I will try to share the gist of this presentation in my own words first. Sychronization of synapses firings in the brain tends to impact mental functioning. When neuron's receive input with in a small millisecond window, well synchronized, then the neuron is stimulated to send the message on and fire an out put message. 10 milliseconds seemed to be the amount of time the brain has 'allowed' for the transmission of information from one brain region to another. Finally, figuring out how to measure individual neuronal transmissions in milliseconds has been challenging but science is beginning to be able to look at such fascinating processing with in our brains. Read on for more notes and some direct quotes.
"The ability to selectively attend can have a profound effect on our visual awareness,” says Desimone, who focuses his research on disorders of perception, attention, and memory . "The core idea is neurons have thousands of inputs but only one output. The idea is, if these thousands of inputs arrive within a small window of time, then they are effective in stimulating an output. This is called temporal processing. How much gitter between the inputs could a cell tolerate and still get an output firing? Previous research show inputs had to synchronized within milliseconds in order to get an output firing. Timings relationship to the inputs to the cell and outputs of the cell that determines neuroplasticity. When you have inputs and outputs of a cell tightly synchronized in time, you can get the strengthening of connections and if these are dissocialed in time you can get depression or breaking of connection. "
Gamma rhythms and Theta rhythms in the hippocampus are also significant. Gamma is 40 - 60 hertz and this is where theres a big peak of spikes occuring - this is like the sweet spot, where cells will integrate synaptic inputs. Attention effects this - you get coherance in this range when attention is being paid. In the cortex, you get a big bang for your bucks when you line up the inputs. Even more impact happens when both inputs and outputs are synchronized. Does this cellar synchrony impact behavior? Yes, it tends to create better behavior (faster response time) with in visual field of focus.
The research was very technical and worth looking at just to get a feel of how involved research is getting. Another interesting point had to do with phase shift - the 10 to 12 milliseconds it takes to transmit information between two brain regions. It actually takes time for information to get from the front of the brain to another part - this 10 - 12 ms is the brains built in time to allows time for the transfer of information. (which begs the question, what if lack of mylination causes a slower transmission of information, as we know it does.)
Frontal cortex seems to be the initiator of synchrony, the beginnings of attending. Watch the rest of the presentation here and explain it to me... OK, :) LOL
