I think we'll go ahead and get started.

It's almost five after we want to welcome
everybody to our blended research at

the Library series.

This is our second panel
discussion that we've held and

we're delighted that you're here.

The theme today is brain
connections advances in

neuroscience we're absolutely delighted
to have four panelists join us.

Each is going to present a little
bit on their own research and

then we will have time for
an extended question answer period so we

hope that you can stay around we do know
that students often have to run to class.

So if you have to leave at the hour.

We understand but if you can stay for

more interaction that would be great as
well our speakers are going to speak in

the order they're sitting here we're
going to start with Dr Drew are to and

Dr Doherty is an assistant professor
of psychology received her Ph D.

in two thousand and four in neurobiology
from the University of California Berkeley

and her research areas are in
cognition in brain science and

cognitive aging our second
speaker is micro do lists and

Michael is currently
working towards his P.H.D.

in the school of psychology and he's
a member of the memory and ageing lab.

He graduated with a B.S.
from the University of Michigan and

he double majored in brain behavior and
cognitive science and English.

Michael also received his master's
degree in psychology from Georgia Tech

in two thousand and eleven his research
is primarily focused on memory changes

throughout the lifespan particularly
memory for contextual details

do is our third speaker and
is also currently a Ph D.

student and he is in the culture
department of biomedical engineering.

He's a member of the Laboratory for

neuro engineering he received
his master's in electrical and

computer engineering from the University
of British Columbia in two thousand and

nine and he received electrical
engineering from say Jang.

His university his P.H.D. research seeks
to understand the coding principles and

the primary visual cortex to
complet computational modeling

and last but certainly not least we have
Dr Robert Pugh Tara who is a professor.

With a joint appointment in the school of
Electrical and Computer Engineering and

the Department of biomedical
engineering here at Georgia Tech.

Robert received from Georgia Tech in one
nine hundred ninety one and his Ph D.

from Rice University in one
nine hundred ninety six

his primary research is in
the fields of neuro engineering.

So you learn systems science and
real time instrumentation.

But that if you would join me
in welcoming our first speaker.

Thank you.

OK So thank you for the invitation I'm
really happy to be speaking with you today

so I'm a cognitive neuroscientist and

what that means is that I'm interested in
understanding the neural basis of human

cognition of your cognitive science that's
that's really what we're talking about

I'm specifically interested in a certain
aspect of cognition it human memory.

I meant to tell you a bit about
the approach that I use to addressing this

area of research so human memory isn't

just one thing it's very complicated
composed of several subtypes and

not even showing the whole branch
here which is short term or

working memory here I'm just showing long
term memory long term memory is memory

over a period of minutes two
hours to potentially forever.

This is the long term memory tree
kind of the classic tree and

I'm not going to go over all of it
because I only study one branch of it

you know there's implicit memory which
is memory for knowing how to drive a car

knowing how to ride a bicycle
knowing how to write with a pencil.

There's also explicit or conscious memory
and there are memories that we have for

facts knowing the days of the we.

The colors the rainbow cetera.

And the subtype that I study is called
episodic memory and this is memory for

events that we experience when you think
of your memories I remember going out to

dinner last night I remember my birthday
party last year that's episodic memory

this figure is meant to show a few very
important regions of the brain the support

episodic memory formation and subsequent
retrieval including the frontal lobe

right in the front and the temporal lobe
and these there are other reasons too.

But these are really the the most
important regions that support

episodic memory ability and I'm going
to touch on this again when I go on.

So why do I choose to
study episodic memory

over all the other possible
aspects of cognition.

The reason I think is important is because
without it we would have no memory for

events that we've experienced.

So for example a recent trip I took to
Venice with my husband memories for

all the amazing things we saw all the
great food that we ate not in Venice but

another set in Italy and
just the great time.

Overall I wouldn't have memory for

any of that trip I took last year with
my nephews who got to see snow for

the first time or so the joy of that
they were you know experienced.

It's a little dark but
that would be totally lost.

I would have no memory for that experience
and these episodic memories don't just

have to be individualized autobiographical
experiences can also be memories for

events that we all have some knowledge
of so some of these are positive some of

these are negative a year ago in September
to ten years ago on September eleventh.

Many of us probably remember where we were
when we heard or maybe we were there in

the city who really with what were we
doing it was such an emotionally charged

day that you likely have a very
strong memory of that day and it's.

Unlikely you're going to
forget any time soon.

Maybe ever.

So collectively these experiences
inform who we are and

really shape our personalities.

This is why I think it's
important to study.

So if we look at the various kinds
of groups that have episodic memory

impairments we see there's quite a few and

this is just a few of the types of
people that do healthy older adults.

So as we age we have episodic memory
decline this is an inevitable.

Not so
fun consequence of the aging process and

I don't mean you know seventy years old.

I mean the starts in the forty's so
something to look forward to.

Patients with damage to the frontal lobe
in the temporal lobe as a kind of show in

that first figure these two regions
which are quite large regions are really

important for episodic memory
ability patients with dementia.

Various kinds of dementia Alzheimer's
being the most common type of dementia

these patients have profound episodic
memory impairments above and

beyond what you see with healthy aging and

then patients with Parkinson's disease
which is something that were recently

discovered we didn't use you know pages
of Parkinson's have motor impairments but

actually they do have some episodic
memory impairment as well.

So it's really this aspect of
cognition that can be affected by

a multitude of of causes
of neurological causes.

So this is a hugely important
area of research not just for

understanding how our episodic memory
you know young healthy adults episodic

memory kind of helps us
define ourselves but

also for understanding how you know what's
going on in these neurological patients.

How might we develop treatments to help
their memory impairments this is something

that we do a little bit of in
the lab actually in my lab.

So in pursuing this line of research I
found that one method alone is too limited

and so I utilize multiple complementary
approaches in my in my work for example I

use behavioral measures to assess the
factors that affect episodic memory this.

It's just simple paper pencil
person computer interactions.

You may be more interested in how emotion
affects memory or gender affects memory or

stress in fact one very common way you
undue stress in these studies is you

film people while they're
giving a public speech and

people find it really stressful so
I'm a heightened at the moment.

So we use these different kinds
of behavioral manipulations

experimental manipulations
to assess memory in the lab.

We also using or

imaging a couple different types
electroencephalography measures measures

neural activity in excellent with
excellent temporal resolution.

Basically as it's happening.

We also use magnetic resonance imaging or
M.R.I.

to measure the structure of the brain and
functions of different areas of the brain

while people are forming memories and
retrieving those memories and

we do this to investigate the neural
substrates of episodic memory and

then finally we do some patient work.

Basically the neural
imaging data is great.

It lets you know what areas of
the brain might be important for

episodic memory but it doesn't tell
you those reasons are necessary.

Maybe it's actually phenomenal that you
see these activations so the patient work

where you look at a group of patients
they have damaged your region A and

you say now their behavior is impaired
they have episodic memory impairments that

gives you some idea that that region might
be necessary for episodic memory ability.

So now show you one example of how we use
behavioral measures in the lab to test

episodic memory ability and we do this
with young adults and older adults and

my graduate student Mike will tell you
about some of the aging work that we do.

So I hope you can see this.

But here's an example of a study that we
recently did where we were interested in

the idea of the effects of emotion
on episodic memory in young adults.

So whether it's hindered or
enhanced by emotion isn't entirely clear.

It's a little bit of a murky story and
what we did was we had.

Come into the lab we had them
sit down at the computer and

study pictures of emotional and neutral
images or images that were emotional or

neutral somewhere neutral like a rolling
pin most people to have an emotional

response to that some are positive like
a little baby kitten with Frog ears most

people find that to be quite positive and
some are negative like a trench

on the shoulder or snarling dog or they
get a lot more graphic as Michael knows.

So these are emotionally
charged picked pictures and

then the rolling pin or
a chair would be a neutral picture.

And the reason or
the way we have people study

was we had them answer one of two
questions about these objects.

Do you think this is
a common item seen picture.

Or do you think this is
an indoor outdoor scene and

we don't really care about
that specific question.

We're just interested in enhancing
memory formation and if people don't

do anything with these stimulate it's
really hard for them to remember them.

So this enhances memory.

It also gives us the chance to assess
memory for some kind of a detail about

that event so later when we tested their
memory and this was the same day that

many minutes later we asked them if
they had seen these images before and

also what was the question that we
previously asked you about that item and

this is a type of episodic memory
detail we're trying to assess here.

And here's what we found episodic memory
accuracy defined as memory for that

question that you had previously answered
about that item was worse worst for

and negative items and best for New try to
mess with positive items in the middle so

episodic memory was actually
impaired by the negative images and

what this suggests is that emotionally
evocative information sequesters your

attention and draws it away from
your ability to encode neutral

episodic details and this is actually
something we know quite well from.

Eyewitness testimonies so there's been
work done for many decades showing that.

People who are eyewitnesses to some
crime they often have fuzzy memories.

So they might remember very vividly
the gun being pointed at them

by the perpetrator.

But they may not remember
the clothing of the perpetrator or

the face of the perpetrator.

It's sort of amazing how the attention is
drawn toward the emotionally charged item

that gun is really important if
it's being pointed at you but

maybe less important is the car that
the person is driving away at so

this is the problem with with eye witness
testimony is meant much of the time so

we also do imaging in the lab him explain.

One recent study that we did that
where we used their imaging and

why we used it so this is the device
that we use it's an M.R.I. scanner.

This is actually the type that we have
here at Georgia Tech at the Center for

Advanced brain imaging on Marietta Street.

Some of you probably
the been there before and

what we do is we have people
lie down on this bed.

We roll them into the scanners of their
head is in the bore of the magnet and

through some complicated physics that I'm
not going to go into now but we basically

capitalized on the properties magnetic
properties of the body in the brain and

we can measure structural images of the
brain take nice pictures we can measure

activity in the brain as it's happening
and what we were interested in and

what we've been interested in the lab for
little while.

Is this question of something we know
in the literature that suggests that

when you think about yourself when
you're in coding new information

it enhances your episodic memory accuracy.

So when you think about your own
feelings about this event or

your own autobiographical biographical
experiences it enhances your memory.

So this is a classic example we use

I might ask you to come in study
some words does this work on us.

Describe you are you honest are you
brave are you joyful Alternatively I

may ask you to make those same
discriminations about words you know do

these words describe Einstein or
Abraham Lincoln or President Obama.

And your memory will be better for

the words that you included
in reference to yourself.

This is called the self reference effect
in memory and what we don't know so

well is what brain system
underlies this effect.

The reason this is interesting is because
there are many patients with different

kinds of brain injuries different
kinds of pathological pathology

that have spared self
reference affects the memory.

So it's really interesting to understand
what brain systems underlying this benefit

if not these other these brain
systems that we know are damaged and

don't seem to impair it.

And so this is data from a functional
magnetic resonance imaging study which we

measured activity while people were
forming these memories in one of these two

conditions the self reference condition or
the Einstein condition and

we found that memory accuracy was
better for the self referenced words

that activity in the region of the brain
called the medial prefrontal cortex which

is in the front and medial kind of
a slice like right through here.

I could be in that region supported
memory for self referenced words.

To a greater extent then words that were
encoded in reference to Abe Lincoln or

by Santa Clara who were
used in this experiment so.

So that's one question that we could only
address with a with a technique like F.

M.R.I. and behavioral analysis alone
wouldn't be able to do that for us.

So while the neuro imaging provide some
evidence to suggest that some regions

might be important for
a type of memory or episodic memory.

We don't know if those
reasons are necessary.

So we do some patient work to address this

lesion studies refer to
this type of research tumor

investigating patients who have lesions
to particular areas of the brain.

This is in contrast to patients studies
looking at patients with dementia or

other types of pathologies that are more
widespread in the brains difficult to

localize what brain areas are specifically
important when you have broad

widespread damage focal lesions caused
by things like stroke aneurism.

Maybe traumatic brain injury
are our focal so we can assess

whether that specific region that's
damaged is important for episodic memory.

There's one region of the brain called
the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

that may contribute tap a sonic memory.

We know this from F. M.R.I. work.

This is a study that I did where we looked
at a group of patients with left damage or

right or slight or all damage and

in this figure the left patients are on
the top the right on the bottom and

what this is showing the color chart
is basically each patient lesion so

we drew them on to the map
here on the brain and

where there's red one hundred percent that
means one hundred percent of the patients

in that group have damage in that region
and so we look at this kind of overall map

of the patients damage to make sure these
patients have damage in this region

there can be included in the group and
so we are looking for

maximal overlap in a region of brain
called the door slot or prefrontal cortex.

OK so what we found in the study
was that was left but not right.

Dorsolateral prefrontal lesions that
impaired episodic memory accuracy and

this was a study kind of
similar to the one with

the emotional pictures that I showed you.

Except there were emotional pictures in
the study but similar kind of design and

so what this suggests is there's something
about the function of the left or slot or

prefrontal cortex specifically but not so

much the right that impairs
episodic memory accuracy.

We're investigating now what that is but
this was the first piece of evidence to

suggest this the control group here
this is a term for your Basically

your group of subjects that are matched
in age education to your patients but

don't have brain damage their baseline
basically so I hope I can convince

you of the benefit of a multi disciplinary
approach in investigating human cognition.

One method alone isn't sufficient to
fully address the mechanism supporting

episodic memory.

That's how.

I feel behavioral studies can assess the
importance of certain factors like emotion

gender stress different types
of images that you're seeing or

hearing in your imaging can assess
the importance of certain brain areas.

You know what regions
are involved in supporting

encoding of emotional information for
example and

patient studies lesion studies can assess
the necessity of specific brain areas.

So I just want to thank everyone here and

I also want to thank my lab because
I don't do a lot of this they do

they do all the work and
one of them you'll hear from now.

So thank you very much.

Thanks

everyone.
I'm Michel do IT work with Audrey and

your sex memory aging lab so I'll just
go to you about half of that memory and

aging she spoke about the memory part I'm
going to talk to you about the aging part.

So why study healthy aging you might
think Well is it more important

to look at people with Alzheimer's things
like that but as important to stand what

happens with healthy aging so
you can dissociate what's on healthy about

Alzheimer's things like that and
the bad news is that as well as we

head to that even with Healthy Aging
you're going to see declines in cognitive

function you can be seeing the Carnes in
actual brain volume things like that.

So it's important to understand
what's happening there.

So support me as everyone age is
unfortunately all of you are going to age

and currently in America the aging
population is on the verge

of just expanding exponentially as baby
boomers are approaching the ages of sixty.

So it's especially critical now that we
sort of understand what's happening with

the brain and aging so that we can better
accommodate the growing aging population

so to start off with a bad news.

Your brain is shrinking.

Even even now if you're over twenty years
of age your brain may be showing signs of

shrinkage this happens with age
with your muscles in your bones and

just like those your brain is going
to be shrinking in volume as well.

Everyone's brain is shrinking
at different rates though but

things like the initial size of your brain
or your education level really are going

to influence this your brain is
going to shrink at some rate

when I say shrinkage I don't mean that
like cells are dying off in your brain.

John what this means is if you know
anything about neurons they have very

large were called dendritic trees so it's
the connections they make to other neurons

and those dendritic trees start to
become sparser and sparser with age.

So those cells are still there.

They're just fewer
connections things like that.

Additionally that your brain
is not all shrinking at

some static rate certain parts your brain
shrink much more quickly than others.

So here are two regions that really shrink
a lot with age are the prefrontal cortex

and the hippocampus the prefrontal cortex
as Audrey says involved in memory.

It's also involved in attention in
executive functions decision making.

It's involved in anything that takes
a lot of cognitive control and

as you can see even starting the age
of twenty yards start to see

declines there and same the hippocampus
have a campus especially critical for

long term memory and that again.

Even as early as twenty you start
to show signs of the car and

this in contrast to other regions such as
up towards the back of your brain your

occipital areas your visual areas those
tend to be pretty stable over the age but

you can see there's Because in the actual
volume of your brain as you age and

this in this your actual cognitive
function is going to be declining as well.

Now granted not everything the Kleins So
what this graph shows is scores on

tasks that are generally assessing
certain parts of brain function.

So things like vocabulary are going to
stay pretty stable crossed what time.

So even your old age are going to
remember what syncopated means

things like that but.

Pretty much everything out really declines
pretty drastically as you age and

depending on who you ask these
may actually speed up and

how quickly that applying
as you get older and older.

So things like just your speed even
you'll be slower to process things you'll

have be able to keep less amounts of
information in your mind at a given time

you'll have memory declines and for our
lab we're particularly interested in this

long term memory as Audrey said and that
ability to remember contextual details

seems to be particularly impaired
by aging so well solar Galt's

report that they can remember if they've
seen some before but maybe they can't

remove the details about where they know
them from or their name things like that.

So that's why we're particularly
interested in that form of memory

with ageing is that seems to
have the most impairments so

what do we do our brain is just resigned
to declining in all of us having a skull

like this or is there something that we
can do to improve the brain density or

improve at least cognitive function and
thankfully we are able to do something

so until recently it was actually
thought that once your brain started

shrink you were just resigned that the
brain didn't have any sort of Regenesis or

anything like that but recent evidence
like the last ten to fifteen years

actually shown that your brain can
grow those dendritic trees and

you can actually regain density and
your brain so

obvious the critical question
is how do we do this.

How do we complex that and
one of the easiest and

most effective ways is actually exercise
so simply doing our exercise which in

the study here was as simple as
walking three hours a week for

six months that actually led to increased
density and several regions of the brain.

So the important ones.

If you can see in the middle part of the
right if your frontal gyrus that's part of

your prefrontal cortex.

That's important as well as you
point out for a lot of things.

Also on the A.C.C. here at the end
here single cortex that's important.

In sort of updating of information and
reward learning things like that.

So these aren't just random areas
these are actually important areas for

cognitive function and you're actually
seeing increases in density for

just from simply walking three hours
a week rather than just being sedentary.

So this seems very easy but
this is one of the best ways to do it.

And this is actually an older adults or
people who are already over sixty.

But if you start doing it now you're
actually getting neuroprotective effects

so if you are physically fit a younger
age you're going to be less it's going to

be less decline over the years as well.

So certainly I recommend getting out and
at least walking.

Even now in addition
it helps your body and

this makes a lot of sense when
you start thinking about it.

So while the brain is only
about two percent of your body.

It takes up about twenty to twenty five
percent of our energy energy being

transferred around basically
through the cardiovascular system.

Thus having a better vascular
how to better brain health and

further beyond just your healthy aging
better cardiovascular health can actually

prevent or poor cardiovascular health
will actually raise the risk of several

neurological diseases all timers
is actually morbid or often occurs

in conjunction with cardiovascular
disease on the actually type of

adventure called cardio vascular dementia
which is a result of many strokes in your

brains you may not even realize you've had
this stroke it's just a small stroke and

but these will build up and cause dementia
as well and obvious the stroke in itself

is the one that will affect your brain and
is more likely when you have poor

cardiovascular health so exercise is
certainly a very important way to do this.

There is research out there about things
like you see things about brain games or

doing crossword puzzles or sudoku So
there's not a lot of strong evidence

to suggest that that's going to help your
actual brain volume or cognitive function

the general sir if you're a stick with
that is though if you enjoy doing it.

Certainly keep doing it.

It's not hurting but it's not sure if
that transfers to other things outside of

you'll just get really good at crosswords
but if you like crosswords go ahead and

do it but what else can we do so
let's say the actual size one

of the strongest evidence is in our field
of re growth but if we're not worried

about actually regrowing and even with
that you're still seeing declines in brain

density is this I'm going to at least
to improve the cognitive functioning.

So even the face of these the clients
there are methods actually

that can support cognitive
performance in older adults.

So one of the findings is not to
cause older adults can't perform as

well as younger adults sometimes it's
just that they don't do it on their own.

So this brings in the idea of we can
provide environmental support for

older adults and raise their level
of performance so obvious talk about

self referencing and I'll show little
data on that as well with older adults.

There's also things of just simply
directing older adult attention to

specific features and then one that
not to talk too much about but

also helps if you make things relatively
more distinctive older adults can benefit

from that as well.

We know that young adults also
benefit from all these things but

basic ideas these are also effective for
older adults.

So I won't go too long on this and
solidarity describe this a bit but

self referencing again is something
that's effective for young and

older adults to producing deeper
processing of your stimulus or

whatever you're trying to remember by
activating self relevance as this goes to

be above and beyond just asking them
to process something more deeply.

This is because you're activating the self
relevant schema or sort of what's relevant

to yourself you'll be having better memory
obviously are sort of two ways that

we do this in our lab one way simply to
ask if someone finds something pleasant.

Now I kittens in our labs I also
picked a kitten picture but

simply asking if you find something plugs
are not really taps into that because you

have to make a judgment based
on your personal feelings or

you can describe something ask if you
describe yourself as something as opposed

to just asking like is
a bigger machine by.

So behaviorally the behavioral stuff
here is again trying to remember

that contextual detail
which would be too far.

Which would be which question you are
asked you can see that in the dark grey

here both groups are benefiting from
self-referential performance on that.

So it is an effective way to boost
performance in older adults now in this

case older adults still have four younger
adults overall but this was also a very

hard task that's not surprising but I have
over here is actually data from our E.G.

So object touched on it briefly but
each year about your own stuff August B.

is actually measuring the electrical
signals that are coming off of your scalp.

Now these are on a couple of Microvolt So
that's ten to the minus six volts.

So very tiny but they are measurable and
which you see here is the self-referential

facts in the older adults actually
cause data or cause effect.

Come on line earlier than here.

This is something to turn over
to disaster common or not.

So you're actually improving
the efficiency of processing and

this is when they're trying
to remember the items so

all we did was doing manipulation
when they were studying the item and

that's producing results when they're
actually trying to remember it and

actually causing older adults to process
things more quickly or more efficiently

than if the we didn't support their
cognition the other manipulation

we try doing is directing their attention
to whatever feature it is we want them to

remember that seems very simple basically
pay attention to this so in this case we'd

be asking them if the color of the object
is likely so is a blue paper likely

you probably say No versus if we just
simply ask is this bigger than a shoe box.

So again as I said sometimes it's just
a matter of the older dogs don't actually

spontaneously gaijin the sort of
elaborate encoding if you were just

at show them this picture of a blue pepper
and later ask them the color of it.

They may not have taken the time to
really think of blue Pepper is that

make sense at all.

They may just passively viewed it and
done nothing but

doesn't mean that they can't do it.

And that's sort of what we were looking at
is whether if we basically force them to

do it whether that will actually help
them were adults show again is that so we

can match performance on these by making
pastoral easier for the older adults but

again both groups benefited from our
explicit direction of attention and again

I'm showing E.G. David here and you're
going to look at what actually easy.

What we're seeing these are Howard
is the black lines being

when they correctly get
a whole lot of rights.

They say this is old and see the same or
different color of the gray lines there

are when they're saying
that I missed you or

we didn't show you that in the beginning
of the experiment and again with the older

overseeing this earlier earlier splitting
of what's old and new or earlier

old you were vast for the direct attention
as opposed to non direct attention.

Both are shown later effects again.

So similarly to self referencing older
adults are benefiting from simply just

saying Pay attention this or
directing their attention.

So again they pan successfully
direct their attention and

do this elaborative in coding they just
don't always do it on their own and

we can simply by directing them
to do it improve their memory and

this is a study from another lab showing
that with enough support you can actually

get older adults to be at the level of
younger adults so we're just seeing here

mostly focus on the associative there's a
gathering word pairs on in this case they

were told when they were studying
items on this associate strategy they

were told to generate a sentence involving
them as you can feasibly generate

a sentence was already in permit holder
golf no strategy and then when they

actually read when they were trying to
remember they were told to try to actually

think of the sentence you generate
around just trying to remember it.

You see at this point with the support
of both study and half full or

both your results are actually
coming to about the same level.

So again another support
you can get older adults

to that level of performance of younger.

Adults under the right conditions so
again it's not that they can't do it.

It's just maybe they
don't do it on their own.

So in conclusion.

While Aging does result in
these in brain shrinkage and

deficits in cognitive formants It's all
is not lost exercise interventions can

actually result in a healthier or
increased density in the brain and

it can prevent neurological disease and
again it's never too early or

too late to start exercising this
helps young adults as older adults and

behavioral meant interventions can
improve performance just an overall can

still perform the same level of young
adults just under proper conditions and

this may be true even with older
adults with neurological diseases so

there is evidence even in all
timers disease that you can

proper strategies they can
remember at least two for

example they can't run with are supposed
to be doing they can remember.

I need to go work on the refrigerator for
what I'm so sorry doing today.

Things like that.

So that's part of my talk and

I hope you agree now that isn't studying
how the ageing is very important and

that we all not doomed to age related
loss of memory and things like that.

So thank you so

much

for.

Take a few seconds to load but
first I'd like to look at

how it's presented to us.

So first of all I'd like to thank you for
this opportunity and

thanks sort of first two speakers I
think it's printed a pretty dismal but

hopeful picture of where you get owed and
things would change but

I'll try to revive some of the confidence
you have had to your brain.

So I'm going to introduce to you what I
think a pretty important and are you ready

on the aspect of theoretical neuroscience
think it has implications everywhere.

You know life.

So let me start off we've shown

in this example I'm pretty
sure if you use Internet.

You know card capture base unit.

It shows you a series of
contorted letters and

ask you to transcribe it all
this is super easy what humans.

I hope hopefully sell but
it's really hard for computers.

It's for about here.

Sometimes it's hard.

So you started to ponder why this
is the case it actually points to

very important differences between how the
human brain and the computer works right.

So for humans.

Humans are great had this kind of pattern
recognition like recognizing faces and

everything and but computers on the other
hand agree that number crunching

I believe except most people are engineers
people are generally pathetic and so

where does this ability arise write if
you know a little bit about brain and

computers and easy answers that.

Well the structures are different.

So the human brain is parallel.

It's pretty fuzzy but
it's pretty robust computers

here serial here are accurate but
it's tremendous easy to break.

If a transistor breaks the whole
computer might die but

with aging you know your brain shrinks but
pretty much you would still be you.

So what I'm going to point out
here is there's a human dimension

here that people usually more than look at
these pictures and tell me which of these

dots are curfew mortars and pretty sure
most of it was say on these two and

those who are there
are curving words right

now we see that but
if it's a stop to think about it.

It's really weird because you're imposing
a certain bias on your perception.

There's no knowledge here that house you
know information or that house you back

to where the life force is coming from but
somehow you have the scene here and

model that inherent bias
in this perceptual task.

So the natural question arises
where does this bias come from

a possible answer is must come

from the environment because you perceive
the light coming from above every day.

Maybe through evolution or
learning slowly bit of this model and

you expect you have this
bias that most probably if

you're shown this novel is saying that
the light sources come from above.

So this points out a very
important issue that

the environment has a lot to do with our
perception and maybe how the brain works

if this is too hard to
understand then think about

the amazing varieties of
body features in animals.

Now these three animals
hummingbird ostrich and

Penguin they most probably
have the same ancestors.

But because they live in different
habitats their body shapes were shaped by

the environmental forces to best adapt to
the features in their individual habitats.

So it's intuitive to ask do we
expect the brain to exploit

the same features now were environment and
we should expect so.

But somehow maybe unfortunately
that in classic when your science

is special in sensory neuroscience

environments natural environment is Nobbs
was not sure of part of the picture.

So here I showed you
what I show you here is

classic experiments done by human
weasely nine hundred sixty S.

I should point out they won
the Nobel Prize because of this work.

It's pretty amazing.

So what they did was they showed a notice
here an artificial stimuli maybe a bar or

grading and
what they wanted to study was the visual

pathway which includes
the retina which transfuse is

optical signal into electrical
impulses we call spikes this.

I tried with that was the.

On the optical nerve and
arrive at our G. N.

is a structure in the middle of
the brain which relays the signal

to the first stage of visual cortex
which we call the primary visual cortex.

OK so
what they did was they dropped electrodes

into the primary visual cortex and
started recording from it.

Now they could literally by connecting
this actually to amplify they could

literally hearing the spikes coming out of
this area of this experiment to an animal

what it would be found was really
interesting what they found was that

for each of the cell we studied
only part of the visual feud

was successful at evoking
response in certain sounds so

for example for this say if we

put the bar here in the visual
food the cell which respond but

for some other cell with this kind
of property line that the bar here.

It would not respond.

So this is what we call
receptive food it's it's kind of

a model of how you summarize

the receptive to how you summarized
response properties from these neurons.

But notice here if we use these artificial
stimuli they're great at answering

questions in the form of what
the response properties are but

they could not give us information of
why does the brain work like that.

Why do they have responses.

Properties that is selective to
our intuition in the visual scene.

So from the intrusion I gave
you from previous lies and

has a question is could incorporating
the structure of natural scenes provide

more information provide answers
possibly answers to the why question.

So before I delve into this problem.

Let me give you an illustration of what I
mean by structures in the natural scene.

OK so I'm going to show you a peer
review the story behind the view

is that this guy Loren carpenter in ninety
eight he was approached by Boeing and

was asked to do animation
of flight simulation.

So at that time there
was no known technology

that could generate realistic looking
natural scenes so what he wanted to do was

to generate backgrounds of mountains and
let the other plane fly through it.

So the time there was
no no not technology.

So he's frustrated by this.

Remember it's nine years long before
possibly most of you were born.

So he he he he.

But one day he stumbled upon this
book by a French French American

mathematician Mandelbrot It's
called fructose geometry of nature.

So one point made by man to Broadway
is that the things are structured

one property is important.

Probably started scaling Behrendt.

For example if you look at a mountain.

It looks pretty jagged but
if you look at it.

Rock on the mountain it still looks
pretty Javid So there are some here and

structure in nature.

So this kind of couple utilize
this kind of observation and

in three days came up with a pretty
amazing technique to generate noise.

Looking scene.

Not sure why it's so dark but

hopefully you can have a glimpse of this
ninety eighty zero type technology but

the more of these stories that
at least some structures can be

abstracted into into mathematical
form what we cost to test

a structure such as these
scaling Veron structure and

if a computer can utilize these
structures to do reconstruction

tasks then could the Bring be utilizing
similar structures for perception.

Now before.

And before you answer that.

Let me explain what I mean by
exploiting the structures so

here's an example if
you look at two images.

One is a circle the other is a white noise
which is just random running battle pixels

and I ask you how can you represent
these two pictures now a naive strategy

is that you can sample these two
pictures pixel by pixel will probably

require millions of numbers but since
the circle has more structure in that

high school students will know that it
can be represented in three numbers.

OK On the other hand because the white
noise thing doesn't have any structure in

it you cannot reduce it to
a simple representation

of these sets of intuition.

It's no surprise that people
begin to wonder does the brain

really explore the structure
in the natural seem

to answer this question people
approach it actually from the OP.

The directions so they assume that
what do you the we assume that

the brain is exploiting
natural seeing statistics.

What would happen.

So the question the posed was if we
assume the representation is concise and

accurate and that the brain
uses statistics and statistics.

What kind of response properties should
we expect of these are the response

properties we should expect if we
make these set of steps sumption Zz

compared back to the experimental
studies results.

Amazingly we could actually do ride

these where we cover such a few
structures by simply making the set of

simple assumptions and taking into account
the knowledge of the natural scene

or to Ricky to recap what

I'm trying to the message I'm
trying to convey here is that

the brain is not separated from
the environment it is constantly

trying to use its knowledge of
thing Vironment to make better and

efficient representation of feel
toward the examples I gave you.

Well from vision but
there are parallels theories.

You know addition and affection as well
on these theories can go on to name

Asian bring hypothesis explain a lot of
other perceptual and motor behaviors.

Now the working are only consist of two
parts one is to bridge this abstract

theories with biology the other one is
to design better engineering systems.

That similar to the brain utilize
the structure in the environment.

So if you're interested
in this kind of topic.

You can check out these researchers
Chris Rizzo's my advisor.

There are several of your science
books you can read lots from the east.

Are you talking about efficiency
efficiencies in the brain today but

there are several books that point out
what happens if the brain fails right.

Like what if you have a stroke that
is kind of contrasts the viewpoint.

I have made today.

So with that I might talk and

over enjoy it and we can have more
discussions afterwards thank you

to make it work.

Yeah you just lose your house and you know

that there are three

things which are just
the minute you know you

go you know it's like
you know it's worth it.

I think it's great to be last year because
I knew it wouldn't fit in one hour.

And I have to teach at noon anyway but I
told my students I'd be ten minutes late.

So my talk of be a very different
contrast from a thing else you've seen.

I'm an engineer by degree but.

Both my Ph D. of those my postdoc I was
basically mentored by neuroscientists and

this topic is actually different for

me because most of my work is
actually at the level of cells and

small circuits using electrophysiology
in competition of modeling we stick

electrodes in neurons that underlie small
circuits that are related to like going to

the big picture things destroyed
everyone else talk about.

This is actually my first project that
I'd actually say is solidly in the area

of neuro engineering.

So what is neuro engineering neuro
engineering kind of has two definitions

one is applying engineering techniques
to the quantitative study of

the nervous system the scientific side and
that's where I spent most of my career but

the other area is more what engineers
do which is trying to develop ways to

modify improve repair or
enhance the nervous system function and

so this talk is about
the peripheral nervous system.

Let me give an overview everything you've
heard about so far is from the brain.

Everything I do in my lab is typically
from the brain stem to spawn a court

perform nervous system all that other
stuff to give you a basic overview.

You know think of the brain as being you
know where all the decisions are made but

we have this complex nervous system
that basically has inputs and

outputs the inputs
are sensory information and

those are things like Tuck's pain vision
that carried from a ship the periphery

back to your brain and
then there's also motor information.

So your brain telling your muscles
to do stuff not just walking but

you know my active talking with
my vocal cords are doing that.

Looking at you.
Looking around the room and

essentially if the brain
could take input or

generate output then it's just sitting
there in a black box doing nothing.

Nobody knows about it's kind of
the tree falling in the forest.

It's all going to talk about the first
full nervous system which is that part

of the nervous system.

Typically after the spinal cord
that conveys that information

either your muscles tell them to move or
contract or

as well as convince
answer information back.

That's a pretty nervous
system to give you a.

Sense of what these nerves are you could

think of a nerve is like
being a bundle of wires.

So here are some cross
sections of a flat nerve

the nerve is the big bundle of nerves
by various And then every nerve bundle

has these smaller bundles called vassals
and every one of these in the business

are fossils as individual buyers so
when you talk about say your Sadeq nerve.

There's actually thousands of
fibers in your Sadeq nerve.

You could think of each one of those
fibers as being like a wire that carries

information but it has some properties
a little bit different than a wire.

First of all.

And each one of those individual wires
informationally flows in one direction.

So in the psychic nerve here.

Some of these nerve fibers are carried
from ation out to the leg and

saying Move your ankle move your move this
muscle other ones of those little dots in

here convey information back like you just
touched a hot stove so like see fibers can

be pain reception one of the holy grails
in neuroscience is how do we selectively

stimulate a nerve fiber especially
in the case of a paralyzed patient.

You know we can put electrodes around the
fiber and we can shock the whole thing but

we don't yet have an ability to say I just
want to stimulate this little region right

here and I don't know where US No this is
blown up that typical nerve fiber there

is less than a millimeter across and the
State of the art of our technology right

now is use of a big electric around it so
there are so technology is amazingly

limited we don't know we know very
little at all about how to intelligently

stimulate a nerve fiber and yet they're
still progress being made these techniques

are used to things like bladder control
for quadriplegics where the certain nerves

have to be stimulated to you know allow
the bladder to actually contract.

When we test your fibers we actually
make measurements of what are called

Compound X. potentials already in
electrical field around that fiber.

You saw that the E.G. the amplitude is
about one Microvolt It's very flat very.

Tiny these compound actually potentials.

They tend to be in the range of ten
to a few hundred microphones so

they're still pretty darn small if you
think about it's actually a very noisy

measurement in this data is actually very
clean looking for technical reasons I

won't go into but it's a very hard signal
to measure but it's ten to a few hundred.

Michael it's long but these come out
actually tensions tell us something about

the information on this nearby here and

I should mention this is
not normal information.

These are from experiments that are kind
of analogous to you don't you're a kid you

have a garden hose or a rope and you snap
at one end of the wave propagated down to

these experiments are were quiet What
will shock one into the nerve and

it's actually stealing these fibers
respond somewhat differently and

with different propagation speeds.

So that we measure that fire
somewhere downstream resume in and

you see get away form shapes and those
actually correspond to different subtypes

of fibers being stimulated and
how they propagate that information.

So this is we have to go
on actually tensional and

we can reduce down into what's
widely recognised to say he'd

buy a response this way or here in the C
five responses that we form there.

So this gets the mind Now the other
point is argument as analogy

about snapping it and stepping a hose in
the way of propagating down his eye so

that you see responses because those
are actually the two we can measure and

also happens that these crawl on
the Miley didn't have active duty.

These are a certain kind of neuron that
propagate information very fast and

actually our effort outgoing
information that tell your muscles to

contract in this corresponds
unmounted activity see fibers and

in particular one of the things the fibers
do is convey sensory information

back especially pain receptors.

So we can trigger both classes of fibers
in this nerve at the same time and measure

them downstream to see if that information
is actually passing down the nerve or not.

So this is a standard approach I
haven't told you why we do that yet.

So here is why we do this and
I got in this field by accident.

As I was reviewing computational modeling
papers in this field for years and

I decided they were very and satisfactory
and we realized that we had an animal

model in our lab it's actually an
invertebrate sea slug that's commonly used

in learning and memory called a policeman
and it had some properties and I said it.

Everyone does this work on mammals.

We're going to try this and vertebrates
and I don't have time to talk about it

today but we made a discovery
that was kind of accidental

surprising try this out as a sort of
a side project for a grad student and

this actually led us to the experiments
are going to present today.

So sometimes accidental findings
totally change someone's Ph D.

topic and completely new direction
with what happened with the student.

But anyway we're in the field called
high frequency conduction block that if

you take a perfectly nerve and
you apply a stimulus still in the range of

three to fifty killer it's the creates
a very localized region of block

where activity can no longer
propagate in either direction.

There's no drug required you
could turn it off immediately.

This is been heavily research for about
twenty five years by researchers mostly at

Case Western and they've had many
spin off companies for devices for

bladder control for quadriplegic for
example using this technique believe it or

not they don't really know how it works
and I'm more of a mechanism kind of

guy I want to know how it works and that's
why I went to simple in a models and

we haven't figured out how it works and
that's another talk.

But we made this interesting finding all
these people who are studying block right

now it's an all or

none thing they block the entire nerve
activity going in both directions.

So for example if you pretend that
this green line here is a nerve fiber

we can stimulate activity
if you measure here and

then downstream you measure similar
waveform to lead in time down there.

If you apply the ten kilograms
waveform right here and

acts like a brick wall so that activity
and this there can't get past this point.

And so
we measure the response down here or

the single in the other if there
is activity propagating this way

can't get this point where say this ten
killer stimulus is another electorate and.

We measure no response.

Over here.
So it's by directional it's all or

not we recently showed that I
just decided that the paper

title pretty much said it is that if you
look really really carefully at a level

people have looked up before this form
of block can actually selectively block

different types of nerve fiber and
again we this is based on a discovery in

a simple invertebrate animal that we
realized we had to test mammals and

we will do for a nerve fiber
that had both types and we chose

a static nerve a frog because it has one
facet cool it's a very clean signal.

And that was after consulting with several
faculty in the pipe physiology department

here that kind of knew how these neurons
worked in very crude various animal models

was a very rational choice of animal.

So what I mean by selectively blocks.

Again we have a couple that actually can
trigger somewhere on the nerve to measure

downstream we can see a fiber and
we can see to see fire.

Well when we apply this
high frequency stimuli.

At different frequencies and then we
measure what's the small Samplitude

of that stimuli where this neural activity
is blocked what we found is that is

a function of frequency in which to this
part of the compound acts potential and

this part of the compound action and so

we're actually blocked at different
frequencies and thresholds.

And we could exploit that.

So for example here is a pretend
diagram of the nerve fiber with pretend

the blue of the fibers and
the right of the sea fibers and

this little blip here is the response of
the cup and I can just see vibe response.

So again it's those high frequency
blocking electrodes turned off this whole

way from propagates through but we found
with experiments that we could slip to

block the fibers so
here's what we stimulated and

on the other side this component got
through but this component did not or

we just looked at what the eight fibers
were here's a complex potential and

there's a big component in talking to the
block you say but the small component did.

And so here is some summary data
the entire experiment is this figure is

basically the entire paper where this was
the threshold of walk with a fibers and

the right occur to actually go down or
high frequencies that was a star

with a working in a bird of manholes
is a threshold a block with a C.

fibers and so at low frequencies.

You could choose a point right here and
you could block this activity but

not the second body and
Mike Wise at higher frequencies.

You could choose a threshold right
here and that we go there and

you could block the C. five A conduction
but not the fiber conduction and so

here actually experimental examples in
this experiment right here the top was

before an exam that US and C. component
that I had actually attentional and had

a low frequency of five kilohertz with the
right input to the point four millions.

We bought the fire component.

This is called a stimulus are actually
going to work out what that means but

the main waveform superior to the C.

fiber component of the syllable propagate
it here at higher frequencies with our

work cited about the barber propagates
through the C. fibers blog so

why is this important fibrous
carry sensory information.

So this says it might be possible that we

could actually modify the techniques that
heard being tested clinically that if

you choose the right frequency and
threshold you could for example.

Take Ambien we used to Sac nerve example
because the common experimental prep.

You could essentially block say pain
reception and they're actually research.

There is research in some fields like
dental research of using a logical

stimulation but pain reception while still
allowing normal muscle movement on that

same or fiber they could balking at it
could also lead to better control or

selective stimulation.

So I mentioned that selective stimulation
stimulating certain nerve fibers

is sort of a big deal in neuroscience

using this blocking technique
in conjunction with current.

Relation protocols could allow you to
say stimulate part of an entire nerve or

a trunk of a nerve and

then block the parts you want to lock it
just the stimulator parts propagate down

and I'll mention that these results
are only on an isolated nerve in a frog.

So we've actually dissected the nerve
it's sitting in addition the lab we still

have to show it in a mammal we still
have to show it functionally in vivo and

that's the direction we're going in and

we're still working on trying to
understand the biophysical And so

here are mechanisms that underlie this and
have my labs computer modeling we're

trying to model this as well it's
actually been very challenging.

No one can make a model that
reproduces these results and

I believe this is because the people
who make these models have this history

of thirty years of research of how
you model neurons and cells B.

if you if you taking classes you've
heard of the hot tubs the model.

You know about memory conductance is I
believe the reason these models don't

reproduce these results is because these
frequencies five to fifty kilo Hertz

are not normal frequencies for
the nervous system and

there are by physical effects that
happen at these frequencies things

like the capacitance of a cell membrane
starts decreasing at frequencies above ten

killer Hertz there's a complex field of
tissue impedance studies going back to

the one nine hundred forty S. showing
a complex in people's properties of

tissues above one killer it's there areas
of physics that I think traditional it for

the ologists are used to thinking about
and I think bringing those areas of by

physics in which come from fields as
diverse as electrochemistry to other

fields are going to shed light on
possible mechanisms to how this works and

with that I think you'll conclude I'll
mention that everything in this work was

actually the Ph D. of Dr Levy to Joseph
she defended her Ph D. last year and

she and is now in Ohio working for Proctor
and Gamble as a biomedical engineer.

If I have a few minutes.

I think I would add to it.

I did want to mention that this
was again an accidental finding.

I think says a lot about the rational
choice of animal models.

I've reviewed modeling papers of this and
I was never happy with them going back but

seven or eight years ago that they really
explained the mechanism when people make

computer models just as it duplicates
the result doesn't mean it explains your

result and that was my concern and I said
you know we use invertebrates in the lab.

You're the expert and invertebrates if
purely in my allotted nervous systems.

Why don't you try this exact same
experiment on this really simple nerve

fiber and it was those original
experiments on the sea slug which actually

was our first published paper where we
show that this threshold goes up and

back down again and we didn't believe it.

Your very first experiment did it twenty
experiments later they all still did it

and so even published this paper and

the reviewers insisted that we could not
see as the general property would say it's

just that weird squishy
animal you're studying.

But then that led us to say well where
is an animal model we have both types of

fibers and and talking to members of
his Ph D. committee who worked in

a whole variety of animal perhaps that's
how we saw them upon the frog we thought

it had the greatest chance of being
measurable and showing success and then we

can move up to higher animals so that's
sort of the back story of how we got here.

Anyway thanks for

the good part is they

were at their own pace you know as you
said you are for the king of your career.

Now that is most high here nine hundred.

You're very non-linear with
what you said earlier but

this is where we are to be going
to really see problems here.

Well again I actually think it's
the biophysical properties of

the brain fishies that have a lot to do
with it but I can't get into why a listen.

Molly study suggesting that's
the case he's actually pretty

frequently given passage of the model
that seems to account for some of it and

there are some other things going on in
more than cellular level with the T.V.

one more example if you record in our
simulations the membrane potential

under this blocking stimulus is
swinging my few hundred mill holes.

We can actually measure experimentally
these combinational models are designed

for memory be ten to the future bills and
back we know from cardiac watches Yalit

into cells a lot of pouring transiently
about one hundred fifty volts and so

that's another factor that we think
might be coming in play here yet

so I will talk a little brown Yes.

So right off his so earlier.

Go read his love.

Read on actions grow or
they are here this week.

So you thought he's who he says so.

Well that's true.

You also can't resist your vision see.

How we believe or
know how the difference between

the brain happens during development and
the pretty that's happening with age is in

development as you said it's actually
becoming more efficient you're getting rid

of redundant that Sharon's destruction
those that are used over and over but

aging it's not necessarily due to
the use or any sort of official see

it's just you're losing connections you
have fewer connections between things so

it's more it's more wide scale
widespread I guess and so.

You're not just throwing the inefficient
parts of it you're losing.

Sometimes the most efficient
then droids as well.

So it's not necessarily helping you.

It's actually you're losing
more what you need rather

than just printing out what you
don't need I mean it's similar.

I guess in physiological sense to
our sort of getting rid of them dry

interconnections but it's not necessarily
helping you because it's often getting rid

of the dendrites that maybe you need to
ask a follow up to that trip here what

what are the major factors of the volume
change our whole neurons dying or dendrite

tricking back is that if it's absolutely
some yes it's mostly it's not cellular

death for the most part it was the Healthy
Aging it's mostly that last digit volume.

Not familiar with supporting structures
like after sites and that are the nervous

system but I think that probably
recent as well as you know on that and

that will follow not to the I mean I would
imagine there's some little cell death but

there's also continued genesis of
Health also on dendritic shrinking

is trying to be the hallmark of this
you know structural atrophy aging.

But there is some loss of neurons but
that is really excel

in apology related things like
Alzheimer's knowledge its parts.

Things like Alzheimer's.

I will say

you're trying to use as a whole
will slow motion with you soon.

Right.

So during the you saw these movements.

This is a song people

along which Yeah that's why
they're not in the song.

That's right.

So do you something like
Well I'm someone who

is really more attached
to simple life really.

See how actually that's
really like I said life.

If you like with the song.

Just like right is right

and so I'm saying you know

look what I mean is that it sounds
theoretically possible I don't think

there's a lot of dropping electrodes into
brains just a cigarette that at seven.

That they do some lectures and

ranges typically in cases where
severe depression things like that.

I guess in theory.

Maybe you could do that.

I don't know if you can do is something so
specifically as like a like for cats and

things like that but you are right in
that everyone's going to have slightly

different opinions about the pictures show
us what we used as a lot of stimuli so

that on average you're
seeing similar facts but

that even speaks to aging that you
see very different facts sometimes

between older and younger adults with
these positive and negative images and

actually sometimes tend to remember more
positive things sometimes younger adults

tend to remember more negative things so
that's very true across even just why mine

such as older versus younger adults but as
for whether you could stimulate someone in

that sense I don't I don't know if we
buy our the standard spiel to you that

he's

not.

I mean unless

it's your question.

So there are a few theories about this
some some argue that there is still

some breaking down of
those functions that they.

They are they're not doing it as well.

And then maybe throughout the lifespan
because it's not as affected their using

outlast some is just that maybe because
one of my colleagues I just heard

there just because of the lazy brain
hypothesis where just there as you get

older you're less likely gauging these
more complex cognitive tasks but

I don't think it's really clear defined of
why that happens throughout the lifespan

or if there's a way that if you were early
in your lifespan you could prevent that by

like really trying to always use
the complicated strategy and

it may not apply to everything
in the lab situations.

Yes we can get people to engage in
these more complex strategies but

whether that actually extends to real
world experience is unclear at this point

as you said

to have him with his dragon

age group and I think we have
healthy aging in the brain.

So you know sort of pathologies like
Alzheimer's or stroke things like that.

So we typically screen for
older adults for ruling out any sort of

cardiovascular disease any sort of brain
injury or brain neurological disorder.

Even things like diabetes which an early
don't include because that can affect

brain function.

So when we say Healthy Aging always for
our purposes we mean more and

brain function so

someone with more peripheral issues
that don't also stand the cardiovascular

system we typically would say are still
at least neurologically healthy

to

you and I mentioned it's nice for.

And being forced to censor it it's really
this one focal area of the prefrontal

cortex called the door slot for Texas
on the superior part of the brain and

lateral and it seems to be these
the left stores a letter from her text

in particular that's a person
inside of memory encoding.

So it came to coding new events and
we know a little bit more about it now.

So there are some variables
I didn't mention here.

One is the type of materials he used
to make her the language has to

be lateral I see the left brain and
a bit in right handed people in

my head it was actually more my
life I was really distributed.

But I had we used abstract
images that are less

amenable to kind of semantic sizing then
it's possible we would have seen a shift

in that Potter and the right deal because
he was sorry or thought of progress that

may have been more important and so that's
a variable that not work has been done.

It's really hard to get
these focal patients.

We there's a common saint in the kind of
work that strokes don't respect these

areas.

So you can have a stroke and Will fact
the dorsal from heart attacks but

it will also in fact the ventral out
of contract and the motor cortex to you

anyway so it's a difficult time these
patients in the first place but

I think part of it is the type of
materials we use we use these verbalize

a whole objects in that study and another
part of it is the kinds of tasks that

we have and you may really was tapping
into a little bit more about the process

is the mechanism supported by the region
now which is in support of things like

taking discrete parts a bit of
an episode and binding them together.

So I think there are a few reasons for

and I wouldn't say that
damaged just to the right.

Doors looking from projects with spare
memory I don't think that's true.

I think it depends in part why you
test on the question of us with her.

You or others that he doesn't

know but it's in the grip
pose already because you go.

One of the issues with in vivo studies
Besides as a working Bebo is to do

these experiments people do it for
one minute five minutes.

That's a really good question.

Joinery his question was if we
study the long term effects

of stimulating these nerves and these
frequencies especially the sea fibers.

So I would

like people to have access to this day and
be able to follow.

I think what you did day.

So would you talk about your life or

are you actively recruiting folks

that each of you meet where.

At the moment I was quite vocal
I was not half bad enough

to have more than I can get also but
next semester I go I'm always looking for

excited undergraduates who
want to do research for

my we have quite a few of them in the lab
and I'm also recruiting graduates.

So we recruit people who are interested
in neuroscience psychology and

aging any of those three things.

So yes you can say here

I think if you're

interested you should contact Chris's
where you measure the real fear so

I'm going to church recruiting

students in my lab draws
from a diverse range of

backgrounds I've mentored Ph D. students
in bioengineering biomedical engineering

a bunch wants hearing physics as
well as the nurse science Ph D.

program at Emory All right now we're
full breast students but Dr this work.

I talked about is currently unfunded and
we're ready to go or a grant.

Based on it and some of that.

Happens we are looking for students.

Most of my other work is
really at the cellular level.

I think I do have a project that probably
worth mentioning there is a program

run by an alleged present called the IP
for vertically integrated projects and

it's a model for

conducting research we call sustainable
research to parch teams of undergrads and

the idea is you bring in about ten
undergrads of different majors and skills

you train the basic skills and you try to
keep a research project going within that

doesn't die I want a grad student leaves
the lab which is them undergrad is the lab

which is typically how I do research with
undergrads they work on something for

a few months they disappear and go away
and they were this particular project is

actually focused on sort of
the cognitive basis of understanding

sensory rhythms like you find in music
like Why can people keep the beat are not

keep the beat and it's actually motivated
by techniques biggest in our laps

the years in war you know animal nervous
system preps you realize you could play to

human subjects studies and
eventually once we get the basic studies

going we're going to start branching
out into each ear imaging techniques.

We've talked to some people do the work
but we also want to actually talk people

in psychology about this project as
well I think one of the No two is that

we're always certainly looking for people
to participate in our experiments as well.

And actually joysticks school psychology
is very good in that we have a lot of

people studying aging where one of the
largest economy major research groups so

if your age disappears particularly aging
there are several labs that do this

sort of work.

So there's there's a lot choose from.

So if you see a little bit more because I

feel like surprise research
on how effective or

not I never mind how big or

small it may be they're
treated I couldn't talk.

Too long about that there's actually an
enormous amount of underappreciated nurse

science work going on in Georgia Tech and
partially it's because it's fragmented.

For example does not actually know almost
there's no other science going on in our

biology department.

But that's actually where students
first go in fact there was

an undergraduate nurse science club
that was just formed and it's going to

about seventy undergraduate in fact
the neuroscience basic science class in

biology is taught by Steve Barber who is
here who's a B. and B. professor so I

think partially because people of biology
and it's absolute in that department.

But if you look at what's
going on in psychology and

apply physiology in biomedical
engineering primarily as well as

electrical engineering and though the
whole continent program The contemplating

there is an enormous amount of her
science research going on here.

So I would mention that both Georgia state
as well as Emory both have your science

as one of their top three priorities where
their strengths are there she teaches

plans and even though I think we have
a lot of strength here that attention has

not pulled up to the right places to
give it that kind of coordination or

attention here but
I'd love to see it happen.

So I hear your true directions for
me is to not bring theories with

biology the other more exactly to
utilize in your series to develop

your engineering systems so that you're
not supposed to answer the question.

These two directions are in arms or
contributor truth really trying to

develop me how the other one and
you know what's next.

I think you know through the study
of your starts to connections

we've heard about the development
of your engineering systems but

I would complement that if you look at so
I get his advisor and myself are part of

basically nine faculty in the college of
engineering that have flown together over.

You're a science impressed.

We have a science bias if you look
at the training of myself here at

Stanley Lena taking we all the engineering
degrees but we're all trained by.

It has to be looked at
are funded grants and

we get money from it's not like from
the biomedical engineering part of it.

I need we're asking scientific questions
being very quantitative about it.

I still think we have a way
to go on actual application.

There are facts in the application
side may some go on Lou and

much much mirroring makes
up wireless amplifiers for

recording behavior from a shrill
behaving that map that brains and

he actually works with us is Professor
in psychology and Emory Joel mans who

actually does experiments using
technology to me sounds me.

Pamela body unless one is hearing studies

who are implants in the steeple
implants and so she is trying

to develop technology is kind of
the cookery implant of the Stigler system.

She works with people with memory and
she goes there and

these people are on a balance.

Cheers to see how dizzy they get
to kind of studies like that.

So there are people on
the technology side as well but

I do think our Stephen ironically
in college of engineering.

I think we have a science bias.

Even here advisor.

You know if you look at the questions you
ask him what he's funded to do a lot of

it is how does the brain work this way and

sort of a secondary question is how could
this be exploited be used in the future.

So in the application side
where we're just starting to

get there that the nervous system is much
less understood than any other major organ

in physiology and of the general public
appreciates how much less we understand.

I think within psychology we actually
do have a fair number of apply

what was like I'll just so we have also
have engineering psych as a program and

industrialization psychologist program and
those are for dealing directly with

so does your organization or look more
like business psychologist do I give

it what engineering is applying
psychological principles to make tools or

make computer programs that are more
accessible or that was actually working

with robotics and know how that
how interacting with them works.

Things like that in the lab has
actually funding from John Deere so

making tractors more servitude of things.

That so then they do so
that work with aging as well so

it is an interesting mix of we get to
interact with people who are more polite

stuff and then they get interact who
are doing more of the neuro stuff and

sometimes we come together sometimes we
just kind of talk about our own things.