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Psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, spirituality, quantum physics, and anything else worth writing about

William Lu
60 posts

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April 20, 2012
02:18 PM
270 views

Does abnormal NREM sleep impair declarative memory consolidation?

by William Lu in The Quantum Lobe Chronicles

Finally got to uploading the review paper Robert Goder and I had written recently on sleep and memory. You can download it HERE. Essentially, we describe a possible mechanism by which abnormal NREM sleep processes (i.e. reduced slow-wave sleep and sleep spindles) contribute to declarative memory impairment and concomittant sleep disruption in certain neuropsychiatric disorders including Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, and fibromyalgia. Underneath, I posted what the tentative model looks like (click ........ Read more »

Lu, W., & Göder, R. (2011) Does abnormal non-rapid eye movement sleep impair declarative memory consolidation?. Sleep Medicine Reviews. DOI: 10.1016/j.smrv.2011.08.001

November 17, 2011
03:14 AM
413 views

Not all hippocampal hemispheres are created equal

by William Lu in The Quantum Lobe Chronicles

I got a chance to sit down and read Kohl et al.'s recently published Nature Neuroscience paper titled "Hemisphere-specific optogenetic stimulation reveals left-right asymmetry of hippocampal plasticity". This paper contributes to our advancing knowledge of the asymmetrical brain and further elucidates the true complexity of the hippocampus, a sea horse shaped brain structure important for learning and memory.More specifically, the team found that an area important for encoding and retrieving ass........ Read more »

Kohl MM, Shipton OA, Deacon RM, Rawlins JN, Deisseroth K, & Paulsen O. (2011) Hemisphere-specific optogenetic stimulation reveals left-right asymmetry of hippocampal plasticity. Nature neuroscience, 14(11), 1413-5. PMID: 21946328

November 13, 2011
10:50 PM
317 views

Can alcoholic parents put their kids at risk for memory problems?

by William Lu in The Quantum Lobe Chronicles

The alcoholic beverage has existed as early as the Neolithic period (cir. 10,000 BC), its use once mandated by The Lord on High in 1,116 BC China (Patrick, 1952). Oh thou holy ethanol, absorbed by the bloodstream, traveling to the brain, and binding to glutamate and GABA receptors, blessing us with the desired effects of slow reaction time, slurred speech, gregariousness, and the ability to sing and dance like a rockstar. However, too much of the bottle and you can find yourself in some serious........ Read more »

Tarokh L, & Carskadon MA. (2010) Sleep electroencephalogram in children with a parental history of alcohol abuse/dependence. Journal of sleep research, 19(1 Pt 2), 165-74. PMID: 19735444

Lu W, & Göder R. (2011) Does abnormal non-rapid eye movement sleep impair declarative memory consolidation? Disturbed thalamic functions in sleep and memory processing. Sleep medicine reviews. PMID: 21889375

August 7, 2011
09:19 AM
775 views

Why Non-rapid Eye Movement (NREM) sleep is important for memory

by William Lu in The Quantum Lobe Chronicles

So...after 4 months of being MIA I've finally emerged from the deep, dark, and lonely cave of academia to give a brief update on what I've been doing all this time. When I wasn't furiously working on my dissertation related to working memory and aging, I was making final revisions to a theoretical review paper on sleep and memory. I'm happy to announce that after countless hours of lost sleep (irony?) it's finally been accepted for publication! I'll link the article abstract once it's up. For no........ Read more »

Siegel, J. (2005) Clues to the functions of mammalian sleep. Nature, 437(7063), 1264-1271. DOI: 10.1038/nature04285

Diekelmann, S., & Born, J. (2010) The memory function of sleep. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. DOI: 10.1038/nrn2762

Wilson, M., & McNaughton, B. (1994) Reactivation of hippocampal ensemble memories during sleep. Science, 265(5172), 676-679. DOI: 10.1126/science.8036517

Rasch B, Büchel C, Gais S, & Born J. (2007) Odor cues during slow-wave sleep prompt declarative memory consolidation. Science (New York, N.Y.), 315(5817), 1426-9. PMID: 17347444

Marshall, L., Helgadóttir, H., Mölle, M., & Born, J. (2006) Boosting slow oscillations during sleep potentiates memory. Nature, 444(7119), 610-613. DOI: 10.1038/nature05278

April 17, 2011
12:38 AM
789 views

How a stinky chemical offers neuroprotection for a seizing brain

by William Lu in The Quantum Lobe Chronicles

What did Socrates, Plato, Hercules, and Ajax have in common? Other than greatness, they were also epileptics according to the 17th century French physician, Jean Taxil.An epileptic seizure consists of abnormal excessive or synchronous neuronal activity in the brain which can lead to convulsions, loss of awareness, full body slump, or even the experience of deja vu. Unprovoked seizures are typically related to epilepsy and other seizure related disorders while unprovoked seizures have multiple co........ Read more »

Bell MR, Belarde JA, Johnson HF, & Aizenman CD. (2011) A neuroprotective role for polyamines in a Xenopus tadpole model of epilepsy. Nature neuroscience, 14(4), 505-12. PMID: 21378970

Neuroscience

April 9, 2011
12:11 PM
846 views

Disorder promotes stereotyping

by William Lu in The Quantum Lobe Chronicles

Xenophobic exclusion has been ubiquitous throughout history. However, the explanation of such a phenomenon has been little understood. Interesting research conducted by Stapel and Lindenberg published in the latest Science has brought us closer to some answers. They found that people who are in a disordered environment (e.g. unclean subway station) exhibit greater discriminatory behavior (e.g. decision to sit further away from a black person compared to a white person). The author........ Read more »

Stapel DA, & Lindenberg S. (2011) Coping with chaos: how disordered contexts promote stereotyping and discrimination. Science (New York, N.Y.), 332(6026), 251-3. PMID: 21474762

October 6, 2010
05:31 PM
835 views

Cross-cultural personality change throughout the lifespan: a result of brain development?

by William Lu in The Quantum Lobe Chronicles

It's not difficult to readily imagine the rebellious angst ridden teenager or the wise old man of very few words. McCrae, et al.’s 1999 research findings seem to have validated these prototypical depictions. They found that across various cultures (Germany, Italy, Portugal, Croatia, and South Korea) there were higher levels of neuroticism in young adults and decreases in extraversion and openness in older adults. Older adults also showed increase rates of agreeableness and conscientiousness. B........ Read more »

Cohen MX, Young J, Baek JM, Kessler C, & Ranganath C. (2005) Individual differences in extraversion and dopamine genetics predict neural reward responses. Brain research. Cognitive brain research, 25(3), 851-61. PMID: 16289773

Golimbet, V., Alfimova, M., Gritsenko, I., & Ebstein, R. (2007) Relationship between dopamine system genes and extraversion and novelty seeking. Neuroscience and Behavioral Physiology, 37(6), 601-606. DOI: 10.1007/s11055-007-0058-8

Resnick SM, Lamar M, & Driscoll I. (2007) Vulnerability of the orbitofrontal cortex to age-associated structural and functional brain changes. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 562-75. PMID: 17846159

Reeves SJ, Mehta MA, Montgomery AJ, Amiras D, Egerton A, Howard RJ, & Grasby PM. (2007) Striatal dopamine (D2) receptor availability predicts socially desirable responding. NeuroImage, 34(4), 1782-9. PMID: 17188897

Volkow ND, Wang GJ, Fowler JS, Logan J, Gatley SJ, MacGregor RR, Schlyer DJ, Hitzemann R, & Wolf AP. (1996) Measuring age-related changes in dopamine D2 receptors with 11C-raclopride and 18F-N-methylspiroperidol. Psychiatry research, 67(1), 11-6. PMID: 8797238

Sutin AR, Beason-Held LL, Resnick SM, & Costa PT. (2009) Sex differences in resting-state neural correlates of openness to experience among older adults. Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), 19(12), 2797-802. PMID: 19366871

Roppongi T, Nakamura M, Asami T, Hayano F, Otsuka T, Uehara K, Fujiwara A, Saeki T, Hayasaka S, Yoshida T.... (2010) Posterior orbitofrontal sulcogyral pattern associated with orbitofrontal cortex volume reduction and anxiety trait in panic disorder. Psychiatry and clinical neurosciences, 64(3), 318-26. PMID: 20602731

Rankin KP, Rosen HJ, Kramer JH, Schauer GF, Weiner MW, Schuff N, & Miller BL. (2004) Right and left medial orbitofrontal volumes show an opposite relationship to agreeableness in FTD. Dementia and geriatric cognitive disorders, 17(4), 328-32. PMID: 15178947

Jackson J, Balota DA, & Head D. (2009) Exploring the relationship between personality and regional brain volume in healthy aging. Neurobiology of aging. PMID: 20036035

September 10, 2010
04:09 AM
571 views

The neuroscience of creativity and insight

by William Lu in The Quantum Lobe Chronicles

Have you ever wondered what was going on in your noggin when on that rare occasion you had an "aha!" moment or found yourself in a creative flow state, where even your screaming girlfriend couldn't snap you out of? Well Dietrich and Kanso over at the American University of Beirut seem to have mapped out the phenomena for us nicely. However, it's not quite as simple as you think. In their review paper published in this months Psychological Bulletin, they cover three broad categories relate........ Read more »

Takeshi K, Nemoto T, Fumoto M, Arita H, & Mizuno M. (2010) Reduced prefrontal cortex activation during divergent thinking in schizophrenia: A multi-channel NIRS study. Progress in neuro-psychopharmacology . PMID: 20673784

Neuroscience

September 7, 2010
02:33 AM
509 views

Is recognition without awareness possible?

by William Lu in The Quantum Lobe Chronicles

It seems common knowledge in the world of neuroscience that episodic memories are formed through conscious awareness. However, a couple of years ago Voss and Paller found that this may not necessarily be the case. They had subjects perform a forced choice recognition task using kaleidoscope images (for novelty's sake). Interestingly, accuracy was highest when subjects reported guessing, thus indicating little awareness that the studied images had been seen before. "This indicates that episodic m........ Read more »

Voss JL, & Paller KA. (2009) Recognition without awareness in humans and its implications for animal models of episodic memory. Communicative , 2(3), 203-4. PMID: 19641728

Jeneson A, Kirwan CB, & Squire LR. (2010) Recognition without awareness: An elusive phenomenon. Learning , 17(9), 454-9. PMID: 20810620

Voss JL, & Paller KA. (2010) What makes recognition without awareness appear to be elusive? Strategic factors that influence the accuracy of guesses. Learning , 17(9), 460-8. PMID: 20810621

April 23, 2010
09:56 AM
676 views

Aggression spectrum disorders: The distinction between borderline personality disorder and psychopathy

by William Lu in The Quantum Lobe Chronicles

I recently read a fascinating book chapter written by William Arsenio titled Happy Victimization: Emotion Dysregulation in The Context of Instrumental, Proactive Aggression. Early in the chapter, the author discussed how according to a study, 4-year-old children tended to predict that a bully would feel happy after pushing around some poor chump on the playground, aka happy victimization (Arsenio & Kramer, 1992). However, at age 6, children who were probed further not only predicted that the bul........ Read more »

Aaronson CJ, Bender DS, Skodol AE, & Gunderson JG. (2006) Comparison of attachment styles in borderline personality disorder and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. The Psychiatric quarterly, 77(1), 69-80. PMID: 16397756

Blair, R. (2008) Review. The amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex: functional contributions and dysfunction in psychopathy. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 363(1503), 2557-2565. DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2008.0027

FECTEAU, S., PASCUALLEONE, A., & THEORET, H. (2008) Psychopathy and the mirror neuron system: Preliminary findings from a non-psychiatric sample. Psychiatry Research, 160(2), 137-144. DOI: 10.1016/j.psychres.2007.08.022

Fertuck EA, Jekal A, Song I, Wyman B, Morris MC, Wilson ST, Brodsky BS, & Stanley B. (2009) Enhanced 'Reading the Mind in the Eyes' in borderline personality disorder compared to healthy controls. Psychological medicine, 39(12), 1979-88. PMID: 19460187

Saltaris, C. (2002) Psychopathy in juvenile offenders Can temperament and attachment be considered as robust developmental precursors?. Clinical Psychology Review, 22(5), 729-752. DOI: 10.1016/S0272-7358(01)00122-2

April 3, 2010
04:16 AM
670 views

The difference between softcore and hardcore insomnia

by William Lu in The Quantum Lobe Chronicles

Self-proclaimed insomniacs should be asking themselves right now if they've got either a "softcore" or a "hardcore" sleep problem on their hands. What's the difference between softcore and hardcore insomnia and why is it important you ask? First, let's define the terms. Softcore insomnia = complaint of insomnia with normal sleep duration greater than or equal to 6 hours of sleepHardcore insomnia = complaint of insomnia with less than or equal to 6 hours of sleepFernandez-Mendoza and colleagues f........ Read more »

ulio Fernandez-Mendoza, MSc1,2,3; Susan Calhoun, PhD1; Edward O. Bixler, PhD1; Slobodanka Pejovic, MD1; Maria Karataraki, PsyD1; Duanping Liao, PhD4; Antonio Vela-Bueno, MD2; Maria J. Ramos-Platon, PhD3; Katherine A. Sauder, BA1; Alexandros N. Vgontzas, M. (2010) Insomnia with Objective Short Sleep Duration is Associated with Deficits in Neuropsychological Performance: A General Population Study. SLEEP, 33(4), 459-465. info:/

March 30, 2010
03:59 AM
670 views

How forming new memories help retain older ones

by William Lu in The Quantum Lobe Chronicles

Try to remember this visual paired associate (AB):Now recall visual paired associate AB:Next, I'm going to have you remember another visual paired associate (AC):Now recall visual paired associate AC:Can you still remember the first visual paired associate (AB)?What if I were to pay you ten cents to remember? How about a hundred bucks? Would your memory performance increase? Stay the same? Most of your would probably infer the former. More money = more motivation to memorize.That's what Kuhl and........ Read more »

Kuhl, B., Shah, A., DuBrow, S., & Wagner, A. (2010) Resistance to forgetting associated with hippocampus-mediated reactivation during new learning. Nature Neuroscience, 13(4), 501-506. DOI: 10.1038/nn.2498

March 18, 2010
05:05 PM
670 views

Parkinsonian emotion recognition impairment better accounted for by sleep deprivation

by William Lu in The Quantum Lobe Chronicles

The New York Times recently covered a paper by Grey and Tickle-Degnen, published in the journal Neuropsychology, finding that people with Parkinson's Disease (PD) are not able to recognize facial and vocal emotions very well. The article states that it's not clear why this seems to be the case. I briefly reviewed the original meta-analytic paper (the pdf can be found here) and saw that the research team accounted for 1) the emotion recognition tasks used, 2) the medication the participants were ........ Read more »

Gray HM, & Tickle-Degnen L. (2010) A meta-analysis of performance on emotion recognition tasks in Parkinson's disease. Neuropsychology, 24(2), 176-91. PMID: 20230112

Massicotte-Marquez J, Décary A, Gagnon JF, Vendette M, Mathieu A, Postuma RB, Carrier J, & Montplaisir J. (2008) Executive dysfunction and memory impairment in idiopathic REM sleep behavior disorder. Neurology, 70(15), 1250-7. PMID: 18216303

Seugnet L, Galvin JE, Suzuki Y, Gottschalk L, & Shaw PJ. (2009) Persistent short-term memory defects following sleep deprivation in a drosophila model of Parkinson disease. Sleep, 32(8), 984-92. PMID: 19725249

Norlinah, M., Afidah, K., Noradina, A., Shamsul, A., Hamidon, B., Sahathevan, R., & Raymond, A. (2009) Sleep disturbances in Malaysian patients with Parkinson's disease using polysomnography and PDSS. Parkinsonism , 15(9), 670-674. DOI: 10.1016/j.parkreldis.2009.02.012

March 16, 2010
01:53 AM
634 views

Earworms, lyrics, and tunes in the brain

by William Lu in The Quantum Lobe Chronicles

Last time I left off quoting Lady GaGa's masterwork "Poker Face". I continue to rag on it because I can't seem to escape it's repetitive and forced impingement on my vulnerable eardrums. Unfortunately, the city doesn't afford much auditory privacy and some people in the subway are really determined to lose their hearing before old age. Whatever happened to iPod etiquette? According to Oliver Sack's book Musicophilia I've got a bad case of the earworm. This is when a piece of music repeats compul........ Read more »

Sammler, D., Baird, A., Valabregue, R., Clement, S., Dupont, S., Belin, P., & Samson, S. (2010) The Relationship of Lyrics and Tunes in the Processing of Unfamiliar Songs: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Adaptation Study. Journal of Neuroscience, 30(10), 3572-3578. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2751-09.2010

March 9, 2010
09:04 AM
784 views

Sleep deprivation impairs emotion recognition

by William Lu in The Quantum Lobe Chronicles

The ability to read emotions is an important part of the human experience; the only way to successfully navigate through complex social environments. It comes in handy especially if you don the title of psychotherapist or professional poker player. Without it, you become socially inept. You enter the world of the autistic individual.Thanks to Charles Darwin we now know that it’s not just the eyes that are “the windows to the soul”. He first wrote about the subject of facial expressions in ........ Read more »

van der Helm E; Gujar N; Walker MP. (2010) Sleep Deprivation Impairs the Accurate Recognition of Human Emotions. SLEEP, 33(3), 335-342. info:/

Ekman P, & Friesen WV. (1971) Constants across cultures in the face and emotion. Journal of personality and social psychology, 17(2), 124-9. PMID: 5542557

Steadman, L. (1980) : Kuru Sorcery: Disease and Danger in the New Guinea Highlands . Shirley Lindenbaum. American Anthropologist, 82(3), 692-694. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1980.82.3.02a01130

March 1, 2010
07:39 AM
645 views

How looking away prevents pedestrian collisions

by William Lu in The Quantum Lobe Chronicles

One day a friend and I were briskly strolling along a mall corridor, engaged in conversation, until something quite hilarious happened. A burly gentleman was quickly approaching my friend's direct line of trajectory. She and this man had to make either one of two choices; move to the left or to the right to avoid a disastrous collision. Simple, no? And so I thought. With about a foot between them, my tiny-sized friend and this large stranger began this seemingly unending and surprisingly well-co........ Read more »

Nummenmaa L, Hyönä J, & Hietanen JK. (2009) I'll Walk This Way: Eyes Reveal the Direction of Locomotion and Make Passersby Look and Go the Other Way. Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS. PMID: 19883491

Pelphrey, K. (2005) Neural basis of eye gaze processing deficits in autism. Brain, 128(5), 1038-1048. DOI: 10.1093/brain/awh404

Mitchell P, Parsons S, & Leonard A. (2007) Using virtual environments for teaching social understanding to 6 adolescents with autistic spectrum disorders. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 37(3), 589-600. PMID: 16900403

Parsons, S., Mitchell, P., & Leonard, A. (2004) The Use and Understanding of Virtual Environments by Adolescents with Autistic Spectrum Disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 34(4), 449-466. DOI: 10.1023/B:JADD.0000037421.98517.8d

February 25, 2010
02:56 PM
577 views

The power of prediction reduces activation in the primary visual cortex

by William Lu in The Quantum Lobe Chronicles

Prediction is an invaluable skill for navigating through complex environments. Somehow the brain generates predictions about perceptual inputs it's likely to receive using contextual information from recent memory. Statistical regularities are learned (e.g. movement and attack patterns of Mega Man bosses) and lead to less activation in corresponding brain areas. The brain is truly a miserly organ. "Why put in more work than I have to when I know what's gonna happen next", says the brain. Alink a........ Read more »

Alink, A., Schwiedrzik, C., Kohler, A., Singer, W., & Muckli, L. (2010) Stimulus Predictability Reduces Responses in Primary Visual Cortex. Journal of Neuroscience, 30(8), 2960-2966. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3730-10.2010

Doppelmayr M, Klimesch W, Sauseng P, Hödlmoser K, Stadler W, & Hanslmayr S. (2005) Intelligence related differences in EEG-bandpower. Neuroscience letters, 381(3), 309-13. PMID: 15896490

January 30, 2010
02:39 PM
802 views

Remembering returns brain states to when the actual experience happened

by William Lu in The Quantum Lobe Chronicles

William James, the influential American philosopher and psychologist of the late 1800's argued that remembering events reactivated motor and sensory brain regions involved during the original event. How right he was! Danker and Anderson have written an extensive review of the research literature looking at how this all happens, cleverly titled "The Ghosts of Brain States Past". Here is there abstract from the latest issue of Psychological Bulletin.There is growing evidence that the brain regions........ Read more »

Danker, J., & Anderson, J. (2010) The ghosts of brain states past: Remembering reactivates the brain regions engaged during encoding. Psychological Bulletin, 136(1), 87-102. DOI: 10.1037/a0017937

Neuroscience

January 21, 2010
01:01 AM
649 views

Can distractions really enhance motor performance?

by William Lu in The Quantum Lobe Chronicles

Texting while driving seems to score pretty high up there on the "I really shouldn't be doing this right now" list. A 2009 study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute found that truck drivers who were texting on the road were 23 times more likely to find themselves involved in an accident. Incidentally, and much to my bewilderment, truck drivers who talked on cell phones were found to have absolutely no increased risk for crashing. I suppose it's much easier to say over the phone than to........ Read more »

Hemond, C., Brown, R., & Robertson, E. (2010) A Distraction Can Impair or Enhance Motor Performance. Journal of Neuroscience, 30(2), 650-654. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4592-09.2010

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