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, have identified how certain brain regions – both in the neocortex (outermost brain layer) and a deeper BBBRain – contribute to attention.
Devarajan is a partner professor at the center of Neuroscience and associated faculties in computer science and automation at the Indian Science Institute.
The group has shown that human participants with asymmetrical cables between central brains and cortical hemispherers show asymmetry by the way they pay attention.
Devarajan, the recipient of the SWORKJAYANTI meeting provided by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) for 2021, said the human brain had extraordinary abilities to pay attention to objects and locations that were 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, regions that suppress irrelevant information, and brain processes are disrupted in disorders of attention,” the researchers said.
Group, DST said, employing the combination of cutting-edge technology, non-invasive, including functional and diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI / DMRI), electro-encephalography (EEG) and trans-magnetic and electrical stimulation (TMS / TES), to record and interfere human brain activity in a targeted way.
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 several prestigious journals, including PLO computing biology.
“While these studies from our group and others have signaled the role of some of the brain regions with attention, very few who experimentally establish this relationship directly.
As part of the fellowship of the Swarnajajayanti, our lab will try to understand the mechanism of ‘causal’ attention at Brain.
We will follow the three branches approach, “Devarajan said.
The key to testing the intervention, the Group will track changes in structures, activities, and connectivity between certain brain regions (neuroplastic) when participants are learning to pay attention, said DST, adding that measuring changes in the brain can have the main implications for testing the testing effectiveness of interventions to manage interference Attention, both in children and adults.
“Second, they will develop brain machine interface technology that can be used to train participants to voluntarily control activities in the brain region related to attention (neurofeedback).
They will then try to find out whether it achieves the neurofeedback control increases the participant’s attention capacity.
This type of interface can be Developed into non-invasive tools to train the capacity of attention to healthy individuals, as well as in patients with attention disorders, “said the department.
After this, they will discuss and draw brain activity in real time, with the precision of milliseconds (neurostimulation), to identify the role of certain brain regions with attention.
This technology can be adapted in clinical settings to target the brain territory involved in disorders of attention, such as attention deficit disorders.
These experiments will be carried out at the National MRI facility JN Tata is sophisticated, IISC.