Monday, October 1, 2012

NEUROSCIENCE: IDLE MINDS



“Neuroscientists are trying to work out why the brain does so much when it seems to be doing nothing at all”
By: Kerri Smith
Published: Nature; 19 September, 2012; http://www.nature.com Alternatively, google the title and author’s name.
Level of difficulty: ****
BEFORE YOU READ
-          How active do you think your brain is while you are resting?
-          Which activities continue no matter what?
-          Can you empty your mind and think of nothing at all?
-          What happens when you try?
-          Does the fact that all these thoughts go racing through your mind have a function?
QUESTIONS
Read as far as “Always Active”
  1. What major change has been made in the study protocols of MRI scanning?
  2. What does this activity in paragraph three refer to?
  3. Why is studying resting state activity important?
  4. We understand from paragraphs five and six that we know........................ about resting state activity.
Read “Always Active”
  1. What misconception did Biswall’s experiments expose?
  2. What does “that notion” in the sentence “I was relatively quickly disabused of that notion” in paragraph eight refer to?
  3. Look back at the answer you gave to question six. Were the scientists right or wrong? How do you know?
  4. Default mode activity is stronger when ................................................................................
  5. How did Michael Milham reach the conclusion that the default mode network is important?
  6.  Andreas Kleinschmit, Shmuel and David Leopold all agree that ...............................................
Read “Disordered Thinking”
  1. Timothy Ellmore says: “It keeps me up at night”. What is he referring to? Be very careful and very specific.
  2. Why exactly have researchers reached the conclusion that resting state networks may prime the brain to respond to stimuli?
  3. What conclusion can we draw from Kleinschmidt’s study of idling networks?
Read “Zen and the Art of Network Maintenance”
  1. How does Raichle reach the conclusion that “activity in the resting state helps the brain to stay organized”?
  2. What does “that conclusion” in the sentence “Work on memory consolidation in animals backs that conclusion” refer to?
  3. What does “These events in the sentence “These events happen when it doesn2t look like the animal is doing very much” refer to?
  4. What does “That” refer to in the sentence “That would stop the brain from reinforcing the same activity too often”?
  5. Why is testing resting state activity hard?
NEUROSCIENCE: IDLE MINDS TEACHER’S NOTES AND KEY
This text out of Nature won’t appeal to everyone but it did lend itself to some lovely questions. I have always been fascinated by this topic and really enjoyed reading about these latest findings. If you feel the same, you will love it. Alternatively, there is plenty more stuff of the same level of difficulty on the blog.
  1. Some researchers have been adding a little down time.
  2. Chugging away as the mind naturally wanders through grocery lists, rehashes conversations and just generally daydreams.
  3. It will help map the brain’s intrinsic connections by showing, for example, which areas of the brain prefer to talk to which other areas and how those patterns might differ in disease.
  4. Possible answer: very little
  5. That background signals were all noise (tough question!)
  6. That they were tapping into a stream of consciousness. Or: this way real time conscious processing.
  7. Wrong. The networks of activity also appeared in altered states of consciousness such as when sleeping or under anaesthesia.
  8. The brain is no longer focusing so intensely.
  9. Because it is always present but modifiable. Or: they seem very similar across...
  10. Resting state networks represent actual brain activity. Or: Various resting state networks are correlated with real neural activity.
  11. The reasons for the differences in resting state signatures in people with Alzheimer’s, dementia and autism (tough question).
  12. It is incredibly computationally demanding to calculate everything on the fly.
  13. They may also influence perceptions
  14. Because the connections between neurons are continually shifting as people age and learn but humans maintain a sense of self throughout.
  15. The brain is not only thinking about supper coming up but it is also processing the recent past and converting some of that into long term memories.
  16. The brain replaying and consolidating new memories at any chance it gets.
  17. Random patterns of activity washing through your network.
  18. When a researcher slides someone into a scanner and instructs them to think about nothing in particular, there is no task to do and no activity to address.

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