Journey through the Cortex

Monday, June 3, 2013

New Training Program for Auditory Processing Disorder

Diagram of human brain showing surface gyri and the primary auditory cortex Angular Gyrus Supramarginal Gyrus Broca's Area Wernicke's Area Primary Auditory Cortex (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

New program for auditory processing disorder developed by some of the big dogs in the field. Wonder how it stacks up against Brain Fitness or Fast forward?

Based on a wealth of empirical evidence on the neuroscience, diagnosis and treatment of central auditory processing disorder (CAPD), Sound Auditory Training (SAT) is a soon-to-be-available new web-based program designed to train auditory processing skills in children, adults, and older adults with CAPD as well as other clinical populations, such as patients with cochlear implants. Developed by Drs. Chermak, Musiek and Weihing, SAT makes available well controlled stimuli that can be customized to exercise a number of fundamental auditory skills. In addition to training, it provides clinicians with a tool-set to design one’s own training tasks and evaluate auditory skills, and provides clinical scientists with highly accessible stimuli to design psychoacoustic procedures. While the developers offer general guidelines for selecting specific tasks and setting parameters based on clinical profiles, SAT is not a program nor is it a test. Rather, SAT is a tool-set that includes adaptable auditory stimuli, a range of auditory tasks, and engaging graphic interfaces to meet the clinical or research needs of the professional.

Sound Auditory Training relies on adaptive algorithms (i.e., the program changes in response to the user’s performance), flexible feedback to the user (via animations or counters), and flexible parameter settings for the clinician/clinical scientist, parents, educators, and users. Tasks train intensity, frequency, and temporal detection, discrimination, and identification using a variety of non-verbal (e.g., tones, noise) and minimally loaded verbal stimuli (e.g., consonant-vowel syllables). Immediate feedback (error correction and reinforcement) is provided through animations within the game. Skills are practiced intensively until they become habitual and automatic. The exercises are sequenced to challenge but not overwhelm the participant. The clinician can use the software to obtain a more comprehensive profile of an individual’s skill strengths and skill deficits in order to more efficiently and effectively target and train deficit areas on a variety of auditory tasks.

In addition to its usefulness to clinical professionals, SAT is designed to be accessible to parents and teachers so that the exercises can be administered in a non-clinical environment. It is also designed to meet the needs of researchers to serve as a tool for investigation of auditory psychophysics, especially with children. The flexibility of the program allows updates based in research and thus promotes evidence-based practice. It provides auditory training exercises that encompass a wide range of auditory processing skills. Most important, SAT exercises auditory skills which are most likely to have a meaningful impact on a person’s listening, communication, and learning. Anticipated release date is August 2013 but you can contact Plural Publishing for more information and a web-based trial package

http://www.pluralpublishing.com/wp/?p=1252

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Saturday, June 1, 2013

Misaligned Teeth, Bad Posture and Eye Problems

Human eye. Español: Iris de un ojo humano. El ojo recibe los rayos de luz que provienen del exterior y los transforma en impulsos nerviosos en la retina, formada por las células de la visión conocidas como conos y bastones. فارسی: چشم انسان Français : Œil humain Italiano: Occhio umano. ქართული: ადამიანის თვალი Русский: Глаз человека Türkçe: İnsan Gözu 中文: 人眼 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Someone has finally put together an article on how your head and body alignment affect posture. Apparently poorly aligned teeth (overbite, cross bite, etc) affect the alignment of the head because of the misalignment of the mandible, one of the links in the muscular chain, leading to hyper-contraction of the masticatory muscles . This tension forces the rest of the body to react, imposing postural modifications brought about by the contraction of other muscles in the chain. Misalignment of the mandible can also cause the position of the pupillary line to be momentarily altered, provoking the intervention of ocular muscles to keep the gaze straight.

Apparently, the alignment of your feet, hips, shoulders are important,too.

The study shows that there is correlation between a deep bite or over bite, dysmetric legs or gait, and exophoria or esophoria (eyes pointing outwards or inwards).

http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-2431-13-12.pdf

Friday, May 31, 2013

Beauty is in the medial orbito-frontal cortex of the beholder

English: Transverse section of the caudate nucleus from a structural MR image. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A region at the front of the brain 'lights up' when we experience beauty in a piece of art or a musical excerpt, according to new research funded by the Wellcome Trust. The study, published July 6 in the open access journal PLoS One, suggests that the one characteristic that all works of art, whatever their nature, have in common is that they lead to activity in that same region of the brain, and goes some way to supporting the views of David Hume and others that beauty lies in the beholder rather than in the object.

"The question of whether there are characteristics that render objects beautiful has been debated for millennia by artists and philosophers of art but without an adequate conclusion," says Professor Semir Zeki from the Wellcome Laboratory of Neurobiology at UCL (University College London). "So too has the question of whether we have an abstract sense of beauty, that is to say one which arouses in us the same powerful emotional experience regardless of whether its source is, for example, musical or visual. It was time for neurobiology to tackle these fundamental questions."

...

Professor Zeki and colleague Dr Tomohiro Ishizu found that an area at the front of the brain known as the medial orbito-frontal cortex, part of the pleasure and reward centre of the brain, was more active in subjects when they listened to a piece of music or viewed a picture which they had previously rated as beautiful. By contrast, no particular region of the brain correlated generally with artwork previously rated 'ugly,' though the experience of visual ugliness when contrasted with the experience of beauty did correlate with activation in a number of regions.

The medial orbito-frontal cortex has previously been linked to appreciation of beauty, but this is the first time that scientists have been able to show that the same area of the brain is activated for both visual and auditory beauty in the same subjects. This implies that beauty does, indeed, exist as an abstract concept within the brain.

The medial orbito-frontal cortex was not the only region to be activated by beauty. As might be expected, the visual cortex, which responds to visual stimuli, was more active when viewing a painting than when listening to music, and vice versa for the auditory cortex.

However, particularly interesting was that activity in another region, the caudate nucleus, found near the centre of the brain, increased in proportion to the relative visual beauty of a painting. The caudate nucleus has been reported previously to correlate with romantic love, suggesting a neural correlate for the relationship between beauty and love
.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110706195800.htm

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Scientists find mechanism that causes noise-induced tinnitus and drug that can prevent it

Teufelskreise beim Tinnitus-Syndrom (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

An epilepsy drug shows promise in an animal model at preventing tinnitus from developing after exposure to loud noise, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. The findings, reported this week in the early online version of theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveal for the first time the reason the chronic and sometimes debilitating condition occurs.An estimated 5 to 15 percent of Americans hear whistling, clicking, roaring and other phantom sounds of tinnitus, which typically is induced by exposure to very loud noise, said senior investigator Thanos Tzounopoulos, Ph.D., associate professor and member of the auditory research group in the Department of Otolaryngology, Pitt School of Medicine.

"There is no cure for it, and current therapies such as hearing aids don't provide relief for many patients," he said. "We hope that by identifying the underlying cause, we can develop effective interventions."

The team focused on an area of the brain that is home to an important auditory center called the dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN). From previous research in a mouse model, they knew that tinnitus is associated with hyperactivity of DCN cells -- they fire impulses even when there is no actual sound to perceive. For the new experiments, they took a close look at the biophysical properties of tiny channels, called KCNQ channels, through which potassium ions travel in and out of the cell.

"We found that mice with tinnitus have hyperactive DCN cells because of a reduction in KCNQ potassium channel activity," Dr. Tzounopoulos said. "These KCNQ channels act as effective "brakes" that reduce excitability or activity of neuronal cells."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130527153701.htm

Monday, May 27, 2013

Cogmed Update of Day 10

Talked to Cogmed Coach on Friday. Not to worry about progress on memory. People often dont show progress on day 10. It takes a little longer for things to kick in.
Copyright © 2010-2013 Traveller Journey Through The Cortex

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Small Breakthrough with Music Therapy

The modern keyboard is based on the intervallic patterns of the diatonic scale. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The other day, my music therapist asked me to sit down at the piano and play with her. I am very much a beginner piano player so I have always been very hesitant. When I have played the piano in the past, I always stuck to playing with one hand because it has been to much for me to think about improvising and coordinate both hands. A lot of times my playing has tended to be a bit rote and mechanical as well.

But this time, I said that I was going to be a bit adventuresome and I sat down and played with two hands using the pentatonic scale (just the black keys). I was also a lot more expressive and fluid.

Copyright © 2010-2013 Traveller Journey Through The Cortex

Friday, May 24, 2013

Cogmed: Day 10

English: Baddeley's model of working memory in English (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Just finished day 10 of Cogmed and am a bit disappointed.

I have been doing a series of exercises that target various aspects of working and short term memory. Some of the exercises that rely on auditory memory, I am doing reasonably well with. Assembly, which has you listen to letters and then click on them in order was a no brainer. Did really well with it and after 3 trials at level 8, Cogmed stopped that exercise.

Memory exercises like remembering numbers and then clicking them on in reverse order have been more challenging but have been making some progress. So that's nice.

But exercises that work on visual spatial system have been a bear. I have been getting some small hard won progress on some exercises that simply have you remember things in sequence. But I have been getting nowhere on exercises that show items and then change orientation by 90 degrees or have you track rotating items.

Had my almost midterm assessment. I didn't sleep well last night so maybe that has something to do with it. Or maybe not. Good news is that my ability to follow instructions has gone up to a low average. Bad news is getting nowhere on working memory. Doing simple math is OK, I am only missing two items on the test. Don't know if that is significant or not.

Just wish I was doing better on visual spatial. One thing I am noticing is that I am doing better with items that are near each other than with figuring out where items are that are across the grid. I am wondering how much of this is due to my visual midline shift problems or eye tracking problems. With visual midline shifts you don't know where things are in relationship to your body. With eye tracking, your eyes are bouncing around a bit when trying to focus on things.

Or, am I just stuck. I've done as much as I can do and that's that.

So, this is the question that has bedeviled me since the beginning of the Journey Through The Cortex. How much is a sensory issue and how much are global issues?
Copyright © 2010-2013 Traveller Journey Through The Cortex

For the story about the various hearing, vision, motor skill and balance therapies that I have been doing, click here

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