Science of the brain- Plasticity

Today we will be studying plasticity and its effect on the brain.  Plasticity is the ability to rewire and change the brain as we learn. The brain doesn’t change as a whole, rather one neuron at a time. There are many mechanisms to plasticity but the most important one being Synaptic Plasticity. Synaptic Plasticity is all about how neurons communicate with one another.

As we interact with our environment, synaptic connections start to change. A great example a lot of us might have experienced is learning an instrument. If we play a lot, our connections associated with that instrument become stronger but if we neglect the instrument our connections become weaker or get lost forever. It’s a use it or lose it situation.

 Synaptic plasticity plays another critical function in our brains – it can help the brain recover from injury. For example, if the neurons that control particular movements are destroyed, as happens during a stroke or serious head injury, all is not necessarily lost.

And that is pretty much the basics of plasticity.

Neuroscience-Science of the brain

since it is the start of the year I think it is time for a new topic.

If you haven’t read the title already this topic is on Neuroscience and what I have learnt about it.

This week I shall be doing the post on Learning and memory.

It might be rather obvious to you but memories are very important, they are central to our individuality and work as a way of learning from our mistakes. new memories are dependent on Synaptic Plasticity (which I will describe in full in the next post).

The organisation of memory

There is no single brain area to which all the information we ever learn is shuttled for storage. Working memory holds information in your mind for a short time in an active conscious state. The much larger, more passive storehouse of information is called long term memory.

Working memory

The capacity of short term memory only allows you to remember 7(give or take 2) items, this is probably why phone numbers are around 7 characters long.

You may have noticed that when you are trying to remember something short term, you tend to say it to yourself over and over in your head. This is because there are two memory stores called the phonological store and a silent rehearsal loop. There is also a visual sketchbook (yes that is what it’s called) used to hold onto images of objects for a short period of time.

Working memory is located in the frontal and parietal lobes.

Long term memory

Long term memory is sub-divided into different systems that do very different things. Put simple, Information enters sensory systems and then pass down pathways that provide increasingly specialised processing.

There is another memory system closely related to Long term memory, this system is called semantic memory. Semantic memory is pretty much all the random facts you know. We know that mount Everest is the tallest mountain in the world because of Semantic memory.

Learning!

You might be very surprised about this (sarcasm), but memory is very important for learning or Plasticity. Through memory, we acquire skills and emotional feelings about things. Pretty self explanatory. Plasticity is simply the refining and re-wiring of the brain, not in full but neuron by neuron. The memory process in plasticity is called imprinting. It’s exactly like what it sounds.

Scientist of the week 15

max born was a German born scientist world famous for his studies on subatomic particles.

Being a bright guy and all,  he studied at the most prominent universities of Germany pursuing scientificness. Through his amazing education, Born had picked up an interest in matrix calculus(very fancy) higher analysis, astronomy and physics. He continued his studies as a successful  physicist at Cambridge and returned to his hometown university to work on the theory of relativity, collaborating with and then taking over for a renowned professor there, which led to his first brush with Albert Einstein (they would become buds).

There was a brief pause in his studies however, as the storms of world war one rolled in,  but soon enough he was back to work as a professor at the esteemed German University Göttingen. At Göttingen he worked on quantum mechanics and atomic science, with scientists such as our man Enrico Fermi and other scientists flocking to the institute.

All was going well, but of course,  as we all know world war two was coming. Max Born being a jew, was forced to flee to Britain and there he continued his experiments.

After retiring he was awarded a Nobel Prize for his contribution to theoretical physics.  He died in 1970 at Göttingen.

Scientist of the week 14

Born in Italy in 1901, Enrico Fermi’s early research was in general relativity and quantum mechanics, but he soon focused on the newer field of nuclear physics. Exciting! Soon, Enrico Fermi’s physics career and personal life flourished. In 1928, he married Laura Capon, the daughter of a rich banker, and soon enough, Fermi began his most important work with the atom, discovering that nuclear transformation could occur in nearly every element. Fantastic! Soon the American government had work for him though. They contracted him to work on the first nuclear bomb.  Despite Fermi’s constant warnings the bomb was built and Fermi is ever infamous for being the father of the nuclear bomb.

Scientist of the week 13

Born on December 27, 1822, in Dole, France, Louis Pasteur discovered that microbes were responsible for souring alcohol and came up with the process of pasteurization, where bacteria is destroyed by heating beverages and then allowing them to cool. His work in germ theory also led him and his team to create vaccinations for anthrax and rabies.

In 1854, Pasteur was appointed professor of chemistry and dean of the science faculty at the University of Lille. Here, he worked on finding solutions to the problems with the manufacture of alcoholic drinks. In 1873, Pasteur was elected as an associate member of the Académie de Médecine. In 1882, the year of his acceptance into the Académie Française he decided to focus his efforts on the problem of rabies. On July 6, 1885, Pasteur vaccinated Joseph Meister, a 9-year-old boy who had been bitten by a rabid dog.

Pasteur had been partially paralyzed since 1868, due to a severe brain stroke, but he was able to continue his research. At that time, his paralysis worsened, and he died on September 28, 1895. Pasteur’s remains were transferred to a crypt at the Pasteur Institute in 1896.

Scientist of the week 12

Earnest Rutherford

Earnest Rutherford! born in New Zealand and father of nuclear science, a great yet terrible achievement.

In the confines of Cambridge University, in the cavandish laboratory, the smart Mr Rutherford found an easier and Comercially better way to detect radio waves.  He also managed to split an atom into its ions thus paving the way to nuclear physics. *breaths in* blarghghghghvhhhghvhg. sorry about that.

Anyway continuing on, what was this amazing discovery that Rutherford found? Well, through his firing of atoms at foil he discovered that an atom is mostly comprised of the nucleus. With that he made the nuclear model.

Scientist of the week 11

Maria Curie 

Maria was famous for being the first woman to win a Nobel prize for Physics. Big feat at the time.

She got the prize 4 her work on Radioactivity which gained fame throughout science

Scientist of the week 10

Hubble!!!1111!!!!!!!!11111!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!!!!!!!1

If you haven’t guessed already, thus guy was the namesake for the hubble telescope; but why????????????????????

Well, it seems like this guy made a very important discovery! The universe! Well…nearly

Hubble proved that other galaxies existed outside of the Milky Way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  There had been no clear idea of the Milky Way’s size at the time, and through his research, Hubble was able to estimate that the Andromeda Nebula (thought of simply as a spiral at the time) was nearly 900,000 light years away from the Milky Way. He also found out that all galaxies were constantly moving around and how this affects the earth.

Good job dude!lmr hubble loves oranges too

Scientist of the week 9

Alexander Graham Bell

Bell owes his immortality to his having been the first to design and patent a practical device for transmitting the human voice by means of an electric current. But Bell always described himself simply as a “teacher of the deaf,” and his contributions in that field were of the first order. Would you be that humble if you invented the telephone?

In 1874 the essential idea of the telephone formed in his mind. As he later explained it, “If I could make a current of electricity vary in intensity precisely as the air varies in density during the production of sound, I should be able to transmit speech telegraphically.” which personality I have no clue what he’s on about.

Scientist of the week 8

Archimedes

welcome to another scientist of the week. Today we are looking at Archimedes-the greatest mind in all of Greece.

Archimedes was born in scyracus on the coast of Sicily in 287 BC where he tinkered and worked and screwed around until he made a very important device called the archimedes screw, used to raise water, which is still being used in some developing countries. Another one of his famous works was the formulation of the hydrostatic principle or…well…Archimedes principle. His fame spread far and wide throughout the medieval world and he was highly celebrated for his discoveries and achievements. His role in defending his home city against the Romans was crucial as he created various weapons and devices to slow the Romans down. However the could not hold forever and on 212 BC the city fell and Archimedes died as it was sacked. Behind him he left a legacy of a great mind of the ancient world and of course two archimedes spheres.