Major Brain Pathway Rediscovered After Century-old Confusion, Controversy

vinces99 writes A couple of years ago a scientist looking at dozens of MRI scans of human brains noticed something surprising: A large fiber pathway that seemed to be part of the network of connections that process visual information that wasn't mentioned in any modern-day anatomy textbooks. "It was this massive bundle of fibers, visible in every brain I examined," said Jason Yeatman, a research scientist at the University of Washington's Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences. "... As far as I could tell, it was absent from the literature and from all major neuroanatomy textbooks.'"With colleagues at Stanford University, Yeatman started some detective work to figure out the identity of that mysterious fiber bundle. The researchers found an early 20th century atlas that depicted the structure, now known as the vertical occipital fasciculus. But the last time that atlas had been checked out was 1912, meaning the researchers were the first to view the images in the last century. They describes the history and controversy of the elusive pathway in a paper published Nov. 17 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. You'd think that we'd have found all the parts of the human body by now, but not necessarily.

Comments

Clearly...

[LordLimecat]

"It was this massive bundle of fibers, visible in every brain I examined," said Jason Yeatman, a research scientist at the University of Washington's Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences. "... As far as I could tell, it was absent from the literature and from all major neuroanatomy textbooks.'

Google's dark fiber really is everywhere.

Schizophrenia and Pathway for Visual Center

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder of this forgotten pathway could be responsible in a large part for the problems associated with bipolar and schizophrenia and other disorders.

Just a thought.

On the other hand.

[fahrbot-bot]

You'd think that we'd have found all the parts of the human body by now ...

This is /. so I'm sure many of us have yet undiscovered parts of the human body...

Re:On the other hand.

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd think that we'd have found all the parts of the human body by now ...

This is /. so I'm sure many of us have yet undiscovered parts of the human body...

Particularly when the parts are on the opposite sex. (No, Pictures don't count)

Re:On the other hand.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not necessarily.
Small stuff embedded in tissue otherwise not thought to be particularly interesting I can understand.
That brain fibre, I can understand too. The brain is a big and messy piece of interconnections.

But that knee ligament does truely surprise me. I remember seeing the head line at the time and thinking it'll just be some obscure thingy previously though to be part of some other ligament.
But following the link just now, it's a full size ligament, in the knee.... it crosses the knee pretty much all on its own, though it shares a common anchoring point with another ligament.
But still... how many generations of orthopedic surgeons have gone through anatomy dissections of the knee completely missing a ligament that looks like it's the same size as the known ones?

Re:On the other hand.

[roc97007]

You'd think that we'd have found all the parts of the human body by now ...

This is /. so I'm sure many of us have yet undiscovered parts of the human body...

At least, those that we can't conveniently reach...

Re:On the other hand.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I remember correctly, at the time the ligament was discovered people were discussing that there's a somewhat common mutation that causes people to not have that ligament.

Re:On the other hand.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? I prefer the fairer gender. (My own.)

Re:On the other hand.

[Type44Q]

I'm sure many of us have yet undiscovered parts of the human body

Undiscovered... by soap? :p

Re:On the other hand.

[jhaefele]

"I found out what my Special Purpose is for!"

Re:On the other hand.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Pictures as parts of the opposite sex? You mean tattoos?

Re:On the other hand.

[rubycodez]

You're talking about eunuchs? neither the two females on slashdot post AC

Re:On the other hand.

[Tablizer]

unfortunately, goat-se isn't among of them

reflexes?

[eleuthero]

Noting the description of the purpose of each of the parts of the brain connected (I clicked through to the journal article abstract), is this possibly part of how trained reflex action develops (not knee-jerk, but the reaction people have in martial arts after learning a movement, etc.)?

Re:reflexes?

[ScienceofSpock]

I watched a show a few months back, one of those shows where they talk about people with different/special abilities, synesthesia, a German guy who was blind from birth, but could understand and draw perspective, etc.

There was one study they talked about where they had a group of people who were blind in one eye, but the blindness was the result of a brain injury or defect, not a problem with their actual eyes. In the study, the subjects had their sighted eye covered, and were shown pictures of faces with various emotions/expressions to the blind eye. They found that even though they were blind in that eye, they could still "see" the emotion in the faces and would mimic it on their own face.

Basically, they were saying that the visual signals were getting into the brain and were being interpreted on some level by an unknown part of the brain before getting lost in the damaged visual cortex. I wonder if this has something to do with it?

Re:reflexes?

[Jason Levine]

My mother likely has a damaged visual cortex. She was born with double vision and had surgery to correct this. Unfortunately, even though the surgery successfully fixed her eyes, she still sees double. She'll see one image up and slightly to the side of the other - all blended together. Don't ask me how she drives, reads, or even maneuvers around. I wouldn't know which objects (seeing two of everything) to avoid but she has adapted and is used to it. She has said that, to her, it seems natural to see 2 of everything since you have two eyes and seeing one just sounds foreign. (3D movies don't work for her, thanks to this though.)

Re:reflexes?

[aaronb1138]

Something about her driving sounds irresponsible.

Re:reflexes?

[ScienceofSpock]

I was going to post something to the effect of:

"If 3D movies don't work on her, she probably has limited or no depth perception, which is a huge problem for driving"

BUT

A cursory google search shows stereo vision or depth perception doesn't seem to be a requirement for a driver license, at least in some areas. Only "sufficient vision" and a regular field of view are required. People can get a driver license with only one eye.

Personally, *I* wouldn't feel comfortable driving with limited depth perception, or only one eye, but I'm speaking from the perspective of having both of those things all of my life. I wouldn't feel comfortable doing ANYTHING without depth perception or only having one eye.

Re:reflexes?

[Imagix]

I don't have depth perception, and I drive perfectly fine. I'd argue that I drive better than most. I have 0 accidents and only 2 tickets (speeding, and an illegal left contrary to posted signs) _lifetime_ record. (I've been driving > 20 years...)

Re:reflexes?

[ScienceofSpock]

Right. My point was that at least some states don't seem to require it, and while I feel it's pretty essential to driving, I have no clue what it would be like to actually go through life without it. Maybe it's not as "required" as I think it is, so maybe it's not that irresponsible either.

Re:reflexes?

[nine-times]

I'm not an expert, but there is some part of your brain that specifically interprets faces. Maybe the information reached that part of the brain, but couldn't be processed beyond that.

Re:reflexes?

[smellsofbikes]

My mother likely has a damaged visual cortex. She was born with double vision and had surgery to correct this. Unfortunately, even though the surgery successfully fixed her eyes, she still sees double. She'll see one image up and slightly to the side of the other - all blended together. Don't ask me how she drives, reads, or even maneuvers around. I wouldn't know which objects (seeing two of everything) to avoid but she has adapted and is used to it. She has said that, to her, it seems natural to see 2 of everything since you have two eyes and seeing one just sounds foreign. (3D movies don't work for her, thanks to this though.)

I don't know if she's already looked (so to speak) into this but she sounds like a possible candidate for vision therapy. They're pretty good at dealing with exactly this sort of problem without surgery, and through use of cleverly designed exercises, training eye muscles to consistently maintain image fusion. It certainly has limitations: they can't fix problems because of nerve palsies or damage that leads to muscles that simply don't work. But if the muscles work at all, they can often do some pretty amazing things.
It's expensive and most insurance plans don't cover it. But what price would you put on having good depth perception?

Re:reflexes?

[St.Creed]

I used to have no depth perspective from age 12 to about 20 because my lens was removed due to glaucoma. While playing baseball was something of a nightmare for me (try catching a ball without depth perspective - my main goal was to try and avoid the ball altogether), driving was never a problem. You just need to maintain a good distance from things, which is sensible advice for most drivers anyway.

Re:reflexes?

[crunchygranola]

...I have no clue what it would be like to actually go through life without it. Maybe it's not as "required" as I think it is, so maybe it's not that irresponsible either.

I can help here. Look out the window. Close one eye.

Wow! Didn't everything look totally different and you suddenly had no idea how far away anything was?

No?

I think no. I think things looked almost exactly the same, and still knew how far away cars, and signs, and people, and houses were.

Binocular depth perception is only one many cues your brain uses to interpret the environment's layout.

Re:reflexes?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I used to have no depth perspective"....."You just need to maintain a good distance from things"

How did you know?

Re:reflexes?

[ScienceofSpock]

I get that I can simulate it, but I choose not to because it makes me uncomfortable :)

To your point of not being able to tell how far away anything really was, it's interesting because one of the pages I found during my cursory search said that stereoscopic depth perception only works within about 20 feet, anything further than that, the difference between left and right images is so negligible that your brain doesn't register any difference, and can't determine distance anyway. To get any better distance would require moving the eyes farther apart.

Re:reflexes?

[ScienceofSpock]

I'm not an expert either, but it seems to me that the activity they were seeing in the brain was not in that area. If I recall, they were using those caps with all the wires coming out of them to monitor brain activity, not some of the more sophisticated/expensive machines, so I don't know how accurate that is.

Re:reflexes?

[Trogre]

You're right that binocular depth perception is just one of many cues, but your experiment will be tainted by cached binocular information. Recall that you can only actually see with any detail a tiny area represented by your fovea - the full image that you perceive is made up by moving your eyes over a scene and is of course aided by memories of what you expect certain elements to look like.

Here's another experiment:

Go to the same window but start out with one eye closed. Take note of what you see and try to judge how far away things are. After a minute, open the other eye and blink a couple of times.

Note the difference.

Re:reflexes?

[Jason Levine]

Honestly, what amazes me with my mother driving (and she's a very safe driver, by the way) isn't any depth perception issues but the fact that she sees two lanes, two cars, two of each side of the road, etc. It must take much more concentration to be able to make sure that she is steering down the lane correctly.

Relax your eyes so that the words on your screen split into two sets. That's what it is like for my mother every second of her life. I'm amazed she can function like that, but - as I said in my original comment - that's normal for her. She's never known anything different.

Re:reflexes?

[Jason Levine]

I believe she went through some sort of vision therapy years ago but it wasn't effective. At this point, her brain is just so used to seeing two of everything that it is normal for her. They are also retired and living on a fixed income so expensive, non-insurance-covered therapies to fix something that she can live with aren't an option.

Re:reflexes?

[Applehu Akbar]

I also have only one eye, so I know what he means. Physical binocular depth perception only works to about thirty feet out, so for driving one eye is as good as two. But when the cashier hands me a bill at the grocery store, in certain light I might miss grabbing it.

Re:reflexes?

[Anonymous Coward]

You already know what it's like. Human stereo vision is very poor for depth perception. Our eyes are too close together. The math works out to be something like it's useful a little bit past your arms length. All depth perception past that is your brain putting together clues on how the object is moving, where you expect it to be, how big you think it is, shadows, etc...

Re:reflexes?

[aaronb1138]

I was less concerned with the issues of stereo depth perception. I am comfortable with people driving with only one eye. I have a pretty good understanding of how the fovea and periphery vision systems work and interact. One eye massively increases the peripheral blind spot on one side, but that is easy to compensate for with mirrors and moving your eyes / head.

Double vision where the two images don't overlap concerns me quite a bit more. I am sure her dominant eye takes over to the point that she might as well have just one eye, but there is a greater range for misinterpretation of perception with two images which don't agree.

Re:reflexes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stereo vision isn't the only means of depth perception.

Have you seen the animated GIFs that switch between two images of the same scene taken from slightly different camera angles, which causes the image to show some depth despite delivering the same image to each eye?

There's also the relatively unpopular method of creating 3D movies by using glasses which simply obscure the vision of one eye, then keeping the camera constantly moving horizontally (or in circles) such that depth is apparent because of closer things moving faster than further away things. It's quite effective at inducing a 3D view despite using only one eye.

You also need to consider that even stereo depth perception becomes weaker as distance increases. When looking at something only 60 meters away, you're looking at something that is a thousand times further away than the distance between your pupils, which means that each of your eyes see the object in very nearly the same position. You can see just how ineffective depth perception is when you get up close to a stop sign (like standing next to it) or happen to see a stop light on the ground and a person standing next to it and you think "damn, I had no idea those things were so huge." Without a doubt, most of your depth perception when driving comes from most cars being approximately the same size, and road lanes all being approximately the same size (or at least the same width out in the distance as right in front of your car) and so your brain can judge distances just on the size of objects rather than relying upon stereo vision.

Re:reflexes?

[u38cg]

Requirements vary quite a lot between country. The UK is one of the strictest - corrected vision must be a certain standard in both eyes. In the US, some states allow people the UK would class as legally blind to drive. Some of these folk use miniature telescopes strapped to their eyes to see with - needless to see, field of view with these things is pretty small.

Re:reflexes?

[nine-times]

Well these things are rarely as simple as a laymen's understanding would lead you to believe, so we could both be completely off-base. Still, it's interesting to think about! I enjoy the reminder of how wacky our brains are.

Re:reflexes?

[rizole]

Most depth perception cues only need one eye with only 3 needing both wikipedia. Even then I don't think failure to be able to see 3d video is much of measure of adequate binocular vision or depth perception as it only works on very a very limited set of depth cues.

From an old Unix fortune(6)

[mi]

The researchers found an early 20th century atlas that depicted the structure, now known as the vertical occipital fasciculus. But the last time that atlas had been checked out was 1912

Ahh, those inquisitive — and well-funded — scientists... The following fortune-cookie came with BSD decades ago:

Westheimer's Discovery:
A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a couple of hours in the library.

Re:From an old Unix fortune(6)

[Tablizer]

Leave it to BSD crowd to find 100 different ways to say "RTFM".

Wait, what?

[gstoddart]

So, for decades we've had med school people doing dissections, we've had autopsies, we've had people doing MRIs and all sorts of other things ... and we really had a situation where nobody ever put up their hand and said "umm, guys, WTF is this, it's not in the diagram?"

That's just bizarre to me.

However this reaffirms the necessity of good old fashioned paper libraries maintained by librarians.

'Discovering' a piece of anatomy which had been forgotten about for a century isn't something you would do with throwing away your old books and digitizing the new ones.

Re:Wait, what?

[peragrin]

I would say it is the brain it is hard to break out the various sections easily. If I gave you a diagram of an Intel processor and I gave you the schematics there are lots of little differences that only an engineer would notice.

No one has the schematics for a human brain yet. God is holding his copyright way to tightly to release them to public domains yet. And since God is infinite age waiting for the copy right to expire will take forever.

Re:Wait, what?

[gstoddart]

If I gave you a diagram of an Intel processor and I gave you the schematics there are lots of little differences that only an engineer would notice.

Dude, we're talking about doctors and neuroscientists here.

So, I place them firmly in the set of people who should be able to navigate this and would be capable of reading the schematics.

No one has the schematics for a human brain yet.

Well, apparently stuff we used to know 100 years ago we no longer know.

it's just hard to wrap my head around the notion that modern medicine just forgot about this, and haven't had it in their text books for that long.

Surely at some point someone would have said "Hey, check this out".

Re:Wait, what?

[misexistentialist]

Butchery only requires a basic understanding of anatomy.

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

What? I've never seen any advocate of digital copies suggest only digizing new content. Everyone wants everything digitized (in conjunction with stores of the dead tree versions).

The reality is this kind of discovery would come around more often with digitized content. If you have all these old copies digitized and searchable, it's much easier to access them and find this kind of stuff.

Re:Wait, what?

[quantaman]

So, for decades we've had med school people doing dissections, we've had autopsies, we've had people doing MRIs and all sorts of other things ... and we really had a situation where nobody ever put up their hand and said "umm, guys, WTF is this, it's not in the diagram?"

That's just bizarre to me.

However this reaffirms the necessity of good old fashioned paper libraries maintained by librarians.

'Discovering' a piece of anatomy which had been forgotten about for a century isn't something you would do with throwing away your old books and digitizing the new ones.

I'm guessing a couple things happened.

First I don't know how obvious it is when you're doing an investigation, I wonder if a lot of people probably simply thought it was part of something else.

The second problem might be overspecialization, everyone focuses on their little section of the brain, and people aren't really doing the dissections poking at physical structures anymore. If it isn't even labelled no one even knows to look for it.

Still you'd expect people working on surrounding structures to notice something was missing in the neighbourhood. I'm really curious to know what other researchers thought when they looked at the structure.

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the science journalism is confusing here.

For example, with the ALL link that the poster mentioned, the supposedly "new" ligament was well known. It's literally impossible to miss. It was just characterized improperly, and the new characterization suggested a slightly different role in the biomechanics of the knee.

I'm guessing it was the same with this feature in the brain: people saw the fibrous band, but nobody paid attention to it. It's probably not that it was hidden, it just wasn't described and characterized, including detailing it's relationship to other features. As medical science gets more sophisticated the level of detail and differentiation that we explore will only grow more complex.

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

| So, I place them firmly in the set of people who should be able to navigate this and would be capable of reading the schematics.

When you have a schematic of a CPU model, you know what every CPU of that model will look like. Every brain varies a good bit from another. Biology is more complex.

Add on to that variation, that an extremely complex CPU has 4 billion transistors. A human brain has 100 billion neurons, each of which may be connected to up to 10,000 other neurons.

So they are really complex schematics, which vary in every single brain, due to biology. Cut us some slack.

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

please do not confuse copyright with trade secret.

Re:Wait, what?

[nine-times]

Yeah, I was thinking about that. Like... I bet somewhere in that span of time, someone must have noticed this bundle and asked, "So what is this?" and someone else looked at a text book and said, "Oh, it must not be anything, really. It's not in the book. If it were anything important, it would be in the book." I wonder how many times that happened, and the people involved just moved along and forgot about the whole thing.

Now a doctor may correct me, and give good reasons why this wouldn't be noticeable in most circumstances. However, I like the idea of something like this being discovered as a lesson about how science historically works sometimes. Everyone has an idealized notion of science that it's just constant progress, and that things are all already known and analyzed, and the only things left to discover are very hard questions like, "what is the smallest fundamental particle, and how big a particle accelerator do we need to observe it?"

But you know, science moves forward through the effort of people, and people aren't perfect. Sometimes something gets lost. Sometimes something important gets disregarded. Sometimes science moves forward because someone isn't afraid of looking stupid, is willing to admit what he doesn't know, and says, "Hey, what is this?"

Re:Wait, what?

[Mashiki]

Those same neurologists are still trying to understand the basic problems of the brain. Like why do people develop MS, but mainly in the norther hemisphere of the world. Or why do we have headaches, why do some people have migraines that go away when they hit puberty and why do some people like me have migraines that get worse with age. I've hit a point where I can no longer function most days, and spend anywhere between 10-25 days on medications to keep the "omg brain exploding" to "omg, the pain...make it stop." It's bad enough that when I walk into emerg, the nurses know me on sight and know what I'm there for.

It's not uncommon to "lose something" like this in a incredibly complex diagnostic field. Especially when it would have been taught as "common knowledge" and expecting that everyone already knows it. We see this in law too, especially common law where some things are so commonly known for a period that cases don't have to be cited. But then an oddball case comes up, and the original meaning of why xyz happened and is common was lost in the shuffle.

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Likely they were all simply too embarrassed about not knowing what it was to ask. Nobody wanted to shed light on their ignorance by asking a stupid question...

Re:Wait, what?

[The Grim Reefer]

If I gave you a diagram of an Intel processor and I gave you the schematics there are lots of little differences that only an engineer would notice.

Dude, we're talking about doctors and neuroscientists here. So, I place them firmly in the set of people who should be able to navigate this and would be capable of reading the schematics.

No one has the schematics for a human brain yet.

Well, apparently stuff we used to know 100 years ago we no longer know. it's just hard to wrap my head around the notion that modern medicine just forgot about this, and haven't had it in their text books for that long. Surely at some point someone would have said "Hey, check this out".

You would think. I'm in the medical field and I can tell you first hand that it's shocking how many things get overlooked. A friend of mine published a paper in 2005 describing how the papillary muscles in the heart do not attach to the ventricular wall as a solid mass as had been depicted in text books for years. In fact, he even pointed to a paper that showed that the muscle fibers spread out before attaching to the wall in an image. But then this same publication used drawings of them attaching as a solid mass. Everyone assumed they attached this way in the texts, and learned this, so even when someone actually looked at it, they still did not see that reality did not match what they learned.

The most popular body surface area (BSA) formula used in adults it DuBois. But if you ever read the paper which describes how it was done you'd lose your mind. They only had a handful of patients, 17 I believe. One had tuberculosis, One was an amputee, and another a midget. They stuck gum paper to these people and then pealed it off and measured it. But by the time better formulas were published, many many papers had already been published using DuBois.

Re:Wait, what?

[Uecker]

I would say it is more like this: "Not known" should have been "not widely known". And "rediscovered" seems to be a bit of an exaggeration. The atlas has not been checked out for century is missing "in Stanford".

Re:Wait, what?

[AthanasiusKircher]

Still you'd expect people working on surrounding structures to notice something was missing in the neighbourhood. I'm really curious to know what other researchers thought when they looked at the structure.

Nothing was "missing." I'm not an expert in neuroanatomy, but just like most press releases from university research labs, this "rediscovery" appears to be quite exaggerated.

The thing they claim to have "rediscovered" is Wernicke's "vertical occipital fasciculus" (or VOF). Just out of curiosity, I just did a quick search in Google Scholar for this term, and it popped up dozens of articles, starting in the 1940s, quite a few in the late 1970s, some in the 1980s, some in the 1990s, and some in the 2000s.

For something that was supposedly "unknown" for a century, it has shown up quite a few times in the literature, particularly since the 1970s. So, it looks like some people "know" about it, and have known about it... and have discussed it in papers. A number of these studies clearly also mention processing of visual information, so it's not like these were just mentioning some old anatomical term for a structure nobody knew the purpose of either.

Granted, I haven't done a full literature search, and I don't know how influential these dozens of papers were/are, but claiming like the last time any scientist noted this part of the brain or its function was a century ago appears to be absolute nonsense. Maybe it deserves to be better known. Maybe it deserves a more prominent place in textbooks.

But clearly SOME scientists have known about it before this "rediscovery."

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds me of this Kayak commercial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqrTEQ_1h68

Re:Wait, what?

[strikethree]

I was getting headaches like that too. Found out it was due to something that was put into the little "bread cakes" I was eating. No, the specific ingredient was not listed on the package. I suspect it was some sort of preservative that is used on grain type foods.

Thankfully, my headaches were regular. It took only 3 weeks of investigation (after three months of "I want to cut my head off" pain).

I did not eat the little bread cakes one weekend. Had no headache that week. I ate two little breadcakes the following weekend and felt the migraine come on. I took the wrapper into the doctor (it was in Arabic) and he said all it has is sugar, water, and grains. Yeah....

So I had a graham (?) cracker at one of the Haagen Daz stores here and it triggered the migraine response too.

I generally have to be somewhat careful around grain type foods but I rarely have those headaches anymore.

A cautionary tale ...

[jamesl]

It's bad enough that everything we know is wrong (Firesign Theater), and that we don't know everything (even though there are those who think they do). It turns out that there's lots of important stuff that we used to know and have forgotten.

Now, where did I leave my keys?

Re:A cautionary tale ...

[bobbied]

Now, where did I leave my keys?

Next to the cell phone.

Re:A cautionary tale ...

[TheCarp]

I would laugh but due to some mixups with laundry (having floors sanded can be disruptive to the house) the past week has given both my house keys and RSA key fob a nice trips through the laundry.

Re:A cautionary tale ...

[macs4all]

It's bad enough that everything we know is wrong

There's a Seeker born every minute!

G Spot

[Anonymous Coward]

Another organ that many people are still looking for...

Third Eye

[Anonymous Coward]

They found it...

explaining hymens & adam's apples

[Anonymous Coward]

we add & subtract parts from time to time? https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nazi+zion+experiments
  at least we still own the 'weather'? https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wmd+weather

Link to PNAS article

[Idarubicin]

Direct link to PNAS abstract.

Why, why, why is it that Slashdot always reports on new scientific discoveries with a link to a lay press summary or a press release, and never gives us the useful link to the actual papers with the real words by actual scientists? Aaaargh.

Re:Link to PNAS article

[roc97007]

Excellent point. As a general rule, if it's on Yahoo's home page, it doesn't belong on Slashdot.

Re:Link to PNAS article

[Todd Palin]

Great point. Unfortunately I currently have no mod points. I am as curious as you are. The lay press often ignores the real meat of the issue and only offers the headline. So, "why" is a good question. Laziness comes to mind, but I expect it is more complicated than that.

Re:Link to PNAS article

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me put into market speak so you understand what they are doing.

Brain surgeons overlooked this one weird part of the brain for nearly 100 years click here to find out what it is!

Up and down the left and right margins are scrolling adverts. Plus the header and footer. It a picture of a smartly dressed doctor with the text flowing around it nicely. With hot links to related stories in the body.

You are being sold a product in the name of 'science' and 'learning' and 'being informed'.

Re:Link to PNAS article

[Webmoth]

No. You are being sold AS a product in the name of 'profits' and 'growth'. You are not the customer. The article is not the product, it is the medium by which the product (your eyes) is delivered to the customer (the advertiser).

Re:Link to PNAS article

[Trailer Trash]

Direct link to PNAS abstract.

Why, why, why is it that Slashdot always reports on new scientific discoveries with a link to a lay press summary or a press release, and never gives us the useful link to the actual papers with the real words by actual scientists? Aaaargh.

Hey, at least it wasn't Bennet Haselton telling us about it.

Re:Link to PNAS article

[Anonymous Coward]

Because stories are submitted to Slashdot mainly by people who stand to gain from clicks?

Re:Link to PNAS article

[Joe_NoOne]

why is it that Slashdot always reports on new scientific discoveries with a link to a lay press summary or a press release, and never gives us the useful link to the actual papers with the real words by actual scientists? Aaaargh.

Because the "actual papers" are behind paywalls...

Re:Link to PNAS article

[nine-times]

Probably because, although you might think of Slashdot as a bastion of intellectuals and scientists, it's really a pop-culture news aggregation with nerd-centric marketing. Most people just want a summary, and don't want to read the actual paper.

And honestly, I'm in the camp that doesn't necessarily want to read the paper. I do recognize that there's a problem with journalists oversimplifying and mischaracterizing scientific ideas, but scientific papers are often written with the idea that you're versed in the particulars of the field being studied. I'd generally prefer to get the layman's explanation, and then dig into it more if I want to.

It seems like the best approach might be to include links to both the lay press summary and the actual papers.

Re:Link to PNAS article

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

What difference does it make? Instead of pontificating without reading the press summary slashdotters would pontificate without reading the original article. The difference is like that joke about the $unfairly_maligned_ethnic berating his son, "You ran behind the bus all the way home to save the bus fare? Idiot! you could have run behind the taxi and saved taxi fare!"

Re:Link to PNAS article

[AthanasiusKircher]

Hey, at least it wasn't Bennet Haselton telling us about it.

You just wait. Tomorrow, there will be a Slashdot headline about how Bennet Haselton believes that this "rediscovered" visual processing link in the brain explains why some people find breastfeeding photos of black women offensive. (Note that this pathway apparently has to do with how we process "visual categories.")

Oh, and this link will clearly be proven when Haselton hires a few dozen people through Amazon's Mechanical Turk to stare at the phrase "Wernicke's vertical occipital fasciculus" before seeing breastfeeding photos. His statistics will clearly prove that this knowledge of brain structure is inherently racist (or maybe it serves to debunk racism... or... heck, I don't know, but Bennet Haselton will... he always does).

Re:Link to PNAS article

[Idarubicin]

Because the "actual papers" are behind paywalls...

1. Not always the case. Some journals (or articles) are open access.

2. Many Slashdot readers have access to paywalled journal articles through our schools or employers.

3. Abstracts are virtually always free to access, and often still provide better information than news coverage.

4. Links are cheap, and there's no reason to avoid providing links to both the lay summary and the actual paper.

Re:Link to PNAS article

[tehcyder]

Hey, at least it wasn't Bennet Haselton telling us about it.

Little known fact: Bennet Haselton is a regular contributor.

So much for human brain simulations

[Anonymous Coward]

This just illustrates how ridiculous the current efforts to simulate a human brain in computers really are. Ancient humans would have stood a better chance of simulating a 747 had they put their minds to it. As far as the brain is concerned, we are still probably at a stage at which we do yet know the extent of our ignorance.

Re:So much for human brain simulations

[Anonymous Coward]

One: Part of the current effort assumes that the complexity is, at least somewhat, independent from the structure. Basically "put enough neurons together and something interesting will happen.
Two: Current efforts have no intention of actually simulating an entire human mind, they want to simulate as much as possible as a learning exercise. Learning both how to better run the simulation as well as learning more about what they are simulating.
Three: Current efforts will take decades even to get that far, they will incorporate advancements like this as well as advancements generated from point two above as they go along. This is like laughing at the human genome project when after 20% of it's planned lifetime it had only mapped .1% of the human genome. Technology changes, techniques advance, results improve.

Re:So much for human brain simulations

[tehcyder]

This just illustrates how ridiculous the current efforts to simulate a human brain in computers really are. Ancient humans would have stood a better chance of simulating a 747 had they put their minds to it. As far as the brain is concerned, we are still probably at a stage at which we do yet know the extent of our ignorance.

But, hey ho, we're still going to have Artificial Intelligence/the Singularity in the next twenty years, with perfect emulation of the brain, a virtual reality universe indistinguishable from the real one, and immortality. Ray Kurzweil says so.

Debunked

[Anonymous Coward]

This article from 2002 says otherwise:

http://www.neurologyindia.com/article.asp?issn=0028-3886;year=2002;volume=50;issue=2;spage=226;epage=8;aulast=Bhatoe

I know what it's for

[wonkey_monkey]

It's the part of the brain that spots typos.

They describes the history and controversy of the elusive pathway

Or maybes not.

Anyone notice the Relation to Assassin's Creed ?

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds frighteningly close to the 'special' brain pathway featured in the Assassin's Creed series. That special part of the brain was responsible for controlling people through the 'Pieces of Eden'. Either the writes found out about this during the writing of AC or there really are Pieces of Eden, Templar's and crazy dude's in hoods stabbing everyone.

Not the first time

[rogerrabit]

This reminds me last november when we discovered a new ligament in the knee : http://www.bbc.com/news/health... How can we miss something so obvious after all those dissections and numerical imaging?

A prime example

[AkkarAnadyr]

Not only /., but the rest of (male) science as well:

Lady parts.

Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

"it was absent from the literature". A simple Google search shows many articles discussing the "vertical occipital fasciculus" - 265,000 for me:

The article referenced here: http://www.pnas.org/content/ea...

Some other references:
2012: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
http://www.nan.upol.cz/neuro/c...
1943 reference: http://psycnet.apa.org/index.c...

There were a lot more. Something seems fishy here.

Re:Debunked?

[crunchygranola]

Mod parent up!

Yes indeed. This seems to be making mountain out of a molehill. Here is the operative phrase I think: "wasn't mentioned in any modern-day anatomy textbooks". This may well be the case - are every know structure commonly included in anatomy textbooks? They aren't, you know, atlases or encyclopedias of neuroanatomy that might be expected to contain everything.

As AC shows, the bit about "absent from the literature" seems to have been hype.

putting on my flame retardant suit...

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this fascinating? This is a comparison I've made to the always controversial subject of global climate. No matter where you fall on the subject, consider this.

In the realm of human physiology we've had hundreds of years of complete (human) life-cycles to study. We can do autopsies, we can test treatments on specific groups (double blind studies/etc) yet EVERY day humanity comes up with new and conflicting data regarding our health and how to maintain it. New discoveries are made constantly.

Switch to global climate: Somehow we are experts on the one (living) planet we can study. Arguably this is a system every bit, if not more so, as complicated as a human body.

We have no life cycles to study, no double-blind studies... All the things we have for human physiology. The arrogance of science is astounding in regard to the certainty of the conclusions. The current so-called scientists that are insulted at even the suggestion that there is still a debate are laughable.

Re:putting on my flame retardant suit...

[Anonymous Coward]

Citizen. Pay your carbon taxes to Gore Inc and be quick about it. Dissent will not be tolerated.

Re:putting on my flame retardant suit...

[tehcyder]

The arrogance of science is astounding in regard to the certainty of the conclusions. The current so-called scientists that are insulted at even the suggestion that there is still a debate are laughable.

Ah yes, the ever-popular "but evolution's only a theory" argument used by pro-Creationists with no understanding of the scientific method.

Mysteries of Life...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I'm still trying to find my wife's hot spot. She claims it doesn't exist by I've read about it...

Where is the seat of consciousness?

[grantspassalan]

A very fundamental question that no one has answered yet and few people even ask is this: does the brain produce consciousness/mind/spirit or is it the other way around? It is a known experimental fact that in quantum physics a conscious observer changes the outcome of the experiment. Why is this?

There is no way to find out the function of the software in a computer, no matter how minutely the hardware thereof is examined, unless the complete computer is functioning correctly. Software is a product of the mind and is not physical even though it requires physical hardware to execute the software.

All ARRANGEMENT of matter is ultimately the result of the activity of mind, regardless of whether this arrangement is caused by humans or what is commonly referred to as “nature”. The question then can be rephrased as, “does matter-energy create/manipulate mind/consciousness or does mind/consciousness manipulate matter-energy”.

Re:Where is the seat of consciousness?

[JimFive]

I shouldn't bother but here goes:

A very fundamental question that no one has answered yet and few people even ask is this: does the brain produce consciousness/mind/spirit or is it the other way around?

This is not an interesting question. You are essentially asking if the universe is based on physics or mysticism. Idealism is absurd, Dualism leads to unanswerable questions and Materialism seems to be working out pretty well for us.

It is a known experimental fact that in quantum physics a conscious observer changes the outcome of the experiment. Why is this?

The observer doesn't need to be conscious. While quantum physics is weird, it is not mysticism.

There is no way to find out the function of the software in a computer, no matter how minutely the hardware thereof is examined, unless the complete computer is functioning correctly. Software is a product of the mind and is not physical even though it requires physical hardware to execute the software.

You can if you include the HD and it's magnetic contents as part of the computer hardware. There is nothing non-deterministic about the way a computer loads and executes software.
--
JimFive

Re:Where is the seat of consciousness?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a known experimental fact that in quantum physics a conscious observer changes the outcome of the experiment. Why is this?

Because to observe it we have to do basically the same a blind person must do to check for obstacles: try to hit them. What happens when you hit something? You accelerate it and change its position.

Spoiler: Magic is not real.

Re:Where is the seat of consciousness?

[tehcyder]

A very fundamental question that no one has answered yet and few people even ask is this: does the brain produce consciousness/mind/spirit or is it the other way around?

This is not an interesting question. You are essentially asking if the universe is based on physics or mysticism. Idealism is absurd, Dualism leads to unanswerable questions and Materialism seems to be working out pretty well for us.

It's not quite as black and white as you make out. You don't have to believe in "mysticism" or "idealism" to know that consciousness exists. Cogito ergo sum still seems true to me.

Cartesian dualism might produce unhelpful consequences , but you can't handwave it away simply by saying there's no such thing as mind or consciousness.

If consciousness can't be explained by pure materialism, then pure materialism is an incomplete theory.

There doesn't have to be a magical explanation for something that we don't (yet) understand, but that doesn't mean we can simply write it off as imaginary.

This isn't like talking about the existence of gods or an immortal soul. I have no direct evidence for them, whereas I do for my self.

Re:Where is the seat of consciousness?

[Twinbee]

The observer doesn't need to be conscious.

It's less mystic than even that AFAIK. I think the word 'observer' is misleading, and it's better to say some atoms (or photons) got in the way of some other atoms (or photons) and affected the result in an expected way. Right?

Re:Where is the seat of consciousness?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a known experimental fact that in quantum physics a conscious observer changes the outcome of the experiment.

No, it is not. That is extending the Copenhagen interpretation (or technically the von Neumann/Wigner variant interpretation) of quantum mechanics to Truth, which it isn't - it's one way of interpreting a set of equations. There's about a dozen major (influental) interpretations of Quantum Mechanics, and two dozen more minor ones. All of them are consistent with the equations - with everything we've observed. Many of them - maybe most - don't involve observers. My own favorite - Cramer's Transactional Interpretation - don't involve any observers.

I personally consider the question of even the mechanics of how to brain produce consciousness to be solved. We know how neural networks work, and neural network will naturally include a self-observing part. A neural network that does generalized symbol processing (where symbols are constructed from experience and the network does feedback learning from itself) will naturally construct a symbol for itself, and naturally observes its own functioning (symbolize over how parts of the network triggers - that's what neural networks *do*). Symbols are naturally fuzzy, since they're recognition tasks run by the neural network, which functions (among other things) as a generalized fuzzy pattern matcher. The consciousness problem is more one of defining consciousness, because people use a fuzzy definition of it, and this makes answers seem inconsistent because the questions asked are inconsistent. For a more in-depth look at the philosophy of asking the right questions (and parts of the answers), look to Daniel Dennett's "Freedom Evolves".

Getting a real feel for how neural networks work and the questions of consciousness is hard - it's a quarter century since I started - but there is no general lack of answers. There is no mystery. It's just simple physics and computation.

Re:Where is the seat of consciousness?

[Anonymous Coward]

Consciousness can be explained by pure materialism. It's neural networks that self-reflect combined with bad questions. For improving the questions (pinning down what to ask and definitions of consciousness), I like to recommend Daniel Dennett's "Freedom Evolves".

Re:Where is the seat of consciousness?

[david_thornley]

What observational evidence would pretty much convince you that (a) the brain produces consciousness/mind/spirit, and (b) that consciousness/mind/spirit produces the brain in some sense? Unless you can give reasonable answers to both, what you're proposing is not a scientific question, and doesn't really belong here. "Consciousness" is a sensation that every human I've talked to has, a way of perceiving things, normally perceived as more important for behavior than it actually is. I have no idea what a "spirit" is in any objective sense.

There are many theories about collapse of the wave function (if that's what's happening). What we really know is that we don't consciously know of the results of the collapse until there's a conscious observer, which is something of a tautology. There's the "many worlds" interpretation, and the possibility that going from a simple state superposition (electron has superposition of spin up and spin down) to a much more complicated one (involving changes in the wave function of the detector, say) results in wave functions that have effectively collapsed.

Software in a computer is present through physical differences, such as number of electrons in a particular place or orientation of magnetic domains. If you can observe that in sufficient detail, you can try to figure out the function (although it'll be difficult in the case of software some ex-co-workers wrote).

There is no good evidence that nature has a mind, and it is entirely reasonable to think that the Universe is a product of chance, and minds are a result of self-organizing things changing over hundreds of millions of years.

Your final question actually can be answered: both. The arrangement of illuminated phosphors on my screen affected my consciousness, and led to a consciously perceived decision to respond. (We perceive more decisions as being made consciously than actually are.) Then, my mind (presumably implemented by complex electrochemical phenomena) caused me to move my fingers in a complicated pattern that resulted in phosphors lighting up in a certain pattern on your screen. This holds for both material and mystical viewpoints, as long as that viewpoint recognizes matter and energy (some claim that all is illusion).

Re:Where is the seat of consciousness?

[JimFive]

Disclaimer: I am not a quantum physicist.

I think the word 'observer' is misleading

I agree with that, I think environment might be better. However, I don't think that the double slit experiment can be explained by saying "something got in the way". That the method of observation affects the results seems pretty clear there. But that doesn't mean that the response to the environment is mystical.
--
JimFive

Re:Where is the seat of consciousness?

[JimFive]

You don't have to believe in "mysticism" or "idealism" to know that consciousness exists.

I never said, nor implied, that consciousness doesn't exist. Your comment seems to be based on this mistaken idea. I also want to point out that I used Idealism in the philosophical sense in which it is the opposite of Materialism, not in the sense of being starry-eyed.

Cartesian dualism might produce unhelpful consequences , but you can't handwave it away simply by saying there's no such thing as mind or consciousness.

The problem with dualism is that mind and body need to be able to interact in some manner. In order for that to happen we have to posit a mechanism for that phenomenon. Until such a mechanism is discovered, or in some other way found to be necessary, then Occam's razor says to ignore it. (Note, that doesn't strictly mean that it doesn't exist, just that you don't posit something you don't need.) Additionally, I never said that there is no consciousness. I said that the question of "Does consciousness cause the brain" is not an interesting question.

If consciousness can't be explained by pure materialism, then pure materialism is an incomplete theory.

This is question begging.

As for the rest of your comment: Positing a spirit/consciousness that exists separate from (and prior to) the material body is magical thinking in exactly the same way as talking about gods and souls and we can write that off as imaginary. The experience that we have of consciousness is not separate from nor prior to the material body. In fact, my experience of consciousness began some years after my experience of body; which is to say that in my earliest memories (experiences of consciousness) I know that I already had a body.
--
JimFive

Lost&Found Dept.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can find great things you've lost in the lost and found department.... but you have to realize that you've lost something first.

Re:Lost&Found Dept.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most.

I can't remember when my memory has been this good.

They say your mind is the second thing to go but I can't remember the first thing.

Re:Anyone notice the Relation to Assassin's Creed

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not seeing random security/police men on rooftops all over. Clearly false. :-)

No body found the real amygdala.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Most pathologists, surgeons, medical students, anatomists, all of them never find the real amygdala. They find a conveniently and conspicuously presented fake amygdala and stop the search prematurely. All the while the real amygdala is hiding in the background, communicating with the fake amygdala using undetectable chemical signals.

Re:No body found the real amygdala.

[Anonymous Coward]

Most pathologists, surgeons, medical students, anatomists, all of them never find the real amygdala. They find a conveniently and conspicuously presented fake amygdala and stop the search prematurely. All the while the real amygdala is hiding in the background, communicating with the fake amygdala using undetectable chemical signals.

I would really like to understand what you are talking about but I just don't. Could you please provide more information and context? Thank you.

Re:No body found the real amygdala.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

This Amygdala

Not lost, just forgotten

[Tablizer]

Actually, I would have remembered the existence of it, but my vertical occipital fasciculus gave out.

Revisionist Anatomical History. You gotta love it.

[MakersDirector]

Revisionist Anatomical History. You gotta love it.