Age, race, sex, all those groupings,” Prerau says. “No two fingerprints were the same, and there was this amazing heterogeneity in brain activity even among people we often demographically categorize together in experiments. The result was a more complete picture that captured our brains’ fingerprint-like qualities - imprints with strong night-to-night consistency that were exclusive to each participant. Prerau and his team instead crafted a new approach that automatically extracts thousands of brainwave events from an entire night of sleep EEG data. To identify spindles, scientists have historically eyeballed EEG recordings to pinpoint moments of rapid oscillation. Led by Michael Prerau, a Harvard Medical School assistant professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the researchers analyzed brainwave data of sleep spindles, one to two second bursts of neural activity associated with our ability to convert short-term memories into long-term memories. “And no two symphonies sound exactly alike,” Shan adds.Ī recent study published in Sleep maps the extent of this neurodiversity through electroencephalogram (EEG) snapshots, which depict the sleeping brain’s electrical activity as wavy lines. This synchronization leads to our thoughts and actions. ![]() These characteristics - which make brain signatures akin to a thumbprint - are the same qualities that enable researchers to study the fingerprint for biological signs of mental health disorders.Īccording to Shan, “The brain is a symphony orchestra.” Each region is its own musician, playing a unique instrument and simultaneously adapting to synchronize with nearby melodies. The final product is a picture of brain activity that is detailed, distinct and difficult to alter. With modern neuroimaging techniques, scientists can trace your brain’s distinct signature, an autograph composed of tens of thousands of electrical signals that communicate across the brain. “In other words, we can identify an individual based on how their brain’s neural connections work together.” Shan, a senior research fellow and the head of Neuroimaging Platform at the University of the Sunshine Coast’s (USC) Thompson Institute. “The same brain executing different tasks looks more similar than different brains doing the same task,” explains Zack Y. But new research suggests our brains have "fingerprints" that are equally unchanging and unique to each person. ![]() They are heralded as special markers of human identity, even more individualized than DNA. We often think of fingerprints as the tiny ridges, whorls and arched patterns on the tip of each finger.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |