Tag Archives: neuroscience

By Karene Booker
Reprinted from Cornell Chronicle, September 19, 2013

Network of brain regions, highlighted in red and yellow, show atrophy in both healthy aging and neurodegenerative disease. The regions highlighted are susceptible to normal aging and dementia.

Brain regions associated with memory shrink as adults age, and this size decrease is more pronounced in those who go on to develop neurodegenerative disease, reports a new study published Sept. 18 in the Journal of Neuroscience (Vol. 33:38). The volume reduction is linked with an overall decline in cognitive ability and with increased genetic risk for Alzheimer’s disease, the authors say.

“Our results identify a specific pattern of structural brain changes that may provide a possible brain marker for the onset of Alzheimer’s disease,” said Nathan Spreng, assistant professor of human development and the Rebecca Q. and James C. Morgan Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellow in Cornell’s College of Human Ecology.

The study is one of the first to measure structural changes in a collection of brain regions – not just one single area – over the adult life course and from normal aging to neurodegenerative disease, said Spreng, who co-authored the study with Gary R. Turner of York University in Toronto.

Overall, they studied brain data from 848 individuals spanning the adult lifespan, using data from the Open Access Series of Imaging Studies and the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI). About half of the ADNI sample was assessed multiple times over several years, allowing the researchers to measure brain changes over time and determine who did and did not progress to dementia.

The researchers found that brain volume in the default network (a set of brain regions associated with internally generated thoughts such as memory) declined in both healthy and pathological aging. The researchers noted the greatest decline in Alzheimer’s patients and in those who progressed from mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer’s disease. Reduced brain volumes in these regions were associated with declines in cognitive ability, the presence of known biological markers of Alzheimer’s disease and with carrying the APOE4 variant of APOE gene, a known risk factor for Alzheimer’s.

“While elements of the default network have previously been implicated in aging and neurodegenerative disease, few studies have examined broad network changes over the full adult life course with such large participant samples and including both behavioral and genetic data,” said Spreng. “Our findings provide evidence for a network-based model of neurodegenerative disease, in which progressive brain changes spread through networks of connected brain regions.”

The study, “Structural Covariance of the Default Network in Healthy and Pathological Aging,” was supported in part by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Karene Booker is an extension support specialist in the Department of Human Development.

By Ted Boscia
Reprinted from Cornell Chronicle, August 28, 2013

Wendy Wei leads a child through spatial cognition tests - Mark Vorreuter

Human development major Wendy Wei ’15 spent most of her summer at Ithaca-area day care centers leading 4- and 5-year-olds through brain teasers and puzzles or building towers with blocks and Legos. Far from child’s play, her work sought to understand how preschoolers develop spatial cognition and whether those abilities could be nurtured through interactive play.

Wei is one of 15 undergraduates who received $4,000 stipends from the College of Human Ecology to work in faculty labs full time this summer as part of the college’s long-running research immersion program. Made possible by a mix of alumni endowments and college and federal funds, it allows students to conduct research uninterrupted by classes, exams, jobs or extracurricular activities.

“We want students to deeply engage in research, not just doing a few hours as an assistant in the lab but helping the team to define the research question, methods and data collection and interpretation,” said Carole Bisogni ’70, M.S. ’72, Ph.D. ’76, associate dean for academic affairs. “For some students, it changes their entire outlook.”

Wei entered Cornell on a path to become a physician. But, partly due to her research in associate professor Marianella Casasola’s Cornell Infant Studies Laboratory, she’s now focused on a career in research and education.

This summer, Wei led an experiment to test how children’s knowledge of spatial language (terms like “up,” “down,” “in” and “on”) influences their spatial cognition (how well they recognize two-dimensional shapes and patterns, and mentally map their physical surroundings).

“Prior work has shown a link between spatial cognition and future performance in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields,” Wei said. “Hopefully the study will help in coming up with better methods for teaching kids spatial concepts.”

While Wei focused on cognitive growth, Judith Mildner ’14, human development, was examining declines in brain function. Mildner helped conduct a study in the Cornell MRI Facility searching for biomarkers in the brain that might predict the onset of Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases years ahead of what is now possible.

Mildner said she enjoyed working on a team of research assistants and the close interaction with faculty that’s rarely possible during the busy academic year.

“I want to work in neuropsychology research, probably on aging and dementia, and I have learned a lot about what it takes to run an functional MRI study [a type of imaging that allows neuroscientists to see different forms of brain activity],” she said. “I want a job doing research, and this summer I’ve been able to do it all day, every day.”

Ariana Levitt working on fiber electrospinning in the lab of Margaret Frey, associate professor of fiber science and apparel design, in the Human Ecology Building - Jason Koski, University Photography

Students from each of Human Ecology’s five academic departments – Design and Environmental Analysis, Fiber Science & Apparel Design, Human Development, Policy Analysis and Management, and Nutritional Sciences – received summer stipends.

Some, like Nivetha Subramanian ’15 and Ariana Levitt ’15, donned white coats at lab benches: Subramanian compared genetic properties of breast milk from mothers of full-term and premature infants, and Levitt looked for the right mix of polymers needed to spin nanofibers with high conductivity and low water solubility. Others contributed to social science projects: Williams “Carlos” Higgins ’14 surveyed occupants of Caldwell Hall to gather data for a project to identify structures best suited for energy-saving retrofits, and Max Kellogg ’15 built a statistical model to track how TV ads influence people’s daily consumption of sweetened and unsweetened drinks.

Higgins said the summer program builds on classes by allowing him to “dive in much deeper.”

“It’s exciting when I find something I don’t expect to,” he said. “Usually in class everything is laid out in the syllabus, and you know what’s coming. With research, I’ve thought about the problem for hundreds of hours and still get results totally different from what I expected.”

Ted Boscia is assistant director of communications for the College of Human Ecology.

Footnote

Overall, six Human Development majors were among the 15 undergraduates who received research stipends from the College of Human Ecology this summer:

  • Rebecca Derven ’15 worked with Valerie Reyna, professor of human development, on "Interventions for Risk Reduction in Obesity Prevention;"
  • Judith Mildner ’14, mentioned above, worked with Nathan Spreng, assistant professor of human development, on "Age-related changes in enhancement and modulation of the default network;"
  • Emily Bastarach ’14 worked with Anthony Ong, associate professor of human development, on "Resilience to parental loss: A prospective study of early parental support and positive emotions;"
  • Wendy Wei, ’15 worked with Marianella Casasola, associate professor of human development, on the project mentioned above called "Putting the pieces together;"
  • Jasmin Perez ’14 worked with Gary Evans, professor of human development, on "The effect of socioeconomc status on infant Distractibility;" and
  • Jenna Behrendt ’14 worked with Barbara Lust, professor of human development, on "Characterizing language deficits in mildly cognitive impaired elderly compared to a healthy aging and a young population."

By Karene Booker
Reprinted from Cornell Chronicle, July 10, 2013

Depue

Depue

Extroverts may be more outgoing and cheerful in part because of their brain chemistry, reports a study by Cornell neuroscientists.

People’s brains respond differently to rewards, say the neuroscientists. Some people’s brains release more of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which ultimately gives them more reasons to be excited and engaged with the world, says Richard Depue, professor of human development in the College of Human Ecology, who co-authored the study with graduate student Yu Fu.

Their study, published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (Vol. 7) in June, sheds new light on how differences in the way the brain responds to reward translate into extraverted behavior, the authors say.

“Rewards like food, sex and social interactions as well as more abstract goals such as money or getting a degree trigger the release of dopamine in the brain, producing positive emotions and feelings of desire that motivate us to work toward obtaining those goals. In extroverts, this dopamine response to rewards is more robust so they experience more frequent activation of strong positive emotions,” Depue says.

“Dopamine also facilitates memory for circumstances that are associated with the reward. Our findings suggest this plays a significant role in sustaining extroverted behavior,” Depue adds. “The extroverts in our study showed greater association of context with reward than introverts, which means that over time, extroverts will acquire a more extensive network of reward-context memories that activate their brain’s reward system.”

Over a week, the researchers engaged 70 young adult males – a mix of introverts and extroverts according to a standard personality test – in a set of laboratory tasks that included viewing brief video clips of several aspects of the lab environment. On the first four days, some participants received a low dose of the stimulant methylphenidate (MP), also known as Ritalin, which triggers the release of dopamine in the brain; the others received either a placebo or MP in a different lab location. The team tested how strongly participants associated contextual cues in the lab (presented in video clips) with reward (the dopamine rush induced by MP) by assessing changes in their working memory, motor speed at a finger-tapping task and positive emotions (all known to be influenced by dopamine).

Participants who had unconsciously associated contextual cues in the lab with the reward were expected to have greater dopamine release/reward system activation on day 4 compared with day 1 when shown the same video clips. This so-called “associative conditioning” response is exactly what the team found in the extroverts. The extroverts strongly associated the lab context with reward feelings, whereas the introverts showed little to no evidence of associative conditioning.

“At a broader level, the study begins to illuminate how individual differences in brain functioning interact with environmental influences to create behavioral variation. This knowledge may someday help us to understand how such interactions create more extreme forms of emotional behavior, such as personality disorders,” says Depue.

The study, “On the Nature of Extraversion: Variation in Conditioned Contextual Activation of Dopamine-Facilitated Affective, Cognitive and Motor Processes,” was funded in part by the National Institute of Mental Health.

Karene Booker is extension support specialist in the Department of Human Development.

By Karene Booker
Reprinted from Cornell Chronicle April 4, 2013

Nathan Spreng

Spreng

The phrase “practice makes perfect” has a neural basis in the brain. Researchers have discovered a set of common changes in the brain upon learning a new skill. They have essentially detected a neural marker for the reorganization the brain undergoes when a person practices and become proficient at a task.

Successful training not only prompts skill-specific changes in the brain, but also more global changes that are consistent across many different types of skills training, the researchers report in the journal Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair (Vol. 27:3). Their results indicate that as you become more adept at a skill, your brain no longer needs to work as hard at it. The brain, they report, shifts from more controlled to more automatic processing as a skill is learned, regardless of the specific type of training, they said.

“The training-related changes we found – that signify a shift to a more ‘efficient’ configuration of brain networks – provide a potential new brain marker for training effectiveness,” said neuroscientist Nathan Spreng, assistant professor of human development and the Rebecca Q. and James C. Morgan Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellow in Cornell's College of Human Ecology. “Such neural markers are increasingly being used to inform the design of new or more-targeted interventions to improve cognitive and motor functioning in aging, brain injury or disease,” he added.

The study is the most comprehensive review of the neural correlates of training to date and the first to associate training with alterations in large-scale brain networks, said Spreng, who was awarded the distinction of “rising star" in March by the Association for Psychological Science.

The researchers conducted a systematic meta-analysis of 38 neuroimaging studies of cognitive and motor skills training interventions in healthy young adults – more than 500 participants in all. Using a quantitative literature review method, they analyzed functional neuroimaging data and mapped the patterns of brain activity changes before and after the training across the individual experiments.

The researchers found that the brain regions that are involved in attention-demanding activities are less active after training compared with before, whereas the brain regions that typically are at rest (known as the default network), became more active.

Specifically, training resulted in decreased activity in brain regions involved in effortful control and attention that closely overlap with the frontoparietal control and dorsal attention networks. Increased activity was found after training, however, in the default network that is involved in self-reflective activities, including future planning or even day dreaming. Thus, skill mastery is associated with increased activity in areas not engaged in skill performance, and this shift can be detected in the large-scale networks of the brain.

“The power of meta-analysis methods to systematically and quantitatively review neuroimaging studies makes possible discoveries such as ours that can provide new insights into how the brain functions; this helps us lay the foundation for better treatments of brain disorders in the future,” said Spreng.

“There have now been over 100,000 neuroimaging papers published, so these types of meta-analytic reviews offer new opportunities to identify common patterns of brain activity across a larger and more diverse array of studies,” he added.

Spreng co-authored the study, “Functional Brain Changes Following Cognitive and Motor Skills Training: A Quantitative Meta-analysis,” with first author Ronak Patel of Ryerson University and with Gary R. Turner, York University.

The research was supported in part by the Hearth and Stroke Foundation of Canada and York University.

Karene Booker is an extension support specialist in the Department of Human Development.

By Karene Booker
Reprinted from Cornell Chronicle, March 5, 2013

MRI image

Region of the brain in medial prefrontal cortex where patterns of activity can be decoded to determine who someone is thinking about. Image provided by Nathan Spreng

Our mental picture of another person produces unique patterns of brain activation that can be detected using advanced imaging techniques, report Cornell neuroscientist Nathan Spreng and his colleagues in a study published online in Cerebral Cortex.

"When we looked at our data, we were shocked that we could successfully decode who our participants were thinking about based on their brain activity," said Spreng, the study's lead author, with Demis Hassabis of University College London, and an assistant professor of human development and the Rebecca Q. and James C. Morgan Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellow in Cornell's College of Human Ecology.

"Our findings shed light on how the brain formulates models of people's personality in order to anticipate their behavior -- a faculty critical for success in the social world," Spreng added.

For their study, the researchers asked 19 young adults to learn about the personalities of four people who differed on key personality traits. Participants were given different scenarios (i.e., sitting on a bus when an elderly person gets on, and there are no seats) and asked to imagine how a specified person would respond. During the task, their brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which measures brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow.

Spreng

Nathan Spreng

The researchers found that different patterns of brain activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) were associated with each of the four different personalities. In other words, which person was being imagined could be accurately identified based solely on the brain activation pattern.

The results suggest that the brain codes the personality traits of others in distinct brain regions, and that this information is integrated in the mPFC to produce an overall personality model used to plan social interactions, the authors said.

"Prior research has implicated the anterior mPFC in social cognition disorders such as autism, and our results suggest people with such disorders may have an inability to build accurate personality models," said Spreng. "If further research bears this out, we may ultimately be able to identify specific brain activation biomarkers not only for diagnosing such diseases, but for monitoring the effects of interventions."

The study, published online in Cerebral Cortex, was also co-authored by Andrie Rusu, Vrije Univesiteit; Raymond Mar, York University; and Clifford Robbin and Daniel L. Schacter, Harvard University.

The research was supported in part by the Wellcome Trust and the National Institutes of Health.

Karene Booker is an extension support specialist in the Department of Human Development.

By Karene Booker
Reprinted from Cornell Chronicle, February 13, 2013

Valerie Reyna

Reyna

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded $1.7 million to Cornell to enhance understanding of why adolescents are prone to taking risks.The study, which will compare differences in the brains of teens and adults when faced with risky decisions, will be the first to use the Cornell MRI Facility, a new, state-of-the-art center for neuroscience and other fields of research in Martha Van Rensselaer Hall.

The project will bring together a team of economists, psychologists and neuroscientists to examine decision-making processes in adolescents and adults and shed light on competing theories about how the teen brain works.

"Research suggests that adolescents differ from adults in emotional reactivity, motivation and self-regulation, but substantial ambiguities remain about how these factors determine adolescents' risky decision-making," said Valerie Reyna, principal investigator for the grant, professor of human development in the College of Human Ecology and co-director of the Cornell MRI Facility. "Our research will disentangle these key causal factors to better understand, predict and ultimately reduce adolescents' unhealthy risk-taking."

The team will answer unresolved questions about how adolescents' responses to rewards might differ from responses to losses or negative consequences and how desires, strong emotions or the way risks are presented may change responses to risk and to reward. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques performed on the 3 Tesla MRI scanner at the Cornell MRI Facility, the researchers will also look at how the adolescent brain reacts differently from the adult brain when making decisions about risks.

The universitywide facility is the newest addition to Cornell's imaging resources and will provide detailed structural and functional images for a broad range of scientific studies involving humans, small animals, plants and biomedical materials. Physicist Wenming Luh is the technical director of the facility.

Other investigators on the grant include William Schulze, the Kenneth L. Robinson Professor of Agricultural Economics and Public Policy; David Dunning, professor of psychology; Ted O'Donoghue, professor of economics; Brian Wansink, the John Dyson Professor of Consumer Behavior; Barbara Ganzel, research scientist in human development; all from Cornell in Ithaca; and Henning Voss, associate professor of physics in radiology at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.

Karene Booker is an extension support specialist in the Department of Human Development.

 
The new field of translational neuroscience uses brain science to inform applications that improve health and well-being. This means using (or improving) our understanding of the brain in order to develop new strategies for intervention. Until recently, translational neuroscience has supported medical interventions that are clinic-based, as in pharmacological, surgical, or behavioral treatments for neural and neuropsychiatric disorders. New on the horizon, however, is the use of neuroscience perspectives to inform social and behavioral interventions that are ecologically-based and can be delivered in the home or school setting. The target of these interventions has expanded to include developmental health outcomes, school readiness, and health promotion, in addition to brain-based disorders. This new approach takes translational neuroscience out of the clinic and puts it to work in our communities.

This series of short articles by Barbara Ganzel, Research Scientist in the Department of Human Development, will present some of the possibilities inherent in this new perspective on translational neuroscience. We invite you to join us in exploring the promise of this approach. Read the full story.

By Karene Booker
Reprinted from Cornell Chronicle, June 8, 2012.
 

- Mark Vorreuter

A powerful magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner has just been delivered to the East Wing of Martha Van Rensselaer Hall. By the fall, researchers will be able to obtain detailed images with rich tissue contrasts noninvasively and without using ionizing radiation.

The 3 Tesla GE750 MRI scanner is well suited for a broad range of scientific studies for structural and functional investigations involving humans, small animals, plants and biomedical materials.

The scanner will help foster cross-disciplinary collaboration and innovative technology development among faculty from diverse fields such as biomedical engineering, neuroscience, behavioral science, and plant and animal science. It will also enhance Cornell's resources for analyzing and visualizing research data, leading to new areas of investigation and expanding educational opportunities for the next generation of scientists.

"The MRI scanner fills the void of in vivo imaging capability on Ithaca campus and enhances Cornell's competitiveness in research," said Yi Wang, professor of biomedical engineering in the College of Engineering and Faculty Distinguished Professor of Radiology at Weill Cornell Medical College. Wang is the principal investigator for the National Institutes of Health MRI equipment grant and co-directs the new Cornell MRI Facility with Valerie Reyna, professor of human development in the College of Human Ecology.

"We expect this MRI research scanner will enable and stimulate various fundamental studies at the Ithaca campus, with potential for results to be translated into clinical practice at Weill Cornell and into healthier life commercialization opportunities in the CornellNYC Tech campus," Wang added.

"The MRI scanner expands Cornell's capacity to push the boundaries of research in the social, biological and physical sciences - and to integrate these sciences," said Reyna. "This versatile tool makes it possible to observe the brain in action, creating opportunities for scientific innovation to improve the human condition. It will be an asset in attracting and retaining excellent faculty, enriching the educational experience for our students."

The 3.0T MRI scanner is a resource for discovery across all domains, allowing researchers to look into structures and how humans function to better understand how we behave and how our health is determined, along with other research projects that might emanate from being able to have a scanner of this quality, said Alan Mathios, the Rebecca Q. and James C. Morgan Dean of the College of Human Ecology. "It provides a unique opportunity for the entire university to collaborate across many colleges to advance science and well-being."

The Cornell MRI Facility is supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, Engineering, Human Ecology and Veterinary Medicine.

Karene Booker is an extension support specialist in the Department of Human Development.

 

Nathan Spreng

Spreng

Please welcome our newest faculty member, Nathan Spreng, assistant professor in the department of human development in Cornell’s College of Human Ecology. Spreng is Director of the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition. His research examines large-scale brain network dynamics and their role in cognition. Currently, he is investigating the link between autobiography and imagination, how we conceive of the future, and successful navigation of the social world. These investigations extend to the related processes of memory, cognitive control, and social cognition and the interacting brain networks that support them. He is also actively involved in the development and implementation of multivariate and network-based statistical approaches to assess brain activity. In doing so, he hopes to better understand the properties of the brain networks underlying complex cognitive processes as they change across the lifespan.

Spreng comes to us from Department of Psychology at Harvard University where he was a postdoctoral research fellow.

Ted Boscia
Reprinted from Cornell Chronicle, March 15, 2012

Reyna

Professor Valerie Reyna said that teens take dangerous risks because they believe "it's worth the risk" for the perceived awards, speaking on March 13 to New York City media.

Teenagers take risks that might give most adults pause -- speeding through a red light, binge drinking or having unprotected sex.

Contrary to popular belief, such behaviors are often not impulsive and don't occur because teens think they're invulnerable. Instead, says Cornell human development professor Valerie Reyna, her research shows that adolescents are aware of the potential dangers of their actions, but make calculated choices to "play the odds" because they believe "it's worth the risk" for the perceived rewards.

Sharing the latest evidence on adolescent brain development, Reyna punctured this and other myths for reporters at an Inside Cornell media luncheon March 13 at Cornell's ILR Conference Center in New York City.

Reyna's studies have revealed that adolescents tend to reason and assess risk via "verbatim-based analysis" -- where the mind focuses on precise details and facts and runs a complex comparison of the costs and benefits of a decision. Adults, on the other hand, more often use "gist-based intuition" to immediately understand the bottom-line dangers inherent in an action. Teen drivers may be inclined to race to beat a train, knowing there's a high probability they'll make it; adults would automatically sense that's a bad idea, realizing that it could be deadly.

"The calculation that teens make may be technically correct, but it ignores the categorical possibility of disaster," said Reyna of the College of Human Ecology. "If people are weighing the odds in potentially catastrophic situations, they're already on the wrong track."

To help vulnerable youths make smarter choices about sexual activity, nutrition and fitness, Reyna and Cornell Cooperative Extension partners are applying her research in a new extension-funded risk reduction project. Working with 189 youth ages 14-19 in Broome County, Ithaca, Queens, Harlem, Brooklyn and the Bronx, extension educators are teaching a gist-enhanced version of the Reducing the Risk curriculum identified as effective by the Centers for Disease Control.

Reyna developed two interventions -- one to reduce risk of sexually transmitted diseases and teenage pregnancy and another to promote healthy eating and physical activity -- that teach teens how to apply gist thinking when temptation strikes. Through 14 one-hour lessons, students learn to quickly and automatically recognize hazardous situations and how to reflexively recall and apply their core values to sidestep such dangers.

"Even teens with strongly held values do not always retrieve those values when they need them," Reyna said. "They retrieve them later -- that's called regret. In risky situations, teens need to respond the way troops in battle do to gunfire: Don't reflect, just react and follow your values to get through."

"The students really responded to [the approach] and said how they had learned many of these things in health class but not in this way," said Eduardo Gonzalez Jr., a Cornell University Cooperative Extension-New York City (CUCE-NYC) educator who has taught the curriculum and who also attended the media session two other CUCE-NYC educators.

Initial findings support Gonzalez's impressions: Compared with control groups, students educated about gist principles were more likely to limit their sexual intentions and behaviors and number of partners, Reyna said.

Reyna also spoke about "The Adolescent Brain: Learning, Reasoning and Decision Making," a new book she edited that collects research from neuroscientists, educators and psychologists on how the teen mind develops.

The stakes, she said, are incredibly high when it comes to risky decision-making by teens. A wrong choice could lead to death or destroyed potential.

"But teens are not fated to negative outcomes from risky behaviors," she said. "We can give them strategies to avoid risk and turn around their life trajectories."

View the video of Reyna's Inside Cornell presentation

Ted Boscia is assistant director of communications for the College of Human Ecology.