Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by janrinok on Wednesday November 13 2019, @05:33PM   Printer-friendly
from the I-imagine-so dept.

Imagined movements can alter our brains

The interdisciplinary study examined the influence of two different types of BCI on the brains of test subjects with no prior experience of this technology. The first subgroup was given the task of imagining that they were moving their arms or feet, in other words a task requiring the use of the brain's motor system. The task given to the second group addressed the brain's visual center by requiring them to recognize and select letters on a screen. Experience shows that test subjects achieve good results in visual tasks right from the outset and that further training does not improve these results, whereas addressing the brain's motor system is much more complex and requires practice. In order to document potential changes, test subjects' brains were examined before and after each BCI experiment using a special visualizing process -- MRT (magnetic resonance tomography).

"We know that intensive physical training affects the plasticity of the brain," says Till Nierhaus of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences. Plasticity refers to the brain's ability to alter depending on how it is used. Scientists distinguish here between functional plasticity, where changes only occur in the intensity of the signals between the individual synapses, and structural plasticity. Structural plasticity refers to a change in nerve cells or even the forming of new nerve cells. "We asked ourselves if these impacts on the brain's plasticity would also occur in purely mental BCI experimental tasks, in other words if test subjects only think of a task without actually performing it," says Carmen Vidaurre, researcher at the Public University of Navarre.

The results did indeed show measurable changes in precisely those regions of the brain specifically required to conduct the tasks. In other words, changes in the visual areas of the brain in test subjects given the visual task and changes in the motor area in test subjects who practiced imagining moving a part of their body. It is particularly worth noting that changes occurred within very short periods of time (one hour) using BCI, rather than weeks as is the case in physical training. "It is still not clear if these changes would also occur if test subjects were not provided with feedback via the BCI system that their brain signals could be successfully read," Dr. Nierhaus points out. However the results do in general demonstrate that the effects of training with a brain-computer interface could have therapeutic benefits by stimulating specific regions of the brain.

Journal Reference:

Till Nierhaus, Carmen Vidaurre, Claudia Sannelli, Klaus‐Robert Mueller, Arno Villringer. Immediate brain plasticity after one hour of brain–computer interface (BCI). The Journal of Physiology, 2019; DOI: 10.1113/JP278118


Original Submission

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(1)
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 13 2019, @05:48PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 13 2019, @05:48PM (#919937)

    can alter our movements!

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by ikanreed on Wednesday November 13 2019, @07:45PM

      by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 13 2019, @07:45PM (#919977) Journal

      See: Politics

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 13 2019, @08:45PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 13 2019, @08:45PM (#920003)

      I guess all that acid I did in the 70s made me smarterer.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 13 2019, @10:49PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 13 2019, @10:49PM (#920049)

        I'm more smartester than you.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @01:14PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @01:14PM (#920318)

    Hasn't this been known for awhile? If you sit down and mentally practice shooting basketball or playing an instrutment it's nearly as effective as actual training, something like 70-80%.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @02:58PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @02:58PM (#920354)

      Yes, yet another "science proves what we have already known for thousands of years and biilions of people put in to practice every day"

      There was a Trump article above this one. Looks like the slashdot infection has arrived here.

(1)