Researchers Discover Our 'Motor Cortex' Actually Links to Other Parts of the Brain (npr.org) 19
While medical textbooks teach that our movements are controlled solely by the brain's motor cortex — that may be wrong, reports NPR, with another area keeping track of the entire body.
"Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that previously overlooked areas of the brain's motor cortex appear to link control of specific muscles with information about the entire body and brain." As a result, the act of, say, reaching for a cup of coffee can directly influence blood pressure and heart rate. And the movement is seamlessly integrated into brain systems involved in planning, goals and emotion. Textbooks, though, still portray a motor cortex in which "the region that controls your finger is not going to be connected to a region [that asks], 'what am I going to do today?' " says Dr. Nico Dosenbach, an author of the study and an associate professor of neurology and radiology.
But the MRI data leaves little doubt that "there is this interconnected system," says Evan Gordon, an assistant professor of radiology and the study's first author. "It always was there, but we had not perceived it because of our training, because of the things we learned in the first neuroscience class that we ever took...." There's two interleaved systems," Dosenbach says. So right below an area controlling the fingers, for example, the team would find an area involved in "whole body integrative action...."
The new view of primary motor cortex may help explain how the brain solves a difficult problem, says Peter Strick, chair of neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh. "Even simple movements require nuanced control of all organ systems," he says. "You have to control heart rate. You have to control blood pressure. You have to control so called fight and flight responses...." A system that weaves together movement and mental states also could explain why our posture changes with our mood, or why exercise tends to make us feel better.
"How you move can have an impact on how you feel. And how you feel is going to have an impact on how you move," Strick says. "You know, my mother would tell me, 'stand up straight, you'll feel better.' And maybe that's true."
Thanks to Slashdot reader Tony Isaac for sharing the article.
"Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that previously overlooked areas of the brain's motor cortex appear to link control of specific muscles with information about the entire body and brain." As a result, the act of, say, reaching for a cup of coffee can directly influence blood pressure and heart rate. And the movement is seamlessly integrated into brain systems involved in planning, goals and emotion. Textbooks, though, still portray a motor cortex in which "the region that controls your finger is not going to be connected to a region [that asks], 'what am I going to do today?' " says Dr. Nico Dosenbach, an author of the study and an associate professor of neurology and radiology.
But the MRI data leaves little doubt that "there is this interconnected system," says Evan Gordon, an assistant professor of radiology and the study's first author. "It always was there, but we had not perceived it because of our training, because of the things we learned in the first neuroscience class that we ever took...." There's two interleaved systems," Dosenbach says. So right below an area controlling the fingers, for example, the team would find an area involved in "whole body integrative action...."
The new view of primary motor cortex may help explain how the brain solves a difficult problem, says Peter Strick, chair of neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh. "Even simple movements require nuanced control of all organ systems," he says. "You have to control heart rate. You have to control blood pressure. You have to control so called fight and flight responses...." A system that weaves together movement and mental states also could explain why our posture changes with our mood, or why exercise tends to make us feel better.
"How you move can have an impact on how you feel. And how you feel is going to have an impact on how you move," Strick says. "You know, my mother would tell me, 'stand up straight, you'll feel better.' And maybe that's true."
Thanks to Slashdot reader Tony Isaac for sharing the article.
But only in some people (Score:5, Informative)
Because clearly, it's not fully engaged [slashdot.org] in all around here.
Incredible! (Score:3)
Said precisely no one. Its been known for a long time that the brain is highly interconnected. Why wouldn't something as important as movement for god sakes be tightly integrated with other control systems in the brain?
Re: (Score:3)
The best example of this, in terms of the brain, is the myth of left and right thinkers. It has infected education and done incredible harm. There is no strict left and right hand brain functions. The brain is flexible and interconnected.
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Yeah, it's really just a minor result for us (significant for brain scientists) that they found another region that previously was not recognized as performing this function.
System? (Score:1)
Tai Chi, anyone? (Score:2)
Strawman (Score:2)
"still portray a motor cortex in which "the region that controls your finger is not going to be connected to a region [that asks], 'what am I going to do today?'"
I would like to see what textbook he is referring to, because I don't think it exists.
Re: (Score:2)
I would like to see what textbook he is referring to, because I don't think it exists. ...
Lol, I was about to write the same a few days ago.
But then I thought, the "assumptions" sketched in the article and summary are so absurd, what is the point to dismantle them
Yeah I heard this on the radio and my first (Score:5, Insightful)
thought was, "Man, the life sciences people know *so* little."
Of course the motion of one part of your body has to be coordinated with another. And of course they all have to talk to each other for planning complex sequences of motion like standing up or pulling yourself up a ladder.
My foray into this field was quite brief: a biomechanics elective in grad school that was taught by an old time controls guy who correctly referred to the square root of -1 with the symbol j, but for whatever reason elected to use a neuroscience textbook aimed at life sciences students. And man oh man was that textbook (I still have it somewhere but it's in another part of the house and I'm nice and cozy where I am) fucking unsophisticated and unquantitative in its presentation of dynamics and motion planning.
I was and am an engineer, so when the prof whipped out some quantitative biomechanics papers and talked about 5th order polynomials that minimize maximum jerk (or average jerk, I forget) as being an empirically good approximation to the way humans make point-to-point movements with their hands IRL, I took it in and moved on.
But if people who go into life sciences learn just out of the textbook with the cartoon feedback loop picture and a minimum of math, I am not at all surprised that they treat a statement about what is, at its heart, the information-theoretic requirements motion planning and dynamics for a complex over- and under- actuated mechanical system, that's been obvious to the guys at Boston Dynamics for 30 years, and treat it as a big newsworthy surprise.
Tldr version is that life sciences are a magnet for people who don't like quantitative shit, so the few people who know how to do math and go into life sciences do very well for themselves.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Yeah I heard this on the radio and my first (Score:5, Informative)
Life sciences people might deserve a little slack. It's not so easy to watch the impulses in the brain and see where they go, you can't just cut living people open any way you want to. Even if you did torture animals by cutting them open while living, in order to study what's happening in their brains, the cutting would alter what happens to a degree as to make much of the research unreliable.
Maybe it's not so amazing to learn that the systems are interconnected. But it is pretty incredible to learn exactly *how* these systems are precisely interconnected.
Engineers think they are pretty smart. But as Boston Dynamics has learned, it's not so easy to replicate the range of reflexes and motions humans and animals are capable of.
So? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The amazing thing here is not that it's complex, but that they've been able to piece together precisely *how* the complex interconnections work.
Who Knew? (Score:1)
idiot headline (Score:2)
What? Before they thought your conscious thinking had no effect on what you actually did?
Re: (Score:2)
Has it?
We live in an exciting time (Score:1)