brain-neuroimaging

January Newsletter: Let’s Talk Brain Fitness, Neuroplasticity and Cognitive Reserve

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Let us first announce an upcom­ing Vir­tu­al Book Club Dis­cus­sion focused on Brain Fit­ness, to take place on Mon­day March 14th in hon­or of Brain Aware­ness Week 2011 (March 14–20th). Let’s dis­cuss burn­ing issues togeth­er: Why care about neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and the pos­si­bil­i­ties it offers to enrich our qual­i­ty of life? What does cog­ni­tive reserve research mean to the way we learn, work, play, live? What is Brain Train­ing — and what is not? All the con­ver­sa­tion be vir­tu­al, via social media tools. You can learn more here.

This edi­tion of Sharp­Brains month­ly eNewslet­ter brings many arti­cles on those top­ics. Enjoy! [Read more…] about Jan­u­ary Newslet­ter: Let’s Talk Brain Fit­ness, Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and Cog­ni­tive Reserve

The value of neuroimaging techniques (and what those squiggly lines mean)

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The media reg­u­lar­ly reports on find­ings based on neu­roimag­ing stud­ies, but rarely do they explain exact­ly what these tech­niques are, their ben­e­fits or what it’s like to actu­al­ly par­tic­i­pate in these types of stud­ies. Today I’ll describe what a par­tic­i­pant goes through when they vol­un­teer for a cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science exper­i­ment using a neu­roimag­ing tech­nique called elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy (EEG). Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it is exceed­ing­ly com­mon for par­tic­i­pants to not under­stand how these tech­niques ben­e­fit pre­vi­ous behav­ioral find­ings. Sim­ply stat­ed, if I were a par­tic­i­pant, I’d like to know why I need­ed to wear a weird swim cap and how it ben­e­fits the research being done.

EEG is a tool reg­u­lar­ly used to view and record the changes in brain activ­i­ty involved in the var­i­ous types of cog­ni­tive func­tions while per­form­ing a task. [Read more…] about The val­ue of neu­roimag­ing tech­niques (and what those squig­gly lines mean)