Slipsliding away

Changes in the synaptic strength of neurons, effected by repeated neuronal activity, drive important behavioral processes such as learning and memory. Continuous simulation of a neuron, for example, can alter the signaling or molecular architecture at its synapses, and make it easier—or harder—for that neuron to activate other neurons with which it communicates. Synaptic efficacy can be enhanced by increasing the process known as excitatory neurotransmission, or by decreasing its opposing process, inhibitory neurotransmission. These processes trigger or halt the firing of neurons, respectively. Now, an international team of researchers, including Hiroko Bannai at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Wako, has shown that neuronal activity drives inhibitory neurotransmitter receptors to diffuse away from the synapse, which substantially reduces inhibitory neurotransmission at those synapses1. In many parts of the brain, inhibitory neurotransmission is mediated by a molecule called γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) binding to its receptors at synapses. When the researchers induced neuronal activity in cultured neurons, they found fewer GABA receptors—and fewer GABA receptor scaffolding molecules—at the synapses of these neurons. This resulted in less efficient inhibitory neurotransmission owing to smaller inhibitory electrical currents through these receptors. read more at Riken's.....

Computational neuroscience

CNS*2009 will be held in Berlin, Germany July 18-23, 2009. CNS*2009 will consist of three days of main meeting (Sunday July 19th-Tuesday July 21st), preceded by a day of tutorials on July 18th and followed by two days of workshops and a Neuroinformatics mini-symposium on July 22nd and 23rd (Wednesday-Thursday). A welcome reception will be held on the evening of Saturday July 18th and the meeting banquet and cruise held on the evening of July 20th. The main meeting will take place at the Hilton hotel in central Berlin on the Gendarmenmarkt, in immediate vicinity of such famous landmarks as the Brandenburg Gate, the Parliament, the Museum Island, and remnants of the Berlin Wall with the notorious border station "Checkpoint Charlie". Pre-meeting “Bernstein tutorials” covering various topics in Computational Neurosciences will be held at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences (BBAW) located on the opposite side of the Gendarmenmarkt. The workshops and Neuroinformatics mini-symposium will also be held at the BBAW. The meeting banquet will be held at the Palace of Charlottenburg. Berlin hosts a large neuroscientific community within its “Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience” funded by the BMBF (the Ministry for Education and Research), which is also sponsoring the CNS*2009 meeting.

A new Brain network

Springer made it's own

Beauty and the Brain

In honor to VivaFemke who made my day. Whaw ! She wrote : " I just wanted to thank you for all the useful links you are always putting up on your website. I am an EEG and BCI fanatic myself. I come here several times a week and always find something interesting. needs to be said sometime :) " Thank You Vivafemke! Regards from Ghent (where a nice festival is going on)

Neuroscience Lectures

The map is not the territory .. or is it ?

Cortical control of neuroprosthetic devices is known to require neuronal adaptations. It remains unclear whether a stable cortical representation for prosthetic function can be stored and recalled in a manner that mimics our natural recall of motor skills. Especially in light of the mixed evidence for a stationary neuron-behavior relationship in cortical motor areas, understanding this relationship during long-term neuroprosthetic control can elucidate principles of neural plasticity as well as improve prosthetic function. Here, we paired stable recordings from ensembles of primary motor cortex neurons in macaque monkeys with a constant decoder that transforms neural activity to prosthetic movements. Proficient control was closely linked to the emergence of a surprisingly stable pattern of ensemble activity, indicating that the motor cortex can consolidate a neural representation for prosthetic control in the presence of a constant decoder. The importance of such a cortical map was evident in that small perturbations to either the size of the neural ensemble or to the decoder could reversibly disrupt function. Moreover, once a cortical map became consolidated, a second map could be learned and stored. Thus, long-term use of a neuroprosthetic device is associated with the formation of a cortical map for prosthetic function that is stable across time, readily recalled, resistant to interference, and resembles a putative memory engram.

Kill Bill the killers

A Nobel winning Chemist shows us in a clear and funny way how we can use our immune system to kill the most dangerous bacteria, just label them with something our immune system loves to eat. “It’s like the LA police dropping a bag of marihuana on your back seat and charging you for possesion”.

Brain Development Unveiled

Read this Blog !!

AK's Rambling Thoughts

Where Your Brain was Born

Nice Brain Pics Blog

Exosceletons are here

Brain Lectures

Professor Diamond begins this lecture with her famous discussion of the human brain, demonstrating her favorite subject with a preserved sample. She then launches into a discussion of the muscular system, starting with its general functions: movement, support, heat generation, facial expression, and protection. She discusses nomenclature for muscles and how these are impacted by the number of muscle heads, the muscle length, muscle location, and attachments. Professor Diamond next talks about the functions of the muscle and their functional types: flexors, extensors, adductors, abductors, supinators, and pronators. She then explains how to differentiate muscle origin and insertion, and she applies this to several muscles in the head, describing the origin, insertion, and action for each.

Hard Inverse problem: HIP

Zero Dipole Localization Error Rolando Grave de Peralta,1,2 Olaf Hauk,3 and Sara L. Gonzalez1 1Electrical Neuroimaging Group, Neurology Department, Geneva University Hospital, 24 Rue Micheli du Crest, 1211 Geneva 14, Switzerland 2Neurodynamics Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry and Clinical Psychobiology, University of Barcelona, 08035 Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain 3Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Medical Research Council, 15 Chaucer Road, Cambridge, CB2 7EF, UK A tomography of neural sources could be constructed from EEG/MEG recordings once the neuroelectromagnetic inverse problem (NIP) is solved. Unfortunately the NIP lacks a unique solution and therefore additional constraints are needed to achieve uniqueness. Researchers are then confronted with the dilemma of choosing one solution on the basis of the advantages publicized by their authors. This study aims to help researchers to better guide their choices by clarifying what is hidden behind inverse solutions oversold by their apparently optimal properties to localize single sources. Here, we introduce an inverse solution (ANA) attaining perfect localization of single sources to illustrate how spurious sources emerge and destroy the reconstruction of simultaneously active sources. Although ANA is probably the simplest and robust alternative for data generated by a single dominant source plus noise, the main contribution of this manuscript is to show that zero localization error of single sources is a trivial and largely uninformative property unable to predict the performance of an inverse solution in presence of simultaneously active sources. We recommend as the most logical strategy for solving the NIP the incorporation of sound additional a priori information about neural generators that supplements the information contained in the data.

BCI

A special issue

HIP: The Hard Inverse Problem

The diversity of non invasive imaging devices (fMRI, EEG, MEG, NIRS) allows one to explore the brain dynamics provided there exists a mathematical framework that encompass this multimodality and the complexity of the inherent sources of the cerebral signals. Despite a general agreement about the source modeling, many mathematical strategies have been elaborated in order to solve the inevitable ill-posed inverse problem. What are the common features between those approaches? What are the mathematical frameworks the most appropriate for handling simultaneous measurements from different modalities? What are the best approaches for estimating both spatial and temporal brain activities?

BCI with Neurosurgical Focus

All articles are FREE !!

For French Speaking readers

neuroradiological help site

very usefull. Thanks to Dr. Schock !!

GBF: Ghent Brain Festival (Gentsche Breen fieste)

Not to forget :-)

feel the VIBE(s)

Open VIBE is now on line !!