“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”
- What major change has been made in the
study protocols of MRI scanning?
- What does this activity in paragraph three
refer to?
- Why is studying resting state activity
important?
- We understand from paragraphs five and six
that we know........................ about resting state activity.
Read “Always Active”
- What misconception did Biswall’s
experiments expose?
- What does “that notion” in the sentence “I
was relatively quickly disabused of that notion” in paragraph eight refer
to?
- Look back at the answer you gave to
question six. Were the scientists right or wrong? How do you know?
- Default mode activity is stronger when
................................................................................
- How did Michael Milham reach the
conclusion that the default mode network is important?
- Andreas Kleinschmit, Shmuel and David
Leopold all agree that ...............................................
Read “Disordered Thinking”
- Timothy Ellmore says: “It keeps me up at
night”. What is he referring to? Be very careful and very specific.
- Why exactly have researchers reached the
conclusion that resting state networks may prime the brain to respond to
stimuli?
- What conclusion can we draw from
Kleinschmidt’s study of idling networks?
Read “Zen and the Art of Network Maintenance”
- How does Raichle reach the conclusion that
“activity in the resting state helps the brain to stay organized”?
- What does “that conclusion” in the
sentence “Work on memory consolidation in animals backs that conclusion”
refer to?
- What does “These events in the sentence
“These events happen when it doesn2t look like the animal is doing very
much” refer to?
- What does “That” refer to in the sentence
“That would stop the brain from reinforcing the same activity too often”?
- 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.
- Some researchers have been adding a little
down time.
- Chugging away as the mind naturally
wanders through grocery lists, rehashes conversations and just generally
daydreams.
- 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.
- Possible answer: very little
- That background signals were all noise
(tough question!)
- That they were tapping into a stream of
consciousness. Or: this way real time conscious processing.
- Wrong. The networks of activity also
appeared in altered states of consciousness such as when sleeping or under
anaesthesia.
- The brain is no longer focusing so
intensely.
- Because it is always present but
modifiable. Or: they seem very similar across...
- Resting state networks represent actual
brain activity. Or: Various resting state networks are correlated with
real neural activity.
- The reasons for the differences in resting
state signatures in people with Alzheimer’s, dementia and autism (tough
question).
- It is incredibly computationally demanding
to calculate everything on the fly.
- They may also influence perceptions
- Because the connections between neurons
are continually shifting as people age and learn but humans maintain a
sense of self throughout.
- 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.
- The brain replaying and consolidating new
memories at any chance it gets.
- Random patterns of activity washing
through your network.
- 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment