history of life on Earth, with references to the sport dotting her speech like product placements: 500 million years ago the first organisms with nervous systems are on the scene—hey, you need a spinal cord to control a ping pong paddle! “Clearly evolution has a purpose, and that purpose is ping pong,” said Stiassny.
One panelist was legendary actress Susan Sarandon, perhaps most beloved for her role as Janet in Rocky Horror; she’s also an investor in SPiN. Why does she think SPiN is so popular? Sarandon claimed that ...
November 09 2010
Why People of Other Races “All Look Alike” to You
Some may say it as a joke, others might find it offensive, but it turns out there’s some truth to the idea that people of other races “all look alike.” A new study demonstrates that people have more trouble recognizing faces of people of other races.
While this effect has been observed for almost a hundred years, scientists still don’t fully understand why it happens and who it happens to, explains Ars Technica:
It has been suggested that the other race effect is simply a result of differing amounts of facial variation between races, or varying observational abilities of particular races. However, in this study, subjects of both races showed the same trends, suggesting that the other race effect is a generalized phenomenon experienced by people of more than one race.
For the new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers monitored the brain activity of 24 subjects (12 western Caucasian, 12 eastern Asian) while they were shown pictures of two faces and asked if they were the same person. The two pictures were always of people of the same race, but were only sometimes the same race as the participant. The two pictures showed people making different facial expressions to make identification more difficult.
In each subject’s brain the scientists watched for a specific electrical spike that they know is related to facial recognition, known as the N170 event-related potential. If the person recognized the two pictures as different people, there were two similar-sized spikes, but if they thought the two pictures were the same person, there was one normal spike and a second, weaker spike.
But this weakened second spike was seen only when a subject was presented with two pictures of a single person who was the same race as the test subject. When a subject saw two pictures of a single person who was a different race, the subject’s brain was essentially flummoxed. Both the Caucasian and Asian groups had a much more difficult time recognizing identical faces from another race, study author Roberto Caldara told New Scientist:
“That suggests it’s a universal phenomenon in our perception,” says Caldara, who adds that people who live among people of other races can learn to identify individuals better. Caldara says his team’s techniques could help identify unreliable witnesses in criminal trials. “If a witness has a really clear other-race effect, we could not be sure that they had really recognised a defendant of another race,” he says.
Related content:
Discoblog: Given the Choice, Liberals Would Rather “Kill Whitey”
80beats: Researcher Discovers Effective Profiling; Says It’s More Trouble Than It’s Worth
The Loom: This is your brain on racism. Or is that liberal guilt?
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Racial bias weakens our ability to feel someone else’s pain
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Williams syndrome children show no racial stereotypes or social fear
Not Exactly Rocket Science: They don’t all look the same – could better facial discrimination lead to less racial discrimination?
Image: Flickr/Juddejah
September 22 2010
That’s a Relief: Ice Cream Probably Doesn’t Cause Brain Damage
So sweet… so painful. You try to hold back, to stop yourself from over-indulging, because you know what will happen: That crippling, brain-piercing pain of the ever-feared brain freeze will ruin your ice cream love-fest.
Bjorn Carey of Popular Science discussed this terrifying condition with medical experts, seeking their opinion:
First, let’s get one thing straight. “This condition is referred to as an ‘ice-cream headache,’ ” says Stacey Gray, a sinus surgeon at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston. “It’s a very technical term.”
Gray also noted that, even though no studies have been done on the exact cause of ice cream headache, she believes we can safely rule out the theory that imbibing overly cold edibles actually lowers brain temperature or causes brain damage. The pain that comes from slurping that Slurpee doesn’t have anything to do with the brain, she says.
Though the NIH has put no money towards studying what causes this condition, scientists and doctors have two ideas as to what might cause the pain, which feels something like an icicle piercing your temple. The first idea is that the cold from a drink causes the blood vessels in the sinuses to shrink, which blocks blood flow in a way similar to a migraine. The second theory suggests that the pain is caused by the low temperature aggravating part of the trigeminal nerve in your mouth.
And even if making mouth-love to an ice cream cone did lower your brain temperature by a few degrees, neurosurgeon Rafael Tamargo at Johns Hopkins Hospital’s told Popular Science that it’s no big deal. He often gives patients’ brains the polar bear plunge down to 64 degrees Fahrenheit during brain surgery:
“Even if the patient wasn’t anesthetized, at that temperature they would be in a noninteractive state, unable to sense stimuli or produce a response,” Tamargo says. “But once you warm the brain up, it picks right up from where it left off. It’s not harmful at all.”
Related content:
Science Not Fiction: Eleventh Hour: They Only Freeze the Heads!
Discover Magazine: The Art & Science of Slicing up a Human Brain
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: I scream! You scream! We all scream…from ice-cream headaches.
Discoblog: Why Can’t All Medications Come in Ice Cream-Form?
Image: Flickr/joolie
August 31 2010
Bronze Age Brain Surgeon: Volcanic Glass Scalpel, Please
Move over, Dr. Quinn. Sure, the fictional television doctor could perform surgeries in the Old West using nothing more than a spoon–but one researcher now argues that inhabitants of a small village in Turkey sliced skulls over 4,000 years ago, using shards of volcanic glass.
Working in a Bronze Age graveyard in Ikiztepe, Turkey, archaeologist Önder Bilgi has uncovered 14 skulls with rectangular cut marks. He believes the Ikiztepe people used obsidian “scalpels,” found elsewhere on the site, to treat brain tumors and fight-related head injuries, and to relieve pressure from hemorrhaging.
Bilgi also told New Scientist, which has a complete interview, that the skulls’ healing indicates that some patients survived at least two years after their surgeries. Though this isn’t the oldest evidence of brain surgery (researchers have found a hole drilled into a Neolithic skull), Bilgi argues that the Ikiztepe rectangular skull openings are much more “sophisticated.”
Bilgi, who in an earlier study analyzed arsenic absorption in Ikiztepe bones to determine their metalworking skills, told New Scientist that the tools themselves aren’t too worse for multiple millennial wear:
“The blades are double-sided, about 4 centimetres [1.6 inches] long, and very, very sharp. They would still cut you today.”
Related content:
Discoblog: Brain Surgery Enables Woman to Run 100-Mile Races
Discoblog: Why Michael Jackson Might Be Buried Without His Brain
Discoblog: Military Members to Donate Their Brains to Science
Discoblog: Will Drilling a Hole in Your Head Cure Alzheimer’s?
Image: flickr / Mykl Roventine
June 22 2010
Did Michelangelo Hide a Brain Drawing in a Sistine Chapel Fresco?
What do you see in this detail from the Sistine Chapel frescos?
We’ll give you a hint: Look at God’s neck.
Still can’t see it? Take a look in a May issue of the journal Neurosurgery. What do a medical illustrator and a neurosurgeon see when they look at a Michelangelo masterpiece?
We propose that in the Separation of Light From Darkness, Michelangelo drew into God’s neck a ventral view of the brainstem as well as the perisellar and chiasmatic regions.
Though finding this hidden drawing seems to take a lot of squinting and genuine imagination, the article’s authors claim that their beliefs have historical and artistic groundings. For one, Michelangelo was a master at dissecting cadavers, a hobby he started at age 17, the authors told NPR. They also point to the lighting, God’s trimmed beard, and the fact that, as a neck, it isn’t anatomically correct. For a brainstem, the authors think, it’s just right.
Some art historians aren’t convinced. Brian A. Curran, an associate professor of art history at Pennsylvania State University told The New York Times:
“I think this may be another case of the authors looking too hard for something they want to find. . . I don’t want to discourage people from looking. But sometimes a neck is just a neck.”
Related content:
Discoblog: Astronomers Identify the Mystery Meteor That Inspired Walt Whitman
Discoblog: Super-Size Me, Jesus: Last Suppers in Paintings Have Gotten Bigger
Discoblog: Artistically Challenged Man Becomes “Michelangelo” After Brain Surgery
Bad Astronomy: A vast, cosmic cloudy brain looms in a nearby galaxy
DISCOVER: Visual Science The Achilles Heel on Michelangelo’s David: His Shin
Images: Wikimedia, Ian Suk and Rafael Tamargo / Neurosurgery
May 05 2010
I’m Telling the Truth, Your Honor. Just Look at This Brain Scan!
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