̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - memory

Search is on for ‘super memorisers’ to help scientists unlock the secrets of memory

cjb250 — Wed, 03 May 2023 06:00:04 +0000

Anyone who believes they have an exceptional memory is invited to take an online survey and memory test. Based on their performance, some people will be invited to Cambridge to have a brain scan so that the origins of exceptional memory can be explored in detail.

̽��ֱ��team will also be exploring whether people who are autistic or neurodiverse are more likely to have an exceptional memory.

It’s long been known that people differ in their memory ability, with some having seemingly infinite memory. For example, essayist and writer Daniel Tammet, who the Cambridge team have worked with previously, set the European record in 2004 for reciting the number pi from memory after recalling it to 22,514 digits. He is both autistic and has synaesthesia, where the senses are interconnected, which may go some way to explaining his talents.

Professor Jon Simons from the Department of Psychology at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge said: “Memory is one of the best understood psychological processes in terms of brain networks and yet we still don’t really know why some people have exceptional memories. That’s why we’re inviting people to take part in our study.”

Professor Sir Simon Baron-Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��, and lead investigator of the study, said: “You don’t need to have won any competitions to take part or to consider yourself neurodiverse – and you certainly don’t need to be able to recite pi to 22,000 digits! We’re looking for anyone who thinks they might be a ‘super memoriser’ to try out our memory tests.”

Anyone who wants to take part will need to take three brief online memory tests, such as memorising a phone number or patterns on a chess board. Anyone who scores highly on one or more of these tests could be invited to come to Cambridge for a brain scan using an MRI scanner. All expenses will be paid.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge scientists want to know whether the brains of people who have exceptional memory show differences in how they are structured or how they function compared to those who do not: in short, how do they achieve their remarkable feats of memory? ̽��ֱ��team also want to investigate if autism gives rise to a greater likelihood of exceptional memory.

Dr Carrie Allison, also from the Autism Research Centre, added: “We hope that people will enjoy taking part in this study, and in the process contribute to helping us understand more about memory and whether exceptional memory is related to autism. For decades, autism research has focused on disability, but this study is a wonderful opportunity to focus on strengths.”

To take part you must be between the ages of 16 and 60 years old.

Take the survey and memory tests here

Cambridge scientists are today launching a search to find people who have exceptional memory, as they attempt to understand why some people are much better at remembering than others.

Memory is one of the best understood psychological processes in terms of brain networks and yet we still don’t really know why some people have exceptional memories

Jon Simons

geralt

Pi on a blackboard

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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For the brain, context is key to new theory of movement and memory

Anonymous — Wed, 24 Nov 2021 16:00:00 +0000

How is it that a chef can control their knife to fillet a fish or peel a grape and can wield a cleaver just as efficiently as a paring knife? Even those of us less proficient in the kitchen learn to skilfully handle an astonishing number of different objects throughout our lives, from shoelaces to tennis rackets.

This ability to continuously acquire new skills, without forgetting or degrading old ones, comes naturally to humans but is a major challenge even for today’s most advanced artificial intelligence systems.

Now, scientists from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Columbia ̽��ֱ�� (USA) have developed and experimentally verified a new mathematical theory that explains how the human brain achieves this feat. Called the COntextual INference (COIN) model, it suggests that identifying the current context is key to learning how to move our bodies.

̽��ֱ��model describes a mechanism in the brain that is constantly trying to figure out the current context. ̽��ֱ��theory suggests that these continuously changing beliefs about context determine how to use existing memories — and whether to form new ones. ̽��ֱ��results are reported in the journal Nature.

“Imagine playing tennis with a different racket than usual or switching from tennis to squash,” said co-senior author Dr Daniel Wolpert from Columbia ̽��ֱ��. “Our theory explores how your brain adjusts to these situations and whether to treat them as distinct contexts.”

According to the COIN model, the brain maintains a repertoire of motor memories, each associated with the context in which it was created, such as playing squash versus tennis. Even for a single swing of the racket, the brain can draw upon many memories, each in proportion to how much the brain believes it is currently in the context in which that memory was created.

This goes against the traditional view that only one memory is used at a time. To improve performance on the next swing, the brain also updates all memories, once again depending on its belief about the current context. When the context of the movement is judged to be new (the first time we play squash after years of tennis, for example), the brain automatically creates a new memory for that context. This ensures that we do not overwrite previously established memories, such as the memory for playing tennis.

This research may lead to better physical therapy strategies to help people with injuries use their bodies again. Often the improvements seen in the setting of a physical therapist's office do not transfer to improvements in the real world.

“With a better understanding of how context affects motor learning, you can think about how to nudge the brain to generalise what it learns to contexts outside of the physical therapy session,” said first author Dr James Heald. “A better understanding of the basic mechanisms that underlie the context dependence of memory and learning could have therapeutic consequences in this area.”

“What I find exciting is that the principles of the COIN model may also generalise to many other forms of learning and memory, not just memories underlying our movement,” said co-senior author Professor Máté Lengyel from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering. “For example, the spontaneous recurrence of seemingly forgotten memories, often triggered by a change in our surroundings, has been observed both in motor learning and in post-traumatic stress disorder.”

COINing a new model

Practice with a tennis racket, and the brain forms motor memories of how you moved your arm and the rest of your body that improve your serve over time. But learning isn’t as simple as just making better memories to make movements more precise, the researchers said. Otherwise, a tennis player’s serves might improve to the point at which they never hit a ball out of bounds. ̽��ֱ��real world and our nervous systems are complex, and the brain has to deal with a lot of variability.

How does the brain distinguish this noise — these random fluctuations — from new situations? And how does it understand that a slightly lighter tennis racket can still be operated using previous tennis racket memories? But that a table tennis paddle is an entirely different kind of object that requires starting from scratch?

̽��ֱ��answer, according to the COIN model, may be Bayesian inference, a mathematical technique used to deal with uncertainty. This method statistically weighs new evidence in light of prior experience in order to update one's beliefs in a changeable world. In the COIN model, a context is a simplifying assumption that, in a given set of circumstances, certain actions are more likely to lead to some consequences than others. ̽��ֱ��new theory's acceptance of the role that uncertainty plays in motor learning is similar to how quantum physics views the universe in terms of probabilities instead of certainties, the scientists noted.

Getting a handle on the theory

̽��ֱ��researchers put the COIN model to the test on data from previous experiments, as well as new experiments, in which volunteers interacted with a robotic handle. Participants learned to manipulate the handle to reach a target while the handle pushed back in different ways.

Volunteers who spent time learning to operate the handle as it pushed to the left, for instance, had more trouble operating the handle when it changed behaviour and pushed to the right, as compared to volunteers who started with a handle pushing to the right. ̽��ֱ��COIN model explained this effect, called anterograde interference.

“ ̽��ֱ��longer you learn one task, the less likely you are to move into a new context with the second task,” said Wolpert. “You’re still forming a motor memory of the second task, but you’re not using it yet because your brain is still stuck back in the first context.”

̽��ֱ��model also predicted that a learned skill can re-emerge even after subsequent training seems to have erased it. Called spontaneous recovery, this re-emergence is seen in many other forms of learning besides motor learning. For example, spontaneous recovery has been linked with challenges in treating post-traumatic stress disorder, where contexts can trigger traumatic memories to spontaneously recur.

Scientists usually explain spontaneous recovery by invoking two different learning mechanisms. In one, memories learned quickly are forgotten quickly, and in the other, memories learned slowly are forgotten slowly, and can thus reappear. In contrast, the COIN model suggests there is just one mechanism for learning instead of two separate ones, and that memories that apparently vanished may be ready to pop back with the right trigger: the belief that the context has re-emerged. ̽��ֱ��researchers confirmed this in their lab with new experiments.

Máté Lengyel is a Fellow of Churchill College. ̽��ֱ��research was supported by the European Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, the Royal Society, the National Institutes of Health, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

Reference:
James B Heald, Máté Lengyel and Daniel M Wolpert. ‘Contextual inference underlies the learning of sensorimotor repertoires.’ Nature (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04129-3

Adapted from a Columbia ̽��ֱ�� press release.

Mathematical model could help in physical therapy and shed light on learning more generally.

̽��ֱ��COIN model may also generalise to many other forms of learning and memory, not just memories underlying our movement

Máté Lengyel

Chino Rocha via Unsplash

Tennis match

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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̽��ֱ��collector of future memories

cg605 — Mon, 24 Jun 2019 16:37:14 +0000

College Recorder Alice Oates is passionate about Pembroke, its community and capturing the latest instalment in the College’s 670-year history.

Selective amnesia: how rats and humans are able to actively forget distracting memories

cjb250 — Wed, 07 Nov 2018 09:45:20 +0000

̽��ֱ��human brain is estimated to include some 86 billion neurons (or nerve cells) and as many as 150 trillion synaptic connections, making it a powerful machine for processing and storing memories. We need to retrieve these memories to help us carry out our daily tasks, whether remembering where we left the car in the supermarket car park or recalling the name of someone we meet in the street. But the sheer scale of the experiences people could store in memory over our lives creates the risk of being overwhelmed with information. When we come out of the supermarket and think about where we left the car, for example, we only need to recall where we parked the car today, rather than being distracted by recalling every single time we came to do our shopping.

Previous work by Professor Michael Anderson at the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, showed that humans possess the ability to actively forget distracting memories, and that retrieval plays a crucial role in this process. His group has shown how intentional recall of a past memory is more than simply reawakening it; it actually leads us to forget other competing experiences that interfere with retrieval of the memory we seek.

“Quite simply, the very act of remembering is a major reason why we forget, shaping our memory according to how it is used,” says Professor Anderson.

“People are used to thinking of forgetting as something passive. Our research reveals that people are more engaged than they realise in actively shaping what they remember of their lives. ̽��ֱ��idea that the very act of remembering can cause forgetting is surprising and could tell us more about people’s capacity for selective amnesia.”

While this process improves the efficiency of memory, it can sometimes lead to problems. If the police interview a witness to a crime, for example, their repeated questioning about selected details might lead the witness to forget information that could later prove important.

Although the ability to actively forget has been seen in humans, it is unclear whether it occurs in other species. Could this ability be unique to our species, or at least to more intelligent mammals such as monkeys and great apes?

In a study published today in the journal Nature Communications, Professor Anderson together with Pedro Bekinschtein and Noelia Weisstaub of Universidad Favaloro in Argentina, has shown that the ability to actively forget is not a peculiarly human characteristic: rats, too, share our capacity for selective forgetting and use a very similar brain mechanism, suggesting this is an ability shared among mammals.

To demonstrate this, the researchers devised an ingeniously simple task based on rats’ innate sense of curiosity: when put into an environment, rats actively explore to learn more about it. When exploring an environment, rats form memories of any new objects they find and investigate.

Building on this simple observation, the researchers allowed rats to explore two previously-unseen objects (A and B) in an open arena – the objects included a ball, a cup, small toys, or a soup can. Rats first got to explore object A for five minutes, and then were removed from the arena; they were then placed back in the arena 20 minutes later with object B, which they also explored for five minutes.

To see whether rats showed retrieval-induced forgetting, like humans, rats next performed “retrieval practice” on one of the two objects (e.g. A) to see how this affected their later memory for the competitor object (B). During this retrieval practice phase, the researchers repeatedly placed the rat in the arena with the object they wanted the rat to remember (e.g. A), together with another object never seen in the context of the arena. Rats instinctively prefer exploring novel objects, and so on these “retrieval practice” trials, the rats clearly preferred to explore the new objects, implying that they indeed had remembered A and saw it as “old news”.

To find out how repeatedly retrieving A affected rats’ later memory for B, in a final phase conducted 30 minutes later, the researchers placed the rat into the arena with B and an entirely new object. Strikingly, on this final test, the rats explored both B and the new object equally – by selectively remembering their experience with A over and over, rats had actively trained themselves to forget B.

In contrast, in control conditions in which the researchers skipped the retrieval practice phase and replaced it with an equal amount of relaxing time in the rats’ home cage, or an alternative memory storage task not involving retrieval, rats showed excellent memory for B.

Professor Anderson’s team then identified an area towards the front of the rat’s brain that controls this active forgetting mechanism. When a region at the front of the rat’s brain known as the medial prefrontal cortex was temporarily ‘switched off’ using the drug muscimol, the animal entirely lost its ability to selectively forget competing memories; despite undergoing the same “retrieval practice” task as before, rats now recognised B. In humans, the ability to selectively forget in this manner involves engaging an analogous region in the prefrontal cortex.

“Rats appear to have the same active forgetting ability as humans do – they forget memories selectively when those memories cause distraction,” says Professor Anderson. “And, crucially, they use a similar prefrontal control mechanism as we do. This discovery suggests that this ability to actively forget less useful memories may have evolved far back on the ‘Tree of Life’, perhaps as far back as our common ancestor with rodents some 100 million years ago.”

Professor Anderson says that now that we know that the brain mechanisms for this process are similar in rats and humans, it should be possible to study this adaptive forgetting phenomenon at a cellular – or even molecular – level. A better understanding of the biological foundations of these mechanisms may help researchers develop improved treatments to help people forget traumatic events.

̽��ֱ��research was funded by the Medical Research Council, the National Agency of Scientific and Technological Promotion of Argentina and the International Brain Research Organization.

Reference
Bekinschtein, B, et al. A Retrieval-Specific Mechanism of Adaptive Forgetting in the Mammalian Brain. Nature Comms; 7 Nov 2019; DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-07128-7

Our ability to selectively forget distracting memories is shared with other mammals, suggests new research from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. ̽��ֱ��discovery that rats and humans share a common active forgetting ability – and in similar brain regions – suggests that the capacity to forget plays a vital role in adapting mammalian species to their environments, and that its evolution may date back at least to the time of our common ancestor.

Quite simply, the very act of remembering is a major reason why we forget, shaping our memory according to how it is used

Michael Anderson

Hans (Pixabay)

Puzzle Unfinished Mess

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Scientists identify mechanism that helps us inhibit unwanted thoughts

cjb250 — Fri, 03 Nov 2017 09:13:20 +0000

We are sometimes confronted with reminders of unwanted thoughts — thoughts about unpleasant memories, images or worries. When this happens, the thought may be retrieved, making us think about it again even though we prefer not to. While being reminded in this way may not be a problem when our thoughts are positive, if the topic was unpleasant or traumatic, our thoughts may be very negative, worrying or ruminating about what happened, taking us back to the event.

“Our ability to control our thoughts is fundamental to our wellbeing,” explains Professor Michael Anderson from the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, which recently transferred to the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. “When this capacity breaks down, it causes some of the most debilitating symptoms of psychiatric diseases: intrusive memories, images, hallucinations, ruminations, and pathological and persistent worries. These are all key symptoms of mental illnesses such as PTSD, schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety.”

Professor Anderson likens our ability to intervene and stop ourselves retrieving particular memories and thoughts to stopping a physical action. “We wouldn’t be able to survive without controlling our actions,” he says. “We have lots of quick reflexes that are often useful, but we sometimes need to control these actions and stop them from happening. There must be a similar mechanism for helping us stop unwanted thoughts from occurring.”

A region at the front of the brain known as the prefrontal cortex is known to play a key role in controlling our actions and has more recently been shown to play a similarly important role in stopping our thoughts. ̽��ֱ��prefrontal cortex acts as a master regulator, controlling other brain regions – the motor cortex for actions and the hippocampus for memories.

In research published today in the journal Nature Communications, a team of scientists led by Dr Taylor Schmitz and Professor Anderson used a task known as the ‘Think/No-Think’ procedure to identify a significant new brain process that enables the prefrontal cortex to successfully inhibit our thoughts.

In the task, participants learn to associate a series of words with a paired, but otherwise unconnected, word, for example ordeal/roach and moss/north. In the next stage, participants are asked to recall the associated word if the cue is green or to suppress it if the cue is red; in other words, when shown ‘ordeal’ in red, they are asked to stare at the word but to stop themselves thinking about the associated thought ‘roach’.

Using a combination of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and magnetic resonance spectroscopy, the researchers were able to observe what was happening within key regions of the brain as the participants tried to inhibit their thoughts. Spectroscopy enabled the researchers to measure brain chemistry, and not just brain activity, as is usually done in imaging studies.

Professor Anderson, Dr Schmitz and colleagues showed that the ability to inhibit unwanted thoughts relies on a neurotransmitter – a chemical within the brain that allows messages to pass between nerve cells – known as GABA. GABA is the main ‘inhibitory’ neurotransmitter in the brain, and its release by one nerve cell can suppress activity in other cells to which it is connected. Anderson and colleagues discovered that GABA concentrations within the hippocampus – a key area of the brain involved in memory – predict people’s ability to block the retrieval process and prevent thoughts and memories from returning.

“What’s exciting about this is that now we’re getting very specific,” he explains. “Before, we could only say ‘this part of the brain acts on that part’, but now we can say which neurotransmitters are likely important – and as a result, infer the role of inhibitory neurons – in enabling us to stop unwanted thoughts.”

“Where previous research has focused on the prefrontal cortex – the command centre – we’ve shown that this is an incomplete picture. Inhibiting unwanted thoughts is as much about the cells within the hippocampus – the ‘boots on the ground’ that receive commands from the prefrontal cortex. If an army’s foot-soldiers are poorly equipped, then its commanders’ orders cannot be implemented well.”

̽��ֱ��researchers found that even within his sample of healthy young adults, people with less hippocampal GABA (less effective ‘foot-soldiers’) were less able to suppress hippocampal activity by the prefrontal cortex—and as a result much worse at inhibiting unwanted thoughts.

̽��ֱ��discovery may answer one of the long-standing questions about schizophrenia. Research has shown that people affected by schizophrenia have ‘hyperactive’ hippocampi, which correlates with intrusive symptoms such as hallucinations. Post-mortem studies have revealed that the inhibitory neurons (which use GABA) in the hippocampi of these individuals are compromised, possibly making it harder for the prefrontal cortex to regulate activity in this structure. This suggests that the hippocampus is failing to inhibit errant thoughts and memories, which may be manifest as hallucinations.

According to Dr Schmitz: “ ̽��ֱ��environmental and genetic influences that give rise to hyperactivity in the hippocampus might underlie a range of disorders with intrusive thoughts as a common symptom.”

In fact, studies have shown that elevated activity in the hippocampus is seen in a broad range of conditions such as PTSD, anxiety and chronic depression, all of which include a pathological inability to control thoughts – such as excessive worrying or rumination.

While the study does not examine any immediate treatments, Professor Anderson believes it could offer a new approach to tackling intrusive thoughts in these disorders. “Most of the focus has been on improving functioning of the prefrontal cortex,” he says, “but our study suggests that if you could improve GABA activity within the hippocampus, this may help people to stop unwanted and intrusive thoughts.”

̽��ֱ��research was funded by the Medical Research Council.

Reference
Schmitz, TW et al. Hippocampal GABA enables inhibitory control over unwanted thoughts. Nature Communications; 3 Nov 2017; DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-00956-z

Scientists have identified a key chemical within the ‘memory’ region of the brain that allows us to suppress unwanted thoughts, helping explain why people who suffer from disorders such as anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and schizophrenia often experience persistent intrusive thoughts when these circuits go awry.

Our ability to control our thoughts is fundamental to our wellbeing. When this capacity breaks down, it causes some of the most debilitating symptoms of psychiatric diseases

Michael Anderson

Jacob Bøtter

Thinking RFIP

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Running on autopilot: scientists find important new role for ‘daydreaming’ network

cjb250 — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 19:00:43 +0000

When we are performing tasks, specific regions of the brain become more active – for example, if we are moving, the motor cortex is engaged, while if we are looking at a picture, the visual cortex will be active. But what happens when we are apparently doing nothing?

In 2001, scientists at the Washington ̽��ֱ�� School of Medicine found that a collection of brain regions appeared to be more active during such states of rest. This network was named the ‘default mode network’ (DMN). While it has since been linked to, among other things, daydreaming, thinking about the past, planning for the future, and creativity, its precise function is unclear.

Abnormal activity in the DMN has been linked to an array of disorders including Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and disorders of consciousness. However, scientists have been unable to show a definitive role in human cognition.

Now, in research published today in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, scientists at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge have shown that the DMN plays an important role in allowing us to switch to ‘autopilot’ once we are familiar with a task.

In the study, 28 volunteers took part in a task while lying inside a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. Functional MRI (fMRI) measures changes in brain oxygen levels as a proxy for neural activity.

In the task, participants were shown four cards and asked to match a target card (for example, two red diamonds) to one of these cards. There were three possible rules – matching by colour, shape or number. Volunteers were not told the rule, but rather had to work it out for themselves through trial and error.

̽��ֱ��most interesting differences in brain activity occurred when comparing the two stages of the task – acquisition (where the participants were learning the rules by trial and error) and application (where the participants had learned the rule and were now applying it). During the acquisition stage, the dorsal attention network, which has been associated with the processing of attention-demanding information, was more active. However, in the application stage, where participants utilised learned rules from memory, the DMN was more active.

Crucially, during the application stage, the stronger the relationship between activity in the DMN and in regions of the brain associated with memory, such as the hippocampus, the faster and more accurately the volunteer was able to perform the task. This suggested that during the application stage, the participants could efficiently respond to the task using the rule from memory.

“Rather than waiting passively for things to happen to us, we are constantly trying to predict the environment around us,” says Dr Deniz Vatansever, who carried out the study as part of his PhD at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and who is now based at the ̽��ֱ�� of York.

“Our evidence suggests it is the default mode network that enables us do this. It is essentially like an autopilot that helps us make fast decisions when we know what the rules of the environment are. So for example, when you’re driving to work in the morning along a familiar route, the default mode network will be active, enabling us to perform our task without having to invest lots of time and energy into every decision.”

“ ̽��ֱ��old way of interpreting what’s happening in these tasks was that because we know the rules, we can daydream about what we’re going to have for dinner later and the DMN kicks in,” adds senior author Dr Emmanuel Stamatakis from the Division of Anaesthesia at the ̽��ֱ�� Of Cambridge. “In fact, we showed that the DMN is not a bystander in these tasks: it plays an integral role in helping us perform them.”

This new study supports an idea expounded upon by Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics laureate 2002, in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, that there are two systems that help us make decisions: a rational system that helps us reach calculated decisions, and a fast system that allows us to make intuitive decisions – the new research suggests this latter system may be linked with the DMN.

̽��ֱ��researchers believe their findings have relevance to brain injury, particularly following traumatic brain injury, where problems with memory and impulsivity can substantially compromise social reintegration. They say the findings may also have relevance for mental health disorders, such as addiction, depression and obsessive compulsive disorder, where particular thought patterns drive repeated behaviours, and the mechanisms of anaesthetic agents and other drugs on the brain.

This research was carried out in the general context of understanding conscious processing in the human brain. ̽��ֱ��Division of Anaesthesia, headed by Professor David Menon, NIHR Senior Investigator, has a programme of research aiming to further elucidate the neural basis of consciousness and cognition in health and disease.

̽��ֱ��research was supported by the Yousef Jameel Academic Program, ̽��ֱ��Stephen Erskine Fellowship from Queens’ College Cambridge, and the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Resource Centre.

Reference
Vatansever, D, Menon, DK, Stamatakis, EA. Default Mode Contributions to Automated Information Processing. PNAS; 23 Oct 2017; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1710521114

A brain network previously associated with daydreaming has been found to play an important role in allowing us to perform tasks on autopilot. Scientists at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge showed that far from being just ‘background activity’, the so-called ‘default mode network’ may be essential to helping us perform routine tasks.

̽��ֱ��default mode network is essentially like an autopilot that helps us make fast decisions when we know what the rules of the environment are

Deniz Vatansever

Erik Starck

Driving a car

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‘They sailed away, for a year and a day’: why learning poetry by heart is good for you

amb206 — Wed, 27 Sep 2017 23:00:00 +0000

Edward Lear’s bizarre and beautiful poem, ̽��ֱ��Owl and the Pussy-cat, was first published in 1871. Featuring an unlikely romance, a wedding ring purchased from a pig and a marriage officiated by a turkey, it’s been a favourite with people of all ages ever since. Who could fail to be charmed by an elegant fowl and a star-struck cat, dancing by the light of the moon?

In a survey that set out to find out what poems the British public are able to recall, ̽��ֱ��Owl and the Pussy-cat ranked top of 287 different poems submitted by more than 500 respondents. Second came Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” with its deliciously resonant language. And on the heels of the whiffling Jabberwock was Shakespeare’s romantic sonnet, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

̽��ֱ��nation has already been quizzed for its poetry favourites. In 1995, a BBC poll famously placed Rudyard Kipling’s If in prime position, and that was later trumped by Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. But the Poetry and Memory Project at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Faculty of Education delved deeper. As well as conducting the first survey to discover what poems people have actually learned, it aimed to find out about the effects of having poetry in our memory.

Collaborators Dr Debbie Pullinger and David Whitley explain: “We’re interested in the ways in which poetry learnt by heart inhabits our inner worlds. Our project was based on two central research questions. Firstly, what is the distinctive value of the memorised poem? And secondly, what is the relationship between memorisation and understanding?”

̽��ֱ��survey elicited a surprisingly large number of poems, including some the researchers had never come across. Whitley says, “We were thrilled by the quality of the responses, which came from a surprisingly wide band of age groups. Many people were deeply reflective about why that poem had stuck and what it had come to mean to them over time – sometimes over a lifetime. ̽��ֱ��most popular poems were drawn from quite a conservative tradition, and were nearly all by long-dead, canonical poets.”

Most of the memorised poems had strong formal structures and rhyme schemes, which might be expected since these features make a poem easier to remember.

“It was interesting to see how humour and whimsy vied with more serious themes in the top rankings, and to see how both types can assume deep personal significance. Compared with the more earnest ‘educational’ canon taught in secondary school onwards, this more varied, informal canon may reflect a national sensibility in which humour is a vital ingredient,” says Whitley.

Memorisation and recitation are back on the primary English curriculum

̽��ֱ��requirement for school children to learn and recite poetry was dropped from the UK curriculum in 1944, and these practices fell from favour. And although poetry’s roots are in the oral tradition, in modern times it has existed primarily on the printed page, where its rhythms and cadences fall silent. Stripped of its auditory pleasures, and often approached as a problem to be solved rather than a sensory and imaginative experience to be enjoyed, poetry came to be perceived as ‘difficult’.

In 2012, however, memorisation and recitation were back as statutory requirements on the primary English curriculum. Today’s school children, unlike most of their parents and teachers, are expected to learn verse. ̽��ֱ��move by Michael Gove, then Secretary of State for Education, met with a mixed reception from the teaching profession, say the researchers. Many teachers regard memorisation as an outdated and pointless exercise, and some feel it risks putting children off poetry for life.

As the Poetry and Memory Project confirmed, enforced learning by rote can have that undesirable effect. But, Pullinger explains, the picture is complicated. “While some people who have learned poems in a perfunctory way are put off, others come to understand and appreciate them over time. And there are many factors that influence our developing relationship with poetry,” she says.

" ̽��ֱ��overarching conclusion of the project is that committing a poem to memory appears to have real benefits. Almost all respondents not only reported that memorisation is a positive experience, but also associated it with a wide range of positive effects."

̽��ֱ��most universal benefit was a deeper appreciation of the poem itself, and this was closely followed by the poem’s potential as an emotional resource. These findings were confirmed and illuminated in the second stage of the project, which followed up 38 people with in-depth interviews about their experience of learning poems and their relationship with poetry in general.

̽��ֱ��emerging picture of the memorised poem is a multifaceted one. For many people, it forges a strong connection with a significant person. One participant realised how much poetry had meant to her late mother. “It might not have been the poetry I would’ve chosen because it was rather ‘rumpty tumpty’ stuff. But that was really part of her legacy to me.” For others, a particular poem was a powerful mnemonic, strongly associated with a time or place – a classroom, a holiday, a first love.

̽��ֱ��memorised poem can also become a container for thoughts and emotions, described by respondents as “a place to inhabit”, “a temporary home while I was homeless” or “a place for your brain to be, if you’re challenged by other things”.

Responses suggested that once a poem is inside you, it can feel as if you are on on the inside of the poem. This sense of inhabiting may in turn open up a space in which understanding can unfold. As one interviewee said: “With some poems, I know the poem so well that I don’t have to think about them, and then I can sort of play around inside them, and different shades and meanings come to you.”

A memorised poem engages us with its sensory aspects

Having a poem installed, quite literally as part of our minds and bodies, engages us with its sensory aspects. “Although printed words are a necessary cue to performance, they can also act as a kind of interference,” says Pullinger.

“Hearing a poem without sight of the text can be a revelation. Our mind is free to attend to tasks other than decoding and our mind's eye is free to roam. Putting the book down is a bit like taking the stabilisers off the bike. You may be a bit wobbly at first, but only then can you really feel the way the bike is moving over the surface; only then can you find your balance.”

Although more than 70% of respondents had learned a poem as a child because a teacher required or suggested it, more than 85% had learned a poem as an adult for personal pleasure. Whitley says he, like many respondents, learned the odd poem in school, and went on to memorise poems that struck a chord with him at various points throughout his life. It’s the poems memorised in adolescence and early adulthood that have really stayed with him.

Pullinger, on the other hand, says that she rediscovered the pleasures of poetry relatively late in life. She learned many poems as a child, all now largely forgotten. But, inspired by the stories of her interviewees, she has tried various memorisation techniques for herself and is now an enthusiastic advocate of poetry learning. “Yes, it does seem that there is something special about committing a poem to memory," she says."You’ve invested in it and made it yours. Learning, giving voice and understanding – these all go hand in hand.”

̽��ֱ��research evidence points strongly towards memorised poetry being a resource with the potential to enrich lives in many different ways over many years. Pullinger believes that the Poetry and Memory Project has staked out some fascinating and potentially important territory: “There is definitely more to learn about the way we experience poetry and poetic language,” she says.

̽��ֱ��Poetry and Memory Project was based in the Faculty of Education and funded by the Leverhulme Trust. www.poetryandmemory.com

Most of us can quote snatches of poetry - but which poems can we recite in their entirety? In a survey of memorised poetry, Lear’s ̽��ֱ��Owl and the Pussy-cat came top, and some people know all 143 verses of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. There are remarkable benefits of having a poem in your head.

Hearing a poem without sight of the text can be a revelation. Putting the book down is a bit like taking the stabilisers off the bike.

Debbie Pullinger

̽��ֱ��Owl and the Pussy-Cat

Owl and the Pussy-Cat illustration by Edward Lear

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

‘Brain training’ app found to improve memory in people with mild cognitive impairment

cjb250 — Sun, 02 Jul 2017 23:05:01 +0000

Amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) has been described as the transitional stage between ‘healthy ageing’ and dementia. It is characterised by day-to-day memory difficulties and problems of motivation. At present, there are no approved drug treatments for the cognitive impairments of patients affected by the condition.

Cognitive training has shown some benefits, such as speed of attentional processing, for patients with aMCI, but training packages are typically repetitive and boring, affecting patients’ motivation. To overcome this problem, researchers from the Departments of Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences and the Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge developed ‘Game Show’, a memory game app, in collaboration with patients with aMCI, and tested its effects on cognition and motivation.

̽��ֱ��researchers randomly assigned forty-two patients with amnestic MCI to either the cognitive training or control group. Participants in the cognitive training group played the memory game for a total of eight one-hour sessions over a four-week period; participants in the control group continued their clinic visits as usual.

In the game, which participants played on an iPad, the player takes part in a game show to win gold coins. In each round, they are challenged to associate different geometric patterns with different locations. Each correct answer allows the player to earn more coins. Rounds continue until completion or after six incorrect attempts are made. ̽��ֱ��better the player gets, the higher the number of geometric patterns presented – this helps tailor the difficulty of the game to the individual’s performance to keep them motivated and engaged. A game show host encourages the player to maintain and progress beyond their last played level.

Screenshot from Game Show. Credit: Sahakian Lab

̽��ֱ��results showed that patients who played the game made around a third fewer errors, needed fewer trials and improved their memory score by around 40%, showing that they had correctly remembered the locations of more information at the first attempt on a test of episodic memory. Episodic memory is important for day-to-day activities and is used, for example, when remembering where we left our keys in the house or where we parked our car in a multi-story car park. Compared to the control group, the cognitive training group also retained more complex visual information after training.

In addition, participants in the cognitive training group indicated that they enjoyed playing the game and were motivated to continue playing across the eight hours of cognitive training. Their confidence and subjective memory also increased with gameplay. ̽��ֱ��researchers say that this demonstrates that games can help maximise engagement with cognitive training.

“Good brain health is as important as good physical health. There's increasing evidence that brain training can be beneficial for boosting cognition and brain health, but it needs to be based on sound research and developed with patients,” says Professor Barbara Sahakian, co-inventor of the game: “It also need to be enjoyable enough to motivate users to keep to their programmes. Our game allowed us to individualise a patient’s cognitive training programme and make it fun and enjoyable for them to use.”

Dr George Savulich, the lead scientist on the study, adds: “Patients found the game interesting and engaging and felt motivated to keep training throughout the eight hours. We hope to extend these findings in future studies of healthy ageing and mild Alzheimer’s disease.”

̽��ֱ��researchers hope to follow this published study up with a future large-scale study and to determine how long the cognitive improvements persist.

̽��ֱ��design of ‘Game Show’ was based on published research from the Sahakian Laboratory at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. ̽��ֱ��study was funded by Janssen Pharmaceuticals/J&J and Wellcome.

In 2015, Professor Sahakian and colleagues showed that another iPad game developed by her team was effective at improving the memory of patients with schizophrenia, helping them in their daily lives at work and living independently. ̽��ֱ��Wizard memory game is available through PEAK via the App Store and Google Play.

Reference
George Savulich, Thomas Piercy, Chris Fox, John Suckling, James Rowe, John O'Brien, Barbara Sahakian. Cognitive training using a novel memory game on an iPad in patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). ̽��ֱ��International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology; 3 July 2017; DOI: 10.1093/ijnp/pyx040

A ‘brain training’ game developed by researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge could help improve the memory of patients in the very earliest stages of dementia, suggests a study published today in ̽��ֱ��International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology.

There's increasing evidence that brain training can be beneficial for boosting cognition and brain health, but it needs to be based on sound research

Barbara Sahakian

Sahakian Lab

Screenshot of Game Show

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes