Sometimes , you’re able to picture something so vividly in your head that it feels as though you ’re actually looking at what you ’re envisage . But no matter how good your imagination is , information will flow through your genius in the opposite focusing compared to when you really perceive something . That ’s the ratiocination of a new discipline , published inNeuroImage , which look at brain natural process in participant when they were either watching clips or recalling them in their heads .
“ A really authoritative problem in brain research is empathize how different parts of the head are functionally connected . What country are interacting ? What is the direction of communicating ? ” lead scientist Barry Van Veen said in anews - release . “ We know that the encephalon does not function as a bent of main area , but as a web of specialized area that collaborate . ”
For the study , scientists from theUniversity of Wisconsin - Madisonand the University of Liege examined the activity of player ’ brains using a technique call electroencephalography ( EEG ) . This expend a serial of non - invading sensors to measure electrical activity along the scalp that results from current flowing through brain cells , or neuron .
They were interested in looking at the catamenia of selective information through the cortex , which is the outer layer of the brain . In particular , they hone in ontwo region : the parietal lobe and the occipital lobe . The former is a higher - guild region involved in mix and processing sensory data , such as skin senses and pain , and the latter is a lower - order area associated with interpret visual stimuli and information .
After electrodes were place on the participants ’ scalps for recordings , they were given a serial of short video clips before being asked to seek to replay the content in their head from memory . Next , the researchers asked volunteers to ideate riding a magical bicycle , focusing on various details such as shapes and colors , before play them a short video of nature scene .
Then , using an algorithm recrudesce by the squad to deconstruct the information , the scientist were capable to settle the directivity of signaling flow within the cerebral mantle . They establish that during mental imagery , there was an increase in the flow of information from the parietal lobe to the occipital lobe , i.e. an increase intop - down signal period . Conversely , during perception , the management of entropy stream was annul and the signal preponderantly traveled from the bottom - up .
These scheme novel determination could one day help scientists understand more about figure of brain activity duringsleep and dreaming . Another possible succeeding direction could be to apply the same methodology to further our cognition of how the mental capacity uses sure networks to encode short - terminal figure remembering , which the researchers hope to finally go after .
[ ViaUW - MadisonandNeuroImage ]
