音乐之脑

回顾并总结了近年来对音乐认知神经基础的研究结果,包括人类感知乐曲的音高、理解音乐的结构和意义中的脑基础,音乐家和普通人在音乐认知上的脑功能差异,以及东西方听众在聆听本土和非本土音乐时的脑活动差异,并对国内利用脑功能成像技术和事件相关电位技术研究音乐认知的前景作出展望     

The Predictive Brain

During the lengthy and complex process of human evolution our ancestors had to adapt to extremely testing situations in which survival depended on making rapid choices that subjected muscles and the body as a whole to extreme tension. In order to seize a prey traveling at speeds that could reach 36 km per hour Homo sapiens had just thousandths of a second in which to anticipate the right moment and position himself before the prey arrived. He also had to prepare the appropriate gesture, tensing his muscles and overcoming the resistance determined by body weight. While we are no longer faced with an environment that is anything so threatening, our brain continues to use these mechanisms day in day out to save time and energy, enabling us to avoid situations of danger, sense in advance the intentions of an interlocutor, and more besides. In this article we set out to show that our brain is not only a reactive mechanism, capable of reacting quickly to the stimuli that arrive from the external environment, but is above all a pro-active mechanism that allows us to make hypotheses, anticipate the consequences of actions, and formulate expectations: in short, to wrong foot an adversary.     

Brain stem encephalitis

Using five cases of illness anamnestic, clinical, paraclinical and morphological results of brain stem encephalitis are presented. The usually indistinctive and unspecified liquor syndrome requires a subtly differentiated diagnostic distinguishing between vascular brain stem syndromes and brain stem gliomas. The hypothesis of hyperallergic reaction of the neurovascular system after bland virus infections is discussed. Because of the unclear spontaneous prognosis in this special case of perivenous focal encephalitis with premature paralysis in swallowing and breathing, measures for intensive care should be included in the method of treatment in time.     

The Storytelling Brain

The well-established techniques of the professional storyteller not only have the potential to model complex ??truth?? but also to dig deeply into that complexity, thereby perhaps getting closer to that truth. This applies not only to fiction, but also to medicine and even science. Compelling storytelling ability may have conferred an evolutionary survival advantage and, if so, is likely represented in the neural circuitry of the human brain. Functional imaging will likely point to a neuroanatomical basis for compelling storytelling ability; this will presumably reflect underlying cellular and molecular mechanisms.     

Sleep and the Brain

Sleep is a fundamental behavior ubiquitous in the animal kingdom, necessary for the support of physical health and in humans for the maintenance of cognitive function. While it influences all body systems, it is particularly important for the brain and is typically characterized using measures of brain electrical activity. Sleep undergoes predictable changes across the lifespan, with notably dramatic alterations occurring during adolescence and with old age. Over and above the normal development changes, however, upwards of a third of the adult population experience some form of insomnia on a regular basis. This issue’s special section on “Sleep through the Ages” contains papers addressing the neurological and neuropsychological implications of sleep in adolescents, older adults and insomnia sufferers, highlighting relations of sleep with brain structure and function.     

Brain Networks in Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia—a severe psychiatric condition characterized by hallucinations, delusions, loss of initiative and cognitive function—is hypothesized to result from abnormal anatomical neural connectivity and a consequent decoupling of the brain’s integrative thought processes. The rise of in vivo neuroimaging techniques has refueled the formulation of dysconnectivity hypotheses, linking schizophrenia to abnormal structural and functional connectivity in the brain at both microscopic and macroscopic levels. Over the past few years, advances in high-field structural and functional neuroimaging techniques have made it increasingly feasible to reconstruct comprehensive maps of the macroscopic neural wiring system of the human brain, know as the connectome. In parallel, advances in network science and graph theory have improved our ability to study the spatial and topological organizational layout of such neural connectivity maps in detail. Combined, the field of neural connectomics has created a novel platform that provides a deeper understanding of the overall organization of brain wiring, its relation to healthy brain function and human cognition, and conversely, how brain disorders such as schizophrenia arise from abnormal brain network wiring and dynamics. In this review we discuss recent findings of connectomic studies in schizophrenia that examine how the disorder relates to disruptions of brain connectivity.     

脑激活定律

用物理学的观点在系统水平上讨论脑内功能子系统的脑区激活及相互作用。引入一些参量描述脑功能特性 ,并且根据现有实验事实提出脑激活的四条定律。     

Representations In The Brain

The representation of objects and faces by neurons in the temporal lobe visualcortical areas of primates has the property that the neurons encode relativelyindependent information in their firing rates. This means that the number ofstimuli that can be encoded increases exponentially with the number of neuronsin an ensemble. Moreover, the information can be read by receiving neurons thatperform just a synaptically weighted sum of the firing rates being received. Someways in which these representations become grounded in the world are described.The issue of syntactic binding in representations, and of its value for a higher orderthought system, is discussed.     

认识脑死亡

脑死亡是指脑功能永久性不可逆的完全丧失,而不考虑呼吸心跳是否停止。目前脑死亡临床诊断标准已具有高度准确性。脑死亡的确立对树立新的道德观念、节约社会资源、促进器官移植发展意义重大,但要在中国立法可能还需要一个漫长的过程。     

Neurofeedback and the Brain

Neurofeedback is an emerging neuroscience-based clinical application, and understanding the underlying principles of neurofeedback allows the therapist to provide referrals or treatment, and provides clients with a framework for understanding the process. The brain's electrical patterns are a form of behavior, modifiable through “operant conditioning,” with the excessive brain frequencies reduced, and those with a deficit are increased. The learning curve for EEG has been described (Hardt, 1975).     

Brain regions as difference-makers

Contrastive neuroimaging is often taken to provide evidence about the localization of cognitive functions. After canvassing some problems with this approach, I offer an alternative: neuroimaging gives evidence about regions of the brain that bear difference-making relationships to psychological processes of interest. I distinguish between the specificity and what I call the systematicity of a difference-making relationship, and I show how at least some neuroimaging experiments can give evidence for systematic difference-making.     

Brain parasites and suicide

In a sample of 20 European nations, the prevalence of the brain parasite Toxoplasma gondii was positively associated with national suicide rates for men and women.