Our brain prefers positive vocal sounds that come from our left

Auditory cortex is less sensitive to human vocalizations from the right and non-vocalizations

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FRONTIERS

Sounds that we hear around us are defined physically by their frequency and amplitude. But for us, sounds have a meaning beyond those parameters: we may perceive them as pleasant or unpleasant, ominous or reassuring, and interesting and rich in information, or just noise.

One aspect that affects the emotional ‘valence’ of sounds – that is, whether we perceive them as positive, neutral, or negative – is where they come from. Most people rate looming sounds, which move towards them, as more unpleasant, potent, arousing, and intense than receding sounds, and especially if they come from behind rather than from the front. This bias might have a plausible evolutionary advantage: to our ancestors on the African savannah, a sound approaching from behind their vulnerable back might have signaled a predator stalking them.

Now, neuroscientists from Switzerland have shown another effect of direction on emotional valence: we respond more strongly to positive human sounds, like laughter or pleasant vocalizations, when these come from the left.

“Here we show that human vocalizations that elicit positive emotional experiences, yield strong activity in the brain’s auditory cortex when they come from the listener’s left side. This does not occur when positive vocalizations come from the front or right,” said first author Dr Sandra da Costa, a research staff scientist at the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland.

“We also show that vocalizations with neutral or negative emotional valence, for example meaningles vowels or frightened screams, and sounds other than human vocalizations do not have this association with the left side.”

From erotic vocalizations to a ticking bomb

Da Costa and colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare how strongly the brain of 13 volunteers responded to sounds coming from the left, front, or right. These were women and men in their mid-twenties, all right-handed, and none were trained in music. The researchers compared the brain’s response between six categories of sounds: besides positive human vocalizations like erotic sounds, they played back neutral and negative vocalizations, like meaningless vowels and a frightened scream; and positive, neutral, and negative non-vocalizations, like applause, wind, and a ticking bomb.

Da Costa et al. focused on brain regions known to be important for the early stages of sound processing, the primary auditory areas A1 and R, the surrounding other early-stage auditory areas, and the ‘voice area’ (VA). Each of these areas occurs in the left and right hemisphere of the brain.

The results showed that A1 and R in both hemispheres became maximally active when listening to positive vocalizations coming from the left, and much less when listening to positive vocalizations coming from the front or right, to neutral or negative vocalizations, or to non-vocalizations.

Auditory cortex discriminates in favor of positive vocalizations from left

“The strong activation by vocalizations with positive emotional valence coming from the left takes place in the primary auditory cortex of either hemisphere: the first areas in the brain cortex to receive auditory information. Our findings suggest that the nature of a sound, its emotional valence, and its spatial origin are first identified and processed there,” said co-author Dr Tiffany Grisendi.

In addition, area L3 in the right hemisphere, but not its twin in the left hemisphere, also responded more strongly to positive vocalizations coming from the left or right compared to those coming from the front. In contrast, the spatial origin of the sound didn’t impact the response to non-vocalizations.

The evolutionary significance of our brain’s bias in favor of positive vocalizations coming from the left is still unclear.

Senior author Prof Stephanie Clarke, at the Neuropsychology and Neurorehabilitation Clinic at the Lausanne University Hospital said: “It is currently unknown when the preference of the primary auditory cortex for positive human vocalizations from the left appears during human development, and whether this is a uniquely human characteristic. Once we understand this, we may speculate whether it is linked to hand preference or the asymmetric arrangements of the internal organs."

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Neuroscience

DOI

10.3389/fnins.2023.1164334 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Emotional sounds in space: asymmetrical representation within early-stage auditory areas

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

19-May-2023

Cidrani and Deep Longevity collaborate to build personalized care tools for longevity and well-being

Business Announcement

DEEP LONGEVITY LTD

 

IMAGE: BLOODAGE + MINDAGE IS YOUR GUT HEALTH THE KEY TO A LONGER LIFE? view more 

CREDIT: DEEP LONGEVITY

Cidrani, a pioneering company in probiotics and micro drink supplements, announces its partnership with Deep Longevity, a leading provider of aging clocks and longevity solutions. The collaboration will leverage Deep Longevity's Blood Age and Mind Age clock APIs to develop gut health-management tools that will help drive longevity and avoid diseases  and manage stress. 

Stanford scientists have already demonstrated how fermented diets can boost our health on the molecular level. Cidrani's solution exploits this phenomenon to improve our immunity and longevity, using microbiota-targeted micro drinks based on our current health profile. 

Deep Longevity's Blood Age is a revolutionary aging clock that utilizes artificial intelligence to analyze simple blood test data  to accurately measure an individual's biological age and recommend improving health and longevity. This aging clock technology will complement Cidrani’s fermented products and longevity app for consumers perfectly.  

Mind Age is a psychological assessment framework. Also developed by Deep Longevity, this aging clock relies on a proprietary questionnaire to calculate the psychological age of an individual. Measuring and improving Mind Age, proactively handling mental health will improve motivation, productivity and eventually lifespan.  

Elevated levels of both blood age and psychological age have been linked to accelerated aging, leading to increased risks of chronic diseases, morbidity, and a shorter lifespan. Cidrani aims to mitigate these health risks through its groundbreaking research on probiotics and micro drink supplements. The collaboration with Deep Longevity will provide Cidrani with a data-driven and evidence-backed technology ,  to further its goal of improving longevity . 

Deep Longevity's recent launch of SenoClock, providing easy access to their aging clocks, reflects their commitment to advancing longevity care and research. By also making their aging clocks available through APIs, Deep Longevity empowers researchers and healthcare providers like Cidrani to develop applications tailored to specific use cases, benefiting patients and end users. 

The personalized care tools developed by Cidrani, utilizing Deep Longevity's aging clocks, will provide users with accurate and up-to-date information about their physical and mental health. Armed with this knowledge, individuals can make informed decisions regarding their lifestyle choices, leading to improved metabolism, gut health, and microbe diversity. Ultimately, this partnership will contribute to healthier and longer lives. 

This collaboration between Cidrani and Deep Longevity represents a significant milestone in longevity research within the global health and wellness industry. Expect more good news and exciting announcements from both partners in the near future. 

About Cidrani --  

Cidrani is a pioneering company in the field of probiotics and micro drink supplements. With a commitment to research and innovation, Cidrani aims to enhance longevity and well-being through cutting-edge solutions. For more information, please visit https://cidrani.com/  

About Deep Longevity --  

Deep Longevity is a leading provider of aging clocks and longevity solutions. By utilizing artificial intelligence and advanced data analysis, Deep Longevity offers accurate and actionable insights into biological and psychological aging. Their mission is to extend human lifespan as well as healthspan and revolutionize the field of longevity . For more information, please visit https://www.deeplongevity.com/  

Boys need ‘lessons in bromance’ to tackle mental health crisis in schools

School lessons in anger, friendships, and listening needed to combat male suicide, teacher warns

Book Announcement

TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP

Teenage boys are twice as likely as girls to die by suicide, and, when boys become men, they are three times more likely than women to die by suicide.  

After years on the frontline of teaching and observing, first-hand, a decline in teenage mental health, a teacher has warned that we need to deal better with male anger, friendships, and attitudes towards sex in order to combat the male suicide crisis.  

Official statistics for England, Scotland, and Wales show that in 2020, 264 people aged 10–19 died by suicide – 72% of these were boys. In England, suicide is the single biggest killer of men under the age of 45. They are three times more likely than women to die by suicide.  

While statistics surrounding male suicide paint a bleak picture of the future of boys in our schools, teacher Matt Pinkett thinks all is not lost.  

What can be done?  

Pinkett has gathered evidence from teachers and school staff, wellbeing experts and therapists to create a powerful guide to helping boys, in Boys Do Cry, released next month.  

The practical and engaging guide, backed up by the latest research from the fields of psychology and education, suggests that teachers must stop stigmatising anger and instead help angry boys understand the neurological and physiological reasons for their feelings.  

Pinkett says: “Anger isn’t an inherently bad thing and telling boys it is just leads to shame and hiding away. Instead, how about we teach them that anger is a feeling as natural as joy or sadness, and give them ways to manage it and the words to talk about it?”  

He also suggests that teachers need to make loving, male relationships the norm, and to assume that every social interaction that takes place in a classroom is being watched and internalised. 

He advises male teachers to compliment male colleagues openly, to talk lovingly about other people, and praise and salute male emotional vulnerability wherever and whenever possible.  

“I am not suggesting that we should ever try to be therapists – that would never work,” Pinkett explains, “but the fact is that we are in front of these children for massive chunks of their life. If we can speak positively about male emotions and demonstrate ways of dealing with problematic feelings, that would be a powerful thing.”  

Talking isn’t enough  

In Boys Do Cry, Pinkett advocates the benefits of the ‘bromance’, suggesting that teachers and schools harness this relatively recent phenomenon of male-to-male relationships. He argues that in teaching boys about bromances, teachers can equip young men with the skills to actively listen and display compassion and affection towards each other.  

He suggests teachers can help facilitate emotional connection between boys and help build friendships that are supportive.  

He explains: “The problem isn’t encouraging young men to talk – it’s teaching their peers to listen. Research suggests boys don’t listen as well as girls.  There is so much conversation about encouraging boys and men to speak up, but are we teaching them how to support each other through listening effectively?”  

Demonstrated through research and case studies, Pinkett argues that boys crave emotional intimacy and the freedom to express themselves without being mocked, but that toxic ideas about masculinity are preventing these fruitful peer relationships.  

“We need to teach boys to be kind, and that it is OK to be vulnerable and emotionally articulate,” he says.  

Benefit to society  

With his research-backed tools and tips, Pinkett hopes the book will give teachers confidence to engage with really difficult topics – to the benefit of all.  

“This isn’t just a problem for teenage boys. If we can teach these boys to get rid of those harmful and outdated expectations of what it means to be a man, all of society will be better off,” Pinkett says. “It is only through education of young people that the scourge of male-on-female sexual abuse, assault, and harassment can be eradicated.”  

Boys Do Cry examines key research on factors impacting boys’ mental health, including topics such as body image, pornography and self-harm, and provides teachers with practical strategies to start enacting positive change.  

With his extensive research, he has created advice on intervening when a child may be in danger, to tips on how to set up group working so friendships can be made while learning.  

“This isn’t about turning teachers into therapists,” Pinkett adds, “It’s just about being brave enough to intervene and give boys a chance to learn another way of being.”  

Further information:  

Boys Do Cry: Improving Boys’ Mental Health and Wellbeing in Schools  
By Matt Pinkett   
Published 17 May 2023  
180 Pages    
Paperback: 9781032168692 | $22.95 USD | £16.99   
Hardback: 9781032168685 | $155 USD | £120  
 

About the author:  
Matt Pinkett is an English teacher in Surrey with a personal and professional interest in gender and masculinity in schools. He is co-author of the bestselling book Boys Don’t Try? Matt has also blogged and written for several publications, and delivers regular CPD sessions on the topic of teaching and masculinity.  

     

About Taylor & Francis Group    
Taylor & Francis supports diverse communities of experts, researchers and knowledge makers around the world to accelerate and maximize the impact of their work. We are a leader in our field, publish across all disciplines and have one of the largest Humanities and Social Sciences portfolios. Our expertise, built on an academic publishing heritage of over 200 years, advances trusted knowledge that fosters human progress.  

  

Our 2650 people, based in a global network of offices in 17 countries, use their skills and the latest technology to curate, validate and share impactful advanced, emergent and applied knowledge. Under the Taylor & Francis, Routledge and F1000 imprints we publish 2700 journals, 8000 new books each year and partner with more than 700 scholarly societies.   

  

Taylor & Francis is proud to be a Global Certified Accessible™ publisher and to have achieved CarbonNeutral® certification for our operations and print publications in accordance with The CarbonNeutral Protocol.  

  

   

***** ENDS *****    

  

 

 

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DOI

10.4324/9781003250722 

Reflecting on their mission increases teachers’ growth mindset

Psychology

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RUHR-UNIVERSITY BOCHUM

 

IMAGE: ANKE HEYDER HAS DEVELOPED A SHORT AND SUCCESSFUL INTERVENTION FOR TEACHERS WITH COLLEAGUES. view more 

CREDIT: © RUB, MARQUARD

All children can thrive

Whether or not students enjoy school and perform well in the classroom depends very much on the teachers, whose fundamental beliefs can be transferred to the learners. “The important factor is whether a teacher is convinced that all children can thrive and learn,” explains Anke Heyder. In psychology, this belief is referred to as the growth mindset. “The belief that a talent or fixed aptitude is necessary for learning success, that students will fail otherwise, is more likely a hindrance.” This so-called fixed mindset tends to reduce motivation, especially among students with poorer performance.

Even though these relations have been identified in many studies, a compact intervention designed to reinforce the growth mindset among teachers hasn’t been introduced as yet. “Our intervention is new, and it is both short and subtle,” points out Anke Heyder. “At its core is a brief reflection on your personal mission: why am I a teacher? How do I want to make a difference to my students through what I do?”

Survey on teacher beliefs

To test the intervention, the researchers recruited a total of 576 student teachers for their study. The participants were divided into groups. In the intervention group, they were asked to briefly reflect on and write down their mission, before completing a survey on their beliefs. In the control groups, they didn’t reflect on their mission but on a different question, and then answered the questionnaire.

“We showed that the beliefs of those participants who focused on their mission was significantly more inclined towards a growth mindset than that of the control group,” explains Anke Heyder. This result was unrelated to the subject the student teachers were pursuing. A survey one week later yielded the same result. “This indicates that the effect does last – at least for a while,” says Heyder. Follow-up research will be necessary to establish whether the effect is permanent. “I can only advise teachers, but also university lecturers and business leaders, to reflect on their own mission every now and then,” concludes the researcher. “Not only does this benefit the people for whom you are responsible, but there’s also evidence that it boosts your own motivation and job satisfaction.”

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JOURNAL

Learning and Instruction

DOI

10.1016/j.learninstruc.2023.101770 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Reflecting on their mission increases preservice teachers’ growth mindsets

Collaboration is key to creating a culture that supports children’s behavior in early childhood education

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN FINLAND

When a child behaves in an unwanted manner, changing their behaviour often becomes a focus. Research, however, suggests that influencing the behaviour of adults who interact with the child would be more effective.

Researchers at the University of Eastern Finland and the University of Jyväskylä conducted an 18-month follow-up of 18 Finnish early childhood education and care (ECEC) centres that were piloting positive behaviour intervention and support (PBIS), which takes a research-based approach to creating an operational culture that supports the behaviour of all children. The PBIS approach sought to clarify the situation-specific behavioural expectations of the ECEC centres and provided training and coaching on how to comply with them. Children’s appropriate social behaviour was acknowledged as systematically as possible through positive feedback, and efforts were made to pay less attention to possible failures.

One ECEC centre, for example, managed to make its corridors less noisy and crowded by teaching children about personal space when moving in the corridors. Professionals working in the ECEC centre, on the other hand, were committed to acknowledging children’s success in considering personal space, and they gave plenty of individual and positive feedback whenever children moved about in the corridors in an orderly manner.

In some ECEC centres, children’s success with social behaviour was also reinforced with tokens. Collecting these tokens gave cause to collective celebration of achievement, or otherwise served as a pleasant collective activity.

Change takes time

According to Senior Researcher Noora Heiskanen of the University of Eastern Finland, the study showed that even when successful, development was a balancing act between many challenges.

“In order to support children in their behavioural challenges in the right way, the entire environment of ECEC, and the ECEC community, must commit to the change of pedagogical practices and understand its significance.”

The theoretical implementation of the new approach and its integration into the existing practices of ECEC centres require time, collaboration, and competence.

“It is not always easy for ECEC professionals to accept change, and enough time should be given to the adoption of the new approach. The ECEC centres piloting the PBIS approach succeeded in creating a uniform way of teaching social behaviour to children, specifically through the participation of the whole community, as well as through research-based, guided development.”

According to University Lecturer Anne Karhu of the University of Eastern Finland, the findings give good tools for a wider development of practices in ECEC.

“Review and development of the common practices plays a key role. The PBIS approach can be used to build an ECEC community that is welcoming to all children and that has research-based means to address possible challenges in children’s behaviour.” 

According to Karhu, behavioural support should be integrated into all activities. In addition, social behaviour should be taught in a preventive manner, while also ensuring enhanced support for those who need it.

“The PBIS approach also provides a good basis for providing more advanced and more intensive behavioural support for children who need it.”

The joint research project between the University of Eastern Finland and the University of Jyväskylä will continue to develop and study these enhanced and individual forms of behavioural support, funded by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture. Highlighting the importance of developing community-level practices, the findings are very topical in view of the discussion related to inclusion in ECEC, and in the educational system at large.

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JOURNAL

European Journal of Special Needs Education

DOI

10.1080/08856257.2023.2207057 

ARTICLE TITLE

Implementing positive behaviour intervention and support in Finnish early childhood education and care: leadership team’s perspective

We must insert joy back into education in the wake of COVID-19, researcher warns

Book Announcement

TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP

Education systems need major reform in the light of lessons learned from Covid, according to a leading education academic.

Klaus Zierer, Professor of Education at the University of Augsburg, Germany, and an associate research fellow at the University of Oxford, UK, has revealed ways in which the ‘collateral damage’ from school closures is still hitting children and young people particularly hard.

He examines the evidence in his new book, Educating the Covid Generation, publishing on May 17. The author believes policymakers are turning a blind eye not only to the physical, emotional and educational after-effects on children, but also to deep flaws in educational systems which have been exposed by the pandemic.

Flaws in the system

“The Covid-19 pandemic has shaken the education system and at the same time exposed known weaknesses in a dramatic way. We are stumbling through this crisis from an educational policy perspective… It is hard to avoid the impression that educational policy is turning a blind eye to this,” Professor Zierer says.

He suggests that three key flaws in education systems have been highlighted by the pandemic. They are:

• A too-narrow focus on easily-measured mathematical, scientific-technical and linguistic competencies.
• A tendency for schools to think mainly in terms of ‘effectiveness,’ which is only one element of a good education.
• A lack of ‘joy,’ which should be ‘the guiding principle for education and teaching.’

The book sets out five key elements for a more joyful education:

1. Reasons: Children and young people need to know why their lessons should matter to them.
2. Feelings: Children’s emotions should be taken into account, both in the classroom and in extracurricular activities.
3. Activity: Learning that consists only of listening and executing is ultimately inhumane.
4. Success: Children need to be given challenges through which they can gain a sense of achievement.
5. Community: A new balance is needed between individual achievement and the experience of becoming a team player.

Professor Zierer also describes how his own family struggled during Covid – he has three school-age children who were then aged six, nine and 11.

“We have not fallen as a family but we have stumbled many times,” he says. “It fills me with concern that they have spent more time at home than at school between 2020 and 2022. How is a young person supposed to develop if they are cut off from the outside world, isolated from friends, quarantined again and again, and not allowed to do all the things that make life worth living?” 

Teachers cooperation: team-knowledge distillation for multiple cross-domain few-shot learning

Peer-Reviewed Publication

HIGHER EDUCATION PRESS

 

IMAGE: THE ARCHITECTURE ILLUSTRATION OF THE PROPOSED TKD-NET ON 5-WAY 1-SHOT CLASSIFICATION. view more 

CREDIT: HIGHER EDUCATION PRESS LIMITED COMPANY

Although few-shot learning (FSL) has achieved great progress, it is still an enormous challenge especially when the source and target sets are from different domains, which is also known as cross-domain few-shot learning (CD-FSL). Utilizing more source domain data is an effective way to improve the performance of CD-FSL. However, knowledge from different source domains may entangle and confuse with each other, which hurts the performance on the target domain.

To solve the problem, a research team led by professor Zhong JI in Tianjin University published their new research on 15 April 2023 in Frontiers of Computer Science co-published by Higher Education Press and Springer Nature.

The team propose team-knowledge distillation networks (TKD-Net) to tackle the CD-FSL, which explores a strategy to help the cooperation of multiple teachers. They distill knowledge from the cooperation of teacher networks to a single student network in a meta-learning framework. It incorporates task-oriented knowledge distillation and multiple cooperation among teachers to train an efficient student with better generalization ability on unseen tasks. Moreover, their TKD-Net employs both response-based knowledge and relation-based knowledge to transfer more comprehensive and effective knowledge.

Specifically, their proposed method consists of two stages: a teacher development stage and a multi-level knowledge distillation stage. They first respectively pre-train teacher models with the training data from multiple seen domains by supervised learning, where all the teacher models have the same network architecture. After obtaining multiple domain-specific teacher models, multi-level knowledge is then transferred from the cooperation of teachers to the student in the paradigm of meta-learning. Task-oriented distillation is beneficial for the student model to quickly adapt to few-shot tasks. The student model is trained based on Prototypical Networks and the soft labels provided by the teacher models. Besides, they further explore the knowledge embedded in the similarity and explore the similarity matrix of teachers to transfer the relationship between samples in the few-shot tasks. It guides the student to learn more specific and comprehensive information.

Future work can focus on adaptively adjusting the weight of multiple teacher models, and finding more ways to effectively aggregate the knowledge from multiple teachers.

###

Research Article, Published: 27 March 2023

Zhong JI, Jingwei NI, Xiyao LIU, Yanwei PANG. Teachers cooperation: team-knowledge distillation for multiple cross-domain few-shot learning. Front. Comput. Sci., 2023, 17(2): 172312, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-022-1250-2

 

About Frontiers of Computer Science (FCS)

FCS was launched in 2007. It is published bimonthly both online and in print by HEP and Springer. Prof. Zhi-Hua Zhou from Nanjing University serves as the Editor-in-Chief. It aims to provide a forum for the publication of peer-reviewed papers to promote rapid communication and exchange between computer scientists. FCS covers all major branches of computer science, including: architecture, software, artificial intelligence, theoretical computer science, networks and communication, information systems, multimedia and graphics, information security, interdisciplinary, etc. The readers may be interested in the special columns "Perspective" and "Excellent Young Scholars Forum".

FCS is indexed by SCI(E), EI, DBLP, Scopus, etc. The latest IF is 2.669. FCS solicits the following article types: Review, Research Article, Letter.

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JOURNAL

Frontiers of Computer Science

DOI

10.1007/s11704-022-1250-2 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Teachers cooperation: team-knowledge distillation for multiple cross-domain few-shot learning

Appreciation of humorous scenes is associated with specific electrical activity in the brain

Peer-Reviewed Publication

INSTITUT DU CERVEAU (PARIS BRAIN INSTITUTE)

Humor is essential for easing interpersonal tensions, reducing stress, relieving physical and moral suffering, and even improving the body's immune response. Given this central role in our lives, it is desirable to understand the cognitive and neuronal mechanisms on which it is based. At the same time, what makes us laugh appears to be highly dependent on a given culture, era, or context. It is quite improbable to chuckle at the facetious graffiti of ancient Rome or the comic dialogues of Noh theatre... In that case, how can we generalize how humor works?

“A large part of humanity certainly shares some aspects of humor, says Lionel Naccache, a specialist in the exploration of human consciousness and co-leader of the PICNIC team at Paris Brain Institute. Humans are particularly susceptible to the comedic powers of non-verbal humor – such as gesticulations, falls, unwarranted blows, or imitations. Physical comedy is the basis of slapstick, burlesque, clowning, and mime. It notably permeates the silent films of Charlie Chaplin, known for generating hilarity across cultures.”

Researchers at Paris Brain Institute and Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv wanted to take advantage of the astonishing power of Chaplin's antics to study the neural substrate of humor... using a new tool. Until now, fMRI has been the preferred technique for this type of research, and several studies have shown the involvement of the temporal lobe in the processing of droll stimuli. However, the signal obtained via fMRI does not allow the detection of the entire spectrum of electromagnetic waves generated by the brain: part of the information is lost.

In-depth comedy

To fill this gap in understanding, the researchers analyzed intracerebral electrophysiological recordings, which make it possible to look at neuronal activity directly with a high spatial and temporal precision (at the millisecond scale) in several cortical areas. Using Paris Brain Institute's CENIR neuroimaging platform, they studied thirteen epileptic patients who had been implanted with deep brain electrodes as part of a pre-surgical assessment of refractory epilepsy.

The researchers asked the patients to watch a three-minute excerpt from Charlie Chaplin's Circus (1928) while their brain activity was measured live. Beforehand, the amusing nature (or not) of each sequence had been evaluated, frame by frame, by a group of healthy volunteers.

The team then compared the patients' neural activity recorded during the funniest scenes in the film with that recorded during the least funny scenes. “We observed that the funniest sequences were associated with an increase in high-frequency gamma waves and a decrease in low-frequency waves. For the most amusing scenes, it was the other way around, explains Vadim Axelrod, who led the experiment. These results indicate that high-frequency neural activity, which is seen in tasks that require a lot of cognitive engagement, such as work, is also a mark of humor appreciation. Conversely, scenes that are not funny – such as transition sequences where the character moves from one place to another without doing anything – promote inattention and introspection... and a preponderance of low frequencies.”

More importantly, this inverse relationship between high and low frequencies was observed in temporal lobe regions but not in others. It seems that humorous content is not processed in the same way throughout the cortex and depends on brain areas and functions.

Incongruity detection machines

According to a dominant theory, the treatment of humor is based on two complementary mechanisms. First, the detection of an incongruous element of reality (for example, in Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush (1925), the hero eats shoelaces like spaghetti). Then, the emergence of a positive emotion related to this incongruity. What is funny would therefore be both unexpected and pleasant and involve two neural circuits: cognitive and emotional.

“Our results support this theory, as we confirm the prominent role of the temporal lobe in the appreciation of humor. As the anterior parts of this area are involved in semantic memory, we can imagine that their activity is linked to the analysis of the scene and the detection of its incongruous content, adds Vadim Axelrod. Conversely, the activation of its posterior parts could correspond to understanding the unusual – and therefore amusing – aspect of certain social interactions.”

Future studies will have to show the simultaneous activation of cognitive and emotional neural circuits to formally validate the theory of incongruity. Researchers will also need to look at other areas involved in cognition (such as the inferior frontal gyrus and anterior cingulate cortex) and emotions.

Finally, there can only be a generalization about the mechanisms of humor by studying other forms of it. “Here, we only looked at reactions to the slapstick genre. Using longer videos, with more complex social interactions where jokes, irony, sarcasm, or references jokes are present, we can expand our understanding of this magnificent, uniquely human phenomenon that is derision”, the researchers conclude.

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DOI

10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2023.108558 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Neural spectral changes while watching comedy movie of Charlie Chaplin

40 Hz vibrations reduce Alzheimer’s pathology, symptoms in mouse models

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PICOWER INSTITUTE AT MIT

 

IMAGE: AN ENLARGED DETAIL FROM A FIGURE IN THE PAPER HIGHLIGHTS REDUCTIONS IN PHOSPHORYLATED TAU (MAGENTA) IN PRIMARY SOMATOSENSORY CORTICAL NEURONS IN TAU P301S MODEL MICE TREATED WITH 40 HZ TACTILE STIMULATION (RIGHT). AN IMAGE FROM AN UNTREATED CONTROL IS ON THE LEFT. view more 

CREDIT: TSAI LAB/MIT PICOWER INSTITUTE

Evidence that non-invasive sensory stimulation of 40 Hz gamma frequency brain rhythms can reduce Alzheimer’s disease pathology and symptoms, already shown with light and sound by multiple research groups in mice and humans, now extends to tactile stimulation. A new study by MIT scientists shows that Alzheimer’s model mice exposed to 40 Hz vibration an hour a day for several weeks showed improved brain health and motor function compared to untreated controls.

The MIT group is not the first to show that gamma frequency tactile stimulation can affect brain activity and improve motor function, but they are the first to show that the stimulation can also reduce levels of the hallmark Alzheimer’s protein phosphorylated tau, keep neurons from dying or losing their synapse circuit connections, and reduce neural DNA damage.

“This work demonstrates a third sensory modality that we can use to increase gamma power in the brain,” said Li-Huei Tsai, corresponding author of the study, director of The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Aging Brain Initiative at MIT, and Picower Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS). “We are very excited to see that 40 Hz tactile stimulation benefits motor abilities, which has not been shown with the other modalities. It would be interesting to see if tactile stimulation can benefit human subjects with impairment in motor function.”

Ho-Jun Suk, Nicole Buie, Guojie Xu and Arit Banerjee are lead authors of the study in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience and Ed Boyden, Y. Eva Tan Professor of Neurotechnology at MIT, is a co-senior author of the paper. Boyden, an affiliate member of The Picwoer Institute, is also appointed in BCS as well as the Departments of Bioengineering and Media Arts and Sciences, the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and the K. Lisa Yang Cener for Bionics.

Feeling the vibe

In a series of papers starting in 2016, a collaboration led by Tsai’s lab has demonstrated that light flickering and/or sound clicking at 40 Hz (a technology called GENUS for Gamma Entrainment Using Sensory stimuli), reduces levels of amyloid-beta and tau proteins, prevents neuron death and preserves synapses and even sustains learning and memory in a variety of Alzheimer’s disease mouse models. Most recently in pilot clinical studies the team showed that 40 Hz light and sound stimulation was safe, successfully increased brain activity and connectivity and appeared to produce significant clinical benefits in a small cohort of human volunteers with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease. Other groups have replicated and corroborated health benefits of 40 Hz sensory stimulation and an MIT spin-off company, Cognito Therapeutics, has launched stage III clinical trials of light and sound stimulation as an Alzheimer’s treatment.

The new study tested whether whole-body 40 Hz tactile stimulation produced meaningful benefits in two commonly used mouse models of Alzheimer’s neurodegeneration, the Tau P301S mouse, which recapitulates the disease’s tau pathology, and the CK-p25 mouse, which recapitulates the synapse loss and DNA damage seen in human disease. The team focused its analyses in two areas of the brain: the primary somatosensory cortex (SSp), where tactile sensations are processed, and the primary motor cortex (MOp), where the brain produces movement commands for the body.

To produce the vibration stimulation, the researchers placed mouse cages over speakers playing 40 Hz sound, which vibrated the cages. Non-stimulated control mice were in cages interspersed in the same room so that all the mice heard the same 40 Hz sound. The differences measured between the stimulated and control mice were therefore made by the addition of tactile stimulation.

First the researchers confirmed that 40 Hz vibration made a difference in neural activity in the brains of healthy (i.e. non-Alzheimer’s) mice. As measured by expression of c-fos protein, activity increased two-fold in the SSp and more than 3-fold in the MOp, a statistically significant increase in the latter case.

Once the researchers knew that 40 Hz tactile stimulation could increase neural activity, they assessed the impact on disease in the two mouse models. To ensure both sexes were represented, the team used male P301S mice and female CK-p25 mice.

P301S mice stimulated for three weeks showed significant preservation of neurons compared to unstimulated controls in both brain regions. Stimulated mice also showed significant reductions in tau in the SSp by two measures, and exhibited similar trends in the MOp.

CK-p25 mice received six weeks of vibration stimulation. These mice showed higher levels of synaptic protein markers in both brain regions compared to unvibrated control mice. They also showed reduced levels of DNA damage.

Finally the team assessed the motor abilities of mice exposed to the vibration vs. not exposed. They found that both mouse models were able to stay on a rotating rod significantly longer. P301S mice also hung on to a wire mesh for significantly longer than control mice while CK-p25 mice showed a positive, though non-significant trend.

“The current study, along with our previous studies using visual or auditory GENUS demonstrates the possibility of using non-invasive sensory stimulation as a novel therapeutic strategy for ameliorating pathology and improving behavioral performance in neurodegenerative diseases,” the authors concluded.

Support for the study came from The JPB Foundation, The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, Eduardo Eurnekian, The DeGroof-VM Foundation, Halis Family Foundation, Melissa and Doug Ko Hahn, Lester Gimpelson, Eleanor Schwartz Charitable Foundation, The Dolby Family, Kathleen and Miguel Octavio, Jay and Carroll Miller, Anne Gao and Alex Hu and Charles Hieken.

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience

DOI

10.3389/fnagi.2023.1129510 

ARTICLE TITLE

Vibrotactile stimulation at gamma frequency mitigates pathology related to neurodegeneration and improves motor function

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

18-May-2023

COI STATEMENT

Li-Huei Tsai and Ed Boyden are co-founders of Cognito Therapeutics, a company that has advanced 40Hz non-invasive sensory stimulation to phase III clinical trials.