.png)
Neuroscience: A way to understand how the mind works
To relate the physical brain to the conceptual mind is what cognitive neuroscience does. It is a mixture of neuroscience and cognitive psychology. The latter has to do with knowledge of higher functions, such as memory, language and attention.
Recently developed technicians have enabled new research in this field. Studies of neuroradiology have enabled the task of linking concrete structures to different functions. A tool is especially useful here: functional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI.
Tools like transcranial magnet stimulation have also been developed to treat various pathological conditions.
The beginning of neuroscience
You can not talk about the beginning of neuroscience without mentioning Santiago Ramon Y Cajal, the creator of the neuron's doctrine. His contribution to problems with development, deterioration and regeneration of nervous systems is important today, and researchers constantly add things to his work.
If you have to set a date for the birth of neuroscience, it would be in the 19th century.
The discipline was developed along with the development of the microscope. Experimental techniques, such as staining of tissues, and research on the structure and functionality of the nervous system also helped.
But neuroscience and our understanding of how the brain works has grown from many areas of knowledge. One can say that many discoveries in neuroscience are multidisciplinary.
Anatomy, which is responsible for locating all complex internal parts of the body, has contributed significantly. Physiology has focused on how the body works. Pharmacology has in turn focused on external substances and their effects on the body as well as our biochemistry, using substances that are secreted by the body itself, as neurotransmitters.
Psychology has also made important contributions to neuroscience in the form of theories of behavior and thinking. Over the years, however, psychology has moved away from this location. This perspective believed that each area of the brain had a specific function.
Now, researchers have a more functional perspective, in order to understand the overall function of the brain.
Cognitive Neuroscience
Neuroscience is a wide scientific field. It includes everything from fundamental research into applied research that works with the consequences of underlying behavioral mechanisms. In neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience wants to understand how higher functions, such as language, memory and decision making, work.
Cognitive neuroscience focuses on the neuronal substrates in the mental processes. In other words, what influence does our behavior and our thoughts on the brain have? We have detected specific areas of the brain responsible for sensory and motor functions, but these constitute only a quarter of our total cortex.
The associated areas do not have a specific function. Instead, they are responsible for interpreting, integrating and coordinating sensory and motor functions. This makes them responsible for high mental functions. The brain areas that control functions like memory, thinking, emotion, awareness and personality are much more difficult to locate.
The memory has a connection to the hippocampus, which you find in the middle of the brain. When it comes to emotions, we know that the limbic system controls thirst and hunger (hypotalamus), aggression (amygdala) and emotions generally.
It is in cortex as the brain integrates cognitive abilities. This is where our consciousness is generated, where we establish relationships and perform complex thinking.
The brain and feelings
An area like cognitive neuroscience has helped us understand feelings. Feelings are important in all people. Everyone we experience them. We express emotions through motor changes and stereotypical somatic and motor responses, especially face movements.
Traditionally, the research attributes feelings to the limbic system. This is still seen as truth, but we have discovered that other regions of the brain are also involved.
These other areas include amygdala as well as the circumferential and medial aspects of the frontal lobe. These regions work together to form an emotional motor system. The same structures that process emotional signals participate in other tasks, such as rational decision making and even moral assessments.
Motor nuclei and somatic motor neurons coordinate how we express feelings. Feelings and activation of autonomic nervous system are intimately linked.
Knowing some kind of feeling, such as fear or surprise, would be possible without experiencing increased heart rhythm, sweating, chills ... It's a part of what makes those feelings so rich.
Feelings are an adaptive tool that informs others about our state of mind. Commonities have been demonstrated in how people express joy, sorrow, anger, etc. Research has actually observed similarities across different cultures. It is one of the ways we communicate and feel empathy for others.
The memory, the storage of the brain
An area that cognitive neuroscience manages is memory. Memory is a basic psychological process involving codification, storage and retrieval of learned information. The importance of memory in our daily lives has motivated much research on the subject.
Forgetting is also a central theme for many studies, as many pathological problems come with amnesia, which seriously affects people's daily lives.
The reason why our memory is so important is that it is our identity. But while it is true that forgetfulness from a pathological point of view is worrying, it is also true that the brain must throw useless information to make room for new ones. One can call the brain an expert in recycling.
Neutral switches change according to how a person uses or does not use memory. When we retain information but do not use it, nervous connections will begin to weaken and eventually disappear.
As we learn something new, new connections will be created. Everything we learn that can be associated with existing memories will be much easier to remember.
Our understanding of how memory works is significantly increased following a study of people with a very special type of amnesia. It helped us to better understand the short-term memory and the consolidation of declarative memory.
The most famous case is with H. M. He emphasized the importance of hippocampus to create new memories. But the cerebellum, primary motor cortex and basal ganglia control the motor memory.
Languages and numbers
Cognitive neuroscience also has a lot to say about language. Language is an ability that separates us from other animals. The ability to communicate our thoughts and feelings with such precision and with so many shades makes languages our richest and most useful communication tools.
This characteristic, unique to our kind, has inspired a lot of research.
The performance of human culture is to some extent based on language. This because it enables accurate communication. Linguistic capacity is due to the integration of several specialized areas for association in the bark of the temporal and frontal loops. In most people there are primary language functions in the left hemisphere.
The right brain half takes care of the emotional content of the language. Specific damage to these regions of the brain can interfere with basic language functions and result in aphasia. Afasi is different from person to person. For example, it may include difficulties in articulation as well as problems in producing and understanding languages.
Neither language nor thought is supported by just one area of the brain. Instead, it is due to associations between different structures. Our brains work in such an organized and complex way that when we think or speak, it makes associations between areas.
Our prior knowledge influences new knowledge in a feedback system.
Major discoveries in neuroscience
To describe all important neurological studies is nothing we can do in this article. But the following discoveries are some of the most important because they completely changed how we looked at the brain's function and opened up new ways to investigate.
The following is a selection of important experimental research in cognitive neuroscience and general neuroscience.
Neurogenes (Eriksson, 1998). Until 1998, we thought that neurogens only occurred during the development of the nervous system. We thought that after this period, the nerve cells died, and no new ones were produced. But after Eriksson's findings, researchers discovered that neurogens occur even at high age. The brain is more plastic and formable than we previously thought.
Contact during education and cognitive and emotional development (Lupien, 2000). In this study, researchers discovered the importance of physical contact for babies during their education. Children who had little contact were more vulnerable to shortcomings in the cognitive functions. Depression and high stress situations affected their attention and memory more than other children.
Detection of mirror neurons (Rizzolatti, 2004). The ability of newborns to imitate gestures led to the start of this study. Mirror neurons, a type of nerve cell triggered when we see another person do something was discovered. These nerve cells promote not only imitation, but also empathy, and hence social relationships.
Cognitive Reserve (Petersen, 2009). The discovery of the cognitive reserve was an extremely important discovery. It postulates that the brain has the ability to compensate for damage to itself. Various factors, such as the years we studied, our work, habits and social networks, influence this ability. A high cognitive reserve can actually compensate for injuries from diseases such as Alzheimer's.
Framtiden för kognitiv neurovetenskap: ”The Human Brain Project”
The Human Brain Project (det mänskliga hjärnprojektet) finansieras av EU. Det ämnar att bygga en infrastruktur baserat på information- och kommunikationsteknologier (ICT). Denna infrastruktur skulle tillhandahålla forskare runtom i världen med en databas för fältet neurovetenskap. Målet är att utveckla sex plattformar baserat på ITC:
Neuroinformatik kommer tillhandahålla data från neurovetenskapliga studier från hela världen.
Hjärnsimulering kommer integrera informationen i förenade datormodeller för att utföra tester som inte kan utföras med människor.
Högpresterande uträkning kommer tillhandahålla interaktiv superdatorteknologi som neuroforskare behöver för datamodellering och simulering.
Neuroinformatikuträkning kommer omvandla hjärnmodellerna till en ny klass av hårdvaruenheter som testar deras applikationer.
Neurorobotik kommer tillåta forskare inom neurovetenskap och industri att experimentera med virtuella robotar som kontrolleras av hjärnmodeller som utvecklats i projektet.
Projektet startade i oktober 2013, och man uppskattar i dagsläget att det kommer ta tio år att färdigställa. Data som samlas i denna gigantiska databas kommer underlätta arbetet inom framtida forskning. Framsteg inom nya teknologier kommer låta forskarna förstå hjärnan på en högre nivå, även om denna forskning ännu har en lång väg att gå.
Bibliografi
Cavada, C. Sociedad Española de Neurociencia: Historia de la neurociencia. Recuperado de http://www.senc.es/es/antecedentes
Eriksson, P.S., Perfilieva E., Bjork-Eriksson T., Alborn A. M., Nordborg C., Peterson D.A., Gage F.H. (1998). Neurogenesis in the Adult Human Hippocampus. Nature Medicine.4(11), 1313–1317.
Kandell E.R., Schwartz J.H. y Jessell T.M.(2001) Principios de Neurociencia. Madrid: McGraw-Hill/Interamericana.
Lupien S.J., King S., Meaney M.J., McEwen B.S.(2000). Child’s stress hormone levels correlate with mother’s socioeconomic status and depressive state. Biological Psychiatry. 48, 976–980.
Purves, Augustine, Fitzpatrick, Hall, Lamantia, McNamara y Williams. (2007). Neurociencia(Tercera edición).Buenos Aires: Editorial Médica Panamericana.
Rizzolatti G., Craighero L. (2004).The mirror-neuron system. Annual Review of Neuroscience.27, 169–192.
Stern, Y. (2009). Cognitive reserve. Neuropsychologia, 47(10), 2015–2028. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2009.03.004
.jpg)
.jpeg)
هیچ نظری موجود نیست:
ارسال یک نظر