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How Your Brain Eats Itself – To Improve Memory

How Your Brain Eats Itself – To Improve Memory

by | 2022 Nov 4 | Public, Quick Hits

Quick Hits
Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

brain cell learning memory

This sounds pretty gruesome – your brain starting to eat itself, like some sort of disease in a horror film. However, research recently published has shown that this process, which we have known about for a long time, is important in developing memory in the short term.

But let’s understand how the brain can eat itself in the first place. There are a number of ways the brain, or rather specific cells in the brain and most of these are good for the brain, digest parts. Firstly, we know that as the brain develops in early childhood there is a key phase of so-called pruning. This is when the brain, or specifically a form of helping cell in the brain called glial cells, cut back connections in the brain. This helps make our brains more efficient and stabilises certain memories and functions.

There are also other processes, and these are often part of everyday cleaning processes whereby a type of glial cell will clear out toxins collected in the brain – and then there is a process whereby damaged cells are cleared out. If the brain does this overenthusiastically, for example after stroke, this can inhibit brain functions.

This we know, but we didn’t know how this works in a day-to-day basis and how this helps plasticity, our brain to develop and learn new things, and therefore memory.

This is where Yosuke M. Morizawa and colleagues at Tohoku University in Japan managed to discover more. They focused on what are called Bergmann Glial Cells and managed to image these as they were “nibbling” on synapses, connections, between neurons.

What was interesting is that when the researchers managed to genetically inhibit this process the learning in mice was blocked. This therefore shows that those cells, by eating away at our brain connections after a learning process, enhance learning.

Therefore, this eating away at our synapses, likely clears out toxins but also improves efficiency of processing and therefore helps us learn more.

So, there you have it your brain eats itself to stay more efficient – but only in a small way, thankfully.

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Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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References

Yosuke M. Morizawa, Mami Matsumoto, Yuka Nakashima, Narumi Endo, Tomomi Aida, Hiroshi Ishikane, Kaoru Beppu, Satoru Moritoh, Hitoshi Inada, Noriko Osumi, Eiji Shigetomi, Schuichi Koizumi, Guang Yang, Hirokazu Hirai, Kohichi Tanaka, Kenji F. Tanaka, Nobuhiko Ohno, Yugo Fukazawa, Ko Matsui. 
Synaptic pruning through glial synapse engulfment upon motor learning. 
Nature Neuroscience, 2022
DOI: 10.1038/s41593-022-01184-5

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A Regular Routine Makes You Happier and Smarter

A Regular Routine Makes You Happier and Smarter

by | 2022 Nov 3 | Public, Quick Hits

Quick Hits
Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

ageing brain active

A “killer” routine is often recommended by many motivational books – the morning routine that will make your more productive and successful. You know the type of thing.

Now, new research into senior citizens could give us a clue to as to how beneficial daily routines are – but this suggests it is the general routine and not the specific routine that gives you the benefits. In this particular study the benefits were being happier (or less depressed) and having better cognitive function. Not bad.

Stehen Smagula and colleagues of the University of Pittsburgh recruited 1’800 adults over the age of 65 and tracked them with accelerometers over seven days and assessed their levels of depression and measured cognitive function.

What did they find?

They saw different activity patterns and could cluster these into four different groups. Those who rose early and kept a consistent daily routine and who were very active (37.6%). Those who kept a pretty consistent daily routine and who were not so active (32.6%). Those who were early rising had erratic activity patterns with high variation throughout the day and between days (9.8%). And those who were late rising and had erratic activity patterns (20%).

These patterns were then also correlated with happiness, measured here as lack of depression, and cognitive ability. Those in group one, the early risers who had consistent and long activity patterns scored best – with around a 300% lower risk of having depressive symptoms or being in the lower cognitive performing group.

This is interesting because it shows that regular consistent routines seem to be doing something that keep us healthy. We do know that routines are important for mental health – we also know that activity of all sorts is very important. With more recent research showing the benefits of light physical activity in contrast to heavy physical activity i.e. doing chores, going for a walk, doing the shopping.

We may also have assumed that variety is the spice of life – as my mother used to say – a varied routine may stimulate the brain more. Not so according to this – though the researchers couldn’t see what activities participants were engaged in. They may have been varied. It seems like the simple stimulus is the most important factor.

Similarly, we may also have assumed, as I have reported on natural sleeping rhythms, that sticking to ones preferred activity period – late or early would be individualised. Here it seems that early rising is beneficial – though it could simply be that the early risers get more consistent activity throughout the day in contrast to later risers.

This was in senior citizens but the message is still: be active and be consistent. Not bad advice for life in general.

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Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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References

Stephen F. Smagula, Gehui Zhang, Swathi Gujral, Naima Covassin, Jingen Li, Warren D. Taylor, Charles F. Reynolds, Robert T. Krafty. 
Association of 24-Hour Activity Pattern Phenotypes With Depression Symptoms and Cognitive Performance in Aging. 
JAMA Psychiatry, 2022
DOI: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2022.2573

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Like Smart Humans, Smart Jays Exhibit Self Control

Like Smart Humans, Smart Jays Exhibit Self Control

by | 2022 Nov 2 | Public, Quick Hits

Quick Hits
Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

Many of you may have seen a version of the legendary marshmallow experiment in which children are asked to resist the temptation to eat a marshmallow now in return for an additional marshmallow when the adult returns.

In these experiments the marshmallow is placed right in front of the children thereby tempting them and really testing their willpower and ability to control their temptation to scoff the juicy marshmallow. This goes back to research in 1972 by Mischel of Stanford that showed that children with greater self-control were more likely to have better life outcomes: get a better job, go to college, etc.

This self-control is linked to higher intelligence, because of its relationship to so-called top-down control i.e. the more advanced areas of the brain sitting in the front control the more primitive emotional areas of the brain.

However, human beings are not the only creatures to be able to exert self-control and this has also been shown in chimpanzees, and interestingly cuttlefish also! In these other species this is also associated with intelligence. Yes, there appear to be intelligence test for chimps and cuttlefish.

Alexandra Schnell and colleagues have now researched jays, particularly smart birds belonging to the corvid family. They have to use careful strategies to hide their food from other birds – but does this more advanced cognitive ability also translate into actual self-control?

Well, you can’t offer birds marshmallows, but you can offer jays mealworms, the jay equivalent of a tasty, spongy marshmallow. In this experiment they could eat bread and cheese now or wait for a transparent door to open which would give them a tasty mealworm – but only if they had resisted the temptation to eat the bread and cheese.

Some of these birds waited up to five minutes to get their reward: a jay called JayLo being the best at five and a half minutes – and Homer coming in bottom of class only managing 20 seconds. The birds were then tested on various tasks, to measure their intelligence. And yes, those that performed better on these tasks had better self-control. Similar to human beings they also noted a general intelligence factor i.e. if a bird did well on one cognitive task, they tended to do well on all the cognitive tasks.

What I also found interesting in the study is that the birds use strategies that we human beings also use to avoid temptation such as avoiding to look at the source of temptation – this is also linked to forms of self-control I wrote about here in that changing the environment, avoiding temptation in the first place, is one of the most effective strategies.

But for now, we now know that jays are indeed smart birds, can exert self-control and this is linked to intelligence. Just like us human beings.

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Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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References

Alexandra K. Schnell, Markus Boeckle, Nicola S. Clayton. 
Waiting for a better possibility: delay of gratification in corvids and its relationship to other cognitive capacities. 
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2022; 377 (1866)
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2021.0348

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Your Dog Can Smell When You’re Stressed – And Reduce Stress

Your Dog Can Smell When You’re Stressed – And Reduce Stress

by | 2022 Nov 1 | Public, Quick Hits

Quick Hits
Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

dog pet stress wellbeingMany dog owners ascribe super powers to their four-legged friends but some of this is a case of over humanising or over ascribing intelligence to our canine companions. Sometimes they are pretty dumb and no they don’t, for example, feel guilt, but are pretty darn good at putting on the right expression to influence humans.

In fact, they seem to be better at reading the emotions of humans than humans are at reading their emotions.

But some recent research has shed some new light on the skills of dogs and how pets in general can reduce stress – if a healthy relationship exists, that is.

First off, a study recently published by Clara Wilson and colleagues of Queen’s University Belfast showed how dogs can smell stress. To do this the researchers recruited 36 human participants. They were then given a fast-paced arithmetic test with their heart rate and blood pressure tracked. They also self-reported their stress levels.

Breath and sweat samples were taken pre test and post test. These were then given to specially trained dogs to identify within three hours of the test. The dogs obviously had to be trained to identify the stressed sample – when we are stressed, we release multiple organic compounds, and this will be present in minute quantities in our breath and sweat.

The dogs could identify the stressed sample 93.75% of the time. Pretty impressive – there was a variation between dogs with accuracy ranging from 90% to 96.88%. What the dogs will do after this though is another question.

However, it seems that, according to other research that simply having a pet reduces stress. This ties in to what we know about pets and, for example, release of oxytocin, the bonding chemical.

Further research by Ece Beren Barklam of Kingston University in London showed how owning and spending time with pets during the pandemic increased wellbeing. But with some interesting twists.

What were these twists?

The study followed about 700 people in total with pet owners and non-pet owners filling out questionnaires. These also measured resilience and their relationship to their pets. Though most people consistently noted that their pets were sources of comfort, what the study showed is those who rated themselves as low on resilience had the largest positive impact from pets.

Therefore, it seems that pets are particularly helpful for those low on self-resilience. Surprisingly those who rated themselves high on resilience did not seem to reap the benefits of pet ownership.

What was also interesting is that those who had unhealthy relationships with their pets, i.e. rated their pets as their only source of comfort or who noted animals were better than people, showed decreased wellbeing and increased loneliness.

So, yes, your dog can smell your stress and will be source of comfort to you. This effect is largest for those who are less resilient but have a healthy relationship with their pets. Once your pet is actually your best, or only friend, you may need to find some human companions as well!

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Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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References

Clara Wilson, Kerry Campbell, Zachary Petzel, Catherine Reeve.
Dogs can discriminate between human baseline and psychological stress condition odours.
PLOS ONE, 2022; 17 (9): e0274143
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0274143

Ece Beren Barklam, Fatima Maria Felisberti.
Pet Ownership and Wellbeing During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Importance of Resilience and Attachment to Pets.
Anthrozoös, 2022; 1
DOI: 10.1080/08927936.2022.2101248

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Neurons in a Dish Learn to Play Pong

Neurons in a Dish Learn to Play Pong

by | 2022 Oct 31 | Public, Quick Hits

Quick Hits
Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

brain cell neuron growth

The things scientists do! Getting neurons to play pong is kind of weird, fascinating, and incredibly important at the same time.

Kind of weird because it sounds like some sort of strange scientific experiment whereby neurons, brain cells, can be wired up to a computer to do useless things. But that may be a lay person’s first impression. The implications are quite dramatic. It means that a group of individual brain cells growing in a petri dish can exhibit “intelligent” behaviours. That is fascinating but also an incredibly important insight.

So, what did these researchers actually do?

This was a collaboration between 10 different institutions led by Brett Kagan and the goal was to see how simple systems can adapt and learn behaviours in an environment. We tend to think of the brain as incredibly complex and advanced, as in human brain, but in research often much simpler brain such as that of worms are used. They have very simple brains but can still have a behavioural repertoire and respond and adapt to the environment that belies the brain’s simplicity.

The researchers grew neurons in a petri dish – these show spontaneous electrical activity – brain cells can’t but help to communicate to each other. The cells were sitting on a mesh that was linked in a closed loop to a simulated environment. And this simulated environment was the original computer game pong – hitting a moving dot with a “paddle”. The reason for this is that it is a very simple game easy to understand the rules and gives a clear environment to measure success or failure of “behaviour”.

The spikes of activity of the neurons were measured and when they got stronger, they moved the paddle. When the paddle missed the ball, the neurons were “critiqued” – this was done through a special software programme created by company called Cortical Labs.

The principle that was used is based on a theory called the free energy principle. One of the tenets of this is that all living organisms are trying to find predictability and change their behaviour, or worldview, to achieve this predictability. Therefore when the paddle is missed, unpredictable signals were given, in contrast to predictable signals when the ball was hit.

The neurons then became better and better at playing pong. Collectively learning and self-organising their behaviour to become an effective pong unit.

So, it might sound weird, but this is quite amazing. That brain cells grown in a petri dish can learn to coordinate their activity to learn to play a game. Wow!

This shows that our brain cells are self-organising groups that aim to build behaviour repertories to reduce unpredictably – and therefore operate better in the environment.

And that the primary purpose of our brain is to be prediction machine.

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Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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References

Brett J. Kagan, Andy C. Kitchen, Nhi T. Tran, Forough Habibollahi, Moein Khajehnejad, Bradyn J. Parker, Anjali Bhat, Ben Rollo, Adeel Razi, Karl J. Friston. 
In vitro neurons learn and exhibit sentience when embodied in a simulated game-world. 
Neuron, 2022
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2022.09.001

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Chirp Up! Birdsong Improves Mental Wellbeing

Chirp Up! Birdsong Improves Mental Wellbeing

by | 2022 Oct 28 | Public, Quick Hits

Quick Hits
Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

birds nature brain health

Waking up to an early morning chorus of birdsong is nice. No doubt about that. But the benefits could be much more significant than just a fleeting feeling of positivity (and followed by a groan to get out of bed by some).

Researchers at Kings College London have just reported on the results of a study that tracked people’s exposure to birdsong and the resulting mental health impact – with some very positive results.

Hammoud et al. tracked 1’292 participants over three years who completed an impressive 26’856 assessments. They used an app that asked them three times a time whether they could hear birdsong and then followed up with questions on mental health.

What did they find?

They found that seeing or hearing birds was associated with an improvement in wellbeing and that this can last up to eight hours. Not bad for a bit of birdsong. What’s more they also found that this also improved wellbeing in those suffering from depression.

This supports plenty of other research into the benefits of nature and specifically of just birdsong. I reported on the positive effects of biodiversity and birdsong here. But these researchers were also able to account for co-occurring other environmental factors such as seeing tress – we also know greenspace has a positive benefit – and found that birdsong alone could account for positive benefits.

So, that’s all good news – surprising and effective method to improve mental wellbeing – so open the windows and listen to the birds. It will do you good.

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Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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References

Ryan Hammoud, Stefania Tognin, Lucie Burgess, Nicol Bergou, Michael Smythe, Johanna Gibbons, Neil Davidson, Alia Afifi, Ioannis Bakolis, Andrea Mechelli. 
Smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment reveals mental health benefits of birdlife. 
Scientific Reports, 2022; 12 (1)
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-20207-6

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