BRAIN AWARENESS WEEK

CAN YOU TRAIN YOUR BRAIN? ARE YOU SMARTER THAN A TENTH GRADER? LATEST BREAKTHROUGHS IN BRAIN RESEARCH

The brain is the complex and mysterious core of who we are: it determines our personalities and preferences—why we love or hate Vegemite, or prefer rugby to AFL—and how we think, act and remember. DEFINITIVE answers to so many questions still remain unanswered: Why do we dream? How can we improve learning? Why does cognitive impairment or dementia only affect certain people as they age, while others’ brains remain healthy? Even though scientists have made many major discoveries in recent years, when it comes to understanding how the brain functions, we’re still scratching at the surface.

Our brains contain roughly

100 billion nerve cells, called neurons, which communicate with each other at junctions called synapses.

The brain is a central component of the nervous system, a network that transmits signals to and from different parts of the body, and regulates involuntary and voluntary actions. The brain and nervous system regulate a wide variety of essential functions, including:

The brain’s cerebral cortex is the outermost layer that gives the brain its characteristic wrinkly appearance. The cerebral cortex is divided lengthways into two cerebral hemispheres connected by the corpus callosum. Traditionally, each of the hemispheres has been divided into four lobes: frontal, parietal, temporal and occipital.

Although we now know that most brain functions rely on many different regions across the entire brain working in conjunction, it is still true that each lobe carries out the bulk of certain functions. The occipital lobe, for example, is located at the back of the head and is the major visual processing centre in the brain. We’re regularly told that the key to keeping our brains healthy is to stimulate them with “brain training” games like crosswords or Sudokus. But does brain training actually work?

“There’s no doubt that repeatedly doing certain tasks improves performance on those tasks,” says Professor Jason Mattingley, a cognitive neuroscientist at UQ’s Queensland Brain Institute and School of Psychology. “It’s been much more difficult to prove any broader benefits for brain function or help with untrained tasks.”

Training on a particular task, for example, completing a Sudoku, improves the speed and accuracy of your performance on that task. But the benefits of training are very specific – your performance on a different task, for example, doing multiplication, may not improve.

But Prof Mattingley and his team have shown that brain training for specific tasks can also improve broader brain performance when combined with brain stimulation. They recently studied the benefits of brain stimulation devices that deliver transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) via electrodes on the scalp.

In the study, participants were trained in a multitasking exercise – requiring them to use a keyboard to quickly identify coloured symbols and sounds. The researchers also tested the participants’ performance on three untrained tasks: a similar multitasking approach that used different symbols and sounds; an inhibition task; and a visual search task, requiring participants to locate and respond to a specific symbol within a group of similar symbols.

The scientist found that tDCS combined with multitasking training enhanced performance not only on the similar (untrained) multitasking exercise, but also on the quite different visual search task.

To better understand how training affects the brain, and how training can be adapted to maximise its benefits, the scientists plan to study exactly how the brain contributes to performance enhancement. They also hope to find out what types of tasks and what groups of people might benefit from this combination of training and tDCS.

But Prof Mattingley cautions about the use of DIY brain stimulation. “There are still many unknowns with these technologies. Although brain stimulation devices are now available commercially, we would not recommend people embark on do-it-yourself brain stimulation at home.”

RIGHT HEMISPHERE PREFRONTAL CORTEX

CORPUS CALLOSUM NEOCORTEX BASAL GANGLIA LEFT HEMISPHERE CEREBELLUM HIPPOCAMPUS BRAIN STEM

SPINAL CORD

AMYGDALA

PITUITARY GLAND

POINTERS TO A HEALTHY BRAIN brainfoundation.org.au/healthy-brain LEARN MORE: The Australian Brain Bee Challenge (ABBC) is a competition for high school students in year 10 in 2018 to learn about the brain and its functions, learn about neuroscience research, and to dispel misconceptions about brain disorders and mental illnesses.

Australia's only neuroscience competition, the Brain Bee was started nationally in 2006 by Professor Linda Richards, Deputy Director at The University of Queensland’s Queensland Brain Institute, to bridge gaps in public knowledge about neuroscience, and to encourage young students to pursue careers in science.

The ABBC is a test of knowledge about interesting facts concerning intelligence, memory, emotions, sensations, movement, stress, ageing, sleep, Alzheimer's disease and stroke. The information can be found in an information-packed book, which students study for the challenge.

Round 1 involves an online 45-minute multiple choice quiz administered by Education Perfect, taken by students at their school at a suitable time beween 12 – 18 March 2018 to coincide with Brain Awareness Week. In Round 2, students who performed highly on the first round then compete in their regional finals in all Australian States and Territories between July and August at various academic institutions. The third round sets the eight regional champions against each other to become the overall Australian Brain Bee Champion, with the opportunity to progress into the International Brain Bee competition.

The competition has inspired previous participants to chase a career in science. Esmi Zajaczkowski, a PhD student at the Queensland Brain Institute, was only 14 years old when she won the Queensland final of the Australian Brain Bee Challenge.

“I was more initially inclined towards the arts, and I wasn’t fond of biology in high school, but the Brain Bee helped me decide that I want to be involved in neuroscience,” Miss Zajaczkowski said.

LEARN MORE: www.ans.org.au/abbc/ or email abbc@uq.edu.au In 2015, researchers from UQ’s Queensland Brain Institute made a breakthrough dementia discovery. They discovered that ultrasound technology can be used to reverse Alzheimer’s symptoms and restore memory in animal models. The technique, conducted by Professor Jürgen Götz and his team, transiently opens the blood–brain barrier, activating cells to remove toxic plaques that build-up in Alzheimer’s disease. Building upon this, in 2017 they found that ultrasound could be combined with an antibody treatment that was more effective than either treatment alone in removing protein clumps and reducing Alzheimer’s symptoms in mice. The exciting next stage of the research is to translate the findings in animals into a therapy that can be trialled in humans.

In 2017, QBI researchers also launched a first-of-its-kind study into concussion. It aims to recruit healthy athletes for brain scans, with follow-up at regular intervals if they experience concussion. “Through functional MRI brain scans taken before and following a concussion, we will assess the amount of time the brain requires to rest and heal,” says researcher Dr Fatima Nasrallah. "We’re trying to develop more sensitive methods, and biomarkers, to be able to detect the subtle changes in mild injury or concussion." For further details visit: www.qbi.uq.edu.au/concussionstudy

Earlier this year, QBI researchers found that general anaesthetics act on the brain in a more complex way than previously thought. A team led by Associate Professor Bruno van Swinderen studied the effects of propofol, one of the most common general anaesthetic drugs used during surgery. "We know from previous research that general anaesthetics act on sleep systems in the brain, much like a sleeping pill," he says. "But our study found that propofol also disrupts presynaptic mechanisms, probably affecting communication between neurons across the entire brain in a systematic way that differs from just being asleep.” The discovery could explain why people experience grogginess after coming out of surgery.

LEARN MORE ABOUT BRAIN RESEARCH Queensland Brain Institute qbi.uq.edu.au