Category: Neuroscience

Some people have a can’t be bothered attitude, but apathy could be partly down to biology.

The root of apathy could lie in the brain’s structure, a study reveals.

The brains of people who can’t be bothered have to make more effort to take an action than those who are motivated, neuroscientists have found.

The pre-motor cortex — where there’s more activity in apathetic people — is an area key to taking actions.

The study could suggest that for apathetic people it is about more than attitude — it could be down to biology.

Professor Masud Husain, who led the study, said:

“We know that in some cases people can become pathologically apathetic, for example after a stroke or with Alzheimer’s disease.

Many such patients can be physically capable.

Yet they can become so demotivated they won’t be bothered to care for themselves, even though they’re not depressed.

By studying healthy people, we wanted to find out whether any differences in their brains might shed light on apathy.”

Can’t be bothered

In the study people played games: these required varying levels of physical effort for more or less reward.

Scans showed that the pre-motor cortex in the brains of apathetic people was consistently more active than in motivated people.

Professor Husain explained why:

“Using our brain scanning techniques we found that connections in the front part of the brains of apathetic people are less effective.

The brain uses around a fifth of the energy you’re burning each day.

If it takes more energy to plan an action, it becomes more costly for apathetic people to make actions.

Their brains have to make more effort.

As far as we know, this is the first time that anyone has found a biological basis for apathy in healthy people.

It doesn’t account for apathy in everyone but by giving us more information about the brain processes underlying normal motivation, it helps us understand better how we might find a treatment for those pathological conditions of extreme apathy.”

Dr Raliza Stoyanova, a cognitive neuroscientist, commented on the study:

“Lack of motivation to act towards achieving even simple goals, for example taking medication, is a feature of some brain disorders but also varies naturally within the population.

It’s well known that some people are more motivated to achieve the same goals than others, but interestingly, very little is known about the biological basis of such apathy.

This study provides important new insights, showing us that the brain systems involved in motivation and preparing for action are important components.”

The study was published in the journal Cerebral Cortex (Bonnelle et al., 2015).

Neuroscience experiments demonstrate how to reverse brain aging, control the mind over the internet, boost mood and way more…

Neuroscience is the study of the structure and function of the nervous system, of which the brain forms the most complex part.

Neuroscientists hope to uncover, among other things, the biological basis of how memory, learning, attention and consciousness really work.

Neuroscience uses all sorts of techniques to try and answer these questions, but the most well-known is neuroimaging or brain scanning technique such as fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) and PET (positron emission tomography).

These techniques allow neuroscientists to see which areas of the brain are particularly active at any given time.

What with these techniques, and others, it’s been an awe-inspiring few years for neuroscience.

By peering inside the living brain, neuroscientists have made all kinds of incredible discoveries.

Here are ten of my favourite — click the link to get the full story.

1. Electrical stimulation can reverse the brain aging, neuroscience finds

Electrical stimulation can reverse the brain aging of a 70-year-old by 50 years, neuroscience research demonstrates (Reinhart & Nguyen, 2019).

People in their 70s performed as well on working memory tasks as those in their 20s after painless electrical stimulation.

Even young people can benefit from the procedure.

The electrical stimulation helps to synchronise brain areas, with striking effects on seniors and some benefits to younger people.

Both gamma and theta rhythms — types of normal electrical activity — help the brain couple and synchronise.

2. Neuroscience enables remote control of the mind

Imagine if it were possible for one person to control another person’s movements over the internet, purely using their thoughts.

Well, back in 2013 researchers at the University of Washington managed to set up the first ever noninvasive human-to-human brain interface in their neuroscience experiment.

The two researchers were actually using the brain interface to play a simple computer game. It took some practice, but eventually one was able to send the signal and remotely move the other’s hand at a 100% success rate.

This type of ‘remote control’ over the internet has since been replicated several times.

3. Neuroscientists find hidden caves open up during sleep

“Hidden caves” that open up in the brain may help explain sleep’s amazing restorative powers, neuroscience has found.

The brain may wash away toxins built up over the day during sleep.

The research discovered “hidden caves” inside the brain, which open up during sleep, allowing cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) to flush out potential neurotoxins, like β-amyloid, which has been associated with Alzheimer’s disease (Xie et al., 2013).

This study suggests that the flushing out of toxins by the CSF may be central to sleep’s wondrous powers.

4. Neuroscience ‘jump-starts’ brain from coma-like state

Neuroscientists have used ultrasound to jump-start two people’s brains from a minimally conscious state, a study reports (Cain et al., 2021).

After treatment, the two patients were able to understand language and communicate for the first time in years.

Ultrasound uses low-intensity focused sound-waves to excite neurons in the thalamus.

The thalamus is a kind of relay station or hub for the brain, routing information to the cerebral cortex and elsewhere.

When in a coma, activity in the thalamus is typically reduced.

In one case, a 56-year-old man was in a minimally conscious state after a stroke.

After treatment, which involved two sessions of ultrasound across one week, he started showing signs of being able to communicate.

5. The brain craves social contact like food or drugs

The brain craves social contact when lonely in the same way it craves food when hungry, neuroscience research finds (Tomova et al., 2020).

After one day’s isolation, people’s brain activate in the same to seeing other people having fun together as it does to a plate of cheesy pasta.

People whose brains were most strongly affected by isolation were those who routinely had richer social lives.

Professor Rebecca Saxe, study co-author and neuroscientist, said:

“People who are forced to be isolated crave social interactions similarly to the way a hungry person craves food.

Our finding fits the intuitive idea that positive social interactions are a basic human need, and acute loneliness is an aversive state that motivates people to repair what is lacking, similar to hunger.”

6. Neuroscience finds sound waves can boost mood

A pilot study has found that the mood of chronic pain patients is boosted by left-field use of ultrasound machine.

Ultrasound equipment—which uses sound waves to see inside the body—is familiar to anyone with children as it’s used to check the health of an unborn child.

The pilot neuroscience study was conducted on 31 chronic pain patients (Hameroff et al., 2012).

After having the ultrasound applied to their brains for just 15 seconds, they felt slightly less pain, but the main effect was an improvement in mood:

“Patients reported improvements in mood for up to 40 minutes following treatment with brain ultrasound, compared with no difference in mood when the machine was switched off.”

7. Social rejection triggers release of natural painkillers in the brain

Contrary to the old ‘sticks and stones’ saying, it seems words can and do hurt, and the brain responds accordingly.

A study has found that the body produces natural painkillers in response to social rejection, just as if it had suffered a physical injury (Hsu et al., 2013).

The lead author, Dr David T. Hsu, explained:

“This is the first study to peer into the human brain to show that the opioid system is activated during social rejection. In general, opioids [are] released during social distress and isolation in animals, but where this occurs in the human brain has not been shown until now.”

This is further evidence from neuroscience that social pain is not as different from physical pain as many thought.

8. The brain “sees” objects that you don’t perceive

Every day, when you open your eyes in the morning, there is a huge flood of visual information from the external world into your mind.

Your brain edits this flood down to a trickle of things that are highly relevant: Where is the dressing-gown? Where is the curtain? Where is the door?

It’s like a film director who doesn’t bother showing you the hero going to sleep or brushing his teeth.

However, what one neuroscience study suggests is that even information that isn’t that useful or relevant is still being processed in the brain for meaning (Sanguinetti et al., 2013).

The study is a fantastic reminder that what we see is the result of an extremely complicated editing and filtering process.

What we actually perceive is just what the brain thinks will be most useful to us.

9. Childhood poverty and stress harms adult brain function

There’s no sugar-coating it: growing up relatively poor is bad for you.

Children from less affluent families are, on average, more likely to suffer both physical and psychological illnesses later in life.

One neuroscience study suggests that exposure to stress at a young age — while the brain is still developing — causes permanent damage to the ability to deal with stress.

Brain scans show that childhood stress and poverty are linked to problems regulating the emotions in adulthood.

One of the study’s authors, Professor K. Luan Phan, explained:

“Our findings suggest that the stress-burden of growing up poor may be an underlying mechanism that accounts for the relationship between poverty as a child and how well your brain works as an adult.”

10. Neurofeedback can improve attention

People can boost their attention skills by controlling their own alpha brain waves using neurofeedback, research finds (Bagherzadeh et al., 2019).

Alpha waves are a type of electrical signal that the brain generates which is important in how people filter out distracting information.

Concentration is improved when alpha waves are suppressed, research has shown.

Neurofeedback, meanwhile, is the process of learning to control brain waves after receiving feedback.

When people learn to control their brain waves using neurofeedback, they can improve their attention.

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Neurofeedback therapy claims that it can help you be more efficient, balanced and happier. Could watching and shaping your own brainwaves do this?

Neurofeedback therapy training is like looking in a kind of mental mirror, where the ‘mirror’ is reflecting your brain’s electrical activity.

The training, some claim, can make you more centred, efficient, balanced and happier — perhaps dramatically enhancing your life.

While others are more skeptical, it has been the subject of renewed interest in psychological research.

What is neurofeedback therapy?

Neurofeedback therapy training itself typically involves sensors placed on the scalp which pick up and display it on a screen.

You then sit in front of the screen and try to change the waveform, just by thinking.

The idea is that you can learn to create specific brain states, like concentration or relaxation — it’s a kind of high-tech meditation.

Eventually, the theory goes, you can learn to better control your own brain.

Here are seven studies on the effects of neurofeedback…

1. Neurofeedback therapy for depression

Learning to control your own brain waves could be an effective treatment for severe depression, research finds (Cheon et al., 2017).

The small pilot study found that a technique called neurofeedback helped severely depressed people whose depression had proved very hard to treat.

For the study, people did two types of neurofeedback training:

• Alpha-theta training, which has been shown to help alcoholics.
• Beta/sensorimotor rhythm training which has been linked to improvements in ADHD and autism.

Professor Eun-Jin Cheon, the study’s first author, said:

“In our study we included patients with major depressive disorder, who still had residual symptoms and functional impairment despite receiving antidepressant treatment.

Our results suggested that neurofeedback might be an effective complementary treatment to make patients feel well again and successfully engage with life.

The most promising thing about neurofeedback is it doesn’t cause even mild side effects. It could also improve self-efficacy by participating active, voluntary treatment.”

2. Neurofeedback improves concentration

Researchers in Canada wanted to see if neurofeedback would affect mind-wandering — the brain’s irritating tendency to get distracted and decrease focus (Ros et al., 2012).

After a 30-minute session of alpha-wave training, participants displayed better cognitive discipline compared to a control condition that was given false feedback.

Alpha waves are a type of electrical signal that the brain generates which is important in how people filter out distracting information.

After the training those who’d received neurofeedback had enhanced performance on a test of attention.

The lead author, Dr Tomas Ros explained:

“We were excited to find that increased metabolic coupling within a key cognitive network was reflected in the individual level of brainwave change provoked by neurofeedback.

The same measures were found to be tightly correlated with reductions in mind-wandering during an attention task.”

Other studies have also shown that people can boost their attention skills by controlling their own alpha brain waves using neurofeedback.

3. Boost the senses

Participants in a University College London study were told to concentrate on the visual cortex while being shown their own brain’s activity, as measured by an fMRI machine (Sharnowski et al., 2012).

They imagined various images and watched the activity of their brains change as they did so.

Their visual perception was then tested. What they found was that those who had been trained could distinguish more subtle shades of grey.

In other words: after focusing on the brain activity in the visual areas of the brain, their vision improved.

Dr. Frank Scharnowski said:

“We’ve shown that we can train people to manipulate their own brain activity and improve their visual sensitivity, without surgery and without drugs.”

4. A purer brainwave

When the mind wanders, the brain is filled with noisy activity, not all of it relevant to what we are doing right now.

Researchers at Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute wondered if neurofeedback could help the brain produce a purer signal (Papageorgiou et al., 2013).

They had participants simply counting upwards either with or without neurofeedback.

Brain scans revealed that those who’d been using neurofeedback demonstrated higher signal-to-noise ratios.

In other words: their brains were producing a more pure electrical signal.

The researchers eventually hope this will help in neurorehabilitation. Stephen LaConte said:

“Ultimately, we want to use this effect to find better ways to treat brain injuries and psychiatric and neurological disorders.”

5. Increase hand-eye coordination

Maybe more than anyone else, micro-surgeons need pinpoint precision.

So Ros et al. (2009) gave some trainee ophthalmic micro-surgeons eight 20-minute neurofeedback sessions, then tested them against those not given the training.

After the neurofeedback training, surgeons were more accurate on a test and, on average, 26 percent quicker.

6. Neurofeedback therapy for trauma

Neurofeedback may have advantages in treating those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

A recent study by Kleutsch et al. (2013) recruited people who’d suffered childhood abuse and gave them a 30-minute neurofeedback session.

Afterwards brain scans revealed key positive changes in neural networks.

In addition, participants felt calmer.

The authors claim this shows that:

“…neurofeedback was able to directly modulate the brain bases of emotional processing in PTSD.”

7. Better dancer

One study has even examined the effects of neurofeedback on dance performances.

Raymond et al. (2005) recruited 24 dancers and gave some the neurofeedback training while others were in a control group.

Their dancing was assessed before and afterwards by professional judges who did not know which dancers had had the neurofeedback.

The results showed those that had received the neurofeedback training were significant better dancers.

Cure-all?

These studies are just the tip of the iceberg.

Neurofeedback has been tested by NASA for training pilots, as a method for treating epilepsy, bed-wetting, depression and ADHD.

Although big claims have been made for neurofeedback, the results have been somewhat variable with many critical about how the studies have been designed.

While it’s unlikely to be a magical cure-all, the latest batch of more tightly controlled studies is promising.

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People with a bigger brain score better on cognitive tests, but the association is extremely small.

A bigger brain is, on average, more intelligent, a study of over 13,600 people has found (Nave et al., 2018).

The brain scans revealed that people with larger brains do indeed score better on cognitive tests.

However, the association is only very small, explained Dr Gideon Nave, the study’s first author:

“On average, a person with a larger brain will tend to perform better on tests of cognition than one with a smaller brain.

But size is only a small part of the picture, explaining about 2 percent of the variability in test performance.

For educational attainment the effect was even smaller: an additional ‘cup’ (100 square centimeters) of brain would increase an average person’s years of schooling by less than five months.”

Men have bigger brains than women

Men’s brains are, on average, 7 percent bigger than women’s brains.

So, are we saying that men are, on average 7 percent more intelligent than women?

Certainly not!

Dr Nave explained:

“Just like with height, there is a pretty substantial difference between males and females in brain volume, but this doesn’t translate into a difference in cognitive performance.”

In fact, there is very little measurable difference between men and women in their IQ, despite men having larger brains.

The disparity may be explained by some studies that find that the cerebral cortex is thicker in women.

The cerebral cortex is the outermost layer of the brain, which does most of our high level thinking.

Dr Nave said:

“This might account for the fact that, despite having relatively smaller brains on average, there is no effective difference in cognitive performance between males and females.

And of course, many other things could be going on.”

Big brain vs small brain

Despite all this, the link between a bigger brain and intelligence is certainly attractive in the first instance.

For example, imagine you measure both the bodies and brains of all the primates on Earth bar humans: beasties like bonobos, chimps and gorillas.

Then, using this ratio and based on the average human’s size, you estimate how big a human brain should be.

To check your estimate you decide to open up your friend’s head to take a peek inside.

When you do, you’re mighty surprised to find a brain about three times larger than you were expecting.

“Aha,” you say, “This is where our amazing capacity for language, emotion, social organisation and creativity comes from.”

Naturally, then, it’s an attractive idea that the bigger the brain, the more able the animal.

This argument soon breaks down, though, when you try chatting to an elephant – an animal with a brain three times the size of ours.

Political problems

OK, you might say, it doesn’t work across species, but maybe it works within species.

Well, now trouble is not far away, and here’s two reasons why:

1. As noted above, men’s brains are generally bigger than women’s, on average by 100 grams (say about 7 percent bigger).
2. Different races have different head sizes with Asian children averaging the largest at birth followed by White children, leaving Black babies with the smallest heads.

So you see the kind of dangerous, shark-infested waters we’re now swimming in?

This is no longer just science, it’s political; with claims to the answer potentially being seen as both sexist and racist.

A bigger brain not significantly better

This is why I’m more than a little relieved to report the view of neuroscientist Dr David P. Carey who has reviewed the research in this area and finds little evidence for the claim that bigger brains mean greater abilities (Carey, 2007).

He argues that the evidence from neuroimaging, behavioural genetics and comparative cognition is largely unconvincing:

“I have little confidence that looking at a sophisticated twenty-first century brain scan (in any number of impossibly sophisticated ways) of a collaborator, competitor or any old conspecific [other human] is going to tell me anything meaningful at all about their capabilities to perform in any cognitive way, psychometric or not.”

Intelligence sceptics

A second layer of scepticism about the bigger brain/intelligence connection is captured by an old joke that goes like this:

Q: What is intelligence?
A: Whatever intelligence tests measure.

The joke expresses a scepticism many harbour towards measures of intelligence.

Does intelligence really tell us anything useful about a person, or does it just tell us how good they are at taking intelligence tests?

The jury is very much out on this point.

The originators and manufacturers of intelligence tests will tell you they are good predictors of people’s real-world performance, while many others are not so sure.

In fact, you’ll likely hear equally strong answers from equally well-qualified people that are completely contradictory.

It’s not how big it is…

The default position should be a high level of scepticism about any claims for a relationship between a bigger brain and ability.

This is because:

1. The connection between a bigger brain and intelligence is largely unproven, and;
2. The relationship between measures of intelligence and real-world functioning and behaviour is highly contentious.

So, there you have, confirmation of the oldest defence in the book: it’s not how big it is, it’s what you do with it.

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