Slashdot Mirror
Adult Brains More Flexible Than Previously Thought
stemceller passed us a link to the official site for Johns Hopkins, which is reporting on some research into cognition. Generally, doctors have understood our best learning to be done at a young age, when the brain has a 'robust flexibility'. As we get older, our brain cells become 'hard-wired' along certain paths and don't move much - if at all. Or, at least, that was the understanding. Research headed by the hospital's Dr. Linden has taken advantage of 'two-photon microscopy', a new technique, to get a new picture inside a mouse's head. "They examined neurons that extend fibers (called axons) to send signals to a brain region called the cerebellum, which helps coordinate movements and sensory information. Like a growing tree, these axons have a primary trunk that runs upward and several smaller branches that sprout out to the sides. But while the main trunk was firmly connected to other target neurons in the cerebellum, stationary as adult axons are generally thought to be, 'the side branches swayed like kite tails in the wind,' says Linden. Over the course of a few hours, individual side branches would elongate, retract and morph in a highly dynamic fashion. These side branches also failed to make conventional connections, or synapses, with adjacent neurons. Furthermore, when a drug was given that produced strong electrical currents in the axons, the motion of the side branches stalled.'"
Maybe there are a lot of adults at this time. You know... their brains don't work that well...
No, the science is settled. Adult nerve cells don't wriggle around, everyone knows that. There's no need to look. Nothing to see here, move along.
Where are the comments!!
OMG they stoled teh commants!!
You just got troll'd!
They just normally prefer not to do so.
I had to fight them for a long time to use it, but now even my parents (in their 60s) suffer from internet withdrawal if they go without for a few days.
There's a branch of neural net studies that focuses on a technique called entropic topography. Essentially, it involves random evolution of just the fringes of a digital neural net. That is, much as this John-Hopkins study has found, a rigid core is kept. It is only the neural subnets branching off that undergo synthesis and morphing.
While there are various deterministic algorithms that are used to evolve neural nets, it's only recently that we've begun seeing randomness used. This has an added benefit of bringing in unexpected mutations, which really don't happen with the deterministic algorithms.
Some advances from the study of Lei topographies have also lead to breakthroughs recently, where some of the more complex, yet deterministic, algorithms have had entropic terms introduced in order to bring in an element of randomness. These neural nets are probably the closest to the human brain, as they introduce the random mutation that is so prevalent within the human species, while also following the constraints of this new-found core neural path.
how Apple computer started using Intel chips. Neuronal flexibility!!
The RTFA...
Err crap, I mean "TFA" of course..
You just got troll'd!
Here's another article on the same topic.
This is kind of what I'd expect, actually. Even if an adult mind was completely plastic, as people learn of the type of experiences that will come to them, they're going to quickly learn to categorize them, and which kinds of categories tend to work with more and more experiences.
It's like as a programmer learns of which coding constructs work for which situations... they learn it becomes more important to worry about understandability rather than speed, and to code with clear structures they can pick up later if and when they need to clean up misunderstandings later. The default practice becomes a sort of robust defensive form, that requires the fewest changes over the widest plausible set of needs - while still doing the job of completely enumerating the problem set needed.
I'd expect that even with minds unhindered by age, the same sort of defensive practices programmers pick up would have analogues in most other realms of experience that mankind goes through. That would then, be easily confused with a mind unable to rapidly change, because such wide change is then rarely observed.
That said - there are more concrete bits of evidence that complicate things - such as rates of new language adoption between adults and children... but again, there's also evidence that some adults can still pick up new languages rapidly. Perhaps those same defensive practices act as a 'language censor' to 'wasting time with confusing sentence structure' - or perhaps there really is some factor of truth to the hardware limitations of an aging brain. Hard to know for sure until we get the computational nuerobiology tools in place to be able to strictly test such things... I'm really happy to see the progress so far though.
Ryan Fenton
i'm getting older, everyone does, but media and "science" try to put in your mind that you are not capable of learning new things or think like a young man, is a trap, the truth is, you can *always* learn... pick a book, a class, and try yourself.
My brain can stretch like silly putty.
I hate this view that some how results of tests on animals don't apply to humans at all. It's simply not true, almost every major medical advance has been tested or researched on animals like mice first. the simple fact is mammals bodies all work in very similar ways.
Having worked in a lab (disclaimer: not as a scientist) I learned that there are loads and loads of promising treatments for cancer and such that work great in mice, and never translate beyond. Even a casual glance at immunology from a layman's perspective reveals your statement to be utter bullshit; there are many, many diseases and afflictions that are species specific, sometimes highly so.
Anyway...it is entirely plausible that this ability to re-purpose brain cells is a plus for mice in survival/adaptation, where they have very little brain capacity at their disposal. We have loads at our disposal, and tend to build a lot of generally useful knowledge..ie, we build tools, literally or figuratively, and apply those 'real' tools or knowledge/skill 'tools'. Mice do not do either. We're more "general purpose", so maybe we don't *need* the ability to re-learn, since our learned skills are so broadly applicable in a survival sense.
Please help metamoderate.
Or maybe young people are smart enough not to clog up their brains with information that can be more easily and accurately recorded elsewhere. If all our fancy devices somehow stopped working, there would definitely be a period of confusion, but people would adapt. They'd go back to using their memories (or pen and paper.)
Technology isn't conflicting with our brain's evolution; it's extending and enhancing it. One less phone number to remember is who knows how many neurons that don't have to waste time storing and retrieving it. You might question whether young people are using this freed memory space to good use (for the love of all that's holy, I do NOT care about who won the latest reality show or what celebrities do in their spare time), but I think that it's a mistake to view this phenomenon as a fault.
I hate this view that some how results of tests on animals don't apply to humans at all.
Hey slow down, it's not as if I was claiming "hey this thing doesn't apply to humans!". I'm just asking, and I believe this is a legitimate question, does that very thing apply to us, as it hasn't been mentioned, and you're not even answering to that. It's not because something works one on on mice that it's automatically working the same way in humans, mostly that our human brains have quite different capabilities and characteristics than mice brains.
You just got troll'd!
Let me get this straight. An adult may be just as capable of learning something new as someone younger. But they aren't as capable of re-considering things they already know. I.E. they have a harder time changing their already established brain structure but forming new structures isn't a problem. Anyone?
That is actually an important observation that often goes unexplained. The fact is, mice are genetically very close to humans, but they reproduce quickly, are cheap, and their genetics and physiology are very well understood. That makes them a great animal to experiment on.
At the cellular level, most mammals are very, very similar to each other. In fact, we know so little about neurology in the first place, any understanding we can draw from mice helps us understand the basics of the vertebrate nervous system.
Most importantly, we cannot breed and sacrifice humans for the purpose of experimentation. The best we can do is use animals and hope that they are close enough (usually they are, by the way).
- Demosthenes
cynicsreport.com
Why is this article tagged with 'ronpaul' and 'ronpaulisanazi'? I thought this was slashdot, not digg. Why don't we just tag the article with 'omgiphonejailbreak' and '10waystoimproveyourwebsite' while we're at it?
Even a casual glance at immunology from a layman's perspective reveals your statement to be utter bullshit; there are many, many diseases and afflictions that are species specific, sometimes highly so.
He stated that it's "not true" that animal tests don't apply to humans at all (true), that almost every major medical advance has been tested or researched on animals like mice first (true, at least since the mid-twentieth century), and that mammal bodies work in very similar ways (true).
What you said is also true--that despite the huge similarities there are also significant differences--but that doesn't make his statement "bullshit"... perhaps merely "incomplete."
I support your point in general, especially because brains is obviously one of the organs in which humans differ the most, but I don't think that gives you the right to call a bunch of essentially truthful statements "bullshit."
I know all of that, but thanks anyways. But do we know if in these very news we're talking about it applies to humans? Because both the summary and the article make it sound like it does apply to us, but it sounds more like misleading us in order to make it sound more interesting than anything else.
You just got troll'd!
Haha thanks for your comment. By the way I'm working on a rewrite of the program to make it much faster (and also a bit more ergonomic and polished), and I plan on releasing it within the next few weeks.
You just got troll'd!
"These side branches also failed to make conventional connections, or synapses" and "Linden thinks they may present a second mechanism for conveying information beyond traditional synapses or assist in nerve regeneration, quickly forming synapses should nearby nerves get damaged."
That pretty much says it: they just sit there and do nothing but replace good ones.
Or they really think it provides a "second mechanism for conveying information beyond traditional synapses" -- but how can it convey information if it's not making "synapses", i.e. connections??? (And aren't synapses the way information is transmitted?) You have to "convey" information somewhere.
Or did they really have a machine that can see "traditional synapses" but can't see "non-traditional synapses"? It's a physical connection, right? How can you see one kind and not the other if you see the potential components of the connection?
That kind of conclusion is totally unwarranted. To begin with, the mice were not 70 years old. No, don't laugh! Either mouse neurons age as fast as the mice themselves do, which implies that (the processes in) their neurons differ fundamentally from ours, or these neurons age the way we do, but then they were studying two year old neurons, which I thought used to be considered pretty young.
Second, the observation that learning and memorizing becomes more difficult with age is pretty solid. If our neurons maintain their plasticity, these people should explain how a plastic brain stops learning.
Concluding: the observations are probably true, the conclusions were just made to draw attention and get more funding (aging is a big topic for funds these days). Such is the sad state of science.
PS I hold a post-doc in neurocognition.
I didn't look up the actual peer-reviewed article, and I don't generally trust reporters to accurately summarize scientific results. However, as a rule of thumb, in biology one study doesn't really mean much at all, unless it is demonstrating a new experimental method. The results must be duplicated in several experiments. In this case, I wouldn't be confident that the 'news' applies even to mice (the experimental subjects), let alone humans. If it does apply to mice, though, then it probably also applies to humans. The important thing to recognize is that relating these studies to cognition or higher mental processes is pure conjecture.
The real story here is the imaging technique, which could lead to further insight into the nervous system. The results about neuron growth do not seem nearly as interesting... My Neurology textbook detailed descriptions on how neurons branch out, and why they form synapses. These scientists are studying certain details about that process; it's not a new paradigm. The best part about this experiment has less to do with neural-connections than the imaging technique which could be used in further neurological research.
- Demosthenes
cynicsreport.com
No, the objection isn't bullshit because research in mice IS relevant to humans. Period. The question is merely HOW relevant this particular piece of research is.
I've got a knife, you've got a brain... let's study this on your brain. ;-)
Must I understand that you don't have a brain? ;-)
You just got troll'd!
When have mice become people? I know we are very similar to rodents some more than others(like in congress), but since when are humans the same as rats, some things are bound to be different this could be one of them.
It has always been known that the brain continuously adapts (but for this it needs to be stimulated all the time, "use it or lose it" as they say). But my understanding at least has been that for this the brain signals travel along new paths of existing neurons to do brain functions. This is the first time I hear of proof that the brain also physically adapts. And at quite a high rate as well. This research could be especially important for understanding Parkinson's disease.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
As there seems to be some neuroscientists and neurologists on /., I'd like to ask the following question as its a somewhat related topic.
There is a man in his early 20's who recently recited pi to some 200,000 digits perfectly at Oxford university. He says he can visualize numbers in his head and is able to (as Oxford researchers found) do division to a precision of 20 or more decimal places in his head (there are some techniques to do this too I'm sure).
The point is he's said that his ability to visualize numbers occurred after having an epileptic seizure. After being diagnosed and (presumably treated with medication), his brain still functions in the same way that he's able to visualize the numbers.
Prior to being diagnosed with my seizure condition, I remember having epileptic episodes (the disorientation and spatial loss) where I was able to do more complex math and deeper thoughts that I ever thought I was able to do. As a senior in HS, I was able to complete math and science homework for sometime in a fraction of the time it would usually take. E.g. 25 minutes total vs 1-2 hours total each night. I haven't been able to unlock this thought process since.
Any thoughts or ideas on what caused this? And -without- any risk to myself, is there any current research on unlocking this potential?
No, but you must understand it would be hard for you to function if you were cutting into your own, unless you really _are_ a fucking idiot.
You've never watched Hannibal now, have you? ;-)
You just got troll'd!
Would you have any suggestions of what literature would be appropriate for someone specifically interested in computational neuroscience? What I'd love to see if discussions on the methods that can be used to ask one neural cell something about its neighbors' state, and it's neighbors' neighbors state, and so on. This is something like how the brain has to work, if I'm able to speak about something I remember, then any functional cells should be able to ask eachother about their states in one way or anther - I'd love to read what the latest is on that.
I'm specifically interested in computational neuroscience because I'd love to create the tools and environments needed for further study of the brain, now that I've paid my dues as a professional programmer simply working for money.
Ryan Fenton
This isn't progress. It is simply quantification. If you have ever worked with the disabled and physically/psychically traumatized you might wonder why exactly scientists wouldn't believe the brain to be more flexible "than they previously thought". The brain is so poorly understood in terms of how it works expect a long and tedious continuation of these pronouncements in the coming decades.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
If so, congrats! Your brain is not rigid yet.
Will you play?
That is essentially how you know if the state of your brain matters or not.
Blogging because I can...
Just ask the zombies.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
Brains aren't flexible; they're squishy! You people should have learned this in high school biology lab... or was I the only one who dissected the pig's head for extra credit?
"Old age and treachery will win over youth and vigor every time."
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I'll believe them when they get me to speak Mandarin.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
There are horrible blends of statistical fallacies here. It's like taking a simple average of peaks & valleys.
... will remember their cell number.
Group 1: Young People able to remember phone numbers:
These are the "Connected youngsters" talked about in conjunction with the rise of Web 2.0 and later, business networking. Someone constantly telling people to "call me on my cell"
Group 2: Older People unable to remember phone numbers:
Watch what happens when such a person is either not used to their cell, or moves to a new city and can't rely on the memory aid of the same area code. If they're unlucky enough not to get an easily memorable phone number, I've seen it take them months to learn it.
As for relative birthdays, it might depend on the cultural connectedness of the family. I may not remember Aunt Mabel's birthday because I never see her, but a young member of a family who "always has the family dinner every week" probably would because it would be about a "person in everyday life" and not a random factoid only needed once a year.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The not-so-developed ones are tastier though. Lots of fat between the neurons makes for good eatin'!
Or is that just a theory? I forget - must be getting old...
Anyone interested in it should read The Brain the Changes Itself by Norman Doige; utterly fascinating and worth reading.