Pain monitored in MRI scans

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Hello Friends:


There will be more books out regarding the brain since techs probably can tell what we are thinking during an MRI scan.

You might  be interested in how pain is measured from scans these days and new details.

http://news.yahoo.com/doctors-brain-scans-see-measure-pain-210707739.html



Regards,



Palace

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We are watched in stores, observed and recorded at the wheel, web-cams abound and now our brains are being monitored in many ways besides just medical data. 

Here is some news about watching the brain changes during musical exposure.

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Activity in certain regions of the brain can predict whether you'll like a new song enough to buy it, whether it's indie rock like Florence + The Machine's "Drumming Song" or experimental electronica like Ratatat's "Neckbrace."

Those are just two songs used in new research that explains how new music rewards the brain. The study found that the more active the nucleus accumbens (a small area deep in the brain), the more likely people are to shell out cash for new music. This willingness is especially strong when the nucleus accumbens interacts with a brain region that stores memories of old music.

The study helps explain how something as fleeting and intangible as a string of musical notes can be so rewarding, said study researcher Valorie Salimpoor, a doctoral student at McGill University in Canada. [Top 10 Mysteries of the Mind]

"It's all happening in your head. You have nothing to show for it," Salimpoor told LiveScience. "But somehow, because we have the cognitive resources to be able to process and appreciate these temporal sound patterns, we can experience really intense emotions from them."

The draw of new music:

Music seems a uniquely human phenomenon, and it appears across cultures. In fact, a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in December 2012 found that even across vastly different cultures, people express primal emotions through music in strikingly similar ways.

Music is known to engage emotion-processing regions of the brain, and Salimpoor and her colleagues had previously found that music perceived as pleasurable triggers the release of dopamine in the brain, a neurochemical associated with feelings of reward. Food and sex, which are necessary for survival and reproduction, also trigger dopamine release.

That earlier study, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, found that people didn't only receive jolts of dopamine at their favorite parts of a song; they got dopamine boosts right before, too. The finding suggested that anticipation is a major part of the pleasure derived from music, but it wasn't clear from where the anticipation was coming.

"Are you anticipating your favorite part because you know it's coming up, or is it the case that you have some general knowledge of music based on all your previous experiences?" Salimpoor said.

To find out, Salimpoor and her colleagues recruited 126 participants and whittled them down to a group of 19 who had very similar tastes in music — they turned out to be lovers of electronica and indie tunes. The researchers used music-recommendation programs to find new songs these participants had never before heard, and then had them listen to those songs for the first time in a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine (fMRI). [Brain Mixtape: List of Songs Used in the Study]

Rewarding notes

As the participants listened, researchers used the fMRI to track blood flow to various brain regions; this blood flow, in turn, is correlated with activity in those regions. After hearing a song clip, participants could choose to buy the tune with their own money, bidding to spend either 99 cents, $1.29 or $2, depending how much they'd liked it.

The researchers found a strong link between how much a person was willing to spend on a song and the nucleus accumbens, in that a busier nucleus accumbens was related to more willingness to drop some cash. This brain region is known to be associated with reward, particularly forming expectations of reward.

"It's really cool, because it's suggesting that as we're listening to new music, we're constantly making predictions," Salimpoor said. "This really links back to our previous study of anticipation and why it would play a role in music."

What's more, as people were willing to spend more money on a song, their nucleus accumbens showed greater co-activity with another brain region called the superior temporal gyrus. This is an auditory region that essentially stores sense memories of music heard in the past. If you've heard a lot of Western music, your superior temporal gyrus will have a different "library" than if you grew up listening to music from East Asia, for example.

The study suggests that when you hear new music, your brain flips through this library, building expectations from templates of music heard before. If those predictions are confirmed or pleasantly subverted, you may find yourself loving the new tune.

"We can look at music as an intellectual reward," Salimpoor said, adding, "It's essentially pattern recognition, and this is something humans are very good at."

Several other brain regions were also linked with finding music rewarding, including the emotion-processing amygdala and two higher-level emotion-processing regions found in the frontal lobe of the brain. Another frontal lobe region, the inferior frontal gyrus, was also linked to finding music pleasurable. This area handles advanced thought, working memory and pattern sequencing.

The fact that the brain recruits these advanced brain regions may explain why humans seem alone among animals in appreciating music, Salimpoor said.

"We're able to obtain pleasure from a sequence of sound that has no inherent reward in itself," she said.

The researchers report their findings Friday (April 12) in the journal Science.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

    Top 10 Things that Make Humans Special
    10 Things You Didn't Know About the Brain
    Inside the Brain: A Journey Through Time

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Exercise seems to be the best for brain health:  More on brain studies!


Beer Makes Brain Release Pleasure Chemical Dopamine, Scan Study Suggests

Posted: 04/16/2013 7:40 am EDT  |  Updated: 04/16/2013 2:22 pm EDT
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By: Tanya Lewis, LiveScience Staff Writer
Published: 04/15/2013 01:31 PM EDT on LiveScience

The taste of beer, without its alcoholic effects, may be enough to trigger the release of the pleasure chemical dopamine in the brain, a study finds.

To see how the taste of beer affects the brain, researchers gave a group of men tiny tastes of beer, and as the men sipped the beer, the researchers scanned the men's brains. After a taste of beer, the men's brains showed a notable release of dopamine, a brain chemical associated with the pleasurable experience of consuming alcohol and other drugs. The effect was even greater among men who had a family history of alcoholism.

The findings are not surprising, scientists say, but having a way to assess predisposition to alcohol abuse could be useful.

"We believe this is the first experiment in humans to show that the taste of an alcoholic drink alone, without any intoxicating effect from the alcohol, can elicit this dopamine activity in the brain's reward centers," the study's senior author, neuroscientist David Kareken of the Indiana University School of Medicine, said in a statement. The findings were detailed online today (April 15) in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.Â

Dopamine, a brain chemical widely associated with pleasure, has long been linked to the consumption of alcohol and other drugs. Sensory cues -- such as tastes, smells or the sight of a bar -- can elicit cravings to drink and cause relapses in recovering alcoholics. Dopamine may be critically involved in such cravings, scientists believe. [11 Interesting Facts About Hangovers]

In the study, researchers gave 49 male volunteers a tiny taste (half an ounce, or 15 milliliters) of their favorite beer over the course of 15 minutes -- enough to taste the beer but not enough to cause a change in blood-alcohol level or intoxication. At other times, the volunteers were given a sports drink or water, for comparison.

To study the effect of beer's taste on dopamine receptors, the researchers scanned the volunteers' brains using Positron Emission Tomography, which uses the radiation emitted by a radioactive chemical to produce a 3D image of the brain.

The scans revealed higher increases in dopamine after the men tasted beer compared with tasting the sports drink or water -- suggesting that the taste of alcohol is enough to prompt a pleasurable response in the brain. The men also reported higher beer cravings after tasting beer than water or the sports drink.

Furthermore, the men who had a family history of alcoholism showed an even greater spike in dopamine levels after they tasted the beer, so the dopamine response may be a heritable risk factor for alcoholism.

"This paper demonstrates that taste alone impacts on the brain functions associated with desire," Peter Anderson, a professor of substance use, policy and practice at Newcastle University, U.K., said in a statement. But Anderson noted that "With regard to the family history effect, this is quite difficult to assess and know what it means so we can't be too sure of an effect or how strong it might be."

The effects of the alcohol itself on the brain, and not just the taste, could not be ruled out, Anderson added.

Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

    Raise Your Glass: 10 Intoxicating Beer Facts
    7 Ways Alcohol Affects Your Health
    10 Easy Paths to Self Destruction

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. ]]>

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    Francis Crick (1916-2004)

    It has been reported that Crick, the Nobel Prize-winning English molecular biologist, first envisioned the double helix structure of the DNA molecule while under the influence of LSD. In fact, though <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/science/11book.html?_r=1">Crick experimented with LSD</a> beginning in the late 1960s, his landmark work was produced over a decade earlier. Credit: Siegel RM, Callaway EM: Francis Crick's Legacy for Neuroscience: Between the α and the Ω. PLoS Biol 2/12/2004: e419. <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0020419" target="_hplink">http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0020419</a> Photo: Marc Lieberman
    Bill Gates (1955-)

    Gates <a href="http://beginnersinvest.about.com/od/billgates/l/blbillgatesint5.htm">gave coy answers in a Playboy interview</a> when he was asked about his experiences with LSD. He said, "there were things I did under the age of 25 that I ended up not doing subsequently." Pictured, <a href="http://www.thesmokinggun.com/mugshots/celebrity/business/bill-gates">Gates in 1977</a> after a traffic violation. Photo: Albuquerque, New Mexico police department
    Timothy Leary (1920-1996)

    Leary, the psychology professor and psychedelic guru, advocated the use of hallucinogens throughout his life. President Nixon once pronounced him <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/01/us/timothy-leary-pied-piper-of-psychedelic-60-s-dies-at-75.html">"the most dangerous man in America."</a> Pictured is his 1972 arrest by agents of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. Photo: DEA
    Kary Mullis (1944-)

    A Nobel Prize-winning biochemist, Mullis is best known for his contributions to a chemical technique known as PCR, which allows for rapid duplication of DNA molecules. In a 2006 speech, <a href="http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/01/70015/?currentPage=all">LSD inventor Albert Hofmann</a> said Mullis had told him that psychedelic experiences were responsible for some of his PCR innovations. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/<a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/78042080@N00" target="_hplink">Erik Charlton</a>
    Richard Feynman (1918-1988)

    The Nobel Prize-winning physicist was a lifelong bon vivant, but <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=7papZR4oVssC&pg=PA205&lpg=PA205&dq=feynman+lsd&source=bl&ots=esRYaapQ3Y&sig=FUftfW0_VKnY_f_D-4g-xq9UQZg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=zGIRUJDnHqbq6gH16IGgAw&ved=0CFYQ6AEwBTgU#v=onepage&q=feynman lsd&f=false">wrote in the autobiographical "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman"</a> that he was "reluctant to try experiments with LSD in spite of [his] curiosity about hallucinations." On the other hand, biographer <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/55432166/James-Gleick-Genius-The-Life-and-Science-of-Richard-Feynman-1992">James Gleick writes</a> that during Feynman's professorship at Caltech, "He tried marijuana and (he was more embarrassed about this) LSD." Photo: Fermilab
    Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

    Sagan, the astrophysicist and science popularizer, <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/10/07/carl-sagan-spaced-ou.html">wrote an essay for the 1969 book "Marihuana Revisited."</a> Using a pseudonym, he discussed his experiences with altered states of consciousness. Photo: NASA/JPL
    Paul Erdos (1913-1996)

    A prolific mathematician, Erdos was known for his ebullient personality. Part of that may have been attributable to his heavy caffeine and, in later life, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/hoffman-man.html">amphetamine use</a>. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Kmhkmh
    Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

    The consumer electronics guru <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/06/11/steve_jobs_on_lsd_a_positive_life_changing_experience_for_me_.html">admitted to having used LSD, marijuana and hashish in the 1970s</a>. He called LSD a "positive, life-changing experience." Photo: Wikimedia Commons/ <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Yohe" target="_hplink">Matt Yohe</a>
    Thomas Edison (1847-1931)

    The prolific inventor was reported to sleep only four hours each night. To help him stay awake, he <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/20/books/howard-markel-on-cocaine-in-anatomy-of-addiction.html">drank Vin Mariani</a>, a cocaine-infused wine. Photo: Levin C. Handy
    Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002)

    Gould, a paleontologist, once wrote that he "valued his rational mind" too much to use drugs during most of his life, but had a change of heart when he underwent chemotherapy in the 1980s. <a href="http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_marijuana.html">He wrote,</a> "Marihuana worked like a charm. I disliked the 'side effect' of mental blurring (the 'main effect' for recreational users)...[but enjoyed] the sheer bliss of not experiencing nausea." Photo: Kathy Chapman
    Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

    Freud, trained as a neurologist, had <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/books/review/an-anatomy-of-addiction-by-howard-markel-book-review.html?pagewanted=all">a cocaine habit for most of his adult life</a>. He told his fiancee that he wanted to write a "song of praise to this magical substance." Photo: Max Halberstadt


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More on brain discoveries:

 LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have worked out the way in which stress hormones reduce the number of new brain cells - a process linked to depression - and say their work should help researchers develop more effective antidepressants.

The scientists identified a protein largely responsible for the long-term detrimental effect of stress on cells.

They also successfully used an experimental drug compound to block this effect, pointing to a possible way of developing new antidepressants, the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences said.

Major depression affects about 20 percent of people at some time in their lives. The World Health Organization (WHO) predicts that by 2020, depression will rival heart disease as the health disorder with the highest global disease burden.

Treatment for depression involves either medication or counseling - and often a combination of both.

But while there are many antidepressants on the market, including top sellers such as Prozac and Seroxat, it is widely accepted that many antidepressants work in only half of patients half of the time, and drugmakers are struggling to come up with a new generation of drugs.

Depression is linked to changes in a process called neurogenesis - the ability of the adult brain to continue producing new brain cells.

At a molecular level, stress is known to increase levels of a hormone called cortisol, which in turn acts on a receptor called the glucocorticoid receptor. But the exact mechanism behind this process has been unclear.

A team under Carmine Pariante of King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, who led the research, studied human hippocampal stem cells - source of new cells in the human brain.

They gave the cells cortisol to measure the effect on neurogenesis and found that a protein called SGK1 was important in mediating the effects.

By measuring the effect of cortisol over time, they found that increased levels of SGK1 prolong the damaging impact of stress hormones on neurogenesis.

Next, the researchers used an experimental drug compound known to inhibit SGK1 and found it blocked the negative effects of stress hormones, leading to an increase in new brain cells.

The team confirmed the results by studying levels of SGK1 in animals and then in blood samples from people with depression.

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Google the full article if interested:


Man's runny nose was brain leaking fluid

Published May 07, 2013

FoxNews.com

    Brain Image.jpg

    An image of Joe Nagy's brain, which was leaking fluid through his nose. (FOX 10)

PHOENIX –  One Arizona man thought he had year-round allergies when his nose continued to run. He was shocked to find out after years of suffering, his runny nose was actually his brain leaking fluid, FOX 10 reported.

Joe Nagy first noticed it when he sat up to get out of bed.

"Brooop! This clear liquid dribbled out of my nose like tears out of your eyes. I go what is this?," he told the TV station.

And, he added, the symptom continued to worsen over time.

Nagy tried allergy medicine, which didn't help. He said he had tissues on-hand all the time.

He still remembers the embarrassing moments when he couldn't get to the tissues in time, like when he was picking up blueprints for his model airplanes.

It was embarrassing, Nagy admitted.

Fed up, Nagy went to a specialist, who tested the fluid that was dripping out of his nose. That's how he discovered it was actually brain fluid.

"I was scared to death if you want to know the truth," he said.

The membrane surrounding Nagy's brain had a hole in it, causing the brain fluid to leak.

"You don't really think about it, but our brains are really just above our noses all of the time," said Dr. Peter Nakaji, a neurosurgeon at  Barrow Neurological Institute.

Nagy was ready to have brain surgery to fix the leak, but then he developed a near-deadly case of meningitis and the fluid became infected.

Eventually, Nagy's infection cleared up, and he was able to have the surgery. Nakaji explained to FOX 10 how the surgery is done: A needle is inserted through the nose and a bit of glue patches the hole. There is no cutting involved.

Nagy said he's planning on starting a new hobby: Building a sailboat called the Great Pelican. He's confident it won't leak.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/07/man-runny-nose-was-brain-leaking-fluid/#ixzz2Sdx4SYTS