Sana Inoue and Tetsuro Matsuzawa of Kyoto University showed a computer screen grid of nine numbers to six chimpanzees. The chimps were previously trained to recognize the ascending nature of the numbers. They were also shown to nine college students. When subjects touched one of the numbers, all of the others vanished. They then had to touch the squares in the order of the numbers that used to be there.

When the numbers flashed for just four-tenths of a second or less, one of the chimps beat all of the college students.

Here's the press release from 'Current Biology', a publication of Cell Press:


Young chimps top adult humans in numerical memory


Young chimpanzees have an “extraordinary” ability to remember numerals that is superior to that of human adults, researchers report in the December 4th issue of Current Biology, a publication of Cell Press.

“There are still many people, including many biologists, who believe that humans are superior to chimpanzees in all cognitive functions,” said Tetsuro Matsuzawa of Kyoto University. “No one can imagine that chimpanzees—young chimpanzees at the age of five—have a better performance in a memory task than humans. Here we show for the first time that young chimpanzees have an extraordinary working memory capability for numerical recollection—better than that of human adults tested in the same apparatus, following the same procedure.”

Chimpanzee memory has been extensively studied, the researchers said. The general assumption is that, as with many other cognitive functions, it is inferior to that of humans. However, some data have suggested that, in some circumstances, chimpanzee memory may indeed be superior to human memory.

In the current study, the researchers tested three pairs of mother and infant chimpanzees (all of which had already learned the ascending order of Arabic numerals from 1 to 9) against university students in a memory task of numerals. One of the mothers, named Ai, was the first chimpanzee who learned to use Arabic numerals to label sets of real-life objects with the appropriate number.

In the new test, the chimps or humans were briefly presented with various numerals from 1 to 9 on a touch-screen monitor. Those numbers were then replaced with blank squares, and the test subject had to remember which numeral appeared in which location and touch the squares in the appropriate order.

The young chimpanzees could grasp many numerals at a glance, with no change in performance as the hold duration—the amount of time that the numbers remained on the screen—was varied, the researchers found. In general, the performance of the three young chimpanzees was better than that of their mothers. Likewise, adult humans were slower than all of the three young chimpanzees in their response. For human subjects, they showed that the percentage of correct trials also declined as a function of the hold duration—the shorter the duration became, the worse their accuracy was.

Matsuzawa said the chimps’ memory ability is reminiscent of “eidetic imagery,” a special ability to retain a detailed and accurate image of a complex scene or pattern. Such a “photographic memory” is known to be present in some normal human children, and then the ability declines with the age, he added.

The researchers said they believe that the young chimps’ newfound ability to top humans in the numerical memory task is “just a part of the very flexible intelligence of young chimpanzees.”

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The researchers include Sana Inoue and Tetsuro Matsuzawa, of Kyoto University, Japan.

What are they and how do they work? Of course everyone reading this already knows :) But it helps to have a quick reminder to refresh our memory every once in a while.

Having a basic understanding about these special chemicals in our brain and how they work helps us to understand memory, learning, behavior, addiction, how drugs work, and emotions.

First we'll quickly go over some of the most important neurotransmitters.

  Acetylcholine: The first neurotransmitter to be identified. It allows nerve cells to communicate with each other.





  Noradrenalin (Norephinephrine): Acts as a stress hormone and affects the parts of our brain where attention and responding actions are controlled. It is what is behind the fight-or-flight response.





  Dopamine: Plays an important role in motivation and reward, sleep, mood, attention, motor activity, cognition and learning.





  Endorphin: Helps modulate pain ("natural opiates"), cardiac, gastric and vascular function.





  Serotonin: Believed to help regulate anger, aggression, mood, sleep, appetite, sexuality and body temperature.





  GABA: One of the most abundant neurotransmitters. It is an inhibitory neurotransmitter - inhibiting all sorts of activating systems.






  Glutamate: Heightens sensitivity to other neurotransmitters. An excitatory neurotransmitter involved in cognitive functions like learning and memory.






So... Neurons pass messages along themselves using electrical impulses, but they use neurotransmitters to pass messages to other neurons. Neurotransmitters are released from synaptic vesicles, flow across gaps between neurons called synapses and then bind with a receptor on the target neuron.

How about a slideshow?

Free access to:

Journal of Biological Rhythms
 

The Neuroscientist
 

Journal of Child Neurology
 

Multiple Sclerosis
 

Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair
 

Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and Neurology
 

American Journal of Alzheimer's Disease & Other Dementias
 

Click here (requires registration)

Discussion on brain plasticity, or neuroplasticity, has increased during the past several years. What is it and why should we be concerned about it? Our brains can migrate activity associated with specific functions to a different location as a result of neuroplasticity. This is an extremely important ability to have after a brain injury or even after normal experience (such as aging). Neuroplasticity allows the brain to re-wire itself as a response to changes in the environment. It is also what is behind the learning process and memory formation.

Plasticity consists of laying out preferred pathways within the brain for circulating important information and is the brain's ability to adapt.

 

Biofeedback/neurofeedback may play an important role in the future if specific operant condition techniques can be designed to increase voluntary control of neuron responses that will increase neuroplasticity.

Neuroplasticity from Wikipedia


Here is a link to a great audio interview from CBC radio with Dr. Norman Doidge. He is the author of "The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science".

The DANA Foundation has decided to make their book "The Dana Guide to Brain Health: A Practical Family Reference from Medical Experts" section on brain disorders freely available online.

 

Description from Amazon.com:

With contributions from over one hundred of the most prominent scientists and clinicians in the United States, The Dana Guide to Brain Health is an extensive and wholly accessible manual on the workings of the human brain. This richly illustrated volume contains a wealth of facts and advice, on simple yet effective ways to take care of our brains; the intimate connection between brain health and body health; brain development from the prenatal period through adulthood; and how we learn, remember, and imagine.

The brain is far too important to be excluded any longer from our daily health concerns. The Dana Guide to Brain Health remedies this oversight with a clearly written, definitive map to our brains that reveals how we can take care of them in order to sustain a long and rich life.

The browseable/searchable copy of the book can be found here.

I found this on Mind Hacks

Scientists from 'Wellcome Trust' claim to have identified for the first time what happens in our brain in the face of an approaching fear. They measured activity in the brain using fMRI while a subject played a game similar to Pac-Man and received an electric-shocks when they were caught by the video game predator.

They found that activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (behind the eyebrows) increased when the enemy was in the distance - this part of the brain is active when one is planning how to respond to a threat. As the video game enemy approached, predominant activity shifted to the periaqueductal grey - the part of the brain responsible for flight or fight and preparing for reaction to pain.

The title of their study is 'Free Will Takes Flight', as it shows that we act more on impulse when a threat increases.

Abstract can be found here

Article in Science Magazine can be found here

A great BBC series on psychology & neuroscience is now available on bittorrent. The series is presented by neuroscientist Professor Susan Greenfield.

There are six episodes total in the series.

The links and instructions are available here on MindHacks.

New experiments in light stimulation are helping scientists learn more about neural systems. Optical excitation using fiber optics can be used to stimulate specific areas of the brain and is an alternative to electrode stimulation. Electrode stimulation is unable to target single types of neurons and instead activates the firing of all neurons in one neural area. This new technology may allow us to uncover what roles specific neurons play.

   
Light stimulation every 200 milliseconds generates electrical activity in an area of the brain associated with depression.

Here is another article on using focused beams of light to stimulate neurons from Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

 
The illustration, which comes from a painting by Duke University student Yifan Xu, conceptually illustrates a beam of light shining into the olfactory bulb activating a mitral cell. HHMI investigator Michael Ehlers and colleagues report they have developed mice that express channelrhodopsin-2, a light-gated cation channel from the green algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, in neurons of the central nervous system. This enables researchers to trigger neural activity with high spatial and temporal precision—a powerful tool for those striving to map functional circuits in the brain.

Researchers have devised a clever way to activate neurons in a living mouse by shining light on the surface of the animal's brain. The “light switch” that turns neurons on is actually a light-sensitive protein that is produced by algae. When this protein is genetically engineered into the neurons of living mice, researchers can precisely trigger those neurons with light, causing them to generate electrical impulses.