Cognitive Neuroscience @ MIT OpenCourseWare

The great MIT Open­Course­Ware ini­tia­tive offers a lot of free mate­ri­als on Brain and Cog­ni­tive Sci­ences. You can browse lec­ture notes, read­ings, and more on a vari­ety of psy­chol­o­gy and neu­ro­science courses.

• “The human brain is the most com­plex, sophis­ti­cat­ed, and pow­er­ful infor­ma­tion-pro­cess­ing device known. To study its com­plex­i­ties, the Depart­ment of Brain and Cog­ni­tive Sci­ences at the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy com­bines the exper­i­men­tal tech­nolo­gies of neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gy, neu­ro­science, and psy­chol­o­gy, with the the­o­ret­i­cal pow­er that comes from the fields of com­pu­ta­tion­al neu­ro­science and cog­ni­tive science.”
• “The Depart­ment was found­ed by Hans-Lukas Teu­ber in 1964 as a Depart­ment of Psy­chol­o­gy, with the then-rad­i­cal vision that the study of brain and mind are insep­a­ra­ble. Today, at a time of increas­ing spe­cial­iza­tion and frag­men­ta­tion, our goal remains to under­stand cog­ni­tion- its process­es, and its mech­a­nisms at the lev­el of mol­e­cules, neu­rons, net­works of neu­rons, and cog­ni­tive mod­ules. We are unique among neu­ro­science and cog­ni­tive sci­ence depart­ments in our breadth, and in the scope of our ambi­tion. We span a very large range of inquiry into the brain and mind, and our work bridges many dif­fer­ent lev­els of analy­sis includ­ing mol­e­c­u­lar, cel­lu­lar, sys­tems, com­pu­ta­tion­al and cog­ni­tive approaches.”

There is a fas­ci­nat­ing new course titled A Clin­i­cal Approach to the Human Brain, Fall 2006, includ­ing Top­ics and Lec­ture Sum­maries such as

• “Neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis: Teach­ing Old Dogs New Tricks. A sur­pris­ing dis­cov­ery in the last few years in neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gy has been that neu­rons are born, neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, in the adult mam­malian brain. Ini­tial­ly, this had been shown in ani­mals and, more recent­ly, in the humans hip­pocam­pus, the site of declar­a­tive mem­o­ry for­ma­tion. (See Gree­nough). Fur­ther­more, the rate of neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis in ani­mals has been enhanced by expe­ri­ence, both phys­i­cal activ­i­ty and liv­ing in enriched envi­ron­ments (See Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can arti­cle by Gage). Provoca­tive clin­i­cal human stud­ies sug­gest that mem­o­ry loss (demen­tia) can be fore­stalled by rich cog­ni­tive activ­i­ties e.g. board games, cross­word puz­zles. These ani­mal and clin­i­cal stud­ies may lead to a strat­e­gy for pre­vent­ing demen­tia in humans.”
• “Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty in the Adult: Pri­ma­ry motor cor­tex in the frontal lobe is orga­nized in such a way that the left side of the brain con­trols the right body and that the foot neu­rons are near the crown of the head and the hand is mid­way between the crown and the ear and the mouth is just above the ear (Homuncu­lus). These neu­rons con­trol indi­vid­ual move­ments accord­ing to this motor map of the cere­bral cor­tex. The map was first dis­cov­ered by Dr. Wilder Pen­field a neu­ro­sur­geon who stim­u­lat­ed the brain in awake patients under­go­ing epilep­sy surgery. He was able to map dif­fer­ent parts of the brain to dif­fer­ent motor and sen­so­ry func­tions. The pre­mo­tor cor­tex lies in front (ante­ri­or) to the motor cor­tex and its role is to plan vol­un­tary move­ments. It is acti­vat­ed in men­tal rehears­ing of a move­ment such as piano play­ing or pole vault­ing before the actu­al exe­cu­tion. Sev­er­al stud­ies have shown that even in adult­hood the motor map of the brain can be mod­i­fied. Stud­ies in ani­mals have shown that increased fin­ger use enlarges the area of the “brain real estate” devot­ed to those fin­gers. In humans, Elbert has shown in string play­ers that the size of the brain cor­tex, on the right side of the brain, devot­ed to the left hand is enlarged. Alter­na­tive­ly, if a fin­ger or limb is ampu­tat­ed the adja­cent func­tion­al areas “invade” the unused area and make use of it; anoth­er exam­ple of com­pe­ti­tion between neu­rons and the adage “use it or lose it”. Recent stud­ies using a tech­nique called con­straint behav­ior ther­a­py actu­al­ly lim­its the use of a good limb to increase the func­tion of the impaired limb such as in cas­es of cere­bral pal­sy with promis­ing results. This is an exam­ple of basic sci­ence lead­ing to impor­tant clin­i­cal dis­cov­er­ies and ben­e­fits to patients.”
• “Can Think­ing Pre­vent Demen­tia?: There is con­sid­er­able hope, and some lim­it­ed evi­dence, that demen­tia can be avoid­ed or delayed by engag­ing in cog­ni­tive­ly stim­u­lat­ing activ­i­ties (eg. cross­word puz­zles). This hope relies upon the ‘muta­bil­i­ty’ or plas­tic­i­ty of the adult brain. If such a ben­e­fit occurs it may be based upon neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis or plas­tic­i­ty of synaps­es. The clin­i­cal evi­dence is lim­it­ed and based upon obser­va­tion­al stud­ies (See Vergh­ese and Wil­son) for the most part. The one prospec­tive ran­dom­ized tri­al (Ball) showed that engag­ing in cog­ni­tive­ly stim­u­lat­ing activ­i­ties improves test­ing results but does not change the per­for­mance of activ­i­ties of dai­ly liv­ing. The edi­to­r­i­al by Coyle reviews the evi­dence. The major lim­i­ta­tion of these stud­ies is the ques­tion of whether it is the cog­ni­tive activ­i­ties them­selves which pre­vent demen­tia or whether indi­vid­u­als who at base­line per­form more cog­ni­tive leisure activ­i­ties do so because they have more cog­ni­tive reserves and, there­fore, have a reduced risk of demen­tia. An oft-quot­ed ret­ro­spec­tive study of nuns looked at the com­plex­i­ty of lan­guage struc­ture which young nun novi­tiates had used to deter­mine if it pre­dict­ed lat­er demen­tia; the authors found that those nuns which had used com­plex lan­guage struc­ture had a low­er late-life risk of demen­tia. The impli­ca­tion being that the abil­i­ty to use com­plex lan­guage struc­ture at a young age reflect­ed increased cog­ni­tive reserves which some­how is asso­ci­at­ed with a reduced risk of late life demen­tia. Oth­er stud­ies have report­ed that there is a low­er fre­quen­cy of demen­tia in those with a high­er lev­el of edu­ca­tion. Again, the mech­a­nism of this is unknown but it is anoth­er incen­tive to study. For the ath­letes in the class, there may be an alter­na­tive; exer­cise has also been found in some ani­mal stud­ies to enhance neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis. Recall that neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, which occurs in the hip­pocam­pus, may be asso­ci­at­ed with enhanced mem­o­ry func­tion. We will focus on the abstracts and the base­line char­ac­ter­is­tics of the clin­i­cal stud­ies, includ­ing their lim­i­ta­tions, and dis­cuss the Coyle edi­to­r­i­al. This clin­i­cal top­ic along with the ani­mal stud­ies from the neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis lit­er­a­ture is anoth­er sug­ges­tion for a final paper.”

Enjoy!

Relat­ed blog posts:

• Brain Exer­cise FAQs
• Life­long Learn­ing and New Neu­rons in Adults
• Books on neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and mem­o­ry training
• Brain Fit­ness Glossary