Brain Metabolism and Training Effects

Here is brain metabolism in Tetris, reported in Wired in 1993:

In Tetris, Haier sees "a tremendous learning curve. The question became: When the stimuli are faster and the decision making is harder, does the brain require more energy?" Haier found, as he suspected, that the brain requires less energy to play higher levels of Tetris. This is "counterintuitive," he says, "but consistent with a brain efficiency idea."

In first-time users, Tetris significantly raises cerebral glucose metabolic rates (GMRs), meaning brain energy consumption soars. Yet, after four to eight weeks of daily doses, GMRs sink to normal, while performance increases seven-fold, on average. Tetris trains your brain to stop using inefficient gray matter, perhaps a key cognitive strategy for learning. In fact, the lowest final GMRs are found in the best players' brains, the ones most efficient at dealing with Tetris's Daedalian geometry.

Here is Yahoo Sports on soccer players and brain metabolism, 2014:

Tokyo (AFP) - Brazilian superstar Neymar's brain activity while dancing past opponents is less than 10 percent the level of amateur players, suggesting he plays as if on auto-pilot, according to Japanese neurologists.

Results of brain scans conducted on Neymar in February this year indicated minimal cerebral function when he rotated his ankle and point to the Barcelona striker's wizardry being uncannily natural.

"From MRI images we discovered Neymar's brain activity to be less than 10 percent of an amateur player," researcher Eiichi Naito told AFP on Friday.

"It is possible genetics is a factor, aided by the type of training he does."

I think genetics is what makes Neymar capable of becoming the great player he is, with training, but the training effect (pros train more and better than amateurs, I believe) is common to all of our genes and brains. Training decreases the brain metabolism requirements for the same amount of work, and that work becomes more effective with that training as well.

Efficiency. A very good thing about the brain.

Some tongue-in-cheek comments about the Arizona execution process.

Here's Yahoo on the Arizona botched execution.

First of all, the fact that the executed man had loud breathing for about two hours after his lethal injection simply means the drug put him to sleep, hypnotic OD style, for a while before he died.  This is slow, but hardly inhumane.  The man did not suffer while asleep, after all, no matter the loud breathing. Snoring and snorting is not suffering. Gasping while asleep from such an OD is not gasping from pain, but from disordered breathing.

It's not being put to sleep and having some sleep apnea that's objected to as inhumane, it's the killing part, right?

Second, as long as we are treating murderers like dogs, here's an answer to the problem of lack of human death drugs:

EUTHASOL® (pentobarbital sodium and phenytoin sodium) Solution

For use in dogs for humane, painless, and rapid euthanasia.

Active ingredients pentobarbital sodium and phenytoin sodium result in humane, painless, and rapid euthanasia.

• Indicated for use in dogs to induce painless, humane, and rapid euthanasia resulting from cerebral death triggered by active ingredients pentobarbital sodium and phenytoin sodium.
• Intravenous (IV) administration produces rapid anesthetic action and smooth, quick onset of unconsciousness.
• Dosage is 1 mL per 10 lb of body weight.
• IV administration is preferred. Intracardiac injection is also possible.
• Available in 100 mL, multiple-dose vials.

Environmental Hazard

This product is toxic to wildlife. Birds and mammals feeding on treated animals may be killed. Euthanized animals must be properly disposed of by deep burial, incineration, or other method in compliance with state and local laws, to prevent consumption of carcass material by scavenging wildlife.

WARNING: For canine euthanasia only. Must not be used for therapeutic purposes. Do not use in animals intended for food.

CAUTION: Caution should be exercised to avoid contact of the drug with open wounds or accidental self-inflicted injections. Keep out of reach of children. If eye contact, flush with water and seek medical advice/attention.

Federal law restricts this drug to use by or on the order of a licensed veterinarian.

Click image to enlarge

Lucy's Myth: But it's 92%, Not 10%

Sci-Fi myth: In the movie Lucy: Humans use only 10% of their brain capacity. Thus, a drug may give humans like Lucy superpowered brain function by allowing them to use more! It's amazing!

Reality: We use essentially all of our brain capacity. Some studies have shown that loss of 50 to 100 ml of brain out of about 1130 ml total brain volume is enough to cause cognitive impairment. So normal function would require that we use at minimum 92% of our brain capacity. Furthermore, it's likely that impairment sometimes happens even with less than an 8% volume loss. At least, the patients notice it.

Of course, a drug that made Lucy a mere 8% smarter, enough to perhaps, with the right help, defeat her opponents using ordinary means, would not make much of a movie.

Gotta love those scfi-fi movies though. Great entertainment, just misleading pseudoscience in their premisses (and on their premises).

Aloha Friday: Eddie Kamae

Linked here is the NEA's page on Eddie Kamae, a composer, one of the founders of the Sons of Hawaii music group and documentary filmmaker.

Check out the love song "Morning Dew" linked to on the audio page. Here is the full song on video:

Black (Chocolate) Sapote Fruit

English: Black Sapote, Black Persimmon, Chocolate-Fruit, Chocolate Pudding Fruit
Spanish: Zapote Negro
German: Schwarze Sapote
Horticultral Species: Diospyros digyna, Family: Ebenaceae.
The Aztec word "tzapotl" meant any soft, sweet fruit, and was not species-specific. The black sapote fruit is a persimmon, but tastes very different from other persimmons. The family Ebenaceae also contains the Chinese and Japanese persimmons.
The chocolate pudding fruit is green when unripe, brown-black when ripe, and may contain 2 to 10 shiny dark red-brown seeds. Some cultivars (including the Hawaiian version) are nearly seedless. Native to Mexico and Guatemala, it is also cultivated in Florida, Philippines, Dominican Republic, Cuba and Hawaii. It is a slow-growing, evergreen tree which may reach 8 meters in height.
Of Culinary Interest: The Black Sapote is a tomato-like fruit, 10 x 13 cm in size, and is best picked with a bit of stem remaining. It is a large single berry type fruit with a thin, firm rind. Its unripe color is shining dark green with brown speckling, browning as it ripens. The fruit's flesh is rich, dark brown colored and is, when fully ripe, mousse or custard-like in consistency. The fruit is at its best once it has changed from green to a completely ugly brown-black appearance. When fully ripe,it has a sweet, nut-like mild flavor, like mild chocolate, but far lower in fat and calories.

See also the fruit pages, here.

Neurosurgical Panel Determines New Criteria for Concussion Diagnosis

Although it is often very clear when a head injury has occurred, criteria have been needed to assess concussion injury independently of a particular researcher's working definition. As the authors of the study below note, there is in the concussion literature a "pervasive circularity in the relationship between case identification and outcome reporting for individual studies. That is, in most of the published literature, criteria for a definition of a case of concussion were prespecified, and then patients were selected on the basis of those criteria. Thus, data on the prevalence of the criteria as outcomes in those samples are overestimated."

The authors reviewed multiple head injury studies (in sports, hospital, and military settings) in a effort to come up with criteria for concussion that would choose persons who had a concussion from those with potentially concussive events who were not felt to have had concussion.

The guidelines are to be published in September, but were just released in advance online.

The symptoms and signs found to be in common as indicators for concussion, regardless of individual study criteria among reviewed studies, were:

(1) observed and documented disorientation or confusion immediately after the event.

(2) impaired balance within 1 day after injury.

(3) slower reaction time within 2 days after injury.

(4) impaired verbal learning and memory within 2 days after injury.

--------------------------------

ABSTRACT

Neurosurgery September 2014 - Volume 75 - Issue - p S3–S15

doi: 10.1227/NEU.0000000000000433

Concussion Guidelines

Concussion Guidelines Step 1: Systematic Review of Prevalent Indicators

Carney, Nancy PhD; Ghajar, Jamshid MD, PhD; Jagoda, Andy MD; Bedrick, Steven PhD; Davis-O'Reilly, Cynthia BSc; du Coudray, Hugo PhD; Hack, Dallas MD; Helfand, Nora; Huddleston, Amy MPA; Nettleton, Tracie MS; Riggio, Silvana MD

Correspondence: Jamshid Ghajar, MD, PhD, Brain Trauma Foundation, 7 World Trade Center, 34th Floor, 250 Greenwich St, New York, NY 10007. E-mail: ghajar@braintrauma.org

Supplemental digital content is available for this article. Direct URL citations appear in the printed text and are provided in the HTML and PDF versions of this article on the journal's Web site (www.neurosurgery-online.com).

BACKGROUND: Currently, there is no evidence-based definition for concussion that is being uniformly applied in clinical and research settings.

OBJECTIVE: To conduct a systematic review of the highest-quality literature about concussion and to assemble evidence about the prevalence and associations of key indicators of concussion. The goal was to establish an evidence-based foundation from which to derive, in future work, a definition, diagnostic criteria, and prognostic indicators for concussion.

METHODS: Key questions were developed, and an electronic literature search from 1980 to 2012 was conducted to acquire evidence about the prevalence of and associations among signs, symptoms, and neurologic and cognitive deficits in samples of individuals exposed to potential concussive events. Included studies were assessed for potential for bias and confound and rated as high, medium, or low potential for bias and confound. Those rated as high were excluded from the analysis. Studies were further triaged on the basis of whether the definition of a case of concussion was exclusive or inclusive; only those with wide, inclusive case definitions were used in the analysis. Finally, only studies reporting data collected at fixed time points were used. For a study to be included in the conclusions, it was required that the presence of any particular sign, symptom, or deficit be reported in at least 2 independent samples.

RESULTS: From 5437 abstracts, 1362 full-text publications were reviewed, of which 231 studies were included in the final library. Twenty-six met all criteria required to be used in the analysis, and of those, 11 independent samples from 8 publications directly contributed data to conclusions. Prevalent and consistent indicators of concussion are (1) observed and documented disorientation or confusion immediately after the event, (2) impaired balance within 1 day after injury, (3) slower reaction time within 2 days after injury, and/or (4) impaired verbal learning and memory within 2 days after injury.

CONCLUSION: The results of this systematic review identify the consistent and prevalent indicators of concussion and their associations, derived from the strongest evidence in the published literature. The product is an evidence-based foundation from which to develop diagnostic criteria and prognostic indicators.

Prejudices about mechanism and the assumptions of reductive neuroscience.

Reductive theories of neuroscience generally rely on the assumption that the mechanisms accounted for at lower levels of description account for the phenomena seen at higher levels. Thus, biochemistry is explained as due to atomic and chemical mechanisms, cell biology explained via biochemical mechanisms, and brain neurophysiology explained as an outcome of cellular physiological mechanisms.

What is "mechanism" in these theories? Mechanism is an explanation of a thing in terms of "objective" properties instead of its "subjective" qualities. Such a distinction is one considered by many to be the properly "scientific" one since the physics of the time of Galileo. Says Wikipedia:

The primary/secondary quality distinction is a conceptual distinction in epistemology and metaphysics, concerning the nature of reality. It is most explicitly articulated by John Locke in his Essay concerning Human Understanding, but earlier thinkers such as Galileo and Descartes made similar distinctions.

Primary qualities are thought to be properties of objects that are independent of any observer, such as solidity, extension, motion, number and figure. These characteristics convey facts. They exist in the thing itself, can be determined with certainty, and do not rely on subjective judgments. For example, if a ball is round, no one can reasonably argue that it is a triangle.

Secondary qualities are thought to be properties that produce sensations in observers, such as color, taste, smell, and sound. They can be described as the effect things have on certain people. Knowledge that comes from secondary qualities does not provide objective facts about things.

Primary qualities are measurable aspects of physical reality. Secondary qualities are subjective.

"Extension, motion, number, and figure," along with emergent but related qualities such as temperature, are used to configure the lower level things to account for the properties of higher levels. For example, the configuration of the neuron in cell biology terms is used to account for the neural circuitry of the reflex response in neuroscience: the cells are extended (in the Lockean sense of filling a particular area or volume) and numbered so as to make up the reflex arc in their function. Thus, reduction: we have used basic, objective properties of the lower level objects to create new objects with new properties, but all is explainable by "basic" physics.

The problem then is that we have not truly used anything that current physics considers physically basic in our reduction!

Currently, particle physics considers a few properties such charge, spin, momentum, and mass to be fundamental, and suggests that all other physical properties are emergent from those base intrinsic properties. By those measures, the "primary" qualities are in reality secondary ones. Perhaps Galileo's secondary qualities are then tertiary ones?

What is clear is that the eliminativist or illusionist about aspects of human experience will always go for elimination of something such as the "illusion" of time or the self, and will neglect attempting the elimination of other human experiences, such as distance or location. Why? For those too are emergent, relative, non-basic properties, or so quantum mechanics tells us!

It is an outmoded, obsolete mechanistic view of the universe that directs the eliminativist to what he seeks to reduce and then call illusion. Garbage in, garbage out.