This year's discoveries confirm old "insights" about the brain from philosophers. Man is a "social animal," said Aristotle, and here you are: the polar explorers who have spent several years alone have decreased brain size. Scientists have challenged the boring idea that the brain has no field associated with the execution of biological functions. It turns out that there is an electromagnetic field, and even "latent consciousness". However, not all.
The brain tells us what to do, how to act, what to think and what to say. He even memorizes the faces of strangers on the street and wraps them up in our worries, and then puts on a jester hat and adds a few angry kangaroos for the sake of completeness, creating a very strange scenario for our entertainment in our sleep. We are completely dependent on this organ, living and experiencing the world thanks to it. But much of it remains a mystery to us, like the inside of a black hole. Every year, new discoveries appear, giving us more and more knowledge about this amazing organ. This year, it became known about the strange ability of the brain to protect itself from the thought of death, how Antarctic expeditions made alone can reduce its size, and how the brain continues to work even if half of it is missing. So let's dive into the world of 2019's greatest discoveries about our brain.
Angry dreams
In a dream, people can experience a variety of emotions, even anger. Scientists have found that by analyzing the activity of the brain, they can determine whether or not a person has angry dreams. A team of researchers studied a part of the brain called the frontal lobe. It helps to control the expression of emotions and solve problems. As the scientists found, asymmetry in the activity of the frontal lobes of the brain during sleep and before it indicates that the person had angry dreams.
When we relax, the brain emits alpha waves with a frequency of 8 to 12 hertz. If there is a discrepancy in the activity of alpha waves between the two frontal lobes (the more alpha waves are emitted, the less this part of the brain works), this indicates that the person is trying to control his anger. After analyzing such brain waves in 17 participants in the experiment, who spent two nights (with a week off) in a sleep laboratory, the scientists found that something similar happens in the brain and during human sleep. People who had more asymmetry in their alpha wave activity in their sleep reported having more angry dreams.
Solitary Antarctic Expeditions
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A person, even an introvert, is a social being, and loneliness negatively affects the brain. Scientists in the study found that five travelers who spent more than a year alone in Antarctica had slightly decreased brain size. A group of researchers compared brain scans of these travelers before leaving for the icy continent and after they returned to society. They found that parts of the brain, such as the hippocampus (or the ammon's horn), which are responsible for cognition and memory, decreased in volume after the travelers returned, as scientists reported this month.
What's more, travelers had lowered levels of a protein called brain neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which aids the growth and survival of new nerve cells and is essential for making new connections in the brain. Now scientists are trying to find ways to prevent brain shrinkage in people who find themselves alone in an environment that does not stimulate anything (this can be special exercises or virtual reality).
Sniffing without bulbs
It would be strange if a person could take an apple without using his hands. A group of scientists found something similar: a small category of people who can distinguish between smells, despite the fact that they lack a very important region in their brain that is responsible for smell. In the front of the brain are the olfactory bulbs, which process information about smells from the nose. Scientists discovered this by accident when they studied a picture of the brain of a 29-year-old woman with a normal sense of smell and saw that she had no olfactory bulbs. They later found a couple more women with the same trait who claimed to be able to distinguish between smells. They gave them an MRI of the brain and also tested them for odor recognition. Indeed, their story was confirmed.
Researchers do not know exactly what is the reason for this magical ability to distinguish between smells. But they think that the role of the olfactory bulbs in this case is played by another part of the brain. This proves the brain's ability to rewire itself. There is another suggestion, which is that we had completely misconceptions that we did not need olfactory bulbs to recognize smells. That is, these bulbs are responsible for something else, but not for smell.
A magnetic field
Some animals use the invisible magnetic field that envelops our planet as a natural navigation system. It turns out that there are people who are also able to feel the Earth's magnetic field, although it is not clear why. In March, the results of a study were published, the authors of which scanned the brains of 34 people, placing them in a dark test chamber with an artificial magnetic field. Brain analysis showed that four of the 34 subjects actively responded to the shift in the magnetic field from northeast to northwest - but not in the opposite direction.
In these four people, a decrease in the wave emitted by the brain was noted. This suggests that the brain is picking up a signal, possibly magnetic. It is not clear why some people react to a magnetic field while others do not. It is equally unclear how the brain picks up such signals. But as scientists say, previous studies have shown that the human brain contains many tiny magnetic particles that may have something to do with this.
The thought of death
Death is as natural a phenomenon as life and love. But our brain protects us from the thought of our own death, and therefore we are not able to fully realize that someday we will join the rest, who have found eternal peace. According to a recent study, the brain continually uses old information to predict what will happen in similar scenarios in the future. Therefore, he must tell you that you too will die someday.
But as it turns out, there is something in our thought about death that destroys this mechanism in the brain. A team of scientists figured this out by observing the brain response of 24 people when they were shown their own photographs next to the words about death. Measurements of brain activity have shown that the work of the predictive mechanism is disrupted as soon as a person has the idea of his own death. The reasons for this are unclear, but as theorists say, too much awareness of the frailty of one's existence reduces the chances that a person will want to produce offspring, since fear prevents him from taking the necessary risks when looking for a partner.
Cerebrospinal fluid
Researchers have long known that the activity of the brain is very rhythmic when we sleep, that it produces pulsating waves of neural activity. But this year, scientists have discovered for the first time that there is another participant in this rhythmic cycle: cerebrospinal fluid. This fluid constantly surrounds and protects the brain and spinal cord. Previous research shows that it also clears toxic proteins from the brain during sleep.
A group of researchers scanned the brains of 13 sleeping people using magnetic resonance imaging and found that cerebrospinal fluid does enter the sleeping brain in a fairly rhythmic flow. The activity of the brain decreases during sleep, then blood flows out of the brain, and cerebrospinal fluid gets there to replace it. This inflow is so predictable and constant that by looking at the cerebrospinal fluid, you can tell exactly when a person is asleep and when he is awake. These findings may provide additional insight into the brain-related issues of aging.
Half of the brain
The brain has an amazing ability to change and adapt, as evidenced by a small group of people who had half of their brains removed as children to ease seizures. Despite the absence of a whole hemisphere of the brain, these people live and function normally, because the remaining half have grown stronger and stronger. These are the findings of a recent study that analyzed the brains of six adults in their 20s and 40s who had half their brains removed between the ages of three months and 11. Scientists in the process of analysis compared their brains with the brains of people who have not undergone such an operation.
MRI data showed that in patients with one hemisphere of the brain, its parts from the same network (say, those responsible for vision) work no worse than in people with a whole brain. Scientists also found that interneuronal connections between regions of different brain networks are stronger in those patients who have one hemisphere removed. This suggests that the brain is able to compensate for the loss of a large part of itself.
Language learning
Our brains need a cd-like storage of information to master their native language, according to a study published in March. The average English-speaking adult needs to learn about 12.5 million bits of language-related information. This is one and a half megabytes of memory. (The authors used bits as an example, because the brain does not store information in bits.) However, most of these millions of bits of linguistic information are not about grammar or syntax, but the meaning of words. In the best case, an adult learns from 1,000 to 2,000 bits of his native language, and in the worst case, this figure is 120 bits per day.
Reviving a dead brain
Scientists managed to restore cerebral circulation and cellular activity in the brain of pigs a few hours after their death. With this radical experiment, they challenged the widespread notion that sudden and permanent brain damage occurs after death. This group of scientists has proven that cells die gradually over a fairly long time, and in some cases this process can be slowed down or even reversed. Scientists have developed a system for studying the brain after death called BrainEx, in which they pump a synthetic blood substitute into arteries in the brain. They injected this solution into the brains of 32 pigs four hours after they died, and it remained there for six hours. The researchers concludedthat the system preserves the structure of brain cells, reduces their necrosis and partially restores cellular activity.
Scientists emphasize that they did not find any activity indicating that the brain is feeling something or is conscious. But some researchers have questions about what it means to be alive. Moreover, the experiments were carried out on pigs, not on humans. (Although the pig's brain is more human-like than rodent's.)
Latent Consciousness
Some comatose or vegetative patients show signs of "latent consciousness," as evidenced by a study in June. Scientists analyzed waves of electromagnetic radiation from the human brain in more than 100 patients who were unconscious after a brain injury. They found that a couple of days after the injury, one in seven patients showed clear and distinct brain activity or "latent consciousness" when asked to move their hands. A year later, 44% of patients with these initial signs of latent consciousness were able to act independently for at least eight hours a day, while among patients who did not show signs of latent consciousness, such people were only 14%. In other words,people with signs of latent consciousness are much more likely to recover than those who do not, researchers say.
Yasemin Saplakoglu