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Major Brain Pathway Rediscovered After Century-old Confusion, Controversy

Posted by timothy on from the hey-if-you-can-find-a-new-knee-bone dept.

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.

25 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. Clearly... by LordLimecat · · Score: 5, Funny

    "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.

  2. On the other hand. by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 5, Funny

    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...

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    1. Re:On the other hand. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      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)

  3. From an old Unix fortune(6) by mi · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
  4. Wait, what? by gstoddart · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    1. Re:Wait, what? by peragrin · · Score: 2

      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.

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    2. Re:Wait, what? by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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".

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    3. Re:Wait, what? by quantaman · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      I stole this Sig
    4. Re:Wait, what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

    5. Re:Wait, what? by Mashiki · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    6. Re:Wait, what? by The+Grim+Reefer · · Score: 2

      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.

    7. Re:Wait, what? by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 4, Informative

      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."

  5. A cautionary tale ... by jamesl · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

  6. Link to PNAS article by Idarubicin · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    ~Idarubicin
    1. Re:Link to PNAS article by Webmoth · · Score: 2

      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).

      --
      Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
    2. Re:Link to PNAS article by Trailer+Trash · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Do you have ESP?
    3. Re:Link to PNAS article by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 2

      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).

  7. Re:reflexes? by ScienceofSpock · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

  8. A prime example by AkkarAnadyr · · Score: 2

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

    Lady parts.

    --

    I bought this house and you know I'm boss
    Ain't no h'aint gonna run me off

  9. Debunked? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    "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.

    1. Re:Debunked? by crunchygranola · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
  10. Re:reflexes? by Jason+Levine · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.)

    --
    My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
  11. Re:reflexes? by ScienceofSpock · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  12. Where is the seat of consciousness? by grantspassalan · · Score: 2

    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”.

    --
    A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
  13. Re:reflexes? by Imagix · · Score: 2

    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...)