I can't verify this because it is in Japanese. Original article here: http://www.chunichi.co.jp/article/national/news/CK2008121102000053.html


 


Researchers from Japan's ATR Computational Neuroscience Labs have created a new brain analysis technology that can recontruct images inside of a person's mind and then display them on a monitor. The researchers want to try to view the contents of dreams in the future.


Sounds like either the journalist or the scientist is exaggerating their findings, but I could be wrong. I just have a hard time believing this could be possible. Here's how they are claiming to do it:

'The scientists were able to reconstruct various images viewed by a person by analyzing changes in their cerebral blood flow. Using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine, the researchers first mapped the blood flow changes that occurred in the cerebral visual cortex as subjects viewed various images held in front of their eyes. Subjects were shown 400 random 10 x 10 pixel black-and-white images for a period of 12 seconds each. While the fMRI machine monitored the changes in brain activity, a computer crunched the data and learned to associate the various changes in brain activity with the different image designs.

Then, when the test subjects were shown a completely new set of images, such as the letters N-E-U-R-O-N, the system was able to reconstruct and display what the test subjects were viewing based solely on their brain activity.'

The researchers also discuss applying the technology to reading feelings and complicated emotional states, but may have a difficult time displaying these things on a monitor.

The blog 'Pink Tentacle' says that this research is in the December 11 issue 'Neuron', but I haven't been able to find it.

lolwut?  more later...
Update - this is being reported about all over the place now. Scientific American also uses Pink Tentacle as a source, but claim that the scientists have 'reported it' to the journal 'Neuron', not that 'Neuron' has published anything about it. Big difference. We'll see where this goes.

I found a couple of interesting articles while researching the 'Ganzfeld Effect', both involving Peter Pütz.

The first study, done in 2005, found EEG correlates to ganzfeld induced hallucinatory imagery. The second, published in Jun 2008, is more generalized. It is entitled "Ganzfeld-induced hallucinatory experience, its phenomenology and cerebral electrophysiology"

Unfortunately I can't post them here in their entirety, but here's the abstracts:


Ganzfeld-induced hallucinatory experience, its phenomenology and cerebral electrophysiology

Abstract

Ganzfeld, i.e., exposure to an unstructured, uniform stimulation field, elicits in most observers pseudo-hallucinatory percepts, and may even induce global functional state changes (‘altered states of consciousness’). The present paper gives a comprehensive overview of the phenomenology of subjective experience in the ganzfeld and its electrophysiological correlates. Laboratory techniques for visual or multi-modal ganzfeld induction are explained. The spectrum of ganzfeld-induced phenomena, ranging from elementary percepts to complex, vivid, dream-like imagery is described, and the latter illustrated by transcripts of subjects' reports. Similarities and differences to related sensory/perceptual phenomena are also discussed. Earlier findings on electrophysiological correlates of the ganzfeld are reviewed. Our own studies of electroencephalographic (EEG) activity in the ganzfeld are presented in some detail, and a re-analysis of data on EEG correlates of hallucinatory percepts in statu nascendi is reported. The results do not support the hypothesis of the hypnagogic origin of the percepts; the ganzfeld-induced steady-state is an activated state, and the spectral EEG dynamics in the alpha frequency range reveals processes of attention shifts and percept formation. The final section is devoted to the controversial topic of allegedly anomalous communication between human subjects (‘ganzfeld telepathy’). It is shown that the use of ganzfeld in this research field relies partly on unsupported hypotheses concerning ganzfeld-induced states, partly on a weak conceptual background of the experimental procedure. The rôle of a particular belief system shared by the participants and experimenters is critically discussed.

Jiří Wackermann, Peter Pütz, Carsten Allefeld

Department of Empirical and Analytical Psychophysics, Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health, Freiburg i. Br., Germany.


EEG correlates of multimodal ganzfeld induced hallucinatory imagery.

Abstract
Multimodal ganzfeld (MMGF) frequently induces dreamlike, pseudo-hallucinatory imagery. The aim of the study was to explore EEG correlates of MMGF-induced imagery. In a screening phase, seven 'high-responders' were selected by frequency and quality of their reported hallucinatory experience in MMGF. Each of these subjects then participated in three MMGF sessions (45 min) with simultaneous 19 channel EEG recordings and indicated occurrences of imagery by pressing a button. Relative spectral power changes during percept formation (30 s preceding subjects' reports) with respect to intra-individual baselines (no-imagery EEG) were analysed. At the beginning of the 30-s 'image formation' period alpha was slightly reduced than in the 'no-imagery' periods. This was followed by increased power in the higher alpha frequency band (10-12 Hz) which then declined in a monotonic fashion. This decline in higher alpha power was accompanied by increased power in the beta frequency bands. Throughout the image formation period there was a steady decline in power of low frequency alpha (8-10 Hz). Correlations between descriptors of subjective experience and EEG power changes were evaluated in terms of their global average magnitude and variability in time. Results indicate that the acceleration of alpha activity is a nonspecific effect of MMGF. In contrast, the tri-phasic profile of faster alpha activity seems to be a specific correlate of the retrieval and transformation of memory content in ganzfeld imagery.

Peter Pütz, MatthiasBraeunig, Jiří Wackermann

Department of Empirical and Analytical Psychophysics, Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology, Wilhemstrasse 3a, D-79098 Freiburg i. Br., Germany.

I just saw this on the great blog 'Neuro Philosophy'.

Two researchers from the Center for Brain and Cognition have found a rare new form of synaesthesia that they have labeled 'tactile-emotion synaesthesia'. They have found two individual cases of patients experiencing specific emotions whenever touching particular textures! The feeling of denim, in one of the cases, caused strong feelings of depression and disgust.


Abstract:


We discuss experiments on two individuals in whom specific textures (e.g., denim, wax, sandpaper, silk, etc.) evoked equally distinct emotions (e.g., depression, embarrassment, relief, and contentment, respectively). The test/retest consistency after 8 months was 100%. A video camera recorded subjects' facial expressions and skin conductance responses (SCR) were monitored as they palpated different textures. Evaluators' ratings significantly correlated with the valence of synesthetes' subjective reports, and SCR was significantly enhanced for negative synesthetic emotions. We suggest this effect arises from increased cross-activation between somatosensory cortex and insula for 'basic' emotions and fronto-limbic hyperactivation for more subtle emotions. It may represent an enhancement of pre-existing evolutionarily primitive interactions between touch and emotions.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18821168

HOBSON'S CHOICE

Can Freud's Theory of Dreams Hold Up Against Modern Neuroscience?

 

It wasn’t until the 1950s, fifty years after the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams,that scientists began bringing people into their labs for sleepovers. They’d spray water on them, or rub their faces with cotton puffs, or ring a bell and then wake them up and see what happened. Volunteers were kept up for days and watched closely, to see whether or not they’d go insane. The early experiments were crude and often conducted by psychiatrists trained in Freudian theory. One prominent researcher studied sexual dream symbols by attempting to correlate erections (he wrapped a nooselike device around the sleeper’s penis) with aggressive dream content, like dog- and snakebites, knife fights, and scenes of choking. He was able to correctly predict tumescence seven times out of eight.

Other researchers took a sociological approach to dreams, meticulously cataloging their content: women dream of men more than men dream of women; black people are more likely to be physically damaged in their dreams than white people; 80 percent of adult dreams have a negative component—their hair looks bad or they can’t find their keys or their kid won’t stop crying—and after ninth grade, children’s dreams become significantly more aggressive.

The field of dream research deals with the worst kind of data: reported by groggy volunteers, grasping at half-formed memories. Once you wake someone up, you’ve already interfered with the evidence. Hobson’s Activation-Synthesis model was so well received, in part, because it was based on neuroscience, not subjective reports. Rosalind Cartwright, chair of psychology at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, who is well known for her research on how dreams affect mood, recalls first hearing Hobson propose his model at a conference in the early ’70s. “A bunch of us were sitting next to each other and we said, ‘You got it the wrong way around! We won’t let your physiological tail wave our psychological dream-dog!’ I used to say about Allan, ‘Oh the trouble is, he’s looking at cell recordings, he’s not talking to people—if he were paying attention to his own dreams, he would be smarter at it.’ When he did start paying attention to these things, I felt he modified his ideas a good deal.”

Only in recent years has Hobson become willing to talk more about the part of dreams that most people are interested in—feelings, symbols, characters, themes. After waking up from a particularly vivid nightmare, few of us are wondering, What part of my brain was just functioning? With practice and the help of a Nightcap (a bandanna device that beeps every few hours, wakes you up, then records whatever you say about your interrupted dream), Hobson began focusing more on the softer side of his field. “I love to talk about my dreams,” he said at the consciousness conference last year. “I’m not sure any of it really makes any difference, or that I learn anything I didn’t know, but it’s a wonderful, wonderful thing to do.”

His enthusiasm for dreams became even more pronounced when, for a startling month in 2001, he lost the ability to have them. While vacationing in Monte Carlo, Hobson suffered a stroke that affected the precise part of the brain stem that he began his career studying. He knew how his body would respond because he had done countless experiments on how damage to this area affects lab cats. He became nauseous, lost balance, and felt he was drowning in his own saliva. For eight days, he lost the ability to fall asleep. For a month, he couldn’t dream. He felt himself becoming psychotic with exhaustion. Like Freud, inventor of the talking cure, dying of oral cancer, Hobson seemed to have the perfect affliction. “I was wide awake all night long,” he recalls. “I said to myself, I am a cat. I am an experimental animal. But this is no experiment.”


Click 'Read More' below for the rest.

 


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:

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".