Disinformation » Brain

Smart Drugs To Make Your Brain Function Better

majestic — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 01:33:25 +0000

The intrepid Ari Levaux tests so-called “smart” nootropic drugs so that you don’t have to (including Joe Rogan’s Alpha Brain), for The Atlantic:

Hunters will go to great lengths to gain an edge over their prey. You never know where the margin between success and failure may lie, so you wake up extra early, say a prayer, spray bottled deer piss on your boots, and do whatever else you think might increase your odds. My schedule recently got more demanding thanks to a new baby. With less time to kill and another mouth to feed, I’ve had to step up my game.

Hunting can be physically demanding but, assuming that you’re prepared, it’s mostly mental. Staying sharp is how opportunities are created. I ordered a bottle of nootropic pills, in case it might help.

Nootropic (new-tro-pik) is the term for supplements, also known as smart drugs, that improve brain function. They can be food substances like phenethylamine and L-Theanine, found in chocolate and green tea, respectively. Nootropics also include extracted and purified components of medicinal plants, as well as substances synthesized from chemical precursors, such as piracetam, the world’s first official nootropic (piracetam was created in 1964 in Belgium by a team of scientists whose leader, Dr. Corneliu E. Giurgea, coined the term). Since then piracetam has been widely used as a cognitive enhancer and to treat neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s.

Some people consider stimulants to be a form of nootropic, while others distinguish them from the likes of caffeine, and Adderall — of which there’s currently a nationwide shortage. Most legal users of this attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) drug are children; it’s prescribed sparingly in adults for fear of abuse. The FDA caused the shortage by halting delivery to drug manufacturers of the drug’s active ingredient, an amphetamine, for months, arguing that enough Adderall had already been produced to satisfy all legal demand. The agency argued that abusers of Adderall are responsible for the shortage. That’s a group that includes students and professionals using Adderall to help boost productivity during stressful times.

I chose the nootropic pills I ordered, a formulation called Alpha Brain, mainly because their ingredients are extracted rather than synthesized. I swallowed some the day they arrived, and waited to become mentally sharp. I wanted fireworks bright enough to eliminate all doubt about whether they worked.

Nothing happened until I was falling asleep, when I became distinctly aware that I was falling asleep. I monitored the entire process and remained lucid, with a measure of free will, as I dreamed, and woke up surprisingly refreshed. While I remembered many of my dreams, some of which were quite long, I couldn’t recall how my underpants ended up around my ankles…

[continues in The Atlantic]

Scientists Reconstruct Images From Peoples’ Minds

majestic — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 12:20:40 +0000

Ben Coxworth writing for Gizmag (thanks to Geoff H for the tip):

Last September, scientists from the University of California, Berkeley announced that they had developed a method of visually reconstructing images from peoples’ minds, by analyzing their brain activity.

Much to the dismay of tinfoil hat-wearers everywhere, researchers from that same institution have now developed a somewhat similar system, that is able to reconstruct words that people have heard spoken to them. Instead of being used to violate our civil rights, however, the technology could instead allow the vocally-disabled to “speak.”

Epilepsy patients were enlisted for the study, who were already getting arrays of electrodes placed on the surface of their brains to identify the source of their seizures. The scientists used these electrodes to monitor the electrical activity in a region of their brains’ auditory system, known as the superior temporal gyrus (STG). From there, it was a matter of observing the specific activity patterns that occurred when the subjects heard certain words.

When the electrodes’ data was applied to a computational model, the computer was able to actually reproduce the sounds that had been heard – sort of. Although the noises made by the computer were somewhat garbled, they were close enough to the original words that the scientists were better able to identify those words than would be possible otherwise…

[continues at Gizmag]

Are We Ready For A Morality Pill?

JacobSloan — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:00:18 +0000

In the New York Times, Peter Singer and Agata Sagan say it’s only a matter of time before we pinpoint chemicals in the brain that produce empathetic behavior. Will religion be rendered obsolete? And, when we develop an ethical-behavior-boosting pill, will it be recommended (or mandatory) that everyone take it?

If continuing brain research does in fact show biochemical differences between the brains of those who help others and the brains of those who do not, could this lead to a “morality pill” — a drug that makes us more likely to help? Given the many other studies linking biochemical conditions to mood and behavior, and the proliferation of drugs to modify them that have followed, the idea is not far-fetched. If so, would people choose to take it? Could criminals be given the option, as an alternative to prison, of a drug-releasing implant that would make them less likely to harm others? Might governments begin screening people to discover those most likely to commit crimes? Those who are at much greater risk of committing a crime might be offered the morality pill; if they refused, they might be required to wear a tracking device that would show where they had been at any given time, so that they would know that if they did commit a crime, they would be detected.

Fifty years ago, Anthony Burgess wrote “A Clockwork Orange,” a futuristic novel about a vicious gang leader who undergoes a procedure that makes him incapable of violence. Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 movie version sparked a discussion in which many argued that we could never be justified in depriving someone of his free will, no matter how gruesome the violence that would thereby be prevented. No doubt any proposal to develop a morality pill would encounter the same objection.

Last October, in Foshan, China, a 2-year-old girl was run over by a van. The driver did not stop. Over the next seven minutes, more than a dozen people walked or bicycled past the injured child. A second truck ran over her. Eventually, a woman pulled her to the side, and her mother arrived. The child died in a hospital. The entire scene was captured on video and caused an uproar when it was shown by a television station and posted online. A similar event occurred in London in 2004, as have others, far from the lens of a video camera. Yet people can, and often do, behave in very different ways.

Timing Of Serial Killers’ Murders Follows Math Formula

JacobSloan — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:47:01 +0000

At least some serial killers’ murder sprees mirror the wax-and-wane pattern of naturally occurring phenomena including earthquakes, avalanches, and epileptic seizures, suggesting that their attacks can be anticipated and have an involuntary, biological cause. It’s somehow more chilling to know that serial killing is a predictable, “natural” process. MSNBC writes:

Researchers have discovered that the seemingly erratic behavior of the “Rostov Ripper,” a prolific serial killer active in the 1980s, conformed to the same mathematical pattern obeyed by earthquakes, avalanches, stock market crashes and many other sporadic events. The finding suggests an explanation for why serial killers kill.

Mikhail Simkin and Vwani Roychowdhury, electrical engineers at the University of California, Los Angeles, modeled the behavior of Andrei Chikatilo, a gruesome murderer who took the lives of 53 people in Rostov, Russia between 1978 and 1990. Though Chikatilo sometimes went nearly three years without committing murder, on other occasions, he went just three days. The researchers found that the seemingly random spacing of his murders followed a mathematical distribution known as a power law.

When the number of days between Chikatilo’s murders is plotted against the number of times he waited that number of days, the relationship forms a near-straight line on a type of graph called a log-log plot. It’s the same result scientists get when they plot the magnitude of earthquakes against the number of times each magnitude has occurred — and the same goes for a variety of natural phenomena. The power law outcome suggests that there was an underlying natural process driving the serial killer’s behavior.

Simkin and Roychowdhury hypothesize that it’s the same type of effect that has also been found to cause epileptics to have seizures. The psychotic effects that lead a serial killer to commit murder “arise from simultaneous firing of large number of neurons in the brain,” they wrote.

Inside The Octopus Mind

JacobSloan — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 17:00:20 +0000

Who can think? Who can feel? Via Orion, the revelation that octopi — boneless creatures with brains the size of a walnut — seem to have immense intelligence, feelings, and personalities is challenging our understanding of what consciousness means and where it comes from:

I have always loved octopuses. No sci-fi alien is so startlingly strange. Here is someone who, even if she grows to one hundred pounds and stretches more than eight feet long, could still squeeze her body through an opening the size of an orange; an animal whose eight arms are covered with thousands of suckers that taste as well as feel; a mollusk with a beak like a parrot and venom like a snake and a tongue covered with teeth; a creature who can shape-shift, change color, and squirt ink. But most intriguing of all, recent research indicates that octopuses are remarkably intelligent.

Many times I have stood mesmerized by an aquarium tank, wondering, as I stared into the horizontal pupils of an octopus’s large, prominent eyes, if she was staring back at me—and if so, what was she thinking?

Not long ago, a question like this would have seemed foolish, if not crazy. How can an octopus know anything, much less form an opinion? Octopuses are, after all, “only” invertebrates—they don’t even belong with the insects, some of whom, like dragonflies and dung beetles, at least seem to show some smarts. Octopuses are classified within the invertebrates in the mollusk family, and many mollusks, like clams, have no brain.

But now, increasingly, researchers who study octopuses are convinced that these boneless, alien animals—creatures whose ancestors diverged from the lineage that would lead to ours roughly 500 to 700 million years ago—have developed intelligence, emotions, and individual personalities. Their findings are challenging our understanding of consciousness itself.

As we gazed into each other’s eyes, Athena encircled my arms with hers, latching on with first dozens, then hundreds of her sensitive, dexterous suckers. Each arm has more than two hundred of them. The famous naturalist and explorer William Beebe found the touch of the octopus repulsive. “I have always a struggle before I can make my hands do their duty and seize a tentacle,” he confessed. But to me, Athena’s suckers felt like an alien’s kiss—at once a probe and a caress. Although an octopus can taste with all of its skin, in the suckers both taste and touch are exquisitely developed. Athena was tasting me and feeling me at once, knowing my skin, and possibly the blood and bone beneath, in a way I could never fathom.

hen I stroked her soft head with my fingertips, she changed color beneath my touch, her ruby-flecked skin going white and smooth. This, I learned, is a sign of a relaxed octopus. An agitated giant Pacific octopus turns red, its skin gets pimply, and it erects two papillae over the eyes, which some divers say look like horns. One name for the species is “devil fish.” With sharp, parrotlike beaks, octopuses can bite, and most have neurotoxic, flesh-dissolving venom.

While Alexa Warburton was researching her senior thesis at Middlebury College’s newly created octopus lab, “every day,” she said, “was a disaster.”

It seemed to Warburton that some of the octopuses were purposely uncooperative. To run the T-maze, the pre-veterinary student had to scoop an animal from its tank with a net and transfer it to a bucket. With bucket firmly covered, octopus and researcher would take the elevator down to the room with the maze. Some octopuses did not like being removed from their tanks. They would hide. They would squeeze into a corner where they couldn’t be pried out. They would hold on to some object with their arms and not let go.

Some would let themselves be captured, only to use the net as a trampoline. They’d leap off the mesh and onto the floor—and then run for it. Yes, run. “You’d chase them under the tank, back and forth, like you were chasing a cat,” Warburton said. “It’s so weird!”

Octopuses in captivity actually escape their watery enclosures with alarming frequency. While on the move, they have been discovered on carpets, along bookshelves, in a teapot, and inside the aquarium tanks of other fish—upon whom they have usually been dining.

Read the rest at Orion

Rats Display Human-Like Empathy

JacobSloan — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 16:52:21 +0000

Rats are better than many people. The Telegraph writes:

Rats actually display human-like empathy and will unselfishly go to the aid of a distressed fellow rodent, research has shown.

The results of an experiment in which rats opened a door to free trapped cage-mates astonished scientists. No reward was needed and not even the lure of chocolate distracted the rescuing rats.

”This is the first evidence of helping behaviour triggered by empathy in rats,” said US study leader Professor Jean Decety. ”There are a lot of ideas in the literature showing that empathy is not unique to humans, and it has been well demonstrated in apes, but in rodents it was not very clear.”

Psychology graduate student Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal, who helped devise the experiment, pointed out that the rats were not trained in any way. ”These rats are learning because they are motivated by something internal,” she said. ”We’re not showing them how to open the door, they don’t get any previous exposure on opening the door, and it’s hard to open the door. But they keep trying and trying, and it eventually works.”

Commenting on the research, Professor Jaak Panksepp, a US veterinary expert at Washington State University, said: ”There is no question that all other animals have emotional feelings. The science is strong for that. And all our strongest basic emotional feelings come from brain networks all mammals share.”

Daniel Wolpert: The Real Reason for Brains

phunkychic666 — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:35:30 +0000

Via TED Talks:

Neuroscientist Daniel Wolpert starts from a surprising premise: the brain evolved, not to think or feel, but to control movement. In this entertaining, data-rich talk he gives us a glimpse into how the brain creates the grace and agility of human motion.

Traffic Fumes Linked To Brain Damage, Autism

majestic — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 14:12:42 +0000

Not that this should be any great surprise, but maybe now that scientists are able to measure the adverse effects of combustion-engine vehicle pollution, legislators will take action. One can dream, anyway. From the Wall Street Journal:

Congested cities are fast becoming test tubes for scientists studying the impact of traffic fumes on the brain.

As roadways choke on traffic, researchers suspect that the tailpipe exhaust from cars and trucks—especially tiny carbon particles already implicated in heart disease, cancer and respiratory ailments—may also injure brain cells and synapses key to learning and memory.

New public-health studies and laboratory experiments suggest that, at every stage of life, traffic fumes exact a measurable toll on mental capacity, intelligence and emotional stability. “There are more and more scientists trying to find whether and why exposure to traffic exhaust can damage the human brain,” says medical epidemiologist Jiu-Chiuan Chen at the University of Southern California who is analyzing the effects of traffic pollution on the brain health of 7,500 women in 22 states. “The human data are very new.”

So far, the evidence is largely circumstantial but worrisome, researchers say. And no one is certain yet of the consequences for brain biology or behavior. “There is real cause for concern,” says neurochemist Annette Kirshner at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences at Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. “But we ought to proceed with caution.”…

[continues in the Wall Street Journal]

Now You Can See Images From Someone Else’s Mind

majestic — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 12:40:58 +0000

The implications of this are mind-boggling – one has visions of the scientists being moved to Guantanamo Bay for some real life “testing.” Katie Moisse reports for ABC News:

California scientists have found a way to see through another person’s eyes.

Researchers from UC Berkeley were able to reconstruct YouTube videos from viewers’ brain activity — a feat that might one day offer a glimpse into our dreams, memories and even fantasies.

“This is a major leap toward reconstructing internal imagery,” said Jack Gallant, professor of psychology and coauthor of a study published today in Current Biology. “We are opening a window into the movies in our minds.”

Gallant’s coauthors acted as study subjects, watching YouTube videos inside a magnetic resonance imaging machine for several hours at a time. The team then used the brain imaging data to develop a computer model that matched features of the videos — like colors, shapes and movements — with patterns of brain activity.

“Once we had this model built, we could read brain activity for that subject and run it backwards through the model to try to uncover what the viewer saw,” said Gallant.

Subtle changes in blood flow to visual areas of the brain, measured by functional MRI, predicted what was on the screen at the time — whether it was Steve Martin as Inspector Clouseau or an airplane. The reconstructed videos are blurry because they layer all the YouTube clips that matched the subject’s brain activity pattern. The result is a haunting, almost dream-like version of the video as seen by the mind’s eye…

[continues at ABC News]

Addiction Is Not A Disease Of The Brain

majestic — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 12:54:08 +0000

Alva Noe explains at NPR:

Addiction has been moralized, medicalized, politicized, and criminalized. And, of course, many of us are addicts, have been addicts or have been close to addicts. Addiction runs very hot as a theme.

Part of what makes addiction so compelling is that it forms a kind of conceptual/political crossroads for thinking about human nature. After all, to make sense of addiction we need to make sense of what it is to be an agent who acts, with values, in the face of consequences, under pressure, with compulsion, out of need and desire. One needs a whole philosophy to understand addiction.

Today I want to respond to readers who were outraged by my willingness even to question whether addiction is a disease of the brain.

Let us first ask: what makes something — a substance or an activity — addictive? Is there a property shared by all the things to which we can get addicted?

Unlikely. Addictive substances such as alcohol, heroin and nicotine are chemically distinct. Moreover, activities such as gambling, eating, sex — activities that are widely believed to be addictive — have no ingredients.

And yet it is remarkable — as Gene Heyman notes in his excellent book on addiction — that there are only 20 or so distinct activities and substances that produce addiction. There must be something in virtue of which these things, and these things alone, give rise to the distinctive pattern of use and abuse in the face of the medical, personal and legal perils that we know can stem from addiction…

[continues at NPR]

Chemical Agent Turns Tissue Transparent

Pelliciari — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 15:25:14 +0000

Olivia Solon writes on Wired:

Japanese researchers have developed a chemical agent that turns biological tissue transparent, allowing for vivid imaging of neurons and blood vessels deep inside mouse brains.

The aqueous reagent — referred to as Scale — offers a way of analyzing complex organs and networks in tissue samples, without having to dissect them into smaller pieces. Developed by Atsushi Miyawaki and his team at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Scale performs better than other clearing reagents because it doesn’t affect the shape or proportions of the sample. It also manages to avoid decreasing the strength of signals emitted by genetically-encoded fluorescent proteins in the tissue, which are frequently used by researchers as markers to flag up specific cells.

This means that neuroscientists can visualise fluorescently-labelled brain samples at a depth of several millimetres (as opposed to just one millimetre) and see neural networks at sub-cellular resolution. The team has used the agent to examine the neurons in a mouse brain and have been able to see the inner workings of the cerebral cortex, hippocampus and white matter. They have then been able to create 3D reconstructions of the neural networks, as you can see here.

[Continues at Wired]

Color Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

JacobSloan — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 21:13:33 +0000

We think of a physical object’s being a certain “color” as a solid, immutable property (grass is green, lemons are yellow, et cetera). However, the way our brains see and process color is largely determined by the language we learned as an infant.

Case in point: the Himba tribe of remote northern Namibia, to whom water looks “white” like milk and the sky looks “black” like coal, and who struggle to distinguish between blue and green, yet can easily pick out micro-shades which Americans cannot see. Via BBC Horizon, a reminder that the world looks different to everyone:

Aging Brains Made Youthful?

Pelliciari — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 16:37:10 +0000

Photo: Mieciu K2 (CC)

Can we restore our “mental sketch pads” by renewing how our brain holds memory on the neurological level? The National Geographic reports:

You can’t teach an old brain new tricks—but you can restore its ability to remember the old ones, a new study in monkeys suggests.

Chemicals given to rhesus macaques blocked a brain molecule that slows the firing of the brain’s nerve cells, or neurons, as we age—prompting those nerve cells to act young again.

“It’s our first glimpse of what’s going on physiologically that’s causing age-related cognitive decline,” said study leader Amy Arnsten, a neurobiologist at Yale University.

“We all assumed, given there’s a lot of architectural changes in aged brains … that we were stuck with it,” Arnsten said.

But with the new results, “the hopeful thing is that the neurochemical environment still makes a big difference, and we might be able to remediate some of these things.”

[Continues at National Geographic]

Dieting Forces Brain To Eat Itself

majestic — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 12:27:27 +0000

It’s pretty much common sense that starvation diets are bad for you, but when your brain starts eating itself you know it’s time to stop! Nick Collins reports for the Telegraph:

Like other parts of the body, brain cells begin to eat themselves as a last-ditch source of energy to ward off starvation, a study found.

The body responds by producing fatty acids, which turn up the hunger signal in the brain and increase our impulse to eat.

Researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in New York said the findings could lead to new scientifically proven weight loss treatments.

Tests on mice found that stopping the brain cells from eating themselves – a process known as autophagy – prevented levels of hunger from rising in response to starvation.

The chemical change in their brains caused the mice to become lighter and slimmer after a period of fasting, the researchers reported in the journal Cell Metabolism.

Dr Rajat Singh, who led the study, said: “A pathway that is really important for every cell to turn over components in a kind of housekeeping process is also required to regulate appetite.

“Treatments aimed at the pathway might make you less hungry and burn more fat, a good way to maintain energy balance in a world where calories are cheap and plentiful.”…

[continues in the Telegraph]

Our Brain’s Neurons Look Exactly Like The Structure Of The Universe

JacobSloan — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 20:04:18 +0000

At top is a microscopic photo of a few neurons. Below it is a simulated rendering of what astrophysicists believe to be the universe’s structure, with clusters of galaxies and dark matter. Marvel at the remarkable symmetry and wonder, do we exist inside a gigantic brain? Via Convozine:

One is only micrometers wide. The other is billions of light-years across. One shows neurons in a mouse brain. The other is a simulated image of the universe. Together they suggest the surprisingly similar patterns found in vastly different natural phenomena.

Mark Miller, a doctoral student at Brandeis University, is researching how particular types of neurons in the brain are connected to one another. The image [on the left] shows three neuron cells on the left (two red and one yellow) and their connections.

An international group of astrophysicists used a computer simulation last year to recreate how the universe grew and evolved. The simulation image [on the right] is a snapshot of the present universes that features a large cluster of galaxies (bright yellow) surrounded by thousands of stars, galaxies and dark matter (web).

What struck me about this is not the similarity between neuron and universe, though it’s striking — rather it’s the continuity of parallels one finds whenever one looks into the structures of nature.

“As above, so below,” goes the Hermetic belief — “That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above, corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracles of the One Thing”. In Eastern thought, this idea is often paraphrased as “As is the microcosm, so is the microcosm.”

Burundanga: The Drug Against Free Will

JacobSloan — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 16:27:45 +0000

It turns out that ‘free will’ is a brain process that can be shut off. Wired UK explores the plant-derived drug — currently all the rage in the South American criminal underworld — that does this:

Burundanga is a scary drug. According to news reports from Ecuador, the last thing a motorist could recall, after waking up minus his car and possessions, was being approached by two women; in Venezuela, a girl came round in hospital to find she had been abducted and sexually assaulted. Each had been doped with burundanga, an extract of the brugmansia plant containing high levels of the psychoactive chemical scopolamine.

News reports allude to a sinister effect: that the drug removes free will, effectively turning victims into suggestible human puppets. Although not fully understood by neuroscience, free will is seen as a highly complex neurological ability and one of the most cherished of human characteristics. Clearly, if a drug can eliminate this, it highlights a stark vulnerability at the core of our species.

It is known that scopolamine affects memory and makes people more passive. Neuroscientist Renate Thienel notes that “scopolamine has a selective effect on memory, although other mental functions, such as planning and information manipulation, are unaffected.” This suggests victims remain cognitively nimble but unable to retain information.

The key seems to be that scopolamine blocks acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter essential to memory. Scans also reveal the drug affects the amygdala, a brain area controlling aggression and anxiety. Evidence suggests victims tend to be confused and passive rather than unable to resist commands. Yet, until scopolamine’s role in the chemistry of free will is fully explored, we can only speculate that the criminal underworld has unwittingly stumbled upon one of the greatest discoveries of 21st-century neuroscience.

Implanted Electrodes Loaded With Drugs Could Monitor Brain And Treat It When Necessary

BananaFamine — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 06:17:02 +0000

… I see no possible way which this could be abused (prepare your tinfoil hats, folks). Clay Dillow writes for Popular Science:

Microelectrode arrays implanted in the brain monitor neurological conditions in living patients all the time, sometimes even influencing brain activity if it gets out of line. So, thought researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, why not load one up with drugs so it can deliver chemical therapy to problem sites immediately upon detecting an issue?

The team is developing a new polymer-coated electrode that can both monitor and treat a patient immediately, a capability that could be life-changing — or even life-saving — for those living with conditions like epilepsy. Their device is basically a microelectrode like any other, but it has been covered in a conductive polypyrrole film. Chambers in the film are loaded up with different drugs and neurotransmitters like dopamine or GABA.

For more information, see original article.

Scientists Create Artificial Brain With 12-Second Memory

JacobSloan — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 17:00:25 +0000

The saddest thought ever: if you say ‘I love you’ to the tiny Cheerio-shaped brain in a petri dish, twelve seconds later it won’t remember. PopSci reports:

The technicolor ring is an artificial microbrain, derived from rat brain cells–just 40 to 60 neurons in total–that is capable of about 12 seconds of short-term memory.

Developed by a team at the University of Pittsburgh, the brain was created in an attempt to artificially nurture a working brain into existence so that researchers could study neural networks and how our brains transmit electrical signals and store data so efficiently. The did so by attaching a layer of proteins to a silicon disk and adding brain cells from embryonic rats that attached themselves to the proteins and grew to connect with one another in the ring.

But as if the growing of a tiny, functioning, donut-shaped brain in a petri dish wasn’t enough, the team found that when they stimulate the neurons with electricity, the pulse would circulate the microbrain for a full 12 seconds. That’s roughly 12 seconds longer than they thought it would (they expected the pulse to live for about a quarter of a second).

Brain Scans Show Apple Products Triggering The Same Parts Of The Brain As Religion

JacobSloan — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 16:54:33 +0000

Go figure — scans taken when Apple devotees were shown the company’s logo and products demonstrate that we literally worship our favorite brands. Digital Trends writes:

UK neuroscientists suggest that the brains of Apple devotees are stimulated by Apple imagery in the same way that the brains of religious people are stimulated by religious imagery.

Alex Riley contacted the editor of World of Apple, Alex Brooks, an Apple worshipper who claims to think about Apple 24 hours a day, which is possibly 23 hours too many for most regular people. A team of neuroscientists studied Brooks’ brain while undergoing an MRI scan, to see how it reacted to images of Apple products and (heaven forbid) non-Apple products.

According to the neuroscientists, the scan revealed that there were marked differences in Brooks’ reactions to the different products. Previously, the scientists had studied the brains of those of religious faith, and they found that, as Riley puts it: “The Apple products are triggering the same bits of [Brooks'] brain as religious imagery triggers in a person of faith.”

This suggests that the big tech brands have harnessed, or exploit, the brain areas that have evolved to process religion,” one of the scientists says. A meeting with the Bishop of Buckingham, who reads the Bible using his Apple iPad, appeared to back up this assertion. He pointed out how the Apple store in, for example, Covent Garden has a lot of religious imagery built into it, with its stone floors, abundance of arches, and little altars (on which the products are displayed). And of course, the documentary doesn’t fail to give Steve Jobs a mention, calling him “the Messiah”.

Study: Advertising Plants Memories Of Experiences We Never Had

JacobSloan — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 11:00:04 +0000

On the bright side, is it really such a bad thing to be implanted with false memories of, say, dancing with smiling, multicultural nu-ravers while drinking a refreshing Pepsi? Partial Objects explains:

A newly published study by two marketing professors suggests that advertising can create memories of experiences that never happened, simply by including sufficiently evocative imagery and descriptions in the ad:

Exposure to an imagery-evoking ad can increase the likelihood that consumer mistakenly believes that s/he has experience with the advertised product when in fact s/he does not. Moreover such a false belief produces attitudes that are as strong as attitudes based on true beliefs based on previous product experience, an effect that we label the false experience effect.

Advertising has always been an appeal to a fantasy, and this study seems to suggest that if the ad is created just right, that fantasy can be in the form of a desire to return to a previous wonderful experience (even if the previous experience never actually happened.) But this finding suggests something a bit more insidious. If you can fool people into thinking they once experienced something that they never did with just an elaborate text description, imagine what you can do with a whole newspaper and 24-7 cable news.

Let’s face it, if Baudrillard was right and our postmodern existence is little more than a simulation, it should not surprise us that our memories have become re-writable and random access.

Edward H. Rulloff, Victorian New York’s Evil Genius

Haystack — Sat, 07 May 2011 18:35:43 +0000

Edward H. Rulloff's brain on display at Cornell.

E. H. Freeman’s biography of the criminal-scholar Edward H. Rulloff is finally back in print. Victorian Gothic looks at his bizarre life and obsession with philology:

Visitors to Cornell University’s psychology department would be hard pressed to overlook the eight pickled brains, preserved in heavy glass jars, which are proudly showcased on the second floor of Uris Hall. A small sample of the 122 specimens in the university’s Wilder Brain Collection, each belongs to a notable scholar or learned individual whose think-meat was once deemed worthy of anatomical examination.

One of these brains, however, is not like the others. If the brain of Edward H. Rulloff, a.k.a. Professor Leurio, were able to come alive, glowing and pulsating as it issued angry, murderous commands to you from inside your head, it would.

Rulloff was a criminal genius who left no question of how he should like to be remembered. One week prior his execution in May of 1871, he had this to say:

…you cannot kill an unquiet spirit, and I know that my impending death will not mean the end of Rulloff. In the dead of the night, walking along Cayuga Street, you will sense my presence. When you wake to a sudden chill, I will be in the room. And when you find yourself alone at the lake shore, gazing away at gray Cayuga, know that I was cut short and your ancestors killed me.

Rulloff was a murderer and a thief whose savant-like intelligence and erudition have invited comparison to Doyle’s Professor Moriarty. He committed robberies throughout his life in order to fund his grandiose research into the science of philology; an obsession that may have had unrecognized origins in a deep-seated sense of remorse.

Binghamton journalist E. H. Freeman was Rulloff’s jail-house confessor. His 1871 biography, Edward H. Rulloff: The Veil of Secrecy Removed, recounts much of Rulloff’s story in his own words. It is the story of a long and ignominious criminal career that begins in Dryden, NY, where Rulloff established himself as a botanical physician, and married a seventeen year old pupil named Harriet Schutt…

[Full Article at victoriangothic.org]

Woman Awakens From Surgery With British Accent

JacobSloan — Thu, 05 May 2011 12:00:50 +0000

Another baffling case as foreign accent syndrome (an actual medical condition) strikes again. When will a cure emerge? I prescribe being wrapped tightly in an American flag for two days, followed by 10 cc’s of apple pie. Spokane, WA’s Spokesman-Review reports:

Over the next few days, the swelling subsided and the pain vanished, but Butler’s newly acquired accent did not. Though it has softened over time, she’s never again spoken like a native Oregonian from Madras. To most people, she sounds British.

It took months to find an explanation: foreign accent syndrome, a disorder so rare that only about 60 cases have been documented worldwide since the early 1900s.

Foreign accent syndrome is usually caused by a stroke, though it also has been associated with multiple sclerosis, head injuries and migraines.

One of the first cases was reported at the turn of the last century by a French neurologist. But the best known case, documented by Norwegian neurologist Georg Herman Monrad-Krohn, was a 30-year-old woman who was hit by shrapnel from a German air raid over Oslo in 1941. The injury left her with a speech impairment that gradually improved, turning into what sounded like a German accent to her countrymen. Suspecting that she was a collaborator, they ostracized her.

Pesticide Use Tied To Lower IQ In Children

JacobSloan — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 16:01:37 +0000

Who could have guessed that drenching our food and homes in brain-ravaging toxins would have dire consequences? Wired Science reports that pesticides have been strongly linked to decreased memory and a seven-point drop in IQ in exposed children:

Children exposed in the womb to substantial levels of neurotoxic pesticides have somewhat lower IQs by the time they enter school than do kids with virtually no exposure. A trio of studies screened women for compounds in blood or urine that mark exposure to organophosphate pesticides such as chlorpyrifos, diazinon and malathion.

These bug killers, which can cross the human placenta, work by inhibiting brain-signaling compounds. Although the pesticides’ residential use was phased out in 2000, spraying on farm fields remains legal.

The three new studies began in the late 1990s and followed children through age 7. Pesticide exposures stem from farm work in more than 300 low-income Mexican-American families in California, researchers from the University of California at Berkeley and their colleagues report. In two comparably sized New York City populations, exposures likely trace to bug spraying of homes or eating treated produce.

Political Views Are Reflected in Brain Structure

Good German — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 15:32:12 +0000

Think your political views are based on reason and/or morality? ScienceDaily reports:

We all know that people at opposite ends of the political spectrum often really can’t see eye to eye. Now, a new report published online on April 7th in Current Biology, reveals that those differences in political orientation are tied to differences in the very structures of our brains.Individuals who call themselves liberal tend to have larger anterior cingulate cortexes, while those who call themselves conservative have larger amygdalas. Based on what is known about the functions of those two brain regions, the structural differences are consistent with reports showing a greater ability of liberals to cope with conflicting information and a greater ability of conservatives to recognize a threat, the researchers say.

“Previously, some psychological traits were known to be predictive of an individual’s political orientation,” said Ryota Kanai of the University College London. “Our study now links such personality traits with specific brain structure.”

Kanai said his study was prompted by reports from others showing greater anterior cingulate cortex response to conflicting information among liberals. “That was the first neuroscientific evidence for biological differences between liberals and conservatives,” he explained.

Someone needs to take this report to the budget negotiations and show it to Boehner, Obama, and Reid. Read more here.

The Importance Of Being Alone

JacobSloan — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 22:12:52 +0000

In a hyper-connected world, does spending time alone provide a unique and increasingly elusive form of freedom? The Boston Globe extols the virtues of solitude, which a growing body of study suggests is essential for mood, memory, creativity, and sanity:

You hear it all the time: We humans are social animals. We need to spend time together to be happy and functional, and we extract a vast array of benefits from maintaining intimate relationships and associating with groups.

But an emerging body of research is suggesting that spending time alone, if done right, can be good for us — that certain tasks and thought processes are best carried out without anyone else around, and that even the most socially motivated among us should regularly be taking time to ourselves if we want to have fully developed personalities, and be capable of focus and creative thinking.

There is even research to suggest that blocking off enough alone time is an important component of a well-functioning social life — that if we want to get the most out of the time we spend with people, we should make sure we’re spending enough of it away from them. Just as regular exercise and healthy eating make our minds and bodies work better, solitude experts say, so can being alone.

“There’s so much cultural anxiety about isolation in our country that we often fail to appreciate the benefits of solitude,” said Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist at New York University whose book “Alone in America,” in which he argues for a reevaluation of solitude, will be published next year. “There is something very liberating for people about being on their own. They’re able to establish some control over the way they spend their time. They’re able to decompress at the end of a busy day in a city…and experience a feeling of freedom.”

The Neuroscience Of Enlightenment

Alberto Villoldo — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 21:41:58 +0000

[Excerpted from the new book Power Up Your Brain: The Neuroscience of Enlightenment by David Perlmutter,
M.D., F.A.C.N. and Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D., courtesy of the authors and their publisher, Hay House.]

Can neuroscience deliver on the promises presented by religion: freedom from suffering, violence, scarcity, and disease? Can neuroscience deliver us into a life where health, peace, and abundance reign?

The pledges of the world’s religions are so universal that it’s likely the longing for joy, inner peace, and well-being are hardwired into the human brain and have become a social instinct as powerful as the drive to procreate. The Bible, the Koran, and Buddhist and Hindu scriptures all teach that we can be delivered into a paradisiacal state, whether after death, at the end of time, following many reincarnations, or as a result of personal effort and merit. This state of liberation is called grace or Heaven by Christian religions, Paradise by Muslims, while Eastern traditions refer to it as awakening or enlightenment, using various terms such as samadhi, mukti, bodhi, satori, and nirvana.

But what if grace, samadhi, and enlightenment are really based in biological science? What if they are states of higher order and complexity created by programmable circuits in the brain? What if these circuits could make it possible to attain lifelong joy, inner peace, health, and well-being now, in this physical world, and not in some distant future or afterlife?

The Brain and Enlightenment

So with all this expanded brain power, what are we striving for? In the East, enlightenment has traditionally been associated with qualities such as generosity, compassion, peaceful acceptance, and an experience of oneness with all creation. In the fiercely individualistic West, our rather vague notion of enlightenment suggests an acceptance of the world as it is, or of discovering how we can change it for the better. Enlightenment for us also implies the common longing for novelty, exploration, and creativity, as personified by the explorers who venture into space.

If we take the Eastern qualities of enlightenment out of their religious context and place them in the realm of biological science, we find that they are attributes associated with the activation of the prefrontal cortex—the newest part of the human brain. On functional MRI scans, people who meditate regularly are shown to have developed brains that are wired differently than the brains of people who don’t meditate. They are better able to remain calm and stress-free, live in peace, and practice compassion. Curiously, their prefrontal cortex is the most active region in their brain during the states they describe as samadhi, or enlightenment. His Holiness the Dalai Lama describes enlightenment as “a state of freedom not only from the counterproductive emotions that drive the process of cyclic existence, but also from the predispositions established in the mind by those afflictive emotions.” The Dalai Lama is suggesting that enlightenment is a state of freedom from destructive emotions and from the limiting beliefs and repetitive behaviors created by these emotions.

Generosity and compassion arise only when the prefrontal cortex is able to throttle back the more prehistoric regions of the brain. Yet, for the prefrontal cortex to create functional pathways for joy and peace, the entire body and brain need to be healthy, fed with the proper nutrients, and trained with an inner discipline. We must heal our bodies and minds to empower the prefrontal cortex—the new brain, which is biologically programmable for bliss, extraordinary longevity, peace, and regeneration. For too long, this brain region has been kept offline, silenced by the same forces—scarcity, violence, and trauma—from which it promises to deliver us.

Once this new region in the brain is brought online, brain synergy is possible. Synergy means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Engineers are familiar with how synergy operates. The tensile strength of stainless steel, for example, is nearly ten times greater than the tensile strength of iron, even though stainless steel is basically iron with a minute amount of carbon added to it. Both carbon and iron, by themselves, are brittle and flake easily. Yet, when combined, they make an extraordinarily strong material.

Brain synergy signifies a neurocomputer whose circuits are all turned on, tuned in, and operating collaboratively, each region attending to its functions—much as the heart attends to circulating blood while the lungs attend to respiration—creating a system that cannot be defined or even described by its component parts.

Reinforcing Toxic Neural Pathways and Subconscious Beliefs

Neural networks are a plastic, dynamic architecture, a constellation of neurons that light up momentarily to perform a specific task. This is why, as you mull over a particular thought (good or bad) or practice a particular activity (beneficial or detrimental), you reinforce the neural networks that correlate with those thoughts and skills. Each time a situation reminds you of an actual fearful or dangerous experience from your past and instinctual emotions are brought up, that specific neural network is reinforced. We strengthen the toxic emotions and neural networks in our limbic brain and begin to create subconscious beliefs about life. These beliefs drive our actions and reactions in all experiences.

PTSD, Emotional Stress, and Suffering

When we are exposed to severe trauma, we can develop a condition known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Studies show that most people are likely to experience at least one life-threatening or violent event in their lifetime. The studies indicate that even if a person recovers from PTSD, he or she may continue to show mild symptoms. With PTSD many of life’s typical events are inappropriately routed through the limbic brain, where we relive, at least from an emotional perspective, the heart-wrenching trauma of events that may have occurred decades ago. PTSD is compounded because the limbic brain, primal as it is, can’t tell time and therefore can’t distinguish the difference between a painful event that occurred 20 years ago and the memory of that event triggered by a similar situation today. As an example, it was common for soldiers who returned from the Gulf War and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to become anxious or distressed when they heard fireworks or other sudden loud noises because their limbic brain did not understand it was no longer in the theater of war. Similarly, couples who go through a bitter divorce may recoil in shock when they hear each other’s voice many years after the marriage has ended.

But you do not have to be diagnosed with PTSD to have even seemingly benign events trigger intense emotional reactions.

This reinforcement can be done without our knowledge or when we are milking an emotional trauma for sympathy, whether from others or from ourselves. We might say, for example, “I don’t have to act maturely; after all, I had a terrible childhood.” By creating and repeating such a statement, we reinforce neural networks and emotional habits that are as distinct as the postural habits from an old whiplash injury that has affected the vertebra and muscles of the spine. These networks give rise to emotions, then beliefs that keep us favoring past pain, as well as behaviors that continually reinforce the trauma as well as the pity we have learned to so successfully milk.

While such a repetitive, circular pattern once served to ensure our survival, it has become toxic and has given rise to erroneous beliefs about the world and acquaintances, friends, and even family. Because beliefs can be unconscious, they may present themselves in ways that surprise us. We may start an intimate relationship that falls apart when we discover the person is not really who we thought he or she was, but the situation might actually be the product of our own unconscious belief that we will never find a partner. Likewise, we may have a terrific career opportunity that collapses because deep down we believe that we are not worthy.

Oddly enough, you can actually reinforce the toxic networks established by traumas by reacting with fear to a perceived threat. Unfortunately, whenever a situation is even faintly similar to some painful event from your past, a red flag goes up in your mammalian brain and you perceive it as a possible threat. This is because trauma is not what actually happened but how you stored it as a story in your mind. That is to say, you are impacted by what you believe occurred. And this story is kept alive below the threshold of consciousness, without your thinking or being aware.

[Footnotes omitted.] From Power Up Your Brain: The Neuroscience of Enlightenment

David Perlmutter, M.D., F.A.C.N., A.B.I.H.M., is a Board-certified neurologist and Fellow of the American College of Nutrition who received his medical degree from the University of Miami School of Medicine where he was awarded the Leonard G. Rowntree Research Award. After completing his residency training in neurology, also at the University of Miami, Dr. Perlmutter entered private practice in Naples, Florida.

Dr. Perlmutter is a frequent lecturer at symposia sponsored by such medical institutions as Columbia University, the University of Arizona, Scripps Institute, and Harvard University. He has contributed extensively to the world medical literature with publications appearing in The Journal of Neurosurgery, The Southern Medical Journal, Journal of Applied Nutrition, and Archives of Neurology. He is the author of The Better Brain Book and Raise a Smarter Child by Kindergarten, and is recognized internationally as a leader in the field of nutritional influences in neurological disorders. Dr. Perlmutter has been interviewed on many nationally syndicated radio and television programs including 20/20, Larry King Live, CNN, Fox News, Fox and Friends, the Today show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Dr. Oz, Montel Across America, and The CBS Early Show.

In 2002 Dr. Perlmutter was the recipient of the Linus Pauling Award for his innovative approaches to neurological disorders, and in addition, was awarded the Denham Harmon Award for his pioneering work in the application of free radical science to clinical medicine. He is the recipient of the 2006 National Nutritional Foods Association Clinician of the Year Award and was awarded the 2010 Humanitarian of the Year award from the American College of Nutrition in October, 2010. Website: www.DrPerlmutter.com

Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D., the author of numerous best-selling books, is a psychologist and medical anthropologist who has studied the spiritual practices of the Amazon and the Andes for more than 25 years. While at San Francisco State University, he founded the Biological Self-Regulation Laboratory to study how the mind creates psychosomatic health and disease. Dr. Villoldo directs The Four Winds Society, where he instructs individuals throughout the world in the practice of energy medicine and soul retrieval. He has training centers in New England; California; the U.K.; the Netherlands; and Park City, Utah. An avid skier, hiker, and mountaineer, he leads annual expeditions to the Amazon and the Andes to work with the wisdom teachers of the Americas. Website: www.thefourwinds.com

Brainsploitation: Rise Of The Neurothriller

BananaFamine — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 14:29:00 +0000

Annalee Newitz writes for io9:

Inception cleaned up in the effects categories at the Academy Awards because they go to movies built around cool ideas. In this case, literally. The centerpiece of the film is a machine that allows clever intruders to enter other people’s dreams and steal their ideas – or implant new ones. Inception is the latest standout example of the mind-manipulation movie, following in the tracks of Memento and classics like George Cukor’s Gaslight. Call them neurothrillers.

What makes neurothrillers relevant now? Sure, we’ve always had psychological suspense flicks, but over the past decade they’ve been coming fast and thick. The Bourne Identity series is one long neurothriller. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind brought the subgenre into the realm of art, while the stinker Johnny Mnemonic did the opposite. Liam Neeson’s new movie Unknown is about a man whose mind has been tampered with, while the much-anticipated Source Code is about Jake Gyllenhaal using futuristic brain tech to jump inside somebody else’s head. And these are just a few of the dozens of movies out there dealing with people whose memories are altered or blocked off – or whose entire identities are fabrications.

The question is, why have our minds become crime scenes?

Gadget futurism
There’s a simple answer to start with, which is that many of these stories are just giving us futuristic snapshots of technologies that have evolved over the past decade. Using brain implants such as Braingate, or just an Emotiv headset, you can interface with your computer using just the power of your brain. “Neural pacemakers” implanted under the skin can stimulate specific nerves, delivering jolts that relieve depression or give orgasms.

With weird brain tech making the headlines, it’s no wonder that we’re awash in movies like Inception or Eternal Sunshine. These film’s genius lies in their ability to extrapolate what the world will be like when brain-tweaking comes in the form a gadget you can pick up at Best Buy. What happens to identity when you can choose what you want to remember, or edit your child’s memories? And can you ever really dream up a new idea, when you live in a world where even the act of personal creation can be manipulated by some guy on the other end of a brain-to-brain firewire setup?

This is the world we’re about to live in, and so it’s no wonder that our science fiction about it is moving into overdrive…

For more information, see original article.

Humanity 3.0: How Will We Evolve Next?

JacobSloan — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 18:28:24 +0000

Writing in SEED Magazine, Mark Changizi expounds on his vision of human advancement in the centuries to come. He argues that the greatest progress will not come through changing our brains and bodies via genetic engineering or cyborg-like enhancement, but by developing technology that better accommodates the magnificently-designed brains and bodies that evolution has already given us:

Where are we humans going, as a species? If science fiction is any guide, we will genetically evolve like in X-Men, become genetically engineered as in Gattaca, or become cybernetically enhanced like General Grievous in Star Wars. All of these may well be part of the story of our future, but I’m not holding my breath.

There is, however, another avenue for human evolution, one mostly unappreciated in both science and fiction. It is this unheralded mechanism that will usher in the next stage of human, giving future people exquisite powers we do not currently possess, powers worthy of natural selection itself. And, importantly, it doesn’t require us to transform into cyborgs or bio-engineered lab rats. It merely relies on our natural bodies and brains functioning as they have for millions of years.

This mystery mechanism of human transformation is neuronal recycling, coined by neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene, wherein the brain’s innate capabilities are harnessed for altogether novel functions.

Scientists Study Brains Of Three-Year-Olds, Predict Future Criminals

BananaFamine — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 13:15:12 +0000

Elizabeth Landau reports for CNN:

Who is going to grow up to become a criminal or psychopath?

Current research in genetics and neuroscience may point towards answers to this question, opening up a whole host of ethical questions about culpability, justice and treatment.

“Is there truly freedom of will, as the law assumes? Freedom of will may not be as free as many of us may think,” said Adrian Raine of the University of Pennsylvania.

Experiments by Raine have found that by looking at the brains of 3-year-old children, scientists could already see signs of potential trouble in the future. Raine discussed this research Monday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Washington.

Those who had poor amygdala function at that time were more likely to become criminal offenders later in life, in the 20-year time span during which the scientists followed them. The amygdala is an almond-shaped brain area associated with fear, and it appears that a trend among offenders is that fear conditioning is impaired. Researchers did not directly measure amygdala function in a brain scanner, but used the children’s fear responses to an anticipated punishment as a proxy for that.

In fact, adult psychopaths appear to have an 18% reduction of the volume of the amygdala compared with non-psychopaths. This difference might explain why psychopaths lack remorse, fear and guilt. (Interestingly, white-collar criminals actually show enhanced brain function in decision-making and other cognitive skills, according to Raine’s unpublished research).

He also noted that a brain region called the orbital frontal cortex tends to be associated with being antisocial when its volume is smaller; as a group, men have a smaller orbital frontal cortex than women, which may help explain why men as a whole tend to commit more crimes than women…

For more information, see original article.

Brain Development May Begin With Faulty Wiring

Pelliciari — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 22:22:26 +0000

Photo: Ranveig

Via Live Science:

Very early in life, neurons in the brain begin forming connections with one another. But it turns out that during normal development, a startling number can link up to the wrong cells and must be pushed back in the right direction, according to a new study on baby mice.

The finding, detailed Feb. 8 in the journal PLoS Biology, could shed light on brain disorders such as autism, according to one researcher. Mice are often used as a model for human biology, and the researchers think a similar phenomenon occurs in humans.

An international research team made their discovery by observing the development of the cerebellum – a region of the brain responsible for motor control and also linked with attention, language and emotion in humans. During the first three weeks after a mouse is born, the neurons of the cerebellum connect to one another by forming synapses.

[Continues at Live Science]

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The Neuroscience Of Enlightenment

[Excerpted from the new book Power Up Your Brain: The Neuroscience of Enlightenment by David Perlmutter, M.D., F.A.C.N. and Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D., courtesy of the authors and their publisher, Hay House.]

Brainsploitation: Rise Of The Neurothriller

Humanity 3.0: How Will We Evolve Next?

Scientists Study Brains Of Three-Year-Olds, Predict Future Criminals

Brain Development May Begin With Faulty Wiring

[Excerpted from the new book Power Up Your Brain: The Neuroscience of Enlightenment by David Perlmutter,
M.D., F.A.C.N. and Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D., courtesy of the authors and their publisher, Hay House.]