Zitat:Abstract

Binaural beats utilize a phenomenon that occurs within the cortex when two different frequencies are presented separately to each ear. This procedure produces a third phantom binaural beat, whose frequency is equal to the difference of the two presented tones and which can be manipulated for non-invasive brain stimulation. The effects of binaural beats on working memory, the system in control of temporary retention and online organization of thoughts for successful goal directed behavior, have not been well studied. Furthermore, no studies have evaluated the effects of binaural beats on brain connectivity during working memory tasks. In this study, we determined the effects of different acoustic stimulation conditions on participant response accuracy and cortical network topology, as measured by EEG recordings, during a visuospatial working memory task. Three acoustic stimulation control conditions and three binaural beat stimulation conditions were used: None, Pure Tone, Classical Music, 5Hz binaural beats, 10Hz binaural beats, and 15Hz binaural beats. We found that listening to 15Hz binaural beats during a visuospatial working memory task not only increased the response accuracy, but also modified the strengths of the cortical networks during the task. The three auditory control conditions and the 5Hz and 10Hz binaural beats all decreased accuracy. Based on graphical network analyses, the cortical activity during 15Hz binaural beats produced networks characteristic of high information transfer with consistent connection strengths throughout the visuospatial working memory task.

Zitat:Peganum harmala has been used for thousands of years in traditional medicine and religious rites. Recent phytopharmaceutical research has given credence to its traditional uses, demonstrating a wide range of potential therapeutic uses, including its use as antidepressant and anxiolytic agent. Entheogenic at high doses, P. harmala can create profound psychedelic experiences with lasting positive effects that echo those seen in research on other psychedelics. Anecdotal evidence from online forums suggests P. harmala may be able to provide results similar to microdosing other psychedelics, though no research exists on this potential. This paper presents the first evidence of P. harmala’s effects when used in a daily microdosing protocol.

Microdosing Peganum harmala (PDF Download Available). Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322234580_Microdosing_Peganum_harmala [accessed Mar 12 2018].

Zitat:Welcome to 2 minute neuroscience, where I explain neuroscience topics in 2 minutes or less. In this installment I will discuss acetylcholine.

Acetylcholine was the first neurotransmitter discovered, and is named for the two substances used to synthesize it: the nutrient choline and the enzyme acetyl coenzyme A.

Neurons that contain acetylcholine are called cholinergic. There are several clusters of cholinergic neurons throughout the brain. Some are found in the basal forebrain; they include the medial septal nucleus, the nucleus of the diagonal band, and the nucleus basalis. Others are found in the brainstem, including the pedunculopontine nucleus and laterodorsal tegmental nucleus.

Acetylcholine acts on two families of receptors, and each receptor family has several subtypes. One family is ionotropic; they are called nicotinic acetylcholine receptors because nicotine also binds to and activates the receptors. Their activation generally results in excitation of the neuron. Another family is metabotropic. These are called muscarinic acetylcholine receptors because a substance called muscarine binds to them; their effects depend on the subtype of the receptor.

The action of acetylcholine in the synapse is terminated by an enzyme called acetylcholinesterase, which breaks acetylcholine down into acetate and choline. The choline is then transported back into neurons to synthesize more acetylcholine.

Acetylcholine has a variety of functions in the nervous system. It is the main neurotransmitter used at neuromuscular junctions, and is responsible for muscle contraction. It is also widely used in the autonomic nervous system. Its functions in the brain are still not fully understood, but it does appear to play important roles in memory, arousal, and attention.

REFERENCES:

Kandel ER, Schwartz JH, Jessell TM 2000. Principles of Neural Science. 5th ed. New York. McGraw-Hill; 2013.

Purves D, Augustine GJ, Fitzpatrick D, Hall WC, Lamantia AS, McNamara JO, White LE. Neuroscience. 4th ed. Sunderland, MA. Sinauer Associates; 2008.

Zitat:Re-experiencing old dreams while being wide awake might seem like some kind of fiction, but a new study revealed that it's possible. Researchers at Toulouse University Hospital in France found that stimulating the temporal lobe – part of the brain that's responsible for long-term memory and dreaming – can allow the person to relive the experiences they've had in the sleep.

Zitat:According to Horowitz’s results, which will be presented this week at the Computer-Human Interface conference in Montreal, although not all of the subjects remembered what they said to the robot, all of them “remembered and reported seeing the prompt word during their dream state, showing successful inception and recall of stimuli into said dream state.”
“This means we have a kind of workable system for dream control,” Horowitz told me.
But Dormio isn’t just about manipulating dreams. Horowitz wanted to see if having conscious access to these microdreams would result in the creativity “boost” that was so coveted by Edison and others.
When Horowitz’s subjects finished three rounds with Dormio, they were administered an “Alternative Uses Task,” which Horowitz described as a “classic test of creativity.” As its name suggests, this test asked the participants to imagine alternative uses for the word they were prompted with, either a rabbit or a fork. The volunteers were also asked to write a creative story based around the word prompt.


Although creativity is notoriously difficult to measure in any objective way, the results from the control and Dormio tests showed signs of a creativity boost among Horowitz’s volunteers. They spent an average of 158 seconds longer working on their creative story after experiencing hypnagogia and five of the six volunteers scored higher on their alternative use task after using Dormio than during the control test. In self reports, four of the volunteers said that the ideas generated during hypnagogia felt creative.

“Ideas were not coming from me, they were just passing through my head,” one subject reported. “I felt I was nowhere really, in this kind of nowhere space where all of these ideas exist, and it made so much sense that all these ideas existed in this nowhere space.”

Zitat:Interregional synaptic maps among engram cells underlie memory formation

Memory resides in engram cells distributed across the brain. However, the site-specific substrate within these engram cells remains theoretical, even though it is generally accepted that synaptic plasticity encodes memories. We developed the dual-eGRASP (green fluorescent protein reconstitution across synaptic partners) technique to examine synapses between engram cells to identify the specific neuronal site for memory storage. We found an increased number and size of spines on CA1 engram cells receiving input from CA3 engram cells. In contextual fear conditioning, this enhanced connectivity between engram cells encoded memory strength. CA3 engram to CA1 engram projections strongly occluded long-term potentiation. These results indicate that enhanced structural and functional connectivity between engram cells across two directly connected brain regions forms the synaptic correlate for memory formation.

Zitat:Vererbt wird dabei allerdings nicht ein präziser IQ-Wert, sondern ein Entwicklungsrahmen, innerhalb derer sich die Intelligenz ausprägen kann.
[...]
Wie  man  in  der  Tabelle [Korrelationsfaktoren verschiedener Einflüsse auf den IQ]  erkennen  kann,  liegt  der  Einfluss  der  Gene  auf  die  Intelligenz bei  20  -  25  %,  der  Einfluss  der  Umwelt  hingegen  liegt  bei  75  - 80  %.

(09.05.2018, 21:29)gnutl schrieb: Wir haben mehrere verschiedene IQ-Modelle gelernt... dass fluide Intelligenz komplett vererbt wäre, hat aber niemand gelehrt, teilweise halt, so wie eh quasi alles teilweise auch vererbt ist. Wir bestehen halt aus biologischer Masse - aber meistens überschätzen die Leute den Einfluss der Gene eher.

Joa - sowohl die Idee, Intelligenz in einer einzigen Zahl erfassen zu wollen, als auch erst recht die Idee, daran ableiten zu wollen, wie wertvoll ein Menschenleben ist, ist mir mittlerweile sehr suspekt. Ein IQ-Test misst die Fähigkeit, zu einem bestimmten Zeitpunkt in einer bestimmten Verfassung eine bestimmte Folge von Logikrätseln zu lösen. That's it.

(13.05.2018, 08:40)Uefken schrieb: Brot82 hat es verstanden. Dieses ganze herumvalidiere ist für den Arsch! Siehe Anastasi!

(09.05.2018, 20:43)Uefken schrieb: Pygar, du hattest doch mal eine Studie vorgestellt, die zeigte, dass Intelligenz plastisch ist.

Wir bekommen beigebracht, es gäbe eine vererbte unveränderliche fluide Intelligenz. Doch das ist nicht nur rechts und menschenverachtend, sondern schlichtweg falsch:

http://www.bdwi.de/forum/archiv/archiv/8505875.html

Zitat:Michael Melnychuk, PhD candidate at the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity, and lead author of the study, explained:  “Practitioners of yoga have claimed for some 2,500 years, that respiration influences the mind. In our study we looked for a neurophysiological link that could help explain these claims by measuring breathing, reaction time, and brain activity in a small area in the brainstem called the locus coeruleus, where noradrenaline is made. Noradrenaline is an all-purpose action system in the brain. When we are stressed we produce too much noradrenaline and we can’t focus. When we feel sluggish, we produce too little and again, we can't focus. There is a sweet spot of noradrenaline in which our emotions, thinking and memory are much clearer.”

“This study has shown that as you breathe in locus coeruleus activity is increasing slightly, and as you breathe out it decreases. Put simply this means that our attention is influenced by our breath and that it rises and falls with the cycle of respiration. It is possible that by focusing on and regulating your breathing you can optimise your attention level and likewise, by focusing on your attention level, your breathing becomes more synchronised.”

[...]

There are traditionally two types of breath-focused practices — those that emphasise focus on breathing (mindfulness), and those that require breathing to be controlled (deep breathing practices such as pranayama).  In cases when a person’s attention is compromised, practices which emphasise concentration and focus, such as mindfulness, where the individual focuses on feeling the sensations of respiration but make no effort to control them, could possibly be most beneficial. In cases where a person’s level of arousal is the cause of poor attention, for example drowsiness while driving, a pounding heart during an exam, or during a panic attack, it should be possible to alter the level of arousal in the body by controlling breathing. Both of these techniques have been shown to be effective in both the short and the long term.