Cultural Neuroscience

Experiences can alter "hard-wired" brain structures. Through rehab, stroke patients can coax a region of the motor cortex on the opposite side of the damaged region to pinch-hit, restoring lost mobility; volunteers who are blindfolded for just five days can reprogram their visual cortex to process sound and touch.

The medial prefrontal cortex supposedly represents the self: it is active when we think of our own identity and traits. But with Chinese volunteers, the results were strikingly different. The "me" circuit hummed not only when they thought whether a particular adjective described themselves, but also when they considered whether it described their mother. The Westerners showed no such overlap between self and mom.

Depending whether one lives in a culture that views the self as autonomous and unique or as connected to and part of a larger whole, this neural circuit takes on quite different functions.

Westerners focus on individual objects while East Asians pay attention to context and background (another manifestation of the individualism- collectivism split). Sure enough, when shown complex, busy scenes, Asian-Americans and non-Asian--Americans recruited different brain regions. The Asians showed more activity in areas that process figure-ground relations—holistic context—while the Americans showed more activity in regions that recognize objects.

Drawings of people in a submissive pose (head down, shoulders hunched) or a dominant one (arms crossed, face forward) was shown to Japanese and Americans. The brain's dopamine-fueled reward circuit became most active at the sight of the stance—dominant for Americans, submissive for Japanese—that each volunteer's culture most values.

Chinese speakers use a different region of the brain to do simple arithmetic (3 + 4) or decide which number is larger than native English speakers do, even though both use Arabic numerals. The Chinese use the circuits that process visual and spatial information and plan movements (the latter may be related to the use of the abacus). But English speakers use language circuits. It is as if the West conceives numbers as just words, but the East imbues them with symbolic, spatial freight. (consider about Asian math geniuses.) Neural processes involving basic mathematical computations seem to be culture-specific.

from
Sharon Begley
West Brain, East Brain: What a difference culture makes.

Newsweek
Mar 1, 2010
http://www.newsweek.com/id/233778

Coma should be redefined

A man with a severe traumatic brain injury remained physically unresponsive, and hence, was presumed to be in a vegetative state for six years. Now, it is understood that he is conscious and he can communicate yes and no via his thought patterns.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the patient's brain activity was mapped while he was asked to answer yes and no questions such as "Is your father's name Thomas?".

The researchers were astonished when they saw the results of the patient's scan. He
was able to correctly answer the questions that were asked by simply changing his thoughts, which they then decoded using our fMRI technique

The new technique can decode the brain's answers to such questions in healthy, non-vegetative, participants with 100 per cent accuracy.

But it has never before been tried in a patient who is in coma, hence, cannot move or speak.

In a three-year study, 23 patients diagnosed as vegetative were scanned. The new technique was able to detect signs of awareness in four of these cases.

However the researchers only managed to communicate, in the yes, no fashion, with one of the patients.

It's early days, but in future we hope to develop this technique to allow some patients to express their feelings and thoughts, control their environment and increase their quality of life

For example, patients who are aware, but cannot move or speak, could be asked if they are feeling any pain, allowing doctors to decide when painkillers should be administered

Recently, a Belgian man named Rom Houben who was wrongly diagnosed as comatose for 23years, is now planning to write a book about his extraordinary story. Since 2006, when his true condition was correctly diagnosed, Houben has regained enough coordination to allow him to use a finger, when aided, to tap out messages on a special computer keyboard.

Published in
New England Journal of Medicine

http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/world/vegetative-man-communicates-via-scan/story-e6frfkui-1225826619059?from=news+newsletter_rss


**

Belgian man named Rom Houben was thought to have been in a coma (vegetative state) for 23 years (from 23 years of age to 46), however he was simply paralysed and unable to communicate. Finally doctors realised he was, in fact, conscious.

Cut off from the world, he passed his time in thought for years. He could hear what was being said around him throughout but was unable to respond.

"Doctors and nurses tried to speak to me and eventually gave up" The worst moment came when his mother and sister told him of the death of his father and though he wanted to weep, his body remained motionless.

After the correction of the diagnosis, he has regained enough coordination to allow him to use a finger, when aided, to use a special computer keyboard. Using a specially-adapted computer to type messages, Houben has been able to describe the ordeal he endured for more than two decades. He told that he meditated to pass the long years trapped in his own body. "I would scream, but no sound would come out," he said, "I will never forget the day they finally discovered what was wrong -- it was my second birth."

Houben is still unable to move, but he can read thanks to a device set up over his bed, and he communicates through a keyboard. "I want to read, to talk to my friends with the computer and to live life now people know I'm not dead," he said

There are too many cases inaccurately diagnosed coma -- more than 40 per cent in certain categories of sufferers. It is vital, with any coma patient, to discover whether they have plunged into a vegetative state or if there is some minimal consciousness

http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/world/man-in-false-coma-plans-memoirs/story-e6frfkui-1225803497327

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/rom-houben-spent-more-than-twenty-years-in-what-doctors-thought-was-a-coma-but-he-was-actually-awake-and-paralysed/story-e6frf7jo-1225803146317

http://www.news.com.au/world/man-misdiagnosed-as-being-in-coma-for-23-years/story-e6frfkyi-1225803256170