Psychoanalysis in the age of neuroscience - Neuroscience in a nutshell
This page, neuroscience in a nutshell, will navigate the enormous amount of neuroscientific information that confronts us every day. It will function as a scanner which browses through information, selecting and presenting the most interesting news from across the web.
2022
July
21st Annual Congress of the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society:
NEUROPSYCHOANALYSIS: IMPLICATIONS FOR CLINICAL TECHNIQUE
San Juan, Puerto Rico
July 14 – 16, 2022
Report by Rosa Spagnolo
The Educational day, introduced by Dr. Zellner and Dr. Axmacher, highlights the main topics of the Congress. Dr. Zellner points out which parts of the human brain are analogous with those of other animal species, in an evolutionary discussion still open between topographic and behavioral evaluation, in order to be able to read the experimental data obtained through mammals. She focused on the subcortical areas where the instinctual, emotional part is located, and on the frontal and prefrontal areas where logical thinking, decision making and problem solving are sited. The seven emotional systems, described by Panksepp back in 1998, are revisited through their reciprocal interaction and dynamism. In the interplay between cortical / subcortical activation / inhibition, she said, we could find the description of an inhibitory corticalized (frontalized) Superego and an instinctual subcortical Id.
Primary emotions, understood as innate predictions, are included in the model of the predictive mind. The generation of expectation (hierarchical generative model) produces a predictive error code (hierarchical predictive coding) that compares the anticipated expectation with what have just happened, in order to correct it, in a continuous integration between interception, exteroception and proprioception. In summary, primary emotions are innate predictions, facilitating learning (experience) that produces new predictive codes, fueling both imagination and inhibition. In other words, in the passage from primary emotions to imagination (and inhibition), there is a development from the primary process to the secondary process, linked by the structure of the Self (Self related process).
The predictive binder is memory, suggests N. Axmacher introducing the process of formation and cancellation of engrams. Starting from the developed concept that memorization processes are multiple and not unitary, he explains the imaging studies of the temporal lobe linked to the formation of declarative memory. By widening the lens on the hippocampus, he enters into the merits of the subcellular mechanisms that encode memories, enhancing or deleting them. How to go from the decoding mechanism to the content (storage and retrieval), that is, from the process to the content? This is the question he answers in the concluding part of his speech. Through a series of specific stimulus experiments, both the coding mechanisms and the mechanisms of finding the specific stimulus in episodic memories (engram patterns) are investigated. The conclusion of the works, here introduced, confirms the multiple location of the codification, which forms specific stimulus representations that are variously narrated, according to their interaction (in particular the interaction with semantic memories). He outlines, also, the role of repression / free association / resistance in generating and resolving conflicts.
Irith Barzel Raveh opens The Congress. She wishes a greater integration between psychoanalytic constructs and neuropsychoanalysis, which have already traveled a lot together and which need a further connection linked to the results of research in the two fields.
Nancy Mc Williams, starts the main session on: “What do we know about psychopathology and psychotherapy”. She analyzes the psychopathology for which patients asking to be helped. “Which patient for what kind of treatment” has been the guiding thread of her topic. Ten "vital signs" are firstly described in detail, and then analyzed within the corresponding lexical in many theories, like their declination within the personality or the environmental context. These signals are placed in a well-defined psychopathological context, already described by literature. As an example, the lack of vitality is a concept expressed, suggests the speaker, in many authors such as that of personality "false self”, or "Alexitimia", or the theorization of the "dead mother complex” and: “other wide-ranging theories that have been embraced by many authors in recent decades”. It is a set of signs, symptoms, characters and personalities that are described, but whose corresponding psychopathological development becomes difficult to grasp if not keeping together. The tenth point among the vital signs "Love, work and play" captures aspects of the patient and the analyst that are brought into play in the psychotherapy work and reread through the axis relating to the capabilities of DPM II. The author stressed that many researches on the effectiveness of psychotherapies have highlighted how these two factors - personality and relationship - two actors of psychotherapy - are the only elements that define their feasibility (and not the theoretical constructs of the various model’s intervention). She then concludes by citing eight positive qualities of the analyst (empathy, acceptance, genuineness, hope and expectations to name a few) that help the successful outcome of the therapeutic process. Ultimately, the work presented is aimed at describing the positive elements of the therapeutic relationship. That can be found in these 10 vital signs, and in the lexical sub-categories, which seem pathognomonic of a successful psychotherapy intervention.
Within this description of her labels, I found it difficult to glimpse the patient, his pathology, specifically predicting psychopathology and its course. Probably, due to the temporal limits of each discourse or, more generally, to the limits of each description of the psychopathology that affects both the DSM and the PMD, which are sometimes not so exhaustive.
The keynotes of M. Solms first enter into the merits of the psychoanalytic process and the intervention technique, then put forward some hypotheses for the revision of some theoretical constructs to better understand them in the light of recent research. He highlights, In particular, the theory of drives, of the unconscious and in general of the talking cure.
The need for a homeostatic balance, that keeps the organism in balance for survival, induces the latter to try to satisfy the primary internal needs, so that this balance does not break. This satisfaction is readable as pleasure, when it brings the organism back into balance, displeasure, when this need does not meet satisfaction. Through this continuous search for balance (pleasure versus displeasure) the body (its needs) meets the mind (the work done by the drive on the border between the two) which learns to make predictions on the encounter between need and satisfaction. The seven primary emotional systems are equated with impulses through which the body meets the mind and the environment, that is, the objects of satisfaction.
The unconscious is revisited through the deposit (and the work) of memories. Learning what works, in satisfying needs for example, and what doesn't work (predictive model) initiates a legitimate or unlawful (early) automation process by the Ego that "learns" to make predictions about the possibility that a certain need will meet the object of satisfaction. In a nutshell the Ego makes predictions and if these are right the answers (the process) would be automatized (made unconscious, cognitive unconscious; passage from cortical to subcortical predictive structures) otherwise, if they are not correct (prediction error) the needs would remain unsatisfied. This second process is recorded as displeasure. In this case the prediction needs further action to be corrected, or, otherwise, the non-satisfaction will be illegitimately automatized (repressed unconscious).
In this continuous work of automation, the long-term memory plays the main role as this kind of memory can be easily recalled (function of declarative, preconscious memory) and their continuous reconsolidation facilitates the automation of predictions. The last revised point is the function of the talking cure. M. Solms proposes the study of this through seven points such as the impact on psychoanalytic theories of affective consciousness linked to the Id, the mutative role of transference interpretations, the value of processing, the automation of defenses, the role of symptoms.
In the following sessions, the various hypotheses posed by the two main guests were extensively analyzed.
More on: https://npsa-association.org/events/npsa-congress-san-juan-2022/
2021
December
Northoff G. and Scalabrini A. (2021) “Project for a Spatiotemporal Neuroscience” – Brain and Psyche Share Their Topography and Dynamic. Front. Psychol. 12:717402. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.717402
Neuroscientists and psychoanalysts working together are making a great deal to build a bridge between the two disciplines. Recently, many models came out and all of them seems to be really important to better understand the psyche-brain work. However, here we will focus on Northoff and Scalabrini paper (2021), who propose a “Project for a Spatiotemporal Neuroscience”, departing from the assumption that - Brain and Psyche Share Their Topography and Dynamic.
The authors start from the assumption that the hypotheses on embodied cognition and those of affective neuroscience on emotional systems, as well as those on the computational mind, do not deviate” from scientific psychology centered on the "third person". In these disciplines, just like the psyche in psychology, the brain is conceived in terms of specific functions that display extrinsic contents, such as affective, cognitive, and social contents. These functions / contents are considered as i) usually located in particular regions of the brain, ii) remain the same over time, and iii) are prevalently investigated by task-evoked brain activity. In this sense, all these disciplines remain anchored to a static view of the brain and the psyche. Psychoanalysis, on the other hand, the authors argue, has always presented a dynamic model of the mind since its inception, made up of changing investments, contents and forms, such as the primary and secondary process capable of speaking in subjective terms. Not being able to investigate the brain from the point of view of the "first person perspective" creates a gap, which they call the "gap contingency", between the static models built around the brain by neuroscience and the dynamic "first person" model of psychoanalysis.
How to bridge this gap they ask?
“One way is to take into view the brain in terms that are analogous to the model of the psyche in psychoanalysis. Specifically, one may want to conceive the brain in terms of its energy, dynamic, structure/topography, and first/second-person perspective. Brain and psyche can then be conceived in analogous terms with the ultimate hope that these features are shared by brain and psyche as their “common currency”” (Pag.2)
The authors therefore propose to start from psychoanalytic models, integrating them with what comes from the neuroscientific world on the space-time structure of the brain and psyche. Better to say, they propose to complete Freud's “Project of a Scientific Psychology” through an alternative vision that focuses on the energy, dynamics, structure of the brain and conceives it in the first / second person perspective.
Psychoanalysis, they claim, has taught us to appreciate the dynamics of the psyche in which energy investments, fueling the libido, the drives and the unconscious. It is this mental energy that makes the psyche dynamic. Is it possible to describe this dynamic before its functions and contents are revealed?
In other words, we have been accustomed to seeing the psyche as a structure organized on functions and contents, while its spatial and temporal characteristics are neglected by both cognitive and affective neuroscience. On the contrary, psychoanalysis refers to the experience in the first- and second-person perspective keeping the focus on subjectivity, whereas in psychology the emphasis is always objective, in the third person. Therefore, starting from the study of spontaneous brain activity at rest, with its cerebral and psychic hierarchies and nesting, helps us, they argue, to better understand the spatiotemporal model and therefore to acquire a scientific view of subjectivity.
Spontaneous activity of the brain at rest refers to the absence of specific tasks or stimuli introduced externally from a researcher and can be measured during the resting state. Spontaneous activity can be characterized topographically, hence spatially, by various interacting networks, the relationships of which appear to be modulated by the global activity of the brain. While on the temporal side, the spontaneous activity of the brain is characterized by fluctuations or oscillations in various frequency ranges which, together, provide a certain dynamic temporal structure. Topography and temporal dynamics constitute for the authors the model of spatiotemporal neuroscience. This focuses on the space and time characteristics of the brain and how they, in turn, shape the brain's cognitive, affective, social functions, etc. with their respective contents.
This model, they warn us, is not in contradiction or competitive with affective, cognitive and social neuroscience, but integrates and incorporates them in a wider and more complete spatial and temporal context. Dwelling on the work of Qin et al. (2020) they introduce the dynamics of the Self, the interoceptive, extero-proprioceptive, cognitive or mental self, and its nested, layered, hierarchical structure by Qin et al. (2020) described as "nested hierarchy of the self". In this nesting, lower-layer regions are included in the next upper- layer and are supplemented by additional regions, and so on. This description converges the studies on brain/self nestedness and hierarchy.
It is important to underline that the Self is no longer conceived as an isolated entity that "resides" within the structures of the brain, body and mind. It nests and hierarchizes exactly with brain nesting and stratification.
Within the paper, great importance was given to the recent “New Project for a Scientific Psychology” by Mark Solms (2020). The latter, following Freud's "Project", uses the original Freudian text as a model to reformulate it in terms of Friston's Free Energy (FEP) and Predictive Coding (PC), within which he recodes more exquisitely psychodynamic concepts such as defenses, memory, dreams, Ego etc.
The authors expand this field by trying to describe how the spatiotemporal structure of the brain also guides and organizes activities related to FEP and PC. They conclude by stating that we need both FEP / PC and spatiotemporal neuroscience models to better understand and guide psychodynamic psychotherapies.
The aim of the authors is to neuroscientifically inform psychotherapy and expand our knowledge on the self and its intrinsic features at neuro-psychodynamic level. At the current stage, their model does not aim to change or provides new therapeutic techniques; nevertheless, they affirm that spatiotemporal psychotherapy might provide a more comprehensive and neuroscientific informed framework that might be useful for therapists.
“What is the goal of psychotherapy? In our neuroscientifically informed view, the goal of psychotherapy is (1) to reverse maladaptive topographic-dynamic re-organization of brain and (2) to establish a more adaptive and stable spatiotemporal nestedness of brain and self thereby re-establishing a proper nested hierarchy of self. This process, in accordance with contemporary psychoanalysis, might serve to re-establish the subjective sense of integrity, coherence, and continuity of self over time and space, similar to what has been described by Philip Bromberg: “health is the ability to stand in the spaces between realities without losing any of them – the capacity to feel like one self while being many” (Bromberg, 1996, p. 166)” (Pag.13)
Solms, M. (2020). New project for a scientific psychology: general scheme. Neuropsychoanalysis 22, 5–35. doi: 10.1080/15294145.2020.1833361
Paper Link: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.717402/full
BY ROSA SPAGNOLO
March
Allan Schore's attachment-regulation model: the right brain communication between caregiver and child and the formation of the intersubjective mind. A right brain cure for the human unconscious. Clara Mucci
In the last decades Bowlby's theories of attachment, initially considered "not deep enough", meaning not referring to the unconscious dynamics, has been widely acknowledged as fundamental for human development even within the psychoanalytic field, especially by relational psychoanalysis and neuropsychoanalysis.
The traditional view of psychoanalysis as based on a model constructed on drives and conflicts has given way to a "relational turn" in psychoanalytic theory and practice, a model based on a dual unconscious (Lyons-Ruth) or a "two person psychology" (Schore). This new relevance given to attachment in developmental models, also sustained by Fonagy and his model of mentalization theory, is based on a theory of affect regulation. Affective regulation is fundamental to achieve mature cognitive levels of development and control of impulses. The mother (or the primary caregiver) is the “hidden” regulator of all the neurobiological systems leading to emotional regulation, cognitive development and social formation of the brain. This communication is regulated by the right hemisphere of the mother in contact with the right hemisphere of the child; the right hemisphere in fact develops first and is dominant in the first year and a half of life, forming Internal Working Models (based on images and dynamics of self and other in relation), regulation of the amygdala in the limbic system with further development and connections with orbitofrontal areas and higher order functioning of the brain, with the subsequent intervention of the left brain which becomes later the dominant hemisphere (even though both works in conjunction). Those first two years of life are encoded in the amygdala, in implicit and procedural memory, forming images of the self that remain un/conscious (in the sense described by Schore), not conscious for the subject and yet capable of organizing most of the mental and emotional life, including future choices and behaviour.
Allan Schore has revised the attachment model derived by Bowlby integrating it with decades of interdisciplinary research combining affective neuroscience, interpersonal neurobiology, psychology of child development and infant research, creating a model based on affect regulation and attachment, in which the right brain functioning and development is essential. Schore describes the early emotional exchanges of mother and child (or the right brain communication of the primary caregiver with the right brain of the child) as the basis of the development of the neurobiological and neuroscientific structures of psychic development, with a determining impact on the maturations of the cerebral systems involved in affect stimulation and affect regulation, which, from being induced by the caregiver finally will become self-regulations of the systems of the child. The structural systems of the right brain are instrumental for the non conscious elaboration of the emotions, in modulating stress and glucocorticoids, in self regulation and constitute therefore the affective roots of the original nucleus of the Self. In this view, attachment dynamics are instrumental for the formation of healthy affective and neurobiological paths or on the contrary will contribute to or even determine future psychopathology; they will also be essential in the implicit dynamics of psychotherapy.
Early emotional experiences therefore affect permanently the psychic structure and are lateralized in the right hemisphere, which is the one most connected to the body, to the autonomous nervous system and to the unconscious emotions. Moreover, these early relational right brain experiences form the neurobiological nucleus of the unconscious (which at this point is not repressed in the sense of Freud but rather “non-repressed” in the sense explained by Mauro Mancia, in a view that is very congruent with Schore's model). The un/conscious interactive regulations between the two are at the foundation of attachment relations and styles.
The entire first year of life of the new born human is spent in the creation of an attachment bond, through visuo-facial, tactile, gestural, tactile, and prosodic communication. The mother (a secure mother) is in attunement with the constant changes of the internal states of the child. At the beginning, the child's affects are decoded and mediated or regulated by the caregiver, then they become more and more self-regulated (from projective identification to regulation of affects); this acquired regulation (which is also the basis of secure attachment) will depend on the actual real experience of the child-caregiver dyad, on the real experiences the child has lived in his/her first year of life. The function of affect regulator performed by the mother has an effect on the synaptic connections during the establishment of functional circuits of the right brain in predetermined or genetically determined critical moments of maturation. In particular, the transactions between caregiver and child have an effect on the limbic circuits controlling and elaborating emotional life and capacity for empathy.
When the caregiver is emotionally inaccessible and reacts with not enough tuning and capacity to regulate the momentarily disruption in the communication or reacts with anger and hostility instead of modulating the arousal, she might contribute to create hyperarousal in the child or even moments of dissociation, as we see in states of abuse and abandonment, where the Internal Working Models are of insecure or even disorganized attachment.
Present forms of psychotherapy consider the dysregulation of affects and relational deficits as an etiopathological precondition towards psychiatric disorders, addictions, destructiveness and personality disorders. Intersubjectively created processes (empathy, identification with the other etc.) greatly depend on resources and functioning of the right brain. 60% of human communication is transmitted nonverbally, through gaze and bodily interactions (visuo-facial, prosodic and bodily posture).
As Daniel Stern argued, “without the nonverbal it would be difficult to reach the empathic interactive aspects of intersubjectivity”. The right brain transactions modulate the relational unconscious dyadically expressed in the attachments experienced by the adult, including the therapeutic encounter. These right brain communications convey even more than the conscious verbalizations the personality of the therapist as well as the personality of the patient. Affective information is based mostly on the face and secondarily on the intonation and modulation of voice (making the use of vis- à- vis technique preferable). As Schore has explained, during intense affective moments these dialogues of the right brain between the relational unconscious of the client to the relational unconscious of the therapist are examples of primary process communication. These non verbal, implicit, non conscious communications, between right brain/ mind/body are bidirectional and therefore intersubjective. Intersubjective transactions mediate the moments of encounter between patient and therapist, including moment of relational enactments. In therapy, affect regulation takes place at the margins of affect dysregulation. "Intersubjectivity is thus more than a match or communication of explicit cognitions. The intersubjective field co-constructed by two individuals includes not only just two minds but two bodies" (Schore, 2012, p. 40). Transference itself therefore is mediated by these transactions that are structured through early moments of intersubjective adaptation. As a consequence, transference-countertransference transactions represent/embody non conscious and non verbal communication between right brain/mind/body of the one participant and right brain/mind/body of the other.
In monitoring the somatic countertransferential responses, the right brain of the empathic clinician psycho-biologically fine tuned follow at preconscious level not only the rhythms of the arousal and the flux of affective states of the patient but also the therapist's bodily and somatic counter-transferential responses, exteroceptive and interoceptive.
Therefore the therapeutic response can repair the damage and create a new structure, more capable of coping with the existential challenges.
This revolutionary attachment/regulation theory based on the right brain functioning explains how the therapeutic participation to the external regulation of affects is based on the emerging capacity to achieve more complex and more adaptive internal regulatory modalities in the patient. The psycho-therapeutic model is based on the same mechanism of psychobiological development of attachment.
According to Schore, the therapeutic alliance acts epigenetically as a social, affective and caring environment. It facilitates growth and promotes not only new relational secure attachment modalities, but is also able to restructure or even expand the right brain functioning in the patient and therefore his/her unconscious creative functioning, being the right brain the biological substrate of the human unconscious.
Schore A.N. , The Science of the Art of Psychotherapy. NewYork:W.W.Norton.
2019
December 2019
The brain never rests Did you always believe that your brain rests while you are sleeping?
As we spend most part of our lives sleeping, it is vital to understand why sleeping is so necessary for the brain. To explain this, brain activity during sleep must be examined. A lot of current studies explore the mechanism involved with the production of sleep/dreams and the process of cognition. From the 50’s onward the discovery of REM/ non-REM sleep lead to increased research in neurophysiology and the anatomic correlation between sleep and dreams. The “resting state”, like sleep/dream, mind wandering, restful state, all share the same circuits associated with non-evocative tasks. The DMN (Default Mode Network) is one of them. I'm going to suggest few new studies that can be helpful to keep us updated about new developments in this topic.
Houldin (2019) [1] writes: "The function of sleep is a longstanding mystery of the brain. By contrast, the function of resting state networks (RSNs) is one of its most recent mysteries". The author outlines three studies involving an evaluation of RSNs, across wakefulness and sleep using an experimental paradigm in which healthy, non-sleep-deprived participants slept in an MRI scanner, as their brain activity was recorded using simultaneous electroencephalography (EEG)-fMRI.
The results indicate that:
a) sleep is supported by much the same RSN structure as wakefulness
b) one of the functions of sleep may be to counterbalance wakefulness by homeostasis
c) the pattern of frequency band representation dynamics reflects the cortical neurophysiological dynamics.
What does that mean?
The author says “By observing communication changes amongst these networks, we can make use of these known associations to infer what the brain might be doing during sleep”. More specifically: The first study found that the resting state networks that are consistently identifiable in a waking state are also consistently present during sleep, with no new networks appearing, despite the unique functions of sleep. The second study suggests that the function of deep sleep may be to “reset” brain activity closer towards a baseline pattern, so that the brain might be better prepared for the need to adapt and to create new patterns the following day. The third study found that, beyond the activity of the networks themselves, representing the collective activity of billions of neurons, subset neuronal populations appear to largely change their activity according to some predictions.
A few years ago, in 2011, Rosazza & Minati [2] noted:
"Functional connectivity can be studied during the performance of active tasks, such as finger tapping or visual stimulation, as well as during resting state, a condition in which the participant is not performing any active task and is simply instructed to remain still, with eyes closed or open while fixating a cross. In fact, it is well known that under resting conditions the brain is engaged in spontaneous activity which is not attributable to specific inputs or to the generation of specific output but is intrinsically originated. The brain under normal physiological conditions is never idle, but always remains neuro-electrically and metabolically active". In the meantime: "Many other brain networks have now been observed at rest, including those involved in vision, hearing, and memory. In each of these cases, the same regions that fire together during tasks seem to hum along together at rest, maintaining a signature of their functional organization. The slow, synchronized oscillations within each network—which are independent of each other—are also remarkably robust, persisting even during sleep and under anaesthesia" [3].
What does it say about the anatomical destination of memory in the dream/sleep?
We know that clinical and brain imaging studies link episodic memory and auto-noetic awareness with activity in several prefrontal brain regions (e.g. the medial, dorsolateral), the visual cortex and the medial temporal lobe-including the hippocampus. Hippocampal regions are especially active when the self-referential quality of the memory task is high. Changes in brain function during REM sleep, especially increased activity in the hippocampal formation and decreased activity in prefrontal regions, are consistent with the view that altered episodic memory functioning, linked to these brain regions contributes to the unique quality of dream experience[4] (Nielsen & Stenstrom, 2005).
In the online page of Neuroscience News [5], they sum up this topic as follows: "While we sleep, the hippocampus reactivates itself spontaneously by generating activity similar to that while we are awake. It sends information to the cortex, which reacts in turn. This exchange is often followed by a period of silence called a ‘delta wave’, then by rhythmic activity called a ‘sleep spindle’. This is when the cortical circuits reorganize to form stable memories. However, the role of delta waves in the formation of new memories is still a puzzle: why does a period of silence interrupt the sequence of information exchanges between the hippocampus and the cortex, and the functional reorganization of the cortex?".
We know that new information is stored into different types of memories. Neuroscientists call this - the multiple memory systems. The model of this system originated from the evidence of a pattern of learning impairment after damage to the mammalian hippocampal system. For many reasons they have proposed a dual-memory theory of memory: hippocampus-dependent and non-hippocampus-dependent, or simply, declarative and non-declarative (procedural) memory. The hippocampus and neocortex, moreover, are the neural structures associated with the temporary and long-term memory storage, respectively.
"Current memory models maintain that these two brain structures accomplish unique, but interactive, memory functions. Specifically: most modeling suggests that memories are rapidly acquired during waking experience by the hippocampus, before being later consolidated into the cortex for long-term storage. Sleep has been shown to be critical for the transfer and consolidation of memories in the cortex" suggests Langille J. J. (2019)[6] . During subsequent consolidation periods, it is assumed that this network will make it possible to strengthen and integrate new memories with pre-existing memories in long-term memory storage. Off-line periods, such as sleep, are considered the ideal periods for reproduction, since no new incoming information will interfere with consolidation.
Todorova & Zugaro (2019)[7] carried out a new study exploring the brain structure involved with deep sleep. Neuroscience news sums up this paper as follows: " Spontaneous reactivations of the hippocampus determine which cortical neurons remain active during the delta waves and reveal transmission of information between the two cerebral structures. In addition, the assemblies activated during the delta waves are formed of neurons that have participated in learning a spatial memory task during the day. Together these elements suggest that these processes are involved in memory consolidation. To demonstrate it, in rats the scientists caused artificial delta waves to isolate either neurons associated with reactivations in the hippocampus, or random neurons".
Todorova and Zugaro argue: "Does this isolation of cortical computations play a critical role in memory consolidation? A prediction of this hypothesis is that isolating cortical assemblies by experimental induction of delta waves should trigger memory consolidation, but only if the isolated activity is relevant to the hippocampo-cortical dialogue (partner spikes). We have already shown that triggering delta waves, when endogenous mechanisms fail to do so, can boost memory consolidation provided the delta waves are induced in an appropriate time window". In reporting the results of this study the authors note: "We focused on delta spikes and found that they are not neuronal noise due to imperfect silencing of the cortical mantle. On the contrary, they constitute a common phenomenon potentially implicating all neurons and all delta waves, and they react genuine processing involved in memory consolidation. This also provides a mechanism for the documented but puzzling role of delta waves in memory consolidation: synchronized silence across most of the cortex isolates the network from competing inputs, while a select subpopulation of neurons maintains relevant spike patterns active between epochs of hippocampo-cortical information transfer and epochs of cortical plasticity and network reorganization".
The therapeutic targets for various kinds of memory disorders are quite different. For example, for extreme fear-based memories like phobias, one must target the amygdala; for strong habit-based memories like obsessive–compulsive disorders, one must target the striatum; for severe forgetfulness, as in Alzheimer’s disease, one must target the hippocampus and adjacent structures.
One possible implication of these studies on memory consolidation is that traumatic memories will be stored, remembered or forgotten, according to this hippocampus-cortical information transfer and network reorganization.
Rosa Spagnolo
[1] Houldin, E. (2019). Resting State Network Dynamics Across Wakefulness and Sleep. Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 6397. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/6397
[2] Rosazza C. &Minati L. (2011). Resting-state brain networks: literature review and clinical applications. Neurol. Sci. 32:773–785. DOI 10.1007/s10072-011-0636-y
[3] Shen, H., H. (2015). Core Concept: Resting-state connectivity. PNAS, 17/112: 46 | 14115–14116 https://www.pnas.org/content/112/46/14115
[4] Nielsen, T., A. & Stenstrom P. (2005). What are the memory sources of dreaming? Nature, Vol. 437|27 October 2005|doi:10.1038/nature04288
[5] CNRS (2019). "A new discovery: How our memories stabilize while we sleep." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 18 October
2019. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191018125514.htm
[6] Langille, J.,J. (2019). Remembering to Forget: A Dual Role for Sleep Oscillations in Memory Consolidation and Forgetting. Front. Cell. Neurosci. 13:71. doi: 10.3389/fncel.2019.00071
[7]Todorova R. & Zugaro, M. (2019). Isolated cortical computations during delta waves support memory consolidation. Science, 2019; 366 (6463): 377 DOI: 10.1126/science.aay0616
March 2019
Mapping the brain. A step forward the regional connectivity matrix.
Mapping connections between neurons, from different brain regions, and then drawing an atlas of connectivity is one of the next challenges for scientists. This challenge was taken upby Professor Partha Mitra, from the RIKEN Center for Brain Science in Japan, who is leading a project to map individual brains onto a common reference atlas, despite their significant individual variation. The study involves the common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus), better for this mapping than both the common mouse and primates (like Macaque), because of its flatter cortexandsmaller brain size, that potentially allow more comprehensive analysis of neuronal circuitry,furthermoreMarmosets exhibit more developed social behavior (Miller et al., 2016) and vocal communication (Marx, 2016). For many reasons, following the initiative in Europe (HBP- Human Brain Project) and US (BRAIN project), Japan launched the Brain/Minds project as an NHPs (Not Humane Primates) model. Tract-tracing methods are the best way for studying the whole brain, whereas previous studies have been based on literature curation and meta-analysis. Now, for the marmoset, an online database of more than 140 retrograde tracer injection studies in about 50 cortical areas is available online (http://monash.marmoset.brainarchitecture.org).
All the studies carried out shed light on both qualitative and quantitative aspects of neural connections. That means building up an ideal data set which would contain the position, morphology, synaptic connectivity together with transmitter/receptor identities at each synapse as well as spatial maps of the diffuse neuro-modulatory transmitters and receptors of every neuron.This mapping could have a great importance for the studies on connectivity and its dysfunctions (in depression, schizophrenia, autism) but each mapping - even if comprehensive mapping was performed in one brain- would still not address the problem of individual variation across brains, which would ideally require doing the same detailed map for many brains.
The authors introduce detailed information about how to address biological variation and display the three- dimensional reconstruction by different stages of image acquisition, showing an accurate parcellation of the brain. The registration process permitted brain surface reconstruction (Video 1), three- dimensional visualizations of projections, and virtual cuts in planes of section other than the original coronal sectionsso as to finally create a brain map of the regional connectivity matrix.
For further reading please see:
A high-throughput neurohistological pipeline for brain-wide mesoscale connectivity mapping of the common marmoset. Meng K. L. , et. al./ Lin et. Al. (2019). eLife, 8:e40042
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.40042
The video
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.40042.011
Rosa Spagnolo
January 2019
Topic 1: Knowledge in Pills
When you surf the web on a neuroscience topic, what will you find first? Everybody seeks information through the internet, psychoanalysts included. Therefore, starting a dialogue between neuroscience and psychoanalysis today means to look through many web proposals. By this fast surfing you gain general information: you look at everything, without going into detail.
Some surfers spend time going into greater depth and reviewing the concepts "reached" by the internet: most surfers remain trapped in the network of offers. The "knowledge in pills" feeds many fields, including both neuroscience and psychoanalysis.
Our, question today is: Do you think it is possible to gain new insights from this kind of surfing? Does "viewing" the information by scrolling down a page, really mean "knowledge"? Let's start by visiting the neuroscientific
top ten
Top 10 Neuroscience News Stories of 2017
Dec 14, 2017 | by Adam Tozer PhD, Science Writer
https://www.technologynetworks.com/neuroscience/lists/top-10-neuroscience-news-stories-of-2017-295213
And the 100 best neuroscience blogs
https://blog.feedspot.com/neuroscience_blogs/
Or the top ten of neuroscience video: A collection of TED Talks (and more) on the topic of Neuroscience
https://www.ted.com/playlists/browse?topics=neuroscience