Researchers develop way to 'fingerprint' the brain

Using a new imaging technique, researchers have confirmed what scientists have always thought to be true: the structural connections in the brain are unique to each individual person.

The Carnegie Mellon University-led team used diffusion MRI to map the brain's structural connections and found each person's connections are so unique they could identify a person based on this brain "fingerprint" with nearly perfect accuracy. Published in PLOS Computational Biology, the results also show the brain's that distinctiveness changes over time, which could help researchers determine how factors such as disease, the environment and different experiences impact the brain.

The new, non-invasive diffusion MRI approach captures the brain's connections at a much closer level than ever before. For example, conventional approaches obtain a single estimate of the integrity of a single structural connection, or a white matter fiber. The new technique measures the integrity along each segment of the brain's biological wires, making it much more sensitive to unique patterns.
"The most exciting part is that we can apply this new method to existing data and reveal new information that is already sitting there unexplored. The higher specificity allows us to reliably study how genetic and environmental factors shape the human brain over time, thereby opening a gate to understand how the human brain functions or dysfunctions," said Fang-Cheng (Frank) Yeh, the study's first author and assistant professor of neurological surgery at the University of Pittsburgh. Yeh completed the research while at CMU as a postdoctoral fellow in psychology. 

For the study, the researchers used diffusion MRI to measure the local connectome of 699 brains from five data sets. The local connectome is the point-by-point connections along all of the white matter pathways in the brain, as opposed to the connections between brain regions. To create a fingerprint, they took the data from the diffusion MRI and reconstructed it to calculate the distribution of water diffusion along the cerebral white matter's fibers.

The measurements revealed that the local connectome is highly unique to an individual and can be used as a personal marker for human identity. To test the uniqueness, the team ran more than 17,000 identification tests. With nearly 100 percent accuracy, they were able to tell whether two local connectomes, or brain "fingerprints," came from the same person or not.
Additionally, they discovered that identical twins only share about 12 percent of structural connectivity patterns and the brain's unique local connectome is sculpted over time, changing at an average rate of 13 percent every 100 days.

"This confirms something that we've always assumed in neuroscience -- that connectivity patterns in your brain are unique to you," said CMU's Timothy Verstynen, assistant professor of psychology. "This means that many of your life experiences are somehow reflected in the connectivity of your brain. Thus we can start to look at how shared experiences, for example poverty or people who have the same patholoigical disease, are reflected in your brain connections, opening the door for potential new medical biomarkers for certain health concerns."

In addition to Yeh and Verstynen, the research team included CMU's Aarti Singh and Barnabas Poczos, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory's Jean M. Vettel, the University of California, Santa Barbara's Scott T. Grafton, the University of Pittsburgh's Kirk I. Erickson and Wen-Yih I. Tseng of the National Taiwan University.

The Army Research Laboratory funded this research.

Developing a way to fingerprint the brain is one of the many brain research breakthroughs to happen at Carnegie Mellon. CMU has created some of the first cognitive tutors, helped to develop the Jeopardy-winning Watson, founded a groundbreaking doctoral program in neural computation, and is the birthplace of artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology. Building on its strengths in biology, computer science, psychology, statistics and engineering, CMU launched BrainHub, an initiative that focuses on how the structure and activity of the brain give rise to complex behaviors. 
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-11/cmu-rdw111416.php

QUANTUM MECHANICS REVEALS HOW WE ARE ALL TRULY CONNECTED

We all know, deep down, that we are all connected. But is this notion of being connected only a magical feeling or is it concrete fact? Quantum mechanics or the study of the micro-world states illustrates that what we think of reality, is not so. Our human brains trick us into believing in the idea of separation when in truth, nothing is truly separated —including human beings.

The Perception of Separation

As a species that grew and evolved to become one of the Earth’s most dominating forces, we came to believe that we were its greatest glory. Surely this thinking has slowly evaporated, but it still holds weight in today’s culture. But when we look into the atomic world with a magnifying lens, it becomes evident that we are not exactly what we thought we were. Our atoms and electrons are no more important or significant than the makeup of the oak tree outside your window, blowing in the wind. In fact, we are much less different from even the chair you sit on while you read this. The tricky part in all of this knowledge and wisdom that quantum mechanics has imparted to us, is that we don’t know where to draw the line. Primarily because the physiology of our brains prevents us from truly experiencing the universe as it is. Our perception is our reality; but it is not the universe’s.

The Basics of Quantum Theory

In order to truly understand what is happening at a sub-atomic level when we think of someone or when we feel the lightness of love for another; we must first bridge the gap between the micro-world and the macro-world. This is much easier said than done, because the micro-world operates under significantly different laws. String Theory states that our universe is made up of tiny little string particles and waves. These strings are the building blocks of the universe we experience, and make up the multiverse and the 11 dimensions that exist in the multiverse.

Quantum Entanglement’s Spooky Actions

So how do these tiny strings that bind the book of life, correlate to how we experience consciousness and affect the physical realm?
It was in 1935, that Albert Einstein and his coworkers discovered quantum entanglement lurking in the equations of quantum mechanics, and came realized how “spooky” and strange it truly was. This lead to the EPR paradox introduced by Einstein, Poldolsky and Rosen. The EPR paradox stated that the only ways of explaining the effects of quantum entanglement were to assume the universe is nonlocal, or that the true basis of physics is hidden (also known as a hidden-variable theory). What nonlocality means in this case, is that events occurring to entangled objects are linked even when the events cannot communicate through spacetime, spacetime having the speed of light as a limiting velocity.
Nonlocality is also known as spooky action at a distance (Einstein’s famous phrase for describing the phenomenon).
Think about it this way, when two atoms that come into contact with each other, they experience a sort of “unconditional bond” with one another. That spans an infinite amount of space, as far as we are capable of observing.
This discovery was so bizarre that even Albert Einstein went to his grave thinking that Quantum Entanglement was not real and simply a bizarre calculation of the universe’s workings.
Since Einstein’s days, there have been a multitude of experiments to test the validity of quantum entanglement, many of which supported the theory that when two particles come into contact, if one’s direction is changed, so too will the other.
In 2011, Nicolas Gisin at University of Geneva was one of the first humans to witness that very thing, a form of communication that went beyond the realm of space and time. Where there would typically be a medium like air or space for the atom to communicate what it was doing; during quantum entanglement there is no medium, communication is instantaneous. Through Gisin’s work in Switzerland, humans were physically capable of witnessing quantum entanglement through the use of photon particles for one of the first times in human history.

So What Does This Mean For Humans?

Senior scientist at Princeton University, Dr.Roger Nelson began a 14-year long study and organization called The Global Consciousness Project (GCP). The GCP uses electromagnetically-shielded computers (called “eggs”) placed in over 60 countries around the world that generate random numbers. Imagine that each computer (egg) is flipping a coin and trying to guess the outcome. With heads being counted as “1’s” and tails as “0’s”. Each time they guess correctly, they consider it a “hit”. The computers do this 100 times every second.
Based on probability, you would imagine that with enough attempts, the computers would break even at 50/50. And up until the catastrophic and rattling events of 9/11, that’s what was occurring. Randomness created by quantum physics, to the best of its ability.
After 9/11 occurred, the numbers that were once supposed to behave randomly, started working in unison. All of a sudden the “1’s” and “0’s” were coinciding and working in sync.  In fact, the GCP’s results were so far above chance it’s actually kind of shocking. Over the 426 pre-determined events measured in the entirety of the project, the recorded probability of a hit were greater than 1 in 2, far more than probability could explain. Their hits were measuring in at an overall probability of 1 in a million. 
Reminding the world and skeptics alike, that even quantum physics shows itself in the least likely of places.
So what this means on a psychological and philosophical field, is that what we once thought was a figment of our imagination is much more real than we could’ve ever imagined. When you touch someone’s heart, emotionally becoming attached to someone, something occurs. Your atoms, the building blocks of your presence in the universe become entangled.
Sure, most physicists will tell you it’s impossible to feel this entanglement, this “spooky” connection to another living being. But when you reflect on a past love or a mother’s inexplicable knowledge of their child in danger; then you really have to stop and look at the evidence. There is proof that we are all connected, and it has more to do with the creation of the universe than the simple fact that we are all humans.
It’s not magic, it’s quantum mechanics.

 http://www.learning-mind.com/quantum-mechanics-reveals-how-we-are-all-truly-connected/

A fasting-like diet with chemotherapy strips away the guard that protects breast cancer and skin cancer cells from the immune system, according to a new USC-led study on mice.
The study was published in the journal Cancer Cell on July 11, days after BMC Cancer published a separate study showing that a pilot trial of the three-day, fasting-like diet was “safe and feasible” for 18 cancer patients on chemotherapy.
Both studies were led by Valter Longo, professor and director of the USC Longevity Institute at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, who has found several health benefits of fasting-like diets, from weight loss to slowed aging. The clinical study was co-led by oncologist David Quinn of the Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

“The mouse study on skin and breast cancers is the first study to show that a diet that mimics fasting may activate the immune system and expose the cancer cells to the immune system,” Longo said. “This could be a very inexpensive way to make a wide range of cancer cells more vulnerable to an attack by the immune cells while also making the cancer more sensitive to the chemotherapy.”

The two studies’ findings build upon prior research that showed a short-term fast starves cancer cells and facilitates the chemo drug therapies to better target the cancer. Another more recent study showed that a low-calorie, fasting-mimicking diet can slow multiple sclerosis by killing off bad cells and generating new healthy ones.

The results of this latest mouse study are striking since chemotherapy’s side effects include immunosuppression. The researchers found that the fasting-mimicking diet, when used with chemotherapy drugs, raises the levels of bone marrow cells that generate immune system cells, such as T cells, B cells and “natural killer” cells that infiltrate tumors.

Deceptive T cells
In the mouse study, scientists saw another significant effect of the diet: the “T regulatory” cells which protect the cancer cells were expelled. The scientists traced this effect to a weakened enzyme, heme oxygenase or HO-1, inside the T regulatory cells’ mitochondria.

Prior research has indicated that HO-1 levels are often elevated in tumors and is linked to several cancers.
“While it’s more of a mechanism to keep the T cells away, in some ways the heme oxygenase tricks the immune system into thinking that the bad cells should not be killed,” Longo said. “By removing heme oxygenase, these T regulatory cells are also taken from the site of the cancer.”

In examining the effects on breast cancer, researchers found that putting the mice on four days of the low-calorie fasting-mimicking diet, with chemo drugs doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide, was as effective as two days of a water-only, short-term starvation diet. Both diets with the drugs slowed the growth of tumors while protecting healthy, normal cells. The scientists found similar effects on melanoma.

They also found three cycles of the fasting diet, combined with doxorubicin, prompted a 33 percent increase in the levels of cancer-fighting white blood cells and doubled the number of progenitor cells in the bone marrow. The cancer-killing cells were also more effective at attacking and shrinking the tumors.

The scientists found that short-term starvation (a two-day, water-only diet) and the low-calorie fasting-like diet in mice reduced the expression of the HO-1 gene in the T regulatory cells. This change made it easier for the chemotherapy drugs to attack the cancer.

Natural mechanism?
Longo said it’s unclear if the diet-prompted response in the immune system is an evolved mechanism to protect us from disease.

“It may be that by always being exposed to so much food, we are no longer taking advantage of natural protective systems which allow the body to kill cancer cells,” Longo said. “But by undergoing a fasting-mimicking diet, you are able to let the body use sophisticated mechanisms able to identify and destroy the bad but not good cells in a natural way.”

The mouse study’s first authors were Stefano Di Biasé and Changhan Lee, with co-authors Sebastian Brandhorst, Brianna Manes, Roberta Buono, Chia-Wei Cheng, Mafalda Cacciottolo, Alejandro Martin-Montalvo, Min Wei and Todd E. Morgan – all of the USC Longevity Institute; and Rafael de Cabo of the National Institute on Aging. The mouse study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (PO1 AG034906).

The results of the pilot trial suggested that even water-only fasting in combination with chemotherapy is safe for humans. The research team also found that 72 hours of fasting is associated with lower side effects, compared with fasting for 24 hours. This raises the possibility that a doctor-monitored, fasting-like diet could bolster the effectiveness of immunotherapy on a wider range of cancers.

The human pilot study was conducted by Assistant Professor Tanya Dorff and Associate Professor and Medical Director David Quinn of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

In addition to Longo, other co-authors were Susan Groshen, Huyen Pham and Denice Tsao-Wei of the Keck School of Medicine; Agustin Garcia and  Manali Shah of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center; as well as Chia Wei-Cheng, Sebastian Brandhorst, USC Davis School Dean Pinchas Cohen and Min Wei – all of the USC Longevity Institute. The study was supported by the V Foundation and the National Cancer Institute.

http://gero.usc.edu/2016/07/11/fasting-like-diet-turns-the-immune-system-against-cancer/

Dopamine is a so-called messenger substance or neurotransmitter that conveys signals between neurons. It not only controls mental and emotional responses but also motor reactions. Dopamine is particularly known as being the "happy hormone." It is responsible for our experiencing happiness. Even so-called adrenaline rushes, such as those experienced when playing sport, are based on the same pattern. Adrenaline is a close relative of dopamine. However, serious health problems can arise if too little or too much dopamine is being produced. If too few dopamine molecules are released, Parkinson's disease can develop, while an excess can lead to mania, hallucinations and schizophrenia.

"Dopamine release is also responsible for people becoming addicted, in that they are always seeking pleasure, so that they can reach higher and higher dopamine levels," explains Harald Sitte of MedUni Vienna's Institute of Pharmacology, speaking on the occasion of the Dopamine 2016 conference, which is taking place next week on the Vienna University campus and at MedUni Vienna's Center for Brain Research. "Dopamine is the reason why a lot of people are constantly seeking to satisfy their cravings."

According to Matthäus Willeit of MedUni Vienna's Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, who is organising the Dopamine conference together with Harald Sitte, "excessive dopamine release at the wrong moment can cause insignificant things to take on an unwarranted significance. This can even result in mania, hallucinations or even schizophrenia." It is not yet clear how this excessive release occurs and specific research is being conducted at MedUni Vienna to find out.

However, Oleh Hornykiewicz of the Center for Brain Research at MedUni Vienna has managed to explain one cause of Parkinson's disease: The working group led by the multiple award-winning scientist found a lack of dopamine in certain areas of the brain and identified it as the trigger for the disease. Sitte explains that Hornykiewicz was also able to show that one cannot simply "top up" dopamine, whereupon he developed a sort of "precursor top-up," Levodopa (L-Dopa), a precursor of dopamine. This serves to increase the dopamine concentration in the cerebral basal cells.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160831085320.htm

How does post-traumatic stress disorder change the brain?

Child abuse. Rape. Sexual assault. Brutal physical attack. Being in a war and witnessing violence, bloodshed, and death from close quarters. Near death experiences. These are extremely traumatic events, and some victims bear the scars for life.
The physical scars heal, but some emotional wounds stop the lives of these people dead in their tracks. They are afraid to get close to people or form new relationships. Change terrifies them, and they remain forever hesitant to express their needs or give vent to their creative potential. It may not be always apparent, but post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) stifles the life force out of its victims. It is no use telling them to “get over” it because PTSD fundamentally changes the brain’s structure and alters its functionalities.

What goes on inside the brains of people with PTSD?
PTSD is painful and frightening. The memories of the event linger and victims often have vivid flashbacks. Frightened and traumatized, they are almost always on edge and the slightest of cues sends them hurtling back inside their protective shells. Usually victims try to avoid people, objects, and situations that remind them of their hurtful experiences; this behavior is debilitating and prevents them from living their lives meaningfully. 

Many victims forget the details of the incident, obviously in an attempt to lessen the blow. But this coping mechanism has negative repercussions as well. Without accepting and reconciling with “reality,” they turn into fragmented souls.

Extensive neuroimaging studies on the brains of PTSD patients show that several regions differ structurally and functionally from those of healthy individuals. The amygdala, the hippocampus, and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex play a role in triggering the typical symptoms of PTSD. These regions collectively impact the stress response mechanism in humans, so the PTSD victim, even long after his experiences, continues to perceive and respond to stress differently than someone who is not suffering the aftermaths of trauma.

Effect of trauma on the hippocampus
The most significant neurological impact of trauma is seen in the hippocampus. PTSD patients show a considerable reduction in the volume of the hippocampus. This region of the brain is responsible for memory functions. It helps an individual to record new memories and retrieve them later in response to specific and relevant environmental stimuli. The hippocampus also helps us distinguish between past and present memories.

PTSD patients with reduced hippocampal volumes lose the ability to discriminate between past and present experiences or interpret environmental contexts correctly. Their particular neural mechanisms trigger extreme stress responses when confronted with environmental situations that only remotely resemble something from their traumatic past. This is why a sexual assault victim is terrified of parking lots because she was once raped in a similar place. A war veteran still cannot watch violent movies because they remind him of his trench days; his hippocampus cannot minimize the interference of past memories.

Effect of trauma on the ventromedial prefrontal cortex
Severe emotional trauma causes lasting changes in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex region of the brain that is responsible for regulating emotional responses triggered by the amygdala. Specifically, this region regulates negative emotions like fear that occur when confronted with specific stimuli. PTSD patients show a marked decrease in the volume of ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the functional ability of this region. This explains why people suffering from PTSD tend to exhibit fear, anxiety, and extreme stress responses even when faced with stimuli not connected – or only remotely connected – to their experiences from the past.

Effect of trauma on the amygdala
Trauma appears to increase activity in the amygdala. This region of the brain helps us process emotions and is also linked to fear responses. PTSD patients exhibit hyperactivity in the amygdala in response to stimuli that are somehow connected to their traumatic experiences. They exhibit anxiety, panic, and extreme stress when they are shown photographs or presented with narratives of trauma victims whose experiences match theirs; or made to listen to sounds or words related to their traumatic encounters.

What is interesting is that the amygdala in PTSD patients may be so hyperactive that these people exhibit fear and stress responses even when they are confronted with stimuli not associated with their trauma, such as when they are simply shown photographs of people exhibiting fear.
The hippocampus, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and the amygdala complete the neural circuitry of stress. The hippocampus facilitates appropriate responses to environmental stimuli, so the amygdala does not go into stress mode. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex regulates emotional responses by controlling the functions of the amygdala. It is thus not surprising that when the hypoactive hippocampus and the functionally-challenged ventromedial prefrontal cortex stop pulling the chains, the amygdala gets into a tizzy.

Hyperactivity of the amygdala is positively related to the severity of PTSD symptoms. The aforementioned developments explain the tell-tale signs of PTSD—startle responses to the most harmless of stimuli and frequent flashbacks or intrusive recollections.

Researchers believe that the brain changes caused by PTSD increase the likelihood of a person developing other psychotic and mood disorders. Understanding how PTSD alters brain chemistry is critical to empathize with the condition of the victims and devise treatment methods that will enable them to live fully and fulfill their true potential.

But in the midst of such grim findings, scientists also sound a note of hope for PTSD patients and their loved ones. According to them, by delving into the pathophysiology of PTSD, they have also realized that the disorder is reversible. The human brain can be re-wired. In fact, drugs and behavioral therapies have been shown to increase the volume of the hippocampus in PTSD patients. The brain is a finely-tuned instrument. It is fragile, but it is heartening to know that the brain also has an amazing capacity to regenerate.

http://brainblogger.com/2015/01/24/how-does-post-traumatic-stress-disorder-change-the-brain/

Hundreds of genes seen sparking to life two days after death!

The discovery that many genes are still working up to 48 hours after death has implications for organ transplants, forensics and our very definition of death!

When a doctor declares a person dead, some of their body may still be alive and kicking – at least for a day or two. New evidence in animals suggests that many genes go on working for up to 48 hours after the lights have gone out.

This hustle and bustle has been seen in mice and zebrafish, but there are hints that genes are also active for some time in deceased humans. This discovery could have implications for the safety of organ transplants as well as help pathologists pinpoint a time of death more precisely, perhaps to within minutes of the event.
 

Peter Noble and Alex Pozhitkov at the University of Washington, Seattle, and their colleagues investigated the activity of genes in the organs of mice and zebrafish immediately after death. They did this by measuring the amount of messenger RNA present. An increase in this mRNA – which genes use to tell cells to make products such as proteins – indicates that genes are more active.

As you might expect, overall mRNA levels decreased over time. However, mRNA associated with 548 zebrafish genes and 515 mouse genes saw one or more peaks of activity after death. This meant there was sufficient energy and cellular function for some genes to be switched on and stay active long after the animal died.

These genes cycled through peaks and dips in activity in a “non-winding down” manner, unlike the chaotic behaviour of the rest of the decaying DNA, says Noble.
Hundreds of genes with different functions “woke up” immediately after death. These included fetal development genes that usually turn off after birth, as well as genes that have previously been associated with cancer. Their activity peaked about 24 hours after death.

A similar process might occur in humans. Previous studies have shown that various genes, including those involved in contracting heart muscle and wound healing, were active more than 12 hours after death in humans who had died from multiple trauma, heart attack or suffocation (Forensic Science International, doi.org/bj63).

The fact that some genes associated with cancer are activated after death in animals, might be relevant for reducing the incidence of cancer in people who receive organ transplants, says Noble. People who get a new liver, for example, have more cancers after the treatment than you would expect if they hadn’t had a transplant. The regime of drugs they need to take for life to suppress their immune system so it doesn’t attack the new organ may contribute to this, but Noble says it is worth investigating if activated cancer genes in the donor liver could play a part.

So why do so many genes wake up after death? It is possible that many of the genes become active as part of physiological processes that aid healing or resuscitation after severe injury. For example, after death, some cells might have enough energy to kick-start genes involved in the inflammation process to protect against damage – just as they would if the body were alive. Alternatively, a rapid decay of genes that normally suppress other genes – such as those involved in embryological development – might allow the usually quiet genes to become active for a short period of time.

For forensic scientists, knowing how gene activity rises and falls at different time points after death is useful for working out when someone died. Measuring mRNA would allow us to nail down the time since death to hours and possibly even minutes, rather than days, helping to reconstruct events surrounding the death.

It is good to see such progress being made in this area, says Graham Williams, consultant forensic geneticist at the University of Huddersfield, UK. “But substantial work is required before this could be applied to case work.” The research also raises important questions about our definition of death – normally accepted as the cessation of a heartbeat, brain activity and breathing. If genes can be active up to 48 hours after death, is the person technically still alive at that point? “Clearly, studying death will provide new information on the biology of life,” says Noble.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2094644-hundreds-of-genes-seen-sparking-to-life-two-days-after-death/

A GRATEFUL HEART IS A HEALTHIER HEART

Recognizing and giving thanks for the positive aspects of life can result in improved mental, and ultimately physical, health in patients with asymptomatic heart failure, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

“We found that more gratitude in these patients was associated with better mood, better sleep, less fatigue and lower levels of inflammatory biomarkers related to cardiac health,” said lead author Paul J. Mills, PhD, professor of family medicine and public health at the University of California, San Diego. The study was published in the journal Spirituality in Clinical Practice^®.

Gratitude is part of a wider outlook on life that involves noticing and appreciating the positive aspects of life. It can be attributed to an external source (e.g., a pet), another person or a non-human (e.g., God). It is also commonly an aspect of spirituality, said Mills. Because previous research has shown that people who considered themselves more spiritual had greater overall well-being, including physical health, Mills and his colleagues examined the role of both spirituality and gratitude on potential health markers in patients.

The study involved 186 men and women who had been diagnosed with asymptomatic (Stage B) heart failure for at least three months. Stage B consists of patients who have developed structural heart disease (e.g., have had a heart attack that damaged the heart) but do not show symptoms of heart failure (e.g., shortness of breath or fatigue). This stage is an important therapeutic window for halting disease progression and improving quality of life since Stage B patients are at high risk of progressing to symptomatic (Stage C) heart failure, where risk of death is five times higher, according to Mills.

Using standard psychological tests, the researchers obtained scores for gratitude and spiritual well-being. They then compared those scores with the patients’ scores for depressive symptom severity, sleep quality, fatigue, self-efficacy (belief in one’s ability to deal with a situation) and inflammatory markers. They found higher gratitude scores were associated with better mood, higher quality sleep, more self-efficacy and less inflammation. Inflammation can often worsen heart failure.

What surprised the researchers about the findings, though, was that gratitude fully or partially accounted for the beneficial effects of spiritual well-being.

“We found that spiritual well-being was associated with better mood and sleep, but it was the gratitude aspect of spirituality that accounted for those effects, not spirituality per se,” said Mills.

To further test their findings, the researchers asked some of the patients to write down three things for which they were thankful most days of the week for eight weeks. Both groups continued to receive regular clinical care during that time.

“We found that those patients who kept gratitude journals for those eight weeks showed reductions in circulating levels of several important inflammatory biomarkers, as well as an increase in heart rate variability while they wrote. Improved heart rate variability is considered a measure of reduced cardiac risk,” said Mills.

“It seems that a more grateful heart is indeed a more healthy heart, and that gratitude journaling is an easy way to support cardiac health.”

Article: “The Role of Gratitude in Spiritual Well-Being in Asymptomatic Heart Failure Patients,” by Paul J. Mills, PhD, and Deepak Chopra, MD, University of California, San Diego, and Chopra Center for Wellbeing, Carlsbad, California; Laura Redwine, PhD, Kathleen Wilson, MS, Meredith A. Pung, PhD, Kelly Chin, BS, Barry H. Greenberg, MD, Ottar Lunde, MD, Alan Maisel, MD, and Ajit Raisinghani, MD, University of California, San Diego; and Alex Wood, PhD, University of Stirling. Spirituality in Clinical Practice, published online April 6, 2015.

http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2015/04/grateful-heart.aspx

SHORT-TERM FASTING MAY IMPROVE HEALTH

After years of fasting, the Buddha’s “legs were like bamboo sticks, his backbone was like a rope, his chest was like an incomplete roof of a house, his eyes sank right inside, like stones in a deep well,” according to one account. The Buddha didn’t get what he wanted from this extreme fasting—enlightenment—but a new study suggests that a diet that replicates some effects of milder deprivation may not only lower your weight but also confer other benefits. Researchers report that following the diet for just 5 days a month improves several measures of health, including reducing the risk of developing cardiovascular disease.

Eating shortens life, and not just because overindulgence can lead to diseases such as diabetes. A diet that cuts food intake by up to 40%, known as calorie restriction, increases longevity in a variety of organisms and forestalls cancer, heart disease, and other late-life illnesses. Although some short-term studies suggest that calorie restriction provides metabolic benefits to people, nobody has confirmed that it also increases human life span. The closest researchers have come are two large, long-term studies of monkeys, and they conflict about whether meager rations increase longevity.

Even if calorie restriction could add years to our lives, almost no one can muster the willpower to eat so little day after day, year after year. An alternative that might be more, er, palatable is fasting, the temporary abstinence from food. Gerontological researcher Valter Longo of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and colleagues have shown that fasting eases side effects of chemotherapy such as fatigue and weakness, and animal studies suggest that it produces health advantages similar to calorie restriction.
But hard-core fasting, in which people drink only water for days at a time, may be no easier than calorie restriction. “I’ve done it, and it was excruciating,” Longo says. For the new study he and his colleagues devised a less grueling diet that might still trigger the benefits of fasting. For two 4-day periods each month, middle-aged mice dined on low-protein, low-calorie chow. The rest of the month, they could nosh as much as they wanted.

The mice outlived their peers by an average of 3 months, a substantial amount for the rodents, and they displayed numerous signs of better health. As the researchers report online today in Cell Metabolism, the mice shed fat and were 45% less likely to fall victim to cancer. During their lean cuisine episodes, their level of blood sugar fell by 40% and the amount of insulin in the blood was 90% lower. And although brainpower usually declines with age, the mice retained more of their mental ability; they bested control animals in two kinds of memory tests, perhaps because they produced more new neurons in the hippocampus, a brain area crucial for memory.

Longo and colleagues also uncovered evidence that the regimen boosted the animals’ capacity to restore and replenish their tissues. “That’s the most exciting” finding, Longo says. For instance, regeneration of the liver was quicker in the fasting animals, and the balance of different types of cells in their blood was more youthful. The numbers of certain stem cells also soared in the dieting rodents.
To determine whether occasional austerity might have the same impact on people, the researchers whipped up a menu of energy bars, soups, teas, and chips. One day’s fare furnishes between 725 and 1090 calories. “It’s not like eating ravioli, but it is better than going without,” Longo says. (The average adult man in America needs about 2000 to 3000 calories daily; people following calorie restriction may limit themselves to as few as 1200 calories.)

Much like the mice, the volunteers in the study followed the diet for 5 days straight and then returned to their usual dining habits for the rest of the month. In their paper, the researchers report the results for the first group of 19 subjects to try this “fasting mimicking” regimen and for 19 controls.

Only three rounds of alternating between the diet and normal eating appeared to improve the participants’ physical condition, reducing blood glucose, trimming abdominal fat, and cutting levels of a protein associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. Longo and colleagues also detected a slight rise in the abundance of some stem cells in the blood, suggesting that the diet might promote regeneration in humans. “We think that what the fasting mimicking diet does is rejuvenate,” Longo says.

Other researchers say the results of the study are encouraging. “This single dietary change can counteract all these variables of aging, and I think that’s very impressive,” says molecular biologist Christopher Hine of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. The study shows that cutting calories all the time may not be necessary, adds biochemist James Mitchell, also of the Harvard School of Public Health. “Intermittent periods can have lasting effects.”
The new diet may also be more practical. “Calorie restriction has failed miserably in human trials” because it’s so hard to stick to, says gerontologist Rafael de Cabo of the U.S. National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, Maryland, who leads one of the monkey studies of calorie restriction. A regimen like the researchers use “is achievable,” he says.

Longo and colleagues have already completed a larger clinical trial of the diet with more than 80 subjects. Fasting like the Buddha is dangerous, and even the fasting mimicking diet could be harmful for some people, such as diabetics, Longo notes. Researchers need to study how the regimen works, who might benefit, and who might be harmed by it, Mitchell notes. “There is a lot of information to figure out.”

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/06/short-term-fasting-may-improve-health

Science of Awakening

Introduction. Recent advances in brain research using brain imaging techniques such as SPECT, fMRI and EEG have indicated that the human brain is already hard wired for enlighten­ment. It seems that the brain, over millions of years of evolu­tion, has been prepared for the experien­ce of unity with Cosmos or oneness with God.

Andrew Newberg, professor of nuclear medicine at the University of Pennsylva­nia, is author of the acclaimed book ‘Why God Won’t Go Away’. In an attempt to bridge science and spirit Newberg studied eight Tibetan Buddhist practitioners during meditation using SPECT scan. The images he captured showed that the brain’s prefrontal cortex during deep meditation lit up in a red color indicating an increase in blood flow and neural activity in that area. At the same time, surpri­sing­ly, the upper rear part of the brain called the parietal area turned a dark blue shade indicating a sudden drop of brain activity in that area which Newberg calls the Orientation Association Area (OAA).

Newberg theorizes that when the medi­tator withdraws from the outside world, sensory input to the OAA is blocked and the neural activity in that area is shut down. At the same time due to the intense concentration (on a mantra, on God or guru) the prefrontal cortex or the Attention Association Area (AAA) is strongly acti­vated and will now assume the role as the brain’s new experiential center. 

The OAA is the area which gives us the ability to orient ourselves in space and time and which gives our bodies a sense of physical limits and the self a sense of separateness from the rest of the uni­verse. When the OAA is deactivated the physical limits of the body and the sense of separateness disappears. The brain can no longer create a boun­dar­y between self and the outside world, or locate itself in physical reality. As a result, Newberg says, the brain has no choice but to perceive that self as end­less, interwoven with everyone and everything.  This is the state Newberg calls Absolute Unitary Being. We prefer to call it the Oneness State.

Newberg’s research suggests that the process of awakening is not only due to psycholo­gical change or a change in philosophy and values. No, it is primarily due to a fundamental change in brain function with a shift in brain dominance from the parietal (OAA) to the prefrontal (AAA) area. When the over-activity in the OAA is decrea­sed and the under-activity in the AAA is increased, there is a shift of the brain’s com­mand center and the individual wakes up to a higher level of consci­ous­­ness and to a new reality which seems to be even more real than the old one. 

Richard Davidson. Some of Newberg’s findings have been corroborated by neuro­scientist Richard David­son, University of Wisconsin. Davidson collaborated with Tibet’s Dalai Lama who sent eight of his most accomplished meditators to Davidson’s laboratory for a scientific study. 

Using both EEG and fMRI scans, Davidson studied the monks during deep medi­ta­tion and found very high activity in the prefrontal cortex - especially on the left side which has to do with feelings of joy, happiness and compassion. The EEG recordings during deep meditation showed extre­mely powerful Gamma waves in that same area of the brain.
  
Since there were no detailed descriptions of the monks’ levels of spiritual development in the above studies we have no idea whether any of them were in a permanent awakened state. 

 http://www.newbrainnewworld.com/?Science_of_Awakening

New Evidence Points to Personal Brain Signatures

Everyone's brain is different. Until recently neuroscience has tended to gloss this over by averaging results from many brain scans in trying to elicit general truths about how the organ works. But in a major development within the field researchers have begun documenting how brain activity differs between individuals. Such differences had been largely thought of as transient and uninteresting but studies are starting to show that they are innate properties of people's brains, and that knowing them better might ultimately help treat neurological disorders.

The latest study, published April 8 in Science, found that the brain activity of individuals who were just biding their time in a brain scanner contained enough information to predict how their brains would function during a range of ordinary activities. The researchers used these at-rest signatures to predict which regions would light up—which groups of brain cells would switch on—during gambling, reading and other tasks they were asked to perform in the scanner. The technique might be used one day to assess whether certain areas of the brains of people who are paralyzed or in a comatose state are still functional, the authors say.

The study capitalizes on a relatively new method of brain imaging that looks at what is going on when a person essentially does nothing. The technique stems from the mid-1990s work of biomedical engineer Bharat Biswal, now at New Jersey Institute of Technology. Biswal noticed that scans he had taken while participants were resting in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner displayed orderly, low-frequency oscillations. He had been looking for ways to remove background noise from fMRI signals but quickly realized these oscillations were not noise. His work paved the way for a new approach known as resting-state fMRI.

This type of scan, it turns out, reveals a lot about a particular brain. It analyzes the commonplace slow fluctuations of neural signaling, which form networks of brain cells that fluctuate in synchrony—and these networks often resemble those the brain engages when it is actively doing something. “We've known for awhile that the brain networks we pull out of resting-state data look similar to the maps we get from task-induced activity,” says neuroscience doctoral student Emily Finn of Yale University. Finn and her colleagues published a study last October showing that brain networks contain enough information to identify individuals with up to 99 percent accuracy. “This study takes things a step further,” Finn says.

The team behind the new study, led by neuroscientists Ido Tavor and Saad Jbabdi of the University of Oxford, used data collected by the Human Connectome Project (HCP)—a National Institutes of Health collaboration that is trying to map the wiring of the human brain and is led by Washington University in Saint Louis, the University of Minnesota and Oxford University. The team obtained data for 98 healthy young adults, including scans taken while the participants performed tasks involving memory, motor functions, decision-making (gambling), language (reading) and others as well as just resting. They analyzed the relationships between participants' resting-state brain activity and the oscillations that emerged while they were engaged in various undertakings. They then tried to predict brain activity profiles for a given participant on each of the tasks, using only the individual’s resting-state scan. The predictions matched the brain activity of that person more closely than any of the other participants' scans. “We extract a set of images that highlight brain areas that fluctuate together during this mind-wandering state,” Jbabdi explains. “Our study shows that these co-fluctuations contain enough information to predict how the brain behaves when it is actually doing something explicit.”

These are only first steps. What other information might be contained in the resting-state scans, and how the relationship between resting and active states might change under some circumstances, remain open questions. “It will be interesting to see if and how this mapping relates to actual performance on the tasks,” Finn says. “And how it changes with factors like age or neuropsychiatric illness.”

Tavor says his group was impelled to do this study by a common problem neuroscientists face. For many studies, researchers need to know exactly which brain areas are chugging along during certain tasks—so (for instance) they can see what happens when they block or enhance that activity. The new technique could allow researchers to predict where these regions are without having to conduct a separate scan for each of the tasks, saving time and money. “It's a very practical result,” Finn says. “Resting-state could eventually serve as a “one-size-fits-all” scan from which we can glean a lot of information about someone, without actually having them sit though multiple task sessions in the scanner,” she adds.

One of the next endeavors in this research is to determine whether these findings hold not just for the healthy participants used in this study but for patients with various illnesses. “We're looking at brain tumor patients before surgery,” Tavor says. Knowing what parts of the brain are responsible for sensitive functions, like language, can be crucial information to a neurosurgeon, and tumors can cause shifts in where functions are performed in the brain. “If we can predict this shift, it could affect the surgeon's strategy of where to enter to remove the tumor,” Tavor explains.

Biswal is also interested in medical implications. “In clinical cases, if there's a difference in performance, compared to healthy controls, would the resting-state still predict patients' performance?” he asks. “Or has something mechanistic happened that means the prediction won't be as good, and might this tell us something about the underlying mechanism of the disease?” Using the technique for diagnostic applications might enable researchers to measure disease severity by examining the accuracy of predictions for brain functions known to be affected by a particular disease.

Whatever the eventual outcome, this work adds to a body of evidence suggesting the resting brain is anything but. “During this so-called resting-state, the brain is not really resting,” Tavor says. “It does everything, all the time.”

 http://www.scientificamerican.com/section/news/new-evidence-points-to-personal-brain-signatures1/

THE POWER OF LOVE

 

In the last few weeks I’ve been doing a social experiment unbeknownst to the people around me. My family, friends, colleagues and even total strangers have all been unwittingly drawn into the exercise. Inspired by the work of Professor Barbara Fredrickson, a leading researcher looking at the health benefits of positive emotions, I’ve been practising the ‘Three Loving Connections’ exercise. It involves consciously trying to boost my brain and body’s experience of the power of love by seeking out three meaningful interactions each day and reflecting on them each night. According to Fredrickson’s findings, it appears these micro moments may not only make me healthier, but they may also make me live longer.

In the last decade the fascinating research field of positive emotion has exploded with studies showing that people who experience warmer, more upbeat emotions tend to live longer and healthier lives. In her new book Love 2.0 Fredrickson writes that the supreme positive emotion is love. Its presence or absence influences everything we feel, do, think and become. It’s the glue bonding us together for the survival of our species.

Fredrickson is not talking about the kind of smoochy, pop culture love associated with romance and marriage, but rather a scientific version of love that she calls positivity resonance, which happens when you and another person mirror each other’s positive emotional state.

 The research shows that in most instances your eyes meet, and what occurs is a kind of mind-body-meld. On a physiological level, activity in your body and brain triggers parallel changes within another person’s body and brain. Your minds literally sync up.

 This all happens within a micro moment. It’s not about sexual attraction. It’s not about fond regard. It’s not even about those special feelings you have towards your partner, kids, parents or close friends. This is a physiological, biochemical event that occurs in harmony between people. Viewed this way, love belongs to not one person, but to pairs or groups of people and is actually all about finding connection.

So, if we want to boost our love to boost our health, what can we do?

Three Loving Connections

Frederickson and her team has shown the power of practicing Loving Kindness Meditation; which can lead to a boost in positivity and life satisfaction as well as a reduction in depressive and illness symptoms. But if you’re not a meditator, you might like to join me with your own ‘Three Loving Connections’ experiment.

• Each day look for three opportunities to connect with others (it could be a relative, friend, colleague, or complete stranger. Each interaction can be with the same person or with three different people)

• Approach this potential interaction with warmth, respect and good will

• Make an effort to stay present and listen with an open heart

• Offer your eye contact and (when appropriate) your touch

• Share your own light-hearted thoughts and feelings

 Write It Down

Each night call to mind your three interactions. Rate each of the following statements on a scale of 1 (not true at all) to 7 (very true):

• During these interactions, I felt “in tune” with the person/s around me.

• During these interactions, I felt close to the person/s around me.

 In preliminary findings, one of Fredrickson’s postgraduate students has uncovered that actually recording these experiences triggers positive physiological effects on the body. In a pilot study for her yet to be published dissertation, Bethany Kok has shown that taking one minute each day to record how ‘close’ and ‘in tune’ you feel when interacting with others can produce improved heart function and a boost in day-to-day positive emotions.

I find that this Three Loving Connections exercise ties in nicely with Dr Martin Seligman’s Three Good Things exercise that I wrote about at the end of this blog post. (The research shows that doing the Three Good Things exercise for just one-week increases happiness and decrease depressive symptoms for six months.)

 Boosting Your Success Rate

In doing my experiment, I’ve learnt the hard way that not every exchange with every person is an opportunity for Fredrickson’s positivity resonance to blossom. (I had a rather awkward moment with a parcel delivery guy who interpreted my eye contact and open conversation as an invitation for romance). This newly defined version of love is tough to grow. It blooms only under very specific circumstances. It doesn’t happen automatically and it’s very hard to manufacture, stemming from particular patterns of thought and action. Fredrickson believes there are two strict conditions that must be met:
 A feeling of safety, both internal and external
If there’s any sense of threat or danger, love won’t bloom. You don’t have to be about to be hit by a car to feel unsafe; this is about your perception of danger.
 Real-time sensory connection
 Scientists believe that eye contact may well be the most potent trigger for connection and oneness and although voice such as over a telephone, gestures, touch and laughter can also act as fertilizer, Fredrickson is adamant that the key is physical presence. 

Conclusion

I’ve been trying this out for a few weeks and I’ve experienced some amazing connected micro moments. They’ve happened when I’d expect them to (seeing my best friend and her newborn baby), they’ve happened after I’ve deliberately sought them out (connecting with my son’s childcare teacher while talking about their shenanigans during the day), they’ve happened when I didn’t expected them to (while I was on a panel doing a Q and A about my film) and they’ve happened with hundreds of people all at once (the result of a swelling of shared joy that sprung up during a live Michael Franti gig).

There have also been many failed attempts (the delivery driver is one example) and I’ve found that often the circumstances aren’t right because the other person I’m hoping to connect with is busy, disconnected and mentally somewhere else; a symptom of the world we live in full of ‘things to do,’ email, texts, Instagram, XOXs and LOLs. More than ever I’m conscious of missed opportunities for deep connection. Blink, and they’re gone.

I’ve also found that making a conscious effort to cultivate connections nurtures deeper and stronger relationships. I’m more relaxed and cheerful and I find that facing difficult relationships is a little easier too. I have more generosity and warmth towards people.

The writing exercise is also valuable. It’s so nice to know I will end each day on a positive note. No matter how tough.

I realize that taking this scientific view of love reduces the essence of some of human kind’s greatest art, profound journeys and grand acts of compassion to a chemical reaction and you may think the ‘L word’ is far too strong, preferring to call it positivity resonance. However you think of it, I hope you are intrigued and start looking for your own micro moments of connection. I believe this kind of loving mindfulness has the potential to profoundly change our connectedness with each other and with ourselves.

Happy positive resonating!

https://www.theconnection.tv/the-power-of-love-how-3-micro-moments-change-everything/