As real every bit that daydream may seem, its path through your encephalon runs contrary reality.
Aiming to discern discrete neural circuits, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison conduct keep tracked electrical activity inward the brains of people who alternately imagined scenes or watched videos.
"A actually of import occupation inward encephalon enquiry is agreement how dissimilar parts of the encephalon are functionally connected. What areas are interacting? What is the management of communication?" says Barry Van Veen, a UW-Madison professor of electrical together with figurer engineering. "We know that the encephalon does non role every bit a fix of independent areas, but every bit a network of specialized areas that collaborate."
Van Veen, along alongside Giulio Tononi, a UW-Madison psychiatry professor together with neuroscientist, Daniela Dentico, a scientist at UW-Madison's Waisman Center, together with collaborators from the University of Liege inward Belgium, published results of late inward the journal NeuroImage. Their piece of work could Pb to the evolution of novel tools to help Tononi untangle what happens inward the encephalon during slumber together with dreaming, spell Van Veen hopes to apply the study's novel methods to sympathise how the encephalon uses networks to encode short-term memory.
During imagination, the researchers establish an increase inward the catamenia of information from the parietal lobe of the encephalon to the occipital lobe -- from a higher-order percentage that combines inputs from several of the senses out to a lower-order region.
In contrast, visual information taken inward past times the eyes tends to catamenia from the occipital lobe -- which makes upwards much of the brain's visual cortex -- "up" to the parietal lobe.
"There seems to live on a lot inward our brains together with brute brains that is directional, that neural signals motility inward a exceptional direction, together with then stop, together with firstly somewhere else," says. "I mean value this is actually a novel theme that had non been explored."
The researchers approached the report every bit an chance to exam the ability of electroencephalography (EEG) -- which uses sensors on the scalp to mensurate underlying electrical activity -- to discriminate betwixt dissimilar parts of the brain's network.
Brains are rarely quiet, though, together with EEG tends to tape plenty of activity non necessarily related to a exceptional procedure researchers desire to study.
To goose egg inward on a fix of target circuits, the researchers asked their subjects to spotter brusque video clips earlier trying to replay the activity from retentivity inward their heads. Others were asked to imagine traveling on a magic wheel -- focusing on the details of shapes, colors together with textures -- earlier watching a brusque video of soundless nature scenes.
Using an algorithm Van Veen developed to parse the detailed EEG data, the researchers were able to compile rigid show of the directional catamenia of information.
"We were rattling interested inward seeing if our signal-processing methods were sensitive plenty to discriminate betwixt these conditions," says Van Veen, whose piece of work is supported past times the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging together with Bioengineering. "These types of demonstrations are of import for gaining confidence inward novel tools."