Status 'determines brain's reactions to others'

BBC NEWS Health

29 April 2011 Last updated at 02:33

Our brains react differently to others depending on how we view their social status, researchers say. The Current Biology study found those who see themselves as being of a high status display more brain activity with those they think are equally elevated. The researchers said behaviour was determined by how people saw those around them.

A British expert said first evaluations were crucial in determining how individuals related to each other. It was already known from other studies that monkeys behave this way; changing behaviour dependent on how they perceived the other animal's position in the troop. The 23 participants, who had varying levels of social status, were shown information about someone of higher status and information about someone of lower status.

The team used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure activity in the ventral striatum, part of the brain's reward system. People who viewed themselves as having a higher subjective socioeconomic status displayed greater brain activity in response to other high-ranked individuals, while those with lower status have a greater response to other low-status individuals.

First evaluations

Dr Caroline Zink, of the US National Institute of Mental Health, who led the study, said: "The way we interact with and behave around other people is often determined by their social status relative to our own, and therefore information regarding social status is very valuable to us. "Interestingly, the value we assign to information about someone's particular status seems to depend on our own." She added that socioeconomic status is not based solely on money, but can also include factors such as accomplishments and habits.

 

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13221922

‘ANXIETY PROTEIN’ THAT HOLDS KEY TO A CURE FOR STRESS 

The British team has found that the brain releases an “anxiety protein” when exposed to stress

Thursday April 21,2011

By Victoria Fletcher Health Editor

SCIENTISTS have made a breakthrough in their understanding of stress.

It could lead to new treatments for the one in three people who suffer from stress disorders and depression. And it could help to explain why some people seem to suffer from anxiety more easily than others.

The British team has found that the brain releases an “anxiety protein” when exposed to stress. Levels of this protein neuropsin appear to dictate how we react to such situations. The researchers believe that targeting it or the gene that produces it could manipulate how we respond to stress and people with conditions it causes. In severe cases stress can lead to long term damage, problems with depression and post-traumatic stress.

Lead scientist Dr Robert Pawlak, from the University of Leicester, said: “Stress-related disorders affect a large percentage of the population and generate an enormous personal, social and economic impact. It was previously known that certain individuals are more susceptible to detrimental effects of stress than others. Although the majority of us experience traumatic events, only some develop stress-associated psychiatric disorders such as depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder. The reasons for this were not clear.”

The research, reported in the journal Nature, showed that a part of the brain that controls emotional responses, called the amygdala, reacts to stress by boosting levels of neuropsin. This in turn triggers a series of chemical events that causes the amygdala to increase activity. Neuropsin interacted with two cell membrane proteins to activate a specific gene that regulates stress response. Further work revealed a link between the neuropsin pathway and the way mice behaved in a maze. Stressed animals stayed away from open, illuminated zones in the maze where they felt exposed and unsafe. But when their amygdala proteins were blocked, either by drugs or gene manipulation, the mice appeared to become immune to stress.

Dr Pawlak said: “We conclude that the activity of neuropsin and its partners may determine vulnerability to stress. We are tremendously excited about these findings. We know that all members of the neuropsin pathway are present in the human brain. They may play a similar role in humans and further research will be necessary to examine the potential of intervention therapies for controlling stress-induced behaviours."

Read more: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/241990/-Anxiety-protein-that-holds-key-to-a-cure-for-stress-Anxiety-protein-that-holds-key-to-a-cure-for-stress#ixzz1K90cLKSb

Time to spring clean... your mind? Scientists say memory lapses can be blamed on too much irrelevant information

By Fiona Macrae, Mail Online
Last updated at 8:00 AM on 21st April 2011

If you struggle to remember names and numbers or frequently fail to follow the plot of a film, help could be at hand. Scientists say the problem is that you know too much – and you need to declutter, or spring-clean your mind.

Experiments show that the memory lapses that come with age are not simply due to brain slowing down. Instead, they can be blamed on the well-used brain finding it more and more difficult to stop irrelevant information interfering with the task in hand.

The first step in the study was to compare the working memory of the young and old. Working memory involves holding information in mind while manipulating it mentally.

Examples in everyday life include retain plots of films and books to understand or predict what will happen next and following the thread of a conversation while working out how you can contribute to the topic.
In the context of the study, it involved giving the volunteers groups of sentences and asking them to work out whether each line made sense – and to remember the last word of each sentence.

Rest: Getting a good night's sleep is just one way to spring clean the mind

Overall, the younger people, who had an average age of 23, did better, the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology reports. The Canadian researchers then did a second experiment to see what was hindering  the older volunteers, who had an average age of 67. This involved being shown a pictures of eight animals and being asked to memorise the order in which the creatures appeared. The volunteers were then shown dozens of the pictures and asked to click on their computer mouse when the first animal in their memorised sequence occurred, then the second and so on.

The older adults found it more difficult to progress, suggesting the previous picture was stuck in their mind. Mervin Blair, of Montreal’s Concordia University, said: ‘We found that  the older adults had more difficulty in getting rid of previous information. ‘We found that that accounted for a lot of the working memory problems seen in  the study.’

A third study confirmed that the memory problems were not simply due to a  simple slowing down of the mind. Mr Blair, a PhD candidate, says that the older mind appears to have trouble  suppressing irrelevant information. This makes it more difficult to concentrate on the here and now.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1378991/Memory-loss-solution-Declutter-mind.html#ixzz1K8vinag5

Expert board game players utilise specific brain areas

BBC NEWS Health

21 January 2011 Last updated at 13:06

Scientists have discovered that expert board game players use a part of their brain that amateurs fail to utilise. The research, published in Science, involved scanning the brains of both professional and amateur Japanese "Shogi" players. Shogi is a Japanese game, similar to chess.

Scientists from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan said that intuitive playing was probably not due to nature, but brain training. Shogi is a very popular game in Japan, played to professional level. Professional players train for up to ten years, three to four hours a day to achieve the level of expertise needed to play professionally.

Intuitive decisions

They are able to make very quick "intuitive" decisions about which move in any combination on the board, would produce the best outcome.

The researchers recruited 30 professional shogi players from the Japanese Shogi Association. They also had a control group of amateur players. The professional players were presented with a game of shogi already in progress and given 2 seconds to choose the next best move - from a choice of four moves. The researchers found that there were significant activations in the caudate nucleus area of the brains of professional players while they were making their quick moves.

Brain activity

In contrast, when amateur players were asked to quickly find the next best move, there was no significant activation in the caudate nucleus. This brain activity was specific to professional players who were making quick decisions about the next best move.

In addition, professionals did not use that area of the brain when they were given a longer time of 8 seconds, to think strategically about further moves they could make. In this scenario, the caudate nucleus area of the brain was not activated.

The caudate nucleus area of the brain was historically thought to be involved with the control of voluntary bodily movements. However more recently it has also been associated with learning and memory.

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12250687

Brain is not fully mature until 30s and 40s

December 22, 2010 by Lin Edwards

(PhysOrg.com) -- New research from the UK shows the brain continues to develop after childhood and puberty, and is not fully developed until people are well into their 30s and 40s. The findings contradict current theories that the brain matures much earlier.

Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, a neuroscientist with the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, said until around a decade ago many scientists had "pretty much assumed that the human brain stopped developing in early childhood," but recent research has found that many regions of the brain continue to develop for a long time afterwards.

The prefrontal cortex is the region at the front of the brain just behind the forehead, and is an area of the brain that undergoes the longest period of development. It is an important area of the brain for high cognitive functions such as planning and decision-making, and it is also a key area for social behavior, social awareness, for empathy and understanding and interacting with other people, and various personality traits. Prof. Blakemore said the prefrontal cortex “is the part of the brain that makes us human,” since there is such a strong link between this area of the brain and a person’s personality.

Prof. Blakemore said brain scans show the prefrontal cortex continues to change shape as people reach their 30s and up to their late 40s. She said the region begins to change in early childhood and then is reorganized in late adolescence but continues to change after that. The research could explain why adults sometimes act like teenagers, sulking or having tantrums if they do not get their own way, and why some people remain socially uncomfortable until they are well out of their teens.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-brain-fully-mature-30s-40s.html

Email has turned us into 'lab rats'

 

Email has turned office workers into no more than lab rats desperately craving “pellets of social interaction”, a leading expert has claimed.

A recent study found that British office workers look at their email inboxes at least 30 times an hour 

By Nick Collins 6:30AM GMT 07 Dec 2010, The Telegraph

Increasing levels of information overload from computer and smart phone screens cause a “bottleneck” in the brain and prevent any deep thought, according to Nicholas Carr, former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review.

His comments add to the weight of evidence that our addiction to technology and the snippets of information it provides is damaging our ability to apply our power of thought in a meaningful way. Mr Carr, a former business of the Harvard Business Review, whose books include The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains, said email exploits a basic human instinct to search for new information, causing us to become addicted to our inboxes.

The natural impulses that helped early humans find food and avoid predators are causing us to regress to a state no more sophisticated than a rat in a laboratory, he said.

A recent study found that British office workers look at their email inboxes at least 30 times an hour. For each bit of new information we find our brain releases a dose of dopamine, a pleasure-inducing chemical which has been linked to addictive behaviour.

Mr Carr told Esquire magazine: “Our gadgets have turned us into hi-tech lab rats, mindlessly pressing levers in the hope of receiving a pellet of social or intellectual nourishment. What makes digital messages all the more compelling is their uncertainty. There’s always the possibility that something important is waiting for us in our inbox …[which] overwhelms our knowledge that most online missives are trivial.”

Scientists fear that divided attention could damage the thought process and the ability to concentrate, and possibly lead to irrational behaviour. Earlier this year Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google, expressed his concerns that “instantaneous devices” could be having an impact on the thought process. He said: “I worry that the level of interruption, the sort of overwhelming rapidity of information – and especially of stressful information – is in fact affecting cognition, affecting deep thinking.”

Mr Carr said the abundance of information we are exposed to through various screens “gets in the way of deep thinking” and “obstructs understanding, impedes the formation of memories and makes learning more difficult”.

He explained: “When we take in too much data too quickly, as we do skipping between links, our working memory gets swamped. We suffer from what brain scientists call cognitive overload.” This results in us retaining very little information and failing to connect what we do remember to experiences stored in our long-term memory, meaning our thoughts are “thin and scattered”.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8184149/Email-has-turned-us-into-lab-rats.html

Brain Imaging Studies Show Different Cultures Have Different Brains

The emerging field of cultural neuroscience reveals fascinating differences in brain function between cultures and environments. Christie Nicholson reports

November 27, 2010

 

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Did you know that our brain function is entirely different when we think about our own honesty versus when we think about another’s honesty? That’s if the “we” is American. For Chinese people their brains look identical when considering either.

These sorts of studies fall into so-called cultural neuroscience: the study of how our environment shapes our brain function.

Following up on the cultural differences between Asians and Americans, one study published in Neuroimage found that when faced with the same image, people’s neural responses are totally different. Scientists found that when American subjects viewed a silhouette in a dominant posture (standing up, arms crossed) their brain’s reward circuitry sparked. Not so for Japanese subjects.  For the Japanese, their reward circuitry fired when they saw a submissive silhouette (head down, arms at sides). This physiological response matches a well-known behavioral difference: Americans favor and encourage dominant behavior. Japanese culture reinforces submissive culture.

This study, and many others, is referenced in a recent article in the American Psychological Association’s Monitor.

One might think, well, these studies add nothing revolutionary and are simply revealing the wiring behind already well-known behavior. Then again isn’t it a good thing for science to understand the wiring behind a light bulb instead of just observing that it goes on when someone walks into a room?

—Christie Nicholson

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=brain-imaging-studies-show-differen-10-11-27&WT.mc_id=SA_WR_20101201