RCBI: Rochester Center for Brain Imaging

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Scientists Watch As Listener's Brain Predicts Speaker's Words

Scientists at the University of Rochester have shown for the first time that our brains automatically consider many possible words and their meanings before we've even heard the final sound of the word.

Previous theories have proposed that listeners can only keep pace with the rapid rate of spoken language (up to 5 syllables per second) by anticipating a small subset of all words known by the listener, much like Google search anticipates words and phrases as you type. This subset consists of all words that begin with the same sounds, such as "candle", "candy," and "cantaloupe," and makes the task of understanding the specific word more efficient than waiting until all the sounds of the word have been presented.

But until now, researchers had no way to know if the brain also considers the meanings of these possible words. The new findings are the first time that scientists, using an MRI scanner, have been able to actually see this split-second brain activity. The study was a team effort among former Rochester graduate student Kathleen Pirog Revill, now a postdoctoral researcher at Georgia Tech, and three faculty members in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Rochester.

"We had to figure out a way to catch the brain doing something so fast that it happens literally between spoken syllables," says Michael Tanenhaus, the Beverly Petterson Bishop and Charles W. Bishop Professor. "The best tool we have for brain imaging of this sort is functional MRI, but an fMRI takes a few seconds to capture an image, so people thought it just couldn't be done."

But it could be done. It just took inventing a new language to do it.

With William R. Kenan Professor Richard Aslin and Professor Daphne Bavelier, Pirog Revill focused on a tiny part of the brain called "V5," which is known to be activated when a person sees motion. The idea was to teach undergraduates a set of invented words, some of which meant "movement," and then to watch and see if the V5 area became activated when the subject heard words that sounded similar to the ones that meant "movement."

For instance, as a person hears the word "kitchen," the Rochester team would expect areas of the brain that would normally become active when a person thought of words like "kick" to momentarily show increased blood flow in an fMRI scan. But the team couldn't use English words because a word as simple as "kick" has so many nuances of meaning. To one person it might mean to kick someone in anger, to another it might mean to be kicked, or to kick a winning goal. The team had to create a set of words that had similar beginning syllables, but with different ending syllables and distinct meanings one of which meant motion of the sort that would activate the V5 area.

The team created a computer program that showed irregular shapes and gave the shapes specific names, like "goki". They also created new verb words. Some, like "biduko" meant "the shape will move across the screen," whereas some, like "biduka," meant the shape would just change color.

After a number of students learned the new words well enough, the team tested them as they lay in an fMRI scanner. The students would see one of the shapes on a monitor and hear "biduko," or "biduka". Though only one of the words actually meant "motion", the V5 area of the brain still activated for both, although less so for the color word than for the motion word. The presence of some activation to the color word shows that the brain, for a split-econd, considered the motion meaning of both possible words before it heard the final, discriminating syllable - ka rather than ko.

"Frankly, we're amazed we could detect something so subtle," says Aslin. "But it just makes sense that your brain would do it this way. Why wait until the end of the word to try to figure out what its meaning is? Choosing from a little subset is much faster than trying to match a finished word against every word in your vocabulary."

The Rochester team is already planning more sophisticated versions of the test that focus on other areas of the brain besides V5, uch as areas that activate for specific sounds or touch sensations. Bavelier says they're also planning to watch the brain sort out meaning when it is forced to take syntax into account. For instance, "blind venetian" and "venetian blind" are the same words but mean completely different things. How does the brain narrow down the meaning in such a case? How does the brain take the conversation's context into consideration when zeroing in on meaning?

"This opens a doorway into how we derive meaning from language," says Tanenhaus. "This is a new paradigm that can be used in countless ways to study how the brain responds to very brief events. We're very excited to see where it will lead us."

Cognition Professor Selected as a Finalist for New York Academy of Sciences Award

Daphne Bavelier, professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences has been selected as a finalist for the 2008 New York Academy of Sciences Blavatnik Award for her research which was recognized as "Outstanding with regards to its scientific potential, innovation and broad impact"

As a finalist, Daphne will receive $10,000 and if she is among the 3 finalist who are presented the award at the New York Academy of Sciences" annual Science & the City Gala on November 17th, she will receive an additional $15,000

Bavelier's research focuses on the plasticity of the human brain as she seeks to learn how the brain is altered by experiences. She hopes to learn what techniques could be developed to harness the natural plasticity of the brain to support recovery from neurological disease or maintenance of cognitive abilities during aging. Bavelier's most recent work looks into the possibility that emerging technologies, such as video games, may be harnessed to enhance brain functions.

Bavelier uses behavior monitoring, brain imaging, and eye tracking to study how individuals learn and adapt to changes induced by nature, such as deafness, or by training, such as in playing a video game. She has found that brain plasticity is highly specific. Lifelong deafness enhances only one aspect of vision: peripheral visual attention. The consequences of that one change range from enhanced visual search abilities to possibly differences in reading patterns, providing valuable information for deaf education. Plasticity induced by training shows individuals tend to improve on the task they were trained on, but not on other, even closely related, tasks.

Recently, however, Bavelier has discovered that playing certain types of video games induces a vast array of improvements in vision, decision-making and cognition that extend well beyond the specific tasks in the game.

Home-Based Monitoring Inventions Win Forbes Entrepreneurial Award

Two health-monitoring inventions and an identity confirmation system designed by senior engineering students at the University of Rochester have won the University's Charles and Janet Forbes Entrepreneurial Awards this year. The award comes with a prize of $3,600 for the first-place winner, and $1,500 for each of the second-place teams.

The first-place winners were biomedical engineering students James Bai, Sarah Hotaling, Huy Le, and Nathan Ross, who were supervised by Nick Kuzma, assistant professor of biomedical engineering. Their design, the "sAMY Monitor," is a small device that can track a patient's daily stress levels while being simple and non-invasive enough that it doesn't add to that stress. As part of a person's regular morning routine, a patient can simply place a small straw-like device in her mouth, and the device quickly measures the amount of amylase in the saliva. Amylase is released into the saliva during stress, so the device can make a reasonably accurate measurement fairly quickly, and can relay that information to a doctor or a computer where the data is stored. This can give doctors vital information about a patient's stress levels when the patient herself may not be aware she is stressed.

One of the devices that tied for second place was designed by biomedical engineering students Ashley Cronin, Nick Mikolenko, Brad Ochocki, and Brandon Smoller, who were supervised by Axel Wismueller, associate professor of biomedical engineering. Their invention, the "ToiletMD," also provides a method to help elderly patients monitor their health from home. The device is designed to help the elderly to manage their own health and to alleviate the strain that an increasingly aging population will place on the healthcare system. Once fully integrated with a substance-identification system developed by Andrew Berger, associate professor of optics, the toilet will be able to detect many kinds of medication that pass through the body and into urine, and thus the device can tell if a patient has taken his proper doses. This form of monitoring prescription drug use could provide a simple way for elderly patients, especially those with some cognitive impairment, to remain living independently and safely at home, rather than under the constant supervision of a doctor or nurse.

Also tied for second place was the rKEY project by electronic and computer engineering students Kyle Aures, Scott Warren, Aaron Wescott, and Adam Williamson, and supervised by Gaurav Sharma, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. The team adapted wireless technology to function as a keyless entry system that can identify different people approaching a door. A person simply holds a keycard with embedded radio frequency identification (RFID) technology near the door, and a detector reads the card and either unlocks the door, or if the card holder is a guest, the device provides a customized ring or "dingtone" to alert the owner of the house that a specific guest is at the door. This would allow the owner to know if the person at the door was a trusted friend. The system is readily re-programmed to disable lost or stolen RFIDs--a feature that offers improved security and convenience over conventional physical key-based systems.

The Charles and Janet Forbes Entrepreneurial Award was established in 1989 to encourage University undergraduate engineering students to consider the commercial potential of their design projects or research. Students, individually or in teams, compete by submitting a business plan for a manufacturing or a technical business, often based on their senior design projects.

About the University of Rochester

The University of Rochester (www.rochester.edu) is one of the nation's leading private universities. Located in Rochester, N.Y., the University gives students exceptional opportunities for interdisciplinary study and close collaboration with faculty through its unique cluster-based curriculum. Its College of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering is complemented by the Eastman School of Music, Simon School of Business, Warner School of Education, Laboratory for Laser Energetics, Schools of Medicine and Nursing, and the Memorial Art Gallery.

Professor Richard Aslin named President of International Society on Infant Studies

Richard N. Aslin, the William R. Kenan Professor of Brain & Cognitive Sciences and director of the Rochester Center for Brain Imaging, has been named president-elect of the International Society on Infant Studies, a not-for-profit professional organization devoted to the promotion of research on the development of infants. Aslin is finishing a five-year term as editor of the Society's journal.

Aslin is director of the Rochester Center for Brain Imaging, which uses one of the world's most powerful magnetic resonance imaging systems to plumb the physiology of the brain. Among his many honors, he was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 1988, received the University's Robert and Pamela Goergen Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Learning in 2001, and was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2006. He also has held the posts of dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and vice provost and dean of the College.

Before joining the Rochester faculty, Aslin was a faculty member at Indiana University at Bloomington, taught at the University of Minnesota, and was a visiting scientist at the University of Washington's Regional Primate Research Center.

He holds a bachelor's degree from Michigan State University and a doctorate in child psychology from the University of Minnesota.

Read more at the University of Rochester News site

News 10 Now: Head Injuries should be checked out

About a million people each year hit their heads hard enough that they have to go to the emergency room. But many others don't seek help until they've suffered chronic headaches, memory loss or other thinking troubles.

These are problems that stem from a concussion. "There is a lot of evidence that head injury, even concussion, can be a risk factor for the development of Alzheimer's later in life," said Dr. Jeff Bazarian of the University of Rochester Medical Center Department of Neurology.

Read more and watch the video on news10now.com

13Wham: UR Doctors Research Brain Injury

A concussion is the most common head injury, but there is no reliable test to detect it and there is no effective treatment.

Researchers at the University of Rochester are now working on an easier, cheaper, and faster way to detect even minor head injuries. They have received a $1.5 million grant from the NIH to see if a simple blood test could determine how serious a concussion is.

'NORMAL' CT SCAN DOESN'T RULE OUT BRAIN DAMAGE FROM CONCUSSIONS

Concussion patients with a normal head CT scan may believe they are free of brain injury, but CT scans often miss damage at the molecular level, warns a new study. In fact, when doctors examine the nerve cells of concussion patients, the pattern of brain injury is identical for mild and severe concussions, says lead author Jeffrey J. Bazarian, a brain injury expert and an attending physician in the emergency department at Strong Memorial Hospital. In an article in the February Academic Emergency Medicine journal, Bazarian and colleagues say that a more accurate and rapid diagnostic test for concussion could lead to better treatment in the short term and might also prevent long-term neurological problems. "Unfortunately, the widespread use of the CT scan as the primary tool for diagnosing head injuries has biased the way we think about concussions," he says. "For many people, a more significant axonal injury has occurred, and this underlies the problems they have with motor skills and memory, and may also be a risk factor for later development of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases." Of more than 1.2 million Americans who seek emergency room care annually for mild head injuries, one of four patients continues to suffer from symptoms such as forgetfulness, headaches, and other cognitive defects that persist beyond one year.