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Switching off my brain, and other extreme measures in the name of science

  
 
astrojax69
00:41 / 11.07.06
i know there are some threads somewhere that have mentioned transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) but i thought i'd start a thread for experiences of science experiments that also cashed out a little of the science underlying these oddball measures...

recently, i underwent rTMS (repetitive transcranial etc...) which is having pulses of magnetic current at the level just on or below motor threshhold [which is assessed by directing the pulses singly into the area of the brain associated with movement and watching until muscles twitch, then winding back a notch. so very safe levels] directed into an area of the brain through the skull (hence trans-cranial).

the purpose from the scientist's side is to disrupt the electrical currents in particular parts of the brain to allow, in this instance, other parts of the brain to have more dominance in active tasks.

the background theory here is that the left hemisphere (and particularly the frontal lobe) is responsible for our concepts, big picture thinking; while the right is predominantly home to details, literalness. we [i work at the centre, so i was a guinea pig to test the experimental protocol] want to test the effect of inhibiting one side of the brain to allow the other side to become dis-inhibited. the theory is we (all of us, evolutionarily) have the brain strategy of discarding details in favour of concepts somehow built up from the details. ie left dominance over right side, in the main.

what if we could consciously somehow access the details - become literal - for a while?? this, we hypothesis, is more or less the strategy of a savant's brain.


now, some reports of tms participants have said that you feel a mild 'high'. i had three goes, one left frontal, one left rear brain somewhere [implicated in motion sensing - great, just before i stepped out to keep goal in soccer!*] and one right frontal lobe, for 15mins, one second pulses, then sat in a dark booth and participated in an experiment protocol related to testing perfect pitch (for simplicity... not really 'perfect'!)

in those three goes, i sort of felt a little light headed but am not sure i wasn't 'looking' for that feeling knowing the prior reports. certainly not anything like say having two or three drinks - maybe one small drink light headedness? or maybe imagined... maybe it 'didn't work' for me, too, is a plausible scenario.

and at that, i still haven't had my data analysed yet, so i don't know if i was made into a temporary savant (the intent of our research in this instance) or not, but i will surely let you know when i find out. the experiment deliberately excluded feedback to the participant, so i can only report that i felt i did a little better at the task while under left fronto-temporal lobe stimulation, and i also fear i may have actually also got a little worse, more distracted, on right stimulation - which is actually what we predict. was i maybe mindset? happy to elucidate further on the science, as i know it.



anyone else been at the mercy of white coats with toys?? do tell...



* btw as an aside, maybe i was keenly focussed because i thought my motion sensing bits had been affected, but i had a blinder of a match and saved two sure goals and we won the game. maybe i should sell this to manchester united???
 
 
astrojax69
05:49 / 11.07.06
....and i just heard back from the lab, my results actually got worse after tms in each case - at least i was consistent! this is prima facie contrary to our hypothesis, but i actually did quite well (not quite 'savant' like but better than chance would suggest) and so some slight deterioration in performance is in tolerance of my range of likely results across a longer series of such tests.

in other words, i don't seem to have falsified our hypothesis, but i haven't necessarily done it favours either!

there are many other aspects to this, though. application of tms is imprecise in that it can't be focussed on exactly particular neural clusters, just the region. and the sulcii, the folds of the brain, mean that the electric current will hit the cells at varying angles of incidence and so the amount of current, if you like, can't be made to be exact either. in more or less terms - i'm not being jargonically precise... and some people's craniums are thicker, etc (though the threshhold test delimits this to some considerable degree)

funny, 'cause if you know me i am likely more towards the opposite end of the spectrum of literal (autistic / aspergers, etc), much more toward conceptual. yet i have now done a couple of the experiment protocols and done quite (autistically) well.
 
 
kidninjah
08:52 / 11.07.06
Astro, you've confused me a little with "the science bit". I was under the impression, drawn from a variety of sources but little formal training, that right-brain "thought" is "parallel", associative, non-verbal, non-logical, fluid, metaphoric, "artistic" and therefore entirely the opposite of literal.

Have I got my wires crossed?
 
 
Dead Megatron
09:33 / 11.07.06
the background theory here is that the left hemisphere (and particularly the frontal lobe) is responsible for our concepts, big picture thinking; while the right is predominantly home to details, literalness. we [i work at the centre, so i was a guinea pig to test the experimental protocol] want to test the effect of inhibiting one side of the brain to allow the other side to become dis-inhibited. the theory is we (all of us, evolutionarily) have the brain strategy of discarding details in favour of concepts somehow built up from the details. ie left dominance over right side, in the main.

What about left-handed people? I am left-handed, thus, as the theory goes, my brain's right side is already dominant. But I do not think my thought process (let's call it that) is no different from any right-handed people, as fas as I can tell. How does your theory fits into that?
 
 
Red Concrete
21:03 / 11.07.06
I thought that left-handed people (and a proportion of right-handed) were more even-brained, in the sense that some things that are usually right-lateralised - such as language - seem to be bilateral? And then most right-handed people are exclusively left-brained.

Can we step back a bit, astrojax, and tell us about this lateralisation. I think the last time I heard about these ideas, they were saying there was no particular evidence for one half of the brain being "rational", and the other "creative" (I can't remember who or what 'they' were...). I had filed it in scientific myth category, like "we only use 10% of our brains". Of course it's your field, so edumacate me, please!
 
 
astrojax69
23:18 / 11.07.06
there is no one side of the brain that is 'creative'. creativity is a process that conjoins from previously unrelated concepts or ideas a new synthesis. a new way of approaching a concept, for instance. you need both sides; or you may do, depending on the synthesis.

and the hemispheric lateralisation is well founded in neuroscienc, as is the switching between the hemispheres, which is also a current 'hot' research topic in neurosciences; for instance, a colleague of our centre's, jack pettigrew's home page has some interesting stuff - think i've posted something from this link before, the bonneh illusion, about brain switching?

anyway, there seems to be a deal of evidence that suggests that details that give rise to a concept, say the lines of a plane's edge, subtly shaded as it curves across the light, is instantly recognised as a sphere, and this will likely occur predominantly in the left fronto-temporal lobe because we know a sphere very well and actually have trouble distinguishing the details that make it up.

novel information, for instance when you're learning a new skill or concept say in a classroom, the new information will be heavily processed in the right side, that is, taking in each detail and building information and understanding from there.

the same sort of information provided to an expert in the field will be processed more heavily in the left brain. music classes and skilled musicians have shown this to be the case in brain scans, eeg, mri etc..


so our centre is trying to push this hypothesis and see what happens when you force the brain into dealing with the details again, even though without the virtual impairment we would have processed this activity in left brain; what happens, what skills are evoked or awakened?

the kinds of mind strategies adopted by people with autism-spectrum disorders (particularly savants), and also found in early phase dementia, and in some psychpharmacologically induced states, and in some meditation states, etc. all have in common this right brain processing aspect.


as for left-handedness, this is not really my field. from what i understand there is some bias in some aspects of processing - motor co-ordination, etc. and some differences in other functions, but the switching seems to be an internalised thing due to some 'body clock' (pettigrew worked with richard feynman, who was a key advocate of a real body clock controlling our functions) and the expert vs novice processing also seems to be a factor. elkhonon goldberg wrote on wisdom recently, expounding this latter process as a key to 'big picture' (concept driven, ie left brain) thinking as a key to wisdom, one that is associated with ageing, and we get 'more expert' by experience, ie by ageing...

fun stuff, brains... btw, if you want to read some of the papers from our centre, here they are.
 
  
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