New Stanford University research suggests that brain cells need to follow specific rhythms for proper brain functioning. "A unifying theme here is that of brain rhythms," said Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD, senior author of both papers. Like the cells that keep the beat of the heart, certain brain cells oscillate and guide cells in the brain.
Though Autism is the major mental diagnosis studied in this paper, I would suspect many other neurodevelopmental issues would show similar findings.- Lori's comment, the rest of this post is the paper itself.
These rhythms don't appear to be working correctly in autism. Research published in April in the journals Nature and Science demonstrate that precisely tuning the oscillation frequencies of certain neurons can affect how the brain processes information.
"A unifying theme here is that of brain rhythms," said Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD, senior author of both papers. Like the cells that keep the beat of the heart, certain brain cells oscillate and guide cells in the brain. Some researchers have suspected that these neurons drive "gamma" brain waves that oscillate at a frequency of 40 times a second.
"We have these cells that could be crucially involved in high-level, complex information processing." Deisseroth said. "We found that the oscillations specifically enhance information flow among different cell types in the frontal cortex "
The potential link to disease comes from the fact that in autism the gamma oscillations appear to be present at the wrong intensity. "Information comes in but it isn't necessarily processed correctly," Deisseroth said.
The papers suggest that people who aren't thinking clearly might have brain cells that quite literally don't have rhythm.
I cut and pasted just some of the basics of this article. IM is all about the rhythms in the brain! It's time we do some research in the autistic population using IM!
Though Autism is the major mental diagnosis studied in this paper, I would suspect many other neurodevelopmental issues would show similar findings.- Lori's comment, the rest of this post is the paper itself.
These rhythms don't appear to be working correctly in autism. Research published in April in the journals Nature and Science demonstrate that precisely tuning the oscillation frequencies of certain neurons can affect how the brain processes information.
"A unifying theme here is that of brain rhythms," said Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD, senior author of both papers. Like the cells that keep the beat of the heart, certain brain cells oscillate and guide cells in the brain. Some researchers have suspected that these neurons drive "gamma" brain waves that oscillate at a frequency of 40 times a second.
"We have these cells that could be crucially involved in high-level, complex information processing." Deisseroth said. "We found that the oscillations specifically enhance information flow among different cell types in the frontal cortex "
The potential link to disease comes from the fact that in autism the gamma oscillations appear to be present at the wrong intensity. "Information comes in but it isn't necessarily processed correctly," Deisseroth said.
The papers suggest that people who aren't thinking clearly might have brain cells that quite literally don't have rhythm.
I cut and pasted just some of the basics of this article. IM is all about the rhythms in the brain! It's time we do some research in the autistic population using IM!
