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How evolution made our brains lazy
Blame our ancestors for why it's easier to be a couch potato.
26 September, 2018
Pixabay.com
- A new study shows that the brain prefers to expend as little energy as possible.
- Putting forth less effort had advantages for our ancestors.
- Being inactive is not beneficial in modern life and needs addressing.
</li></ul>
<p>Why is it often so hard to get off the couch and go to the gym? While you can certainly point to your lack of will power for the inaction, you can also blame evolution for this predicament. Your brain prefers to minimize effort because that's how it's been trained to do it for millennia.</p><p>Scientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG) in Switzerland came to this conclusion after studying the neuron activity of people who had the choice of either engaging in physical activity or doing nothing. The researchers found that it takes much more effort for the brain to escape its general tendency to put forth less effort.</p><p>This battle in the mind comes courtesy of our ancestors who aimed to do less to increase the likelihood they would survive. Expending unnecessary energy would have made them more vulnerable to predators or environmental factors. Conserving energy was helpful when competing against rivals, fighting, hunting for prey, and searching for food. Living in modern societies does not require this approach, and yet the predilection of our brains to work less persists.</p><p>To gain a better understanding, the scientists based their hypothesis on "<strong>the physical activity paradox</strong>." You've experienced it if you've ever done something like buying a membership to a gym that you attend with less frequency each passing week. This happens when the conflict between your reason-based knowledge (going to the gym is good for my health) runs into the automatic system based on <em>affect</em>, which is, in this case, all the hurt and tiredness you expect to get out of the physical activity. The result is often paralysis—you remain sedentary.</p><p>To delve deeper into what is taking place at the neuronal level, the researchers studied the brain activity of 29 people who desired to be more active in their everyday lives but had a hard time doing so. The subjects were made to choose between physical activity or inactivity as the researchers observed their brains using an electroencephalograph (EEG) with 64 electrodes.</p><p>The research team was headed by Boris Cheval from the Faculty of Medicine at UNIGE and HUG and Matthieu Boisgontier from Leuven University, Belgium, and the University of British Columbia, Canada.</p><p>Cheval explained how the experiment, where subjects <a href="https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-09-brain-struggles-sofa.html" target="_blank">controlled an online avatar</a>, was carried out:</p><blockquote>We made participants play the "manikin task," which involved steering a dummy towards images representing a physical activity and subsequently moving it away from images portraying sedentary behaviour [...] They were then asked to perform the reverse action.</blockquote><p>The scientists looked at how long it took the participants to get near the sedentary image versus avoiding it and found that it took the subjects 32 milliseconds less to move away from the less active image. Cheval called this result "considerable for a task like this." While such an outcome didn't correspond to their theory of the physical activity paradox at first glance, it actually ended up confirming it.</p><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODY2NDg4OC9vcmlnaW4uZ2lmIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMTEzMjE0OX0.gT2FClyfNHBDQC765AEhPHCXn6eQ-6KDvWHWK60OPGY/img.gif?width=980" id="d9814" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="face9be84ef16ec8972c1e68221a6ed5" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
This animation shows the experiment the participants were asked to perform, moving the avatar closer or farther from the image shown.
Credit: UBC Media Relations
<p>It turned out that the reason for why the participants moved their avatar away from images of physical inactivity and towards active pictures more quickly is because avoiding lazy images forced their brains to work harder. That's due to the fact that the participants wanted to engage in physical activity even if they weren't doing so. Choosing more active images was actually easier to do. As such, the EEG scans suggested that their brains were essentially hardwired towards laziness.</p><p>Matthieu Boisgontier <a href="https://news.ubc.ca/2018/09/18/hardwired-for-laziness-tests-show-the-human-brain-must-work-hard-to-avoid-sloth/" target="_blank">explained why</a> evolution preferred the easy way out:</p><blockquote>Conserving energy has been essential for humans' survival, as it allowed us to be more efficient in searching for food and shelter, competing for sexual partners, and avoiding predators. [...] The failure of public policies to counteract the pandemic of physical inactivity may be due to brain processes that have been developed and reinforced across evolution.</blockquote><p>He thinks one big takeaway from the study is that the brain has to work hard to avoid physical activity. The team's research will next focus on whether the brain can be re-trained.</p><p>Check out the new study, published in the journal <em>Neuropsychologia,</em> <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0028393218303981?via%3Dihub" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
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How schizophrenia is linked to common personality type
Both schizophrenics and people with a common personality type share similar brain patterns.
21 September, 2018
(shutterstock)
- A new study shows that people with a common personality type share brain activity with patients diagnosed with schizophrenia.
- The study gives insight into how the brain activity associated with mental illnesses relates to brain activity in healthy individuals.
- This finding not only improves our understanding of how the brain works but may one day be applied to treatments.
<p><br>Researchers have found that the signals in the brains of people with schizophrenia are similar to signals in the brains of people with schizotypal personalities. This discovery opens up new ways of looking at the condition as well as new avenues for treatment. </p>
<p class=""><sup>1 </sup>Schizophrenia is not <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/conditions/dissociative-identity-disorder-multiple-personality-disorder" target="_blank">multiple personality disorder</a>, despite the common misconception.</p>
<p>The study, published in <em><a href="https://academic.oup.com/schizophreniabulletin/advance-article/doi/10.1093/schbul/sby117/5095481" target="_blank">Schizophrenia Bulletin</a>,</em><em> </em>was carried out by scientists at the <a href="https://www.institutemh.org.uk/" target="_blank">University of Nottingham</a>, <a href="https://www.sickkids.ca/Research/Neurosciences-and-mental-health/index.html" target="_blank">the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto</a>, and <a href="https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/cardiff-university-brain-research-imaging-centre" target="_blank">Cardiff University</a>. Building off previous research and ideas on personality types going back decades, the study suggests that schizophrenia is not an entirely distinct condition but is instead an extreme variation of a <a href="https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-09-brain-schizophrenia-extreme-version-common.html" target="_blank">common personality type</a>.</p>
The Schizotypal Personality
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="5d6b8d5b3aecddd241d26243ac33aeb3"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hzcIdCdPuUs?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>The <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/schizotypal-personality-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20353919" target="_blank">schizotypal personality</a> is characterized by social anxiety, magical thinking, unusual perceptual experiences, eccentric behavior, a lack of close friends, atypical speech patterns, and suspicions bordering on paranoia. These personality traits that, taken together, resemble the symptoms of schizophrenia.</p><p>A person with <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/conditions/schizotypal-personality-disorder" target="_blank">schizotypal personality disorder</a> has these personality traits at a level where they begin to interfere with their lives, such as preventing them from forming close relationships, but they lack the hallucinations or delusions commonly associated with full-blown schizophrenia.<sup>1</sup> </p><p>The similarities between this personality type and the symptoms of schizophrenia interested the researchers. Since <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213158215001436" target="_blank">previous studies</a> had shown that the electrophysiological response patterns in the brains of schizophrenic test subjects were often strange (the patterns showed a reduced post-movement beta rebound [PMBR] to be precise), the study looked at the brains of healthy patients to see if a person with a schizotypal personality would have similar brain activity.</p>The experiment
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODY0NzYwNC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxNzQzMzE4Mn0.V1uUF-5LKraBeY9f8SPN5gwruXjg39Dx_Q4BQSWaacU/img.jpg?width=1245&coordinates=0%2C0%2C0%2C118&height=700" id="d479b" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d67f534ea95babb8232b78a6b88f3e75" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Eduard Einstein (left) and his father Albert Einstein. Eduard was a brilliant student who wanted to study psychiatry before being diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 20. He lived a difficult life afterwards, dying in an institution at the age of 55.
(Einstein: His Life and Universe)
<p>The experiment took 112 test subjects and had them answer a questionnaire, similar to <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e84e/a17580e2afd70777e70294b076ea4f810cb2.pdf" target="_blank">others </a>available <a href="https://psymed.info/schizotypal-personality-disorder-test" target="_blank">online</a>, to determine how many features of the schizotypal personality they had. They were then strapped into a <a href="http://ilabs.washington.edu/what-magnetoencephalography-meg" target="_blank">magnetoencephalography</a> (MEG) machine to have their brains scanned while they performed a simple motor task.</p><p>The volunteers were asked to move their index fingers when given a prompt. The reaction in their brains was recorded. The results were then compared to the answers the test subjects gave in their questionnaires.</p><p>As expected, the higher that a person scored on the schizotypal personality test, the more subdued their PMBR brain activity was—just as it is for patients with schizophrenia. This brain activity was particularly associated with scoring high on the parts of the test geared towards reveling the subject's tendencies to disorganized thinking and difficulty in forming interpersonal relationships.</p>What are the implications of this study?
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODY0Nzc0MS9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMTg5MzIwN30.aBOy-gIsb-lFMyfDax-tzuaBABMz_VrvUTxHd4Kbmlc/img.png?width=1245&coordinates=3%2C252%2C997%2C310&height=700" id="03ade" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="acdb45767221dc0d66d873b60c66181c" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Sample brain scans from the study. Here we see false color images of the brain, with areas that showed higher brain activity during the experiment shown in the most vibrant shades. The top row shows the change above baseline and the bottom shows the change below it. In a test subject with either schizophrenia or many schizotypal traits, the amplitude of the change would be greatly reduced.
(Hunt et al.)
<p>The authors conclude the study by explaining</p><blockquote>The finding that diminution of PMBR, previously reported in schizophrenia, is correlated with the severity of schizotypal features across the range observed in the general population, supports the hypothesis that at least some aspects of schizophrenia lie at the extreme end of a normal personality variant.</blockquote><p>This idea, which has been around since the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3332195" target="_blank">seventies</a>, has recently been given more attention as a result of increasing interest in the concept of viewing mental disorders as existing on a gradient. This new view could lead to a better understanding of schizophrenia and perhaps even better treatments over the long run. </p><p>The results might also be of use in reducing the stigma around mental illness, as the study shows that the thought processes of people with schizophrenia are not categorically different from those of many other people. It is a difference of severity, not substance, which seems to separate those suffering from schizophrenia from the people who are merely eccentric. </p><p>Of course, more research is needed. At this moment, scientists aren't sure what neural mechanism even causes this brain activity, let alone how to treat the more extreme manifestations of the reduced activity seen in cases of schizophrenia. </p><p>Our understanding of mental illness has changed drastically over the last few decades as old ideas of what counted as mental illness are thrown out, and new ideas step up to replace old paradigms. The results of this study suggest that the brains of patients with this disease are more similar to the minds of healthy people than had previously been thought. While it will take years of more research before any medical advances are made on this information, our understanding of the people who go through life with this condition can be improved today. </p>
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Scientists Use Artificial Intelligence To Spot Alzheimer's Before Onset of Symptoms
Scientists have developed an algorithm that reliably detects the signs of Alzheimer’s dementia before its onset.
31 August, 2017
<p dir="ltr">Scientists from the <a href="https://www.mcgill.ca/brain/research-discovery/areas-exploration/douglas-mental-health-university-institute" target="_blank">Douglas Mental Health University Institute’s Translational Neuroimaging Laboratory</a> at McGill have developed an algorithm that reliably detects signs of dementia before its onset. The technology could be used to help families prepare for treatment options, and to help researchers select better candidates for clinical trials that test drug effectiveness.</p> <p dir="ltr"><span>The findings were detailed in a study published in the journal </span><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28756942"><span>Neurobiology of Aging</span></a><span>.</span></p> <blockquote>
<p dir="ltr"><span>“If you can tell from a group of of individuals who is the one that will develop the disease, one can better test new medications that could be capable of preventing the disease,” </span><a href="https://www.livescience.com/60267-artificial-intelligence-predicts-alzheimers-disease.html"><span>said</span></a><span> co-lead study author Dr. Pedro Rosa-Neto, an associate professor of neurology, neurosurgery and psychiatry at McGill University, to Live Science.</span></p>
</blockquote> <p dir="ltr"><span>The algorithm works by searching brain scans for the buildup of amyloid, a protein that accumulates in the brains of people who develop mild cognitive impairment and, later, dementia. Amyloid starts accumulating in the brain years, or sometimes decades, before the onset of dementia, and it does so at differents rates and locations in the brain. What’s more, not everyone with amyloid buildup necessarily develops cognitive impairment. This has made spotting the development of dementia difficult for scientists.</span></p> <p dir="ltr"><strong>Machine learning could make it much easier.</strong></p> <p dir="ltr">Using hundreds of PET scans available through the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI), scientists trained an algorithm to spot signs of dementia by having it first analyze the amyloid buildup in the scans of patients who had mild cognitive impairment. They then showed it brain scans taken <em>before </em>patients had developed the disease.</p> <p dir="ltr"><span><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODM0MDM2Mi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwNzA3OTA2NH0.zbj9js8w2gvCGNxv7oyv-AQO0y2x8HDWfTp-Lp2zN5g/img.jpg?width=980" id="11c0d" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d462faa18efc5bbdc6cb5992e673cdd1" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image"><br></span></p> <p dir="ltr"><em>(<a href="http://www.neurobiologyofaging.org/article/S0197-4580(17)30229-4/fulltext" target="_blank">Summary</a> of the steps followed to train the algorithm to predict the progression of dementia.) </em></p> <p dir="ltr"><span>Scientists then presented the algorithm with a new set of brain scans, some of which were from patients who currently had mild cognitive impairment. All of the scans, however, were taken before any of the patients had developed the disease. The algorithm was able to predict which patients would end up impaired with an accuracy of 84 percent.</span></p> <blockquote>
<p dir="ltr"><span>“This is an example how big data and open science brings tangible benefits to patient care,” </span><a href="https://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/channels/news/artificial-intelligence-predicts-dementia-onset-symptoms-269722"><span>said</span></a><span> Rosa-Neto to McGill News.</span></p>
</blockquote> <p dir="ltr"><span>The biggest benefit to patient care could be improved clinical trials studying the effectiveness of drugs for Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia.</span></p> <blockquote>
<p dir="ltr"><span>“By using this tool, clinical trials could focus only on individuals with a higher likelihood of progressing to dementia within the time frame of the study,” </span><a href="https://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/channels/news/artificial-intelligence-predicts-dementia-onset-symptoms-269722"><span>said</span></a><span> Dr. Serge Gauthier, the study’s co-lead author, to McGill News. “This will greatly reduce the cost and the time necessary to conduct these studies.”</span></p>
</blockquote> <p dir="ltr"><em>Research was funded by the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.</em></p> <div class="video-full-card-placeholder" data-slug="debunking-alzheimers-greatest-myth" style="border: 1px solid #ccc;">
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