Sabin Nettles, a graduate student in the Department of Neuroscience at the School of Medicine, received the Pre/Postdoctoral Next Generation Award from the Society for Neuroscience in recognition of her outreach work introducing neuroscience to young students through the Brain Discovery initiative.
Read more on the Department of Neuroscience website.
New research turns the old idiom about not being able to walk and chew gum on its head. Scientists with the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester have shown that the healthy brain is able to multitask while walking without sacrificing how either activity is accomplished.
David Richardson
This research shows us that the brain is flexible and can take on additional burdens, said David Richardson, an MD/PhD student in his fifth year in the Pathology & Cell Biology of Disease Program, and first author of the study recently published in the journal NeuroImage. Our findings showed that the walking patterns of the participants improved when they performed a cognitive task at the same time, suggesting they were actually more stable while walking and performing the task than when they were solely focused on walking.
During these experiments, researchers used a Mobile Brain/Body Imaging system, or MoBI, located in the Del Monte Institutes Frederick J. and Marion A. Schindler Cognitive Neurophysiology Lab. The platform combines virtual reality, brain monitoring, and motion capture technology. While participants walk on a treadmill or manipulate objects on a table, 16 high speed cameras record the position markers with millimeter precision, while simultaneously measuring their brain activity.
Example of image captured by MoBI.
The MoBI was used to record the brain activity of participants as they walked on a treadmill and were cued to switch tasks. Their brain activity was also recorded as they performed these same tasks while sitting. Brain changes were measured between the cued tasks and showed that during the more difficult the tasks the neurophysiological difference was greater between walking and sitting highlighting the flexibility of a healthy brain and how it prepares for and executes tasks based on difficulty level.
The MoBI allows us to better understand how the brain functions in everyday life, said Edward Freedman, Ph.D., lead author on the study. Looking at these findings to understand how a young healthy brain is able to switch tasks will give us better insight to whats going awry in a brain with a neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimers disease.
Edward Freedman, Ph.D.
Understanding how a young healthy brain can successfully walk and talk is an important start, but we also need to understand how these findings differ in the brains of healthy older adults, and adults with neurodegenerative diseases, said Richardson. The next stage is expanding this research to include a more diverse group of brains.
Additional authors include John Foxe, Ph.D., Kevin Mazurek, Ph.D., and Nicholas Abraham of the University of Rochester. This research was funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience Pilot Program.
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Researchers provide insight into how the brain multitasks while walking - URMC
An excerpt from "Beyond the Self: Conversations between Buddhism and Neuroscience."
By: Matthieu Ricard & Wolf Singer
Buddhism shares with science the task of examining the mind empirically; it has pursued, for two millennia, direct investigation of the mind through penetrating introspection. Neuroscience, on the other hand, relies on third-person knowledge in the form of scientific observation.
In the following conversation, Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk trained as a molecular biologist, and Wolf Singer, a distinguished neuroscientist, offer their perspectives on the unconscious and the role of meditation in resolving conflicts that arise at levels inaccessible to conscious processing.
The text is excerpted from their book Beyond the Self: Conversations between Buddhism and Neuroscience, a collection of illuminating exchanges Ricard and Singer close friends had over the course of eight years at meetings around the world. Their objective, as they write in the books preface, is to confront two perspectives anchored in rich traditions: the contemplative Buddhist practice, and epistemology and research in neuroscience. The Editors
Matthieu Ricard: Lets explore for a bit the notion of the unconscious, from neuroscientific and contemplative perspectives. Usually when people speak about the unconscious, they refer to something deep in our psyche that we cannot access with our ordinary consciousness. We certainly have the concept, in Buddhism, of habitual tendencies that are opaque to our awareness. These tendencies initiate various thought patterns that can either occur spontaneously or be triggered by some kind of external circumstance. Sometimes you are just sitting there, thinking of nothing in particular, and suddenly the thought of someone or a particular event or situation pops up in the mind, seemingly out of nowhere. From there, a whole chain of thoughts begins to unfold, and if you are not mindful, you can easily get lost in it.
The general public, psychologists, and neuroscientists surely have varying views about what the unconscious is. As for psychoanalysis, what it calls the depths of the unconscious are, from a contemplative perspective, the outer layers of clouds formed by mental confusion that temporarily prevent one from experiencing the most fundamental nature of mind. How can there be something unconscious in a state of pure awareness, devoid of mental construct? No darkness exists in the middle of the sun. For Buddhism, the deepest, most fundamental aspect of consciousness is this sun-like awareness, not the murky unconscious. Of course, this is all expressed from the first-person perspective, and I am sure that a neuroscientist approaching this issue from the third-person perspective will have a different view of the unconscious.
For Buddhism, the deepest, most fundamental aspect of consciousness is [a] sun-like awareness, not the murky unconscious.
Wolf Singer: Yes, I see it a bit differently. As mentioned earlier, an enormous amount of knowledge is stored in the specific architectures of the brain, but we are not aware of most of these given heuristics, assumptions, concepts, and so on. These routines determine the outcomes of cognitive processes, which we are aware of, but the routines remain hidden in the unconscious. Usually we are not aware of the rules that govern the interpretation of sensory signals, the construction of our percepts, or the logic according to which we learn, decide, associate, and act.
We cannot move these implicit hypotheses and rules to the workspace of consciousness by focusing our attention on them, as is possible with contents stored, for example, in declarative memory, the memory in which we store what has been consciously experienced. Abundant evidence indicates that attentional mechanisms play a crucial role in controlling access to consciousness. When attended to, most signals from our senses can reach the level of conscious awareness. Exceptions are certain odors, such as pheromones, that are processed by special subsystems and cannot be perceived consciously. Then there are the many signals from within the body that are excluded from conscious processing, such as messages about blood pressure, sugar level, and so on. It cannot be emphasized enough, however, that signals permanently excluded from conscious processing as well as transitorily excluded signals such as nonattended sensory stimuli still have a massive impact on behavior. In addition, these unconscious signals can control attentional mechanisms and thereby determine which of the stored memories or sensory signals will be attended and transferred to the level of conscious processing.
Another constraint is the limited capacity of the workspace of consciousness. At any one moment in time, only a limited number of contents can be processed consciously. Whether these limitations are due to the inability to attend to large numbers of items simultaneously or whether they result from the restricted capacity of working memory or both is still a matter of scientific investigation. The capacity of the workspace is limited to four to seven different items. This finding corresponds to the number of contents that can be kept simultaneously in working memory. The phenomenon of change blindness, the inability to detect local changes in two images presented in quick succession, demonstrates impressively our inability to attend to and consciously process all features of an image simultaneously.
Perception is actually not as holistic as it appears to be. We scan complex scenes serially, and actually much of what we seem to perceive we are in fact reconstructing from memory. Which of the many signals actually reach the level of conscious awareness is determined by a host of factors, both conscious and unconscious. It depends on what we attend to, and this is controlled by either external cues, such as the saliency of a stimulus, or internal motifs, many of which we may not actually be aware of. Then it may occur that even an attentive, conscious search for content stored in declarative memory fails to raise it to the level of awareness. We are all familiar with the temporary inability to remember an episode or a name and then how a persisting subconscious search process may suddenly lift the content into the workspace of consciousness. It appears that we are not always capable of controlling which contents enter consciousness.
I consider the workspace of consciousness as the highest and most integrated level of brain function. Access to this workspace is privileged and controlled by attention. Moreover, the rules governing conscious deliberations such as consciously made decisions most likely differ from those of subconscious processes. The former are based mainly on rational, logical, or syntactic rules, and the search for solutions is essentially a serial process. Arguments and facts are scrutinized one by one and possible outcomes investigated. Hence, conscious processing takes time. Subconscious mechanisms seem to rely more on parallel processing, whereby a large number of neuronal assemblies, each of which represents a particular solution, enter into competition with one another. Then a winner-takes-all algorithm leads to the stabilization of the assembly that best fits the actual context of distributed activity patterns. Thus, the conscious mechanism is suited best to circumstances in which no time pressure exists, when not too many variables have to be considered, and when the variables are defined with sufficient precision to be subjected to rational analysis. The domains of subconscious processing are situations requiring fast responses or conditions where large numbers of underdetermined variables have to be considered simultaneously and weighed against variables that have no or only limited access to conscious processing, such as the wealth of implicit knowledge and heuristics, vague feelings, and hidden motives or drives.
We scan complex scenes serially, and actually much of what we seem to perceive we are in fact reconstructing from memory.
The outcome of such subconscious processes manifests itself in either immediate behavioral responses or what are called gut feelings. It is often not possible to indicate with a rational argument why exactly one has responded in that way and why one feels that something is wrong or right. In experimental settings, one can even demonstrate that the rational arguments given for or against a particular response do not always correspond to the real causes. For complex problems with numerous entangled variables, it often turns out that subconscious processes lead to better solutions than conscious deliberations because of the wealth of heuristics exploitable by subconscious processing. Given the large amount of information and implicit knowledge to which consciousness has no or only sporadic access and the crucial importance of subconscious heuristics for decision making and the guidance of behavior, training oneself to ignore the voices of the subconscious would not be a helpful, well-adapted strategy.
MR: What you said corresponds with what Daniel Kahneman explains in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow. Although we are generally convinced that we are rational, our decisions, economic or otherwise, are often irrational and strongly influenced by our immediate gut feelings, emotions, and situations to which we have been exposed immediately before taking a decision. Intuition is a highly adaptable faculty that allows us to make fast decisions in complex situations, but it also lures us into thinking that we have made a rational choice, which actually takes more time and deliberation.
I understand that a lot is going on in the brain to allow us to function and have coherent perceptions, memories, and so on. But I was thinking more of the pragmatic aspect of dealing with the particular tendencies that give rise to the afflictive mental states and emotions associated with suffering. My point was that if you know how to relate to pure awareness and rest within that space of awareness, when disturbing emotions arise, they dissolve as they appear and do not create suffering. If one is an expert in this, then there is no need to bother about what is going on down in the subconscious. It is more a question of method. Psychoanalysis, for instance, contends that you need to find a way to dig into those hidden impulses and identify them, whereas Buddhist meditation teaches you to free the thoughts as they arise.
By dwelling in the clarity of the present moment, you are free from all ruminations, upsetting emotions, frustrations, and other inner conflicts. If you learn to deal, moment after moment, with the arising of thoughts, then you can preserve your inner freedom, which is the desired goal of such training.
WS: Here we seem to face rather divergent concepts of the virtues of subconscious processing and the way we should deal with the unconscious dimension of our mind. This brings me to a critical issue: the side effects of meditation. One could argue that a strategy consisting of closing ones eyes when facing conflicts, in escaping from problems rather than solving them, is perhaps a suboptimal strategy. Let us assume that conflicts exist in the subconscious and that the rumination motivated by these conflicts serves to identify and settle them. Such conflicts could arise from ambiguous bonding between the child and her caretaker in early infancy or from conflicting imperatives imprinted by early education. The causes of such problems cannot easily surface in consciousness because they are part of implicit memories that have been formed prior to the maturation of declarative memory. Such conflicts jeopardize mental and physical health.
Humankind throughout its history has sought relief from such problems, with drugs, cultural activities, and, more recently, a host of specially designed therapies. Most of the latter require one to face the problem to cope with it. Another strategy, which is applied in cognitive and behavioral therapy, attempts to alleviate the problem by unlearning the habit using conditioning paradigms. If one suffers from a particular phobia, then one gets exposed to the threatening events and learns that they dont cause harm, and after a while, one habituates to the threat and the problem may be solved.
MR: We surely need to get at the heart of the issue. But in the end, what we need is to be free from inner conflicts, one way or another, right? So, there might be ways that involve digging into the past as much as one can, with or without the help of a therapist, and then trying to solve the problem or trauma that has thus been identified, thereby freeing oneself from the afflictive effect. But there are also ways, including those used by Buddhism, that do not attempt to elude the problem but to free any conflicting thoughts that arise in the mind at the moment they arise. If you become expert in those methods, the so-called afflictive thoughts no longer have the power to afflict you because they undo themselves the moment they arise. But that is not all: Experience shows that by repeatedly doing so, you not only deal successfully with each individual arising of afflictive thoughts but you also slowly erode the tendencies for such thoughts to arise. So in the end, you are free of them entirely. Among contemporary Western therapies, cognitive and behavioral therapy also offer methods to attend precisely to a particular emotion that upsets you in the moment and deal with it in a reasonable and constructive way and has therefore some interesting similarities with the Buddhist approach.
WS: Let us see what meditation could contribute to the resolution of conflicts that arise at levels inaccessible to conscious processing. I shall take a critical stance and use a real-world problem as an example. Imagine a conflict evolves between two partners that evokes uneasy feelings and causes lasting mental rumination in both parties. Their two ego bubbles fight against each other, as in Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Love and passion exist between them, which are both difficult to control because they are anchored in subconscious spheres. The partners go into retreat and meditate, stop ruminating, and feel fine while they meditate alone in a protected environment. But will this solve the problem? Will they not resume fighting once they are back home, together, and confronted again with their problems?
MR: To openly confront our differences can be a way to pacify a conflict, but it is not the only one. To begin with, a conflict requires two protagonists confronting each other in antagonistic ways. One cannot clap with one hand only. In fact, if one of the persons involved disarms his or her own antagonistic mind, then it will contribute greatly to reducing the conflict with the other person.
We did an experiment at Berkeley with Paul Ekman and Robert Levenson, who, among other things, have been studying conflict resolution. In this case, they wanted me to have two conversations with two different people. The idea was to discuss a controversial topic in this case, why a former biologist like me, who did research in a prestigious lab at Pasteur Institute, would ever choose not only to become a Buddhist monk but to believe in crazy things such as reincarnation. We were all fitted with all kinds of sensors detecting our heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, skin conductivity and sweating, and body movements, and our facial expressions were recorded on a video camera, to be later analyzed in details for fleeting microexpressions. My first interlocutor was Professor Donald Glaser, a Nobel laureate in physics, who then moved to research in neurobiology. He was an extremely kind and open-minded person. Our discussion went well, and at the end of the 10 minutes, we both regretted not having more time to dialogue. Our physiological parameters indicated a calm, nonconflictual attitude. Then came in someone who had to be chosen because he was reputed to be a rather difficult person he was not told about that of course! He knew that we were supposed to get into a heated debate and went straight into it. His physiology became immediately highly aroused. From my side, I tried my best to remain calm I actually enjoyed it and did my best to provide reasonable answers delivered in a friendly way. Soon enough, his physiology became calmer and calmer, and at the end of the 10 minutes, he told the researchers, I cant fight with this guy. He says reasonable things and smiles all the time. So, as the Tibetan saying goes, One cannot clap with one hand.
As far as your own inner conflicts are concerned, if you use meditation simply as a quick fix to superficially appease your emotions, you temporarily enjoy a pleasant deferral of these inner conflicts. But as you rightly say, these cosmetic changes have not reached the root of the problem.
Merely putting problems to sleep for a while or trying to forcibly suppress strong emotions will not help either. You are just keeping a time bomb ticking somewhere in a corner of your mind.
True meditation, however, is not just taking a break. It is not simply closing ones eyes to the problem for a while. Meditation goes to the root of the problem. You need to become aware of the destructive aspect of compulsive attachment and all of the conflictive mental states that you mentioned. They are destructive in the sense of undermining your happiness and that of others, and to counteract them you need more than just a calming pill. Meditation practice offers many kinds of antidotes.
A direct antidote is a state of mind that is diametrically opposed to the afflictive emotion you want to overcome, such as heat and cold. Benevolence, for instance, is the direct opposite of malevolence because you cannot wish simultaneously to benefit and harm the same person. Using this kind of antidote neutralizes the negative emotions that afflict us.
Lets take the example of desire. Everyone would agree that desire is natural and plays an essential role in helping us to realize our aspirations. But desire in itself is neither helpful nor harmful. Everything depends on what kind of influence it has over us. It is capable of both providing inspiration in our life and poisoning it. It can encourage us to act in a way that is constructive for ourselves and others, but it can also bring about intense pain. The latter occurs when desire is associated with grasping and craving. It then causes us to become addicted to the causes of suffering. In that case, it is a source of unhappiness, and there is no advantage in continuing to be ruled by it. Here you may apply the antidote of inner freedom to the desire that causes suffering. You bring to your mind the comforting and soothing quality of inner freedom and spend a few moments allowing a feeling of freedom to be born and grow in you.
True meditation is not just taking a break. It is not simply closing ones eyes to the problem for a while. Meditation goes to the root of the problem.
Because desire also tends to distort reality and project its object as something that you cannot live without, to regain a more accurate view of things, you may take the time to examine all aspects of the object of your desire and see how your mind has superimposed its own projections onto it. Finally, you let your mind relax into the state of awareness, free from hope and fear, and appreciate the freshness of the present moment, which acts like a balm to soothe the burning of desire. If you do that repeatedly and perseveringly and this point is really the most important this will gradually lead to a real change in the way you experience things all the time.
The second, even more powerful way to deal with afflictive emotions is to stop identifying with them: You are not the desire, you are not the conflict, and you are not the anger. Usually we identify with our emotions completely. When we become overwhelmed by desire, anxiety, or a fit of anger, we become one with it. It is omnipresent in our mind, leaving no room for other mental states such as inner peace, patience, or reasoning, which might calm our torments.
The antidote is to be aware of desire or anger, instead of identifying with it. Then the part of our mind that is aware of anger is not angry, it is simply aware. In other words, awareness is not affected by the emotion it is observing. Understanding that makes it possible to step back and realize that the emotion is actually devoid of solidity. We just need to provide an open space of inner freedom, and the internal affliction will dissolve by itself.
By doing so, we avoid two extremes, each as inefficient as the other: repressing our emotion, which would then remain as powerful as before, or letting the emotion flare up, at the expense of those around us and of our own inner peace. Not to identify with emotions is a fundamental antidote that is applicable to all kinds of emotions in any circumstance.
This method might seem difficult at the beginning, especially in the heat of the moment, but with practice, it will become easier to retain mastery of your mind and deal with the conflicting emotions of day-to-day life.
Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk, trained as a molecular biologist before moving to Nepal to study Buddhism. He is the author of several books, including The Monk and the Philosopher (with his father, Jean-Franois Revel); The Quantum and the Lotus (with Trinh Xuan Thuan); The Art of Meditation; and Beyond the Self: Conversations between Buddhism and Neuroscience (with Wolf Singer), from which this article is excerpted. The MIT Press will publish the English translation of his memoir, Notebooks of a Wandering Monk, next fall.
Wolf Singer is Emeritus Director of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research and Founding Director of the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies and the Ernst Strngmann Institute for Neuroscience in cooperation with the Max Planck Society, where he is also Senior Research Fellow.
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On Meditation and the Unconscious: A Buddhist Monk and a Neuroscientist in Conversation - The MIT Press Reader
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What to Expect in Neuroscience, Genetics, Longevity, Biotech, and Psychedelics in 2022 - NEO.LIFE
Dr. Qin Wang, an expert in molecular neuropharmacology and signaling research exploring how cell surface receptor signaling regulates healthy brain function and contributes to neurological and psychiatric disorders, has been named the inaugural director of the Program for Alzheimers Therapeutics Discovery at the Medical College of Georgia.
The Alzheimers Association tells us that more than six million Americans already are living with this devastating problem, a number that is likely to more than double in the next few decades, says Dr. David Hess, MCG dean. With great support from the Georgia Research Alliance, Dr. Wang will enable us to more strategically address this pervasive condition generally associated with aging and help us identify better therapeutic and prevention strategies that improve peoples lives.
Qin Wang is a superstar who has already moved the needle significantly in Alzheimers research, says GRA President Susan Shows. She has deepened understanding of the toxic cascade in the brain that contributes to the disease, and she has discovered new avenues for treatments. Georgia is fortunate to add her great breadth and depth in pharmacology to our university research portfolio.
Wang joins the faculty of the MCG Department of Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine April 1. She is an MD/PhD who completed her postdoctoral studies in pharmacology at Vanderbilt University, joined the faculty there then moved to the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2005 where she is currently a professor in the Department of Cell, Developmental and Integrative Biology.
She is a member of the American Heart Association Councils on Basic Cardiovascular Sciences and High Blood Pressure Research. She has served as a regular member of the National Institutes of Health and AHA Molecular Peer Review Study Groups. Wang also has served as a grant reviewer for the Alzheimers Association for more than a decade and has served on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Alzheimers Disease Congress and on the Executive Committee of the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics Molecular Pharmacology Division. She is permanent associate editor for neurodegeneration for the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience.
Dr. Wang is currently principal investigator on three National Institutes of Health grants and contact PI on two additional multi-PI NIH grants. She was among the top 20 out of 869 NIH-funded PIs in the nations anatomy/cell biology departments in 2020.
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Dr. Qin Wang will lead new Program for Alzheimer's Therapeutics Discovery at MCG - Jagwire Augusta
SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--NTT Research, Inc., a division of NTT (TYO:9432), today announced that it has entered a joint research agreement with scientists at Harvard University to study animal neuro-responses with the hope of informing future artificial intelligence systems. The five-year research project, launched in the fall of 2021, enables researchers at the two organizations to collaboratively study how animals maintain behavioral flexibility, specifically in the task of navigation. Greater understanding of how this challenge is approached in biology may eventually enable the design of new computing machines with similar capabilities. The principal investigator is Venkatesh Murthy, PhD, the Raymond Leo Erikson Life Sciences Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard and the Paul J. Finnegan Family Director of its Center for Brain Science. Murthys counterpart at NTT Research for the joint project is Physics & Informatics (PHI) Lab Research Scientist Gautam Reddy, PhD, who was previously an Independent Post-Doctoral Fellow at Harvards NSF-Simons Center for Mathematical and Statistical Analysis of Biology.
This joint research aims to better elucidate how animals maintain the ability to respond appropriately to a wide variety of complex real-world scenarios. The investigators expect the results from one aspect of the research to be a source of new, biologically inspired ideas for artificial reinforcement learning systems that rely on representation learning. Such ideas have played a major role in recent advances in artificial intelligence. Results from another aspect of the research should provide a quantitative understanding of how animals track trails, as well as identify the basic elements of general behavioral strategies that perform flexibly and reliably in the real world. Professor Murthys lab has a long track record in experimental and computational neurobiology. Expertise relevant to the joint research includes the ability to record from or image many individual neurons in the brain while an animal performs behavioral tasks. This technical expertise will enable the research team to understand what computations are performed by biological neural networks when an animal is navigating in a complex world.
Efficient computation is at the heart of quantum computing and neuroscience. Inspired by neuroscience, recent advances in machine learning have recently begun to change how we process data, said PHI Lab Director Yoshihisa Yamamoto, PhD. This joint research project could provide a rich source of animal-inspired algorithms that generalize across various research domains within NTT and inspire truly novel interdisciplinary ideas.
Professor Murthy and Dr. Reddy have previously worked together on understanding the computational principles behind olfaction. Their focus was on how the smell receptors in the nose respond to blends of odorous compounds. As an Independent Fellow at Harvards NSF-Simons Center for Mathematical Biology, Dr. Reddy worked on the theory behind how animals track scent trails and on developing a computational framework to explain how evolution optimizes organisms. I am delighted to continue this line of inquiry with Dr. Reddy through the NTT Research PHI Lab, Murthy said. The brain is an example of an extremely efficient computational device, and plenty of phenomena within it remain unexplored and unexplained. We believe the results of these investigations in neurobiology will reveal basic understandings and prove useful in the field of artificial intelligence.
Gaining insights from neuroscience is an ongoing part of the PHI Labs strategy to redesign artificial computers. In July 2021, for instance, NTT Research announced a joint research agreement with the University of Tokyos International Research Center for Neurointelligence (IRCN) to develop numerical tools and a simulator for the coherent Ising machine (CIM), an information processing platform based on photonics oscillator networks. In October 2020, PHI Lab Director Yamamoto co-authored a paper in Applied Physics Letters (APL) titled, Coherent Ising Machines: Quantum optics and neural network perspectives, which underscored the interdisciplinary nature of the PHI Labs pathbreaking research agenda, which could lead to a new field of study.
In addition to the researchers at Harvard and the University of Tokyo, investigators at eight other universities have agreed to conduct joint research with the NTT Research PHI Lab. These include the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Cornell University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Notre Dame University, Stanford University, Swinburne University of Technology, the University of Michigan and the Tokyo Institute of Technology. The NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley and 1QBit, a private quantum computing software company, have also entered joint research agreements with the PHI Lab.
About NTT Research
NTT Research opened its offices in July 2019 as a new Silicon Valley startup to conduct basic research and advance technologies that promote positive change for humankind. Currently, three labs are housed at NTT Research facilities in Sunnyvale: the Physics and Informatics (PHI) Lab, the Cryptography and Information Security (CIS) Lab, and the Medical and Health Informatics (MEI) Lab. The organization aims to upgrade reality in three areas: 1) quantum information, neuroscience and photonics; 2) cryptographic and information security; and 3) medical and health informatics. NTT Research is part of NTT, a global technology and business solutions provider with an annual R&D budget of $3.6 billion.
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Neuroscientist Ryan Hibbs, Ph.D., has been honored for his work on structure and function of receptors in the brain.
DALLAS Jan. 19, 2022 UTSouthwestern structural biologist and neuroscientist Ryan Hibbs, Ph.D., has received a 2022 Norman Hackerman Award in Chemical Research. The prize recognizes his work investigating the structure and function of receptors on the surfaces of brain cells and how they interact with drugs, such as nicotine or general anesthetics.
Dr. Hibbs, Associate Professor of Neuroscience and Biophysicsand a member of the Peter ODonnell Jr. Brain Institute, is one of two Hackerman Award winners this year and the ninth UTSouthwestern researcher to receive the prestigious prize since its establishment in 2002. Dr. Guihua Yu of UT Austin was selected for his work in nanomaterial science.
The Welch Foundation, one of the nations oldest and largest sources of private funding for basic research in chemistry, presents the $100,000 award annually to a rising star at a Texas institution. The award is named after the late Norman Hackerman, Ph.D., an internationally known chemist, former president at UT Austin and Rice University, and longtime Chair of the foundations Scientific Advisory Board.
I was blown away and extremely grateful to find out that I had won one of this years Hackerman Awards. I know some of the previous awardees and their work, and it is an honor to be considered a part of that exceptionally high caliber of scientists, said Dr. Hibbs, an Effie Marie Cain Scholar in Medical Research.
My very first research grant came from The Welch Foundation, and it allowed me to take more risks, hire a postdoctoral fellow, and do more in my lab, but it also gave me assurance that an external committee thought my work was exciting enough to support. The Welch Foundation has been immensely helpful in supporting me financially and giving me confidence to succeed, he added.
The award recognizes Dr. Hibbs important contributions to better understand synaptic ligand-gated ion channels, a type of cell-surface receptor present on neurons. These protein receptors act as locks that are opened by molecular keys, either natural chemicals or synthetic pharmaceuticals. In particular, the Hibbs lab has studied receptors that bind nicotine the addictive component in tobacco as well as general anesthetics and the benzodiazepine class of anti-anxiety drugs. He has also studied receptors that bind natural neurotransmitters.
Ryan Hibbs is clearly one of the rising stars in the structural biology and biophysics of neuronal ionotropic receptors. His recent discoveries solving the structures of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptors and the GABAA receptor are landmark accomplishments. Perhaps most stunning historically is the structure of the native nicotinic receptor from the fish electric organ, which was the very first neurotransmitter receptor to be described by neuroscience pioneer Jean-Pierre Changeux over 50 years ago, said Joseph Takahashi, Ph.D., Professor and Chair of Neuroscience, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator, and holder of the Loyd B. Sands Distinguished Chair in Neuroscience at UTSW.
An important first step in understanding the workings of these channels is to visualize them at high magnification and resolution, Dr. Hibbs explained. He added that UTSouthwesterns decision to invest in a technology known as cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) an imaging system that allows visualization of proteins at the atomic level by freezing them in place has been key to his labs success in this field. Dr. Hibbs wife, Colleen Noviello, Ph.D., is a Senior Research Scientist at UTSouthwestern and has collected most of the cryo-EM data for the Hibbs lab.
Ryan possesses a powerful combination of creativity, fearlessness, technical excellence and superb scientific taste. These have allowed him and his group to determine some of the most important structures in molecular neuroscience, said Michael Rosen, Ph.D., Professor and Chair of Biophysics and an HHMI Investigator. Dr. Rosen also holds the Mar Nell and F. Andrew Bell Distinguished Chair in Biochemistry at UTSW. His work has deepened our understanding of basic functions of the brain and opened the door to improved therapeutics for human conditions spanning mental illness to insomnia.
UTSWs eight current and former scientists who received Hackerman Awards include:
About UTSouthwestern Medical Center
UTSouthwestern, one of the nations premier academic medical centers, integrates pioneering biomedical research with exceptional clinical care and education. The institutions faculty has received six Nobel Prizes and includes 25 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 16 members of the National Academy of Medicine, and 14 Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigators. The full-time faculty of more than 2,800 is responsible for groundbreaking medical advances and is committed to translating science-driven research quickly to new clinical treatments. UTSouthwestern physicians provide care in about 80 specialties to more than 117,000 hospitalized patients, more than 360,000 emergency room cases, and oversee nearly 3 million outpatient visits a year.
To borrow from Aristotle, Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of lifethe whole aim and end of human existence.
For author and entrepreneur Tia Graham happiness is the secret sauce to thriving in business and life.
After she had her second daughter and returned to work as director of sales and marketing at The London West Hollywood Hotel, she was not happy. I was attempting to balance my executive career, motherhood, marriage, friendships, physical health, family, and all else. I felt as if I were failing at all of it, says Graham. I was stressed, overwhelmed, full of guilt, angry, sad and felt stuck.
Tia Graham
While Graham, like many others, had painful and challenging moments in her life before going back to when she was a child, at this moment when she was returning to work, she was particularly unhappy. I thought that maybe it would be my new normal, she shares. I have always been a very positive and optimistic person and have made choices to increase my happiness and well-being. But this thought terrified me.
Being miserable impacted every part of Grahams personal and professional life. At this low point she began researching happiness and the science of happiness. She turned to Tal Ben-Shahar, PhD who taught the popular Positive Psychology course at Harvard University. Graham received a certificate in Happiness Studies and Teaching Happiness Ben-Shahars Happiness Studies Academy. She became certified in neuroscience from The Neuroscience School and is now a speaker and coach at the annual World Happiness Summit.
My neuroscience and positive psychology research gave me the scientific knowledge on why happiness is vital, says Graham. Happiness affects our longevity, relationships, motivation, career and parenting success, creativity, productivity, and more. It connects to everything.
To that end, four years ago Graham made a big career pivot and founded her company Arrive At Happy. With a mission is to inspire transformation through the science of happiness and neuroscience, Graham partners with organizations and leaders to grow their business through a happy, joyful culture.
This month Graham debuted her book, Be a Happy Leader: Stop Feeling Overwhelmed, Thrive Personally, and Achieve Killer Business Results. The book delves into the struggle of feeling overwhelmed and stressed. It offers doable strategies on how to find consistent joy while keeping motivated.
The truth is that our happiness and creating a happy life is an inside job, says Graham. Human connection is the number one predictor of happiness, but there is so much more to it like being resilient, having a healthy relationship with difficult emotions, living with gratitude, learning and growing constantly and giving and helping others. It takes effort and making the ongoing choice to choose to be happy.
Jeryl Brunner: Can you share more how money doesn't make you happy?
Tia Graham: Research shows that wealthy people are happier than less wealthy people. But the degree is a lot smaller than most people would think. A lot of very wealthy people are miserable. Money alone cannot make you happy. What money affords are more choices and time affluence. How you spend your money also contributes to your well-being, like spending on others or experiences rather than material possessions. There is an interesting phenomenon calledThe Hedonic Treadmill from Dr. Martin Seligman. His research shows that once we make a decent living and have all our needs met, a new car or expensive handbag, for example, will give us ahappy high for just three to four months. And then we go back to our resting level of happiness.
Brunner: You write that there are misconceptions about what makes us happy. What are some of those myths?
Graham: One myth is that if you are famous, you will be happier. Another is that when you acquire new material possessions, you will be happier. The research shows that, on average, fame makes us less happy. Another myth is that if you are successful and have a great title, that will make you happy. Another one could be that if you find the love of your life, you will be happy.
Brunner: What inspired you to write Be A Happy Leader?
Graham: I worked as a director of sales and marketing in the luxury hotel industry for 14 years in Hawaii, New York City, Istanbul, and Los Angeles. During that time, I was exposed to motivational and fantastic leaders. I also experienced the exact opposite. I was thrown into a leadership position at 26 years old and always saw leadership as an honor and a big responsibility. I prided myself on being a very positive, supportive, and collaborative leader and created connected, loyal, and successful sales teams.
Over the past five years running my company, Arrive At Happy, I have become certified in positive psychology and applied neuroscience. I created an eight-step methodology to be a happy leader combining my experience and research. A tremendous amount of proven, practical tools exists that all people can use immediately. I knew that I would not be able to reach every person around the world with my talks and leadership programs. My goal is to motivate and educate as many people as possible.
Link:
This Entrepreneur And Author Says Inner Happiness Should Top Your List - Forbes
ALBANY, N.Y., Jan. 24, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Advancements in methods notably FES (functional electrical stimulation) have driven new opportunities in disabling brain disorders particularly in stroke and traumatic brain injury. Gamification are increasingly underpinning advances in neurorehabilitation especially for promoting neuro-motor recovery. A case in point is use of virtual reality (VR) in gamification. The valuation of the neurorehabilitation devices market is projected to reach US$ 3.2 Bn by 2027.
Virtual reality technology and robotic neurorehabilitation have opened a promising avenue for the target population. A number of endpoint robots for the upper extremity rehabilitation have been commercialized, and thus have augmented the revenue sales in the neurorehabilitation devices market.
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Extensive research on neural interfaces and multimodal rehabilitative approaches are expected to pave the way to new revenue streams in the neurorehabilitation devices market. Companies are collaborating with neuroscientists to test new strategies in neurorehabilitation, concurs the TMR study.
Key Findings of Neurorehabilitation Devices Market Study
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Neurorehabilitation Devices Market: Key Drivers
Neurorehabilitation Devices Market: Regional Growth Dynamics
Players are leveraging the synergies of in-licensing and collaboration agreements to unveil innovative products in North America and Europe, assert the analysts scrutinizing lucrative market avenues in the TMR report. The opportunities in the neurorobotic systems and brain stimulators are anticipated to rise rapidly in the next few years, assert the TMR study on the neurorehabilitation devices market.
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North America held a major share of the global neurorehabilitation devices market in 2018. The revenue growth was propelled by the prevalence of various neurological disorders and widespread demand for the products in traumatic brain injuries. The U.S. is projected to contribute sizable revenue shares of the North America neurorehabilitation devices market during the forecast period (20192027). The TMR study estimates the U.S. market to advance at a CAGR of approximately 13% during the period. The adoption of safe neurorehabilitation products is propelling the growth of the market.
Aside from these, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America are expected to be provide new avenues for companies in the neurorehabilitation devices market during the forecast period.
Neurorehabilitation Devices Market: Key Players
Some of the key players in the market are DIH Technologies Corporation, Medtronic plc, Reha Technology AG, Boston Scientific Corporation, Tyromotion GmbH, ReWalk Robotics, Neuro Device Group S.A., Saebo, Inc., Neurostyle Pte Ltd, DIH Technologies Corporation, Ekso Bionics, and Bionik Laboratories Corp.
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Neurorehabilitation Devices Market, by Product
Neurorehabilitation Devices Market, by Application
Neurorehabilitation Devices Market, by Region
Modernization of healthcare in terms of both infrastructure and services have pushed the healthcare industry to new heights, Stay Updated with Latest Healthcare Industry Research Reportsby Transparency Market Research:
Neuroscience Market: Neuroscience market was valued at US$ 28.5 Bn in 2020 and is projected to expand at a CAGR of 4% from 2021 to 2031. Increase in patient population with neurological disorders such as dementia, Alzheimer's disease, and Parkinson's disease and advancements in the field of neuro-technology and neuroscience are anticipated to drive the global neuroscience market from 2021 to 2031.
Teleradiology Services Market: The global teleradiology services market was valued over US$ 6.4 Bn in 2020. It is projected to expand at a CAGR of 11% from 2021 to 2031. Shortage of radiologists globally, rise in number of specialty modalities, increase in global geriatric population, and technological advancements in teleradiology are estimated to propel the global teleradiology services market.
Central Lab Market: Central lab market was valued over US$ 2.4 Bn in 2019 and is projected to expand at a CAGR of ~6% from 2020 to 2030. Central labs are designed to provide services for supporting clinical trials for upcoming drugs, genetic testing services for various genetic diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, sickle cell anemia, and microbiology testing services such as testing the kinetics and growth of different microbes.
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Neurorehabilitation Devices Market to Advance at CAGR of 12.5%, Novel Approaches in Gamification through VR to Offer Lucrative Opportunities, Says TMR...
For many scientists, the desire to pursue research stems from an early love of learning and an abundance of curiosity and Isha Verma, Ph.D., a postdoctoral research fellow at the Michigan Neuroscience Institute, is no different.
Born and raised in India, Vermas interest in biomedical science began during her elementary school days.
I was always fascinated by the processes of development and disease, Verma said.
As she grew older, that interest grew more specific: I was particularly interested in understanding how aberrations in the normal developmental process can lead to disease manifestation.
This fascination carried through Vermas undergraduate years at Kurukshetra University, in the Indian state of Haryana. Thats where she had her first experience conducting diverse biological research projects, from detecting Rotavirus infection in children to estimating the antioxidant abilities of plant extracts. These early research endeavors, coupled with training experiences at a diagnostic laboratory and a premier vaccine manufacturing institute in India, sparked an appreciation for how basic science discoveries can lead to translational outcomes.
They solidified my interest in pursuing research, particularly in a field with high translational potential, Verma said.
Her passion leads to Ann Arbor
Driven by her research, Verma began her Ph.D. studies at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India, where she trained in a lab focused on early mammalian development. There, she had her first foray into stem cell research and she has been hooked ever since.
I started my Ph.D. project on stem cells and completely fell in love with the system, Verma said. Stem cells can form all the cell types found in the human body; they provide a unique model to study development, cell lineage specification and disease progression.
Her graduate research centered on neural differentiation. She also worked to generate a stem cell model of Huntingtons disease.
When it was time to look for a postdoctoral position, Verma sought out opportunities that would satisfy her immense passion for stem cell research, craving for new experiences and a desire to expand her comfort zone.
I wanted to look for postdoctoral opportunities to get further training in stem cell research, specifically stem cell-based neural disease modeling. I also wanted to experience working in a diverse scientific environment, Verma said.
For her, there was no better place in the world than Ann Arbor and Michigan Medicine.
She was drawn to the collaborative environment at U-M and its multiple labs working on different areas of stem cell research. The schools career and professional development opportunities for postdocs were a bonus, offering Verma a chance to network with professionals in various fields and learn from their experiences.
In terms of her research, Verma has stayed true to her stem cell roots. As a member of the Parent Lab, she is studying the genetic underpinnings of epilepsy, a neurological disorder that results in abnormal brain activity and seizures.
Verma noted that, down the line, such research could facilitate the development of personalized treatment therapies for epilepsy patients. One day, she hopes to be on the front lines of this development working as a translational researcher to generate stem cell therapies for managing and treating various neurological disorders.
Varied interests beyond the lab
While Vermas scientific interests are stem cell-centric, her passions beyond the lab are diverse. She enjoys learning about the history and culture of various places, whether by traveling (she particularly likes taking solo adventures) or visiting museums.
Additionally, she has a knack for science communication and teaching. Verma has written articles for multiple media outlets and serves as a course instructor for Developing Future Biologists, an organization that aims to provide fundamental developmental biology training to underserved undergraduate students.
Besides these teaching and writing endeavors, Vermas outreach efforts include improving the training experience of international postdocs at Michigan Medicine. As the chair of the international affairs committee of the U-M Postdoctoral Association (UMPDA), she has spearheaded numerous initiatives geared toward international postdocs, such as organizing visa, financial and grant information seminars.
These experiences have allowed Verma to advocate for and make a difference in the lives of her fellow postdocs.
Ultimately, as she said, her time at Michigan Medicine and working with UMPDA has been an incredible experience: Everyone here has really helped me to develop a community of support.
This is the first in a series of profiles of postdoctoral and graduate students at Michigan Medicine. Stay tuned to Headlines for more in the weeks and months ahead!
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Points of Blue: Isha Verma, Ph.D., brings global perspective to Michigan Medicine - Michigan Medicine Headlines