Bengaluru: A team led by Prof.
Sridharan Devarajan who studies the territory and brain mechanisms that mediate human attention to develop therapy to treat attention disorders, in his recent works, has identified how certain brain regions – both in neocortex (outermost layer The brain) and also in the deeper midbrain – contribute to attention.
Devarajan is currently Associate Professor in the Center for Neuroscience and Associate Faculty in Computer Science and Automation at IISC.
The group has shown that human participants with asymmetrical cables between central brains and cortical hemispherers also show asymmetry characterized by the way they pay attention.
Devarajan, the recipient of the SWORKJAYANTI fellowship provided by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) for 2021, said the human brain had extraordinary abilities to pay attention to important objects and locations in our world while ignoring irrelevant.
Although attention has been studied in a few decades, there is little knowledge of how attention works in the brain.
“…
an undisclained area includes identifying brain areas that allow us to maintain attention to certain objects, brain regions that suppress irrelevant information, and brain processes are disrupted in attention disorders,” the researchers said.
Groups, DST said, employing a combination of cutting-edge technology, non-invasive – including imaging of functional magnetic resonance and diffusion (FMRI / DMRI), electro-encephalography (EEG), and trans-magnetic and electrical stimulation (TMS / Test) – to record and Turn down the human brain activity targeted.
In His recent work, Devarajan has identified how certain brain regions – both in the neocortex (outermost layer of the brain) and in the deeper midbrain – contribute to attention.
In other studies recently, DST said, the group has shown that interference activities in certain regions in Neocortex (Parietal cortex) can affect the ability of participants to pay attention.
To analyze and simulate how attention works in the brain, they also develop mathematical and computational models (in-depth) detailed from neocortex and midbrain.
This research has been published in various prestigious journals, including the biology of plos computing.
“While these studies from our group and others have signaled the role of several regions of the brain with attention, very few who experimentally establish this relationship directly.
As part of the fellowship of the SWORKJAYANTI, our lab will try to understand the mechanism of” causal “attention in the brain .
We will follow the three-branch approach, “Devarajan said.
First, the Group will track changes in the structure, activity, and connectivity between certain brain regions (“neuroplasticity”) when participants learn to pay attention, said DST, adding that measuring neuroplastic changes as in the brain may have the main implications of testing the effectiveness of the intervention to manage attention , both for children and adults.
“Second, they will develop brain machine interface technology that can be used to train participants to control activities voluntarily in the brain region related to attention (” neurofeedback “).
They will then try to find out whether it achieves the neurofeedback control increases the capacity of participants’ attention.
This can be developed into a non-invasive tool to train the capacity of attention to healthy individuals, as well as in patients with disorders of attention, “DST said.
After this, they will disrupt and draw brain activity in real-time, with precision milliseconds (“neurostimulation”), to identify the role of certain brain regions with attention.
This technology can be adapted in clinical settings to target brain regions involved in attention disorders, such as attention deficit disorders (added).
“As widely, the research findings of this proposal will advance our fundamental understanding of the main principles that with their attention work in the human brain and can pave the way for developing a rational strategy to manage and treat attention disorders,” Devarajan added.
All experiments will be carried out at the National MRI facilities JN Sophisticated Tata in IISC, which holds the MRI 3T scanner (Siemens Prisma) with Mr-EEG settings and integrated MR-TMS.