Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Evidence that the brain’s ability to control thinking relies on beta rhythms

news.mit.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 65 posts

Re: Evidence that the brain’s ability to control thinking relies on beta rhythms

#21

Post by bitcurious »

chc wrote: post #19
Shank wrote: post #12

I wonder how much this can be applied to day to day life. For example, the Binaural app on the iOS app store acts as a wave generator that lets you listen to specific frequencies. I'd be interested to see if you could force yourself into getting beta wave activity in the brain by just listening to beta frequencies -- almost as if to tune yourself manually.

Expecting your brain to operate in a way that produces certain frequencies because your ears are detecting air vibrations with those frequencies sounds extremely homeopathic.

This study of memory loss in mice found that exposing them to light at about 40hz triggered gamma waves and reduced plaque formation.

https://news.mit.edu/2016/visual-stimulation-treatment-alzhe...

Re: Evidence that the brain’s ability to control thinking relies on beta rhythms

#22

Post by growlix »

tomalpha wrote: post #17
jnordwick wrote: post #10

It seems almost definitional that this effect is correlative and not causative unless the authors are positing that there are structures in the brain whose purpose is to generate brain waves or that we just massively misunderstand the function of neurons. I read the previous paper summary linked to and I didn't see a way these waves are supposed to affect the neurons. Is there absolutely any theory as to the mechanis…

This was my reading of the paper/summary too - a demonstration of correlation but not the evidence of a causal link that the headline suggests. My understanding of neuroscience is limited however. Can someone with a better understanding point me at what I’m missing?

Your comprehension seems spot on to me, though maybe you feel like you're missing something given the apparent discrepancy between the hype vs. value of this research. I think there are two relevant factors here:

1) MIT is very good at publicity and press.

2) Causal neuroscience experiments are still technically challenging to implement in complex behaving organisms (e.g. monkeys and humans). We have methods such as microstimulation (invasive) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (non-invasive), but these methods are pretty ham-fisted. They indiscriminately activate (or deactivate) all the neurons in and passing through a given volume in the brain (optogenetics is promising in this regard, but it's still a nascent technology in monkeys). So while this study may appear weak because it's correlational, it may actually represent a meaningful step forward in the field.

Re: Evidence that the brain’s ability to control thinking relies on beta rhythms

#23

Post by growlix »

jnordwick wrote: post #11
andai wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since brainwaves are associated with brain disorders and brain disorders are associated with genetics, it would be worth (albeit dangerous politically?) to investigate the link between brainwaves (and by extension, different cognitive faculties) and ethnicity.

This assumes that brainwaves function the same in everybody and that their measurement means anything more than phrenology.

Also that "brainwaves" have meaning beyond the behavior, brain region, and context in which they're being examined.

Re: Evidence that the brain’s ability to control thinking relies on beta rhythms

#24

Post by bsanderson »

chc wrote: post #19
Shank wrote: post #12

I wonder how much this can be applied to day to day life. For example, the Binaural app on the iOS app store acts as a wave generator that lets you listen to specific frequencies. I'd be interested to see if you could force yourself into getting beta wave activity in the brain by just listening to beta frequencies -- almost as if to tune yourself manually.

Expecting your brain to operate in a way that produces certain frequencies because your ears are detecting air vibrations with those frequencies sounds extremely homeopathic.

Actually a thing...

Auditory Beat Stimulation and its Effects on Cognition and Mood States

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4428073/

Re: Evidence that the brain’s ability to control thinking relies on beta rhythms

#25

Post by tw1010 »

chc wrote: post #19
Shank wrote: post #12

I wonder how much this can be applied to day to day life. For example, the Binaural app on the iOS app store acts as a wave generator that lets you listen to specific frequencies. I'd be interested to see if you could force yourself into getting beta wave activity in the brain by just listening to beta frequencies -- almost as if to tune yourself manually.

Expecting your brain to operate in a way that produces certain frequencies because your ears are detecting air vibrations with those frequencies sounds extremely homeopathic.

Dismissing it based on nothing more than a feeling, and no data, is just as irrational as homeopaths.

Re: Evidence that the brain’s ability to control thinking relies on beta rhythms

#26

Post by anon1253 »

maxander wrote: post #9
tomalpha wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t tell from this, but does this demonstrate a causal link or is the headline somewhat disconnected from the paper? That is to say, does the brain truly rely on beta rhythms, or are they just a symptom of something else?

I think the answer is necessarily "no," because the rhythm is a sign we observe of some functional system in the brain, not the functional system itself. Similar to how your heart rate is just a sign of the beating of your heart, only the latter of which is a real functional mechanism. Something is happening in the brain that generates these patterns and which also has to do with the cognitive faculties described in…

The waves come from synchronicity of neurons "firing". When neurons fire there is a flow of ions that causes a potential difference. If a lot of this happens at the same time with some periodicity you can measure this. But it would be like looking at a CPU running some math operations and determining "there is periodic activity in the ALU" (which could be due to memory reads). Now this is a poor analogy because a single neuron doesn't do "one thing" it's massively distributed. My go to argumentation for "how the brain works" (and thus consciousness) has been that it's a massive coincidence detector that tries to encode these coincidences in spike train activity using spike train dependent plasticity. In doing so the brain echoes the coincidences of the neural (sensory) input, and since these encode for some "real" cause-effect you can predict the future: memory is "echoing" in a neural substrate, consciousness is exploiting those "echos" to try to predict the future. I wrote it up in 2011 https://www.dropbox.com/s/huol1vf4j1fs1ll/mind_matters.pdf?d... I've never seen anyone poke holes in this, and even hints at the details of this paper. Guess I chose the wrong career somewhere.

Re: Evidence that the brain’s ability to control thinking relies on beta rhythms

#27

Post by tree_of_item »

tw1010 wrote: post #25
chc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expecting your brain to operate in a way that produces certain frequencies because your ears are detecting air vibrations with those frequencies sounds extremely homeopathic.

Dismissing it based on nothing more than a feeling, and no data, is just as irrational as homeopaths.

No it isn't. You should default to disbelieving such extraordinary claims.

Re: Evidence that the brain’s ability to control thinking relies on beta rhythms

#28

Post by chc »

bsanderson wrote: post #24
chc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expecting your brain to operate in a way that produces certain frequencies because your ears are detecting air vibrations with those frequencies sounds extremely homeopathic.

Actually a thing... Auditory Beat Stimulation and its Effects on Cognition and Mood States https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4428073/

The proposition "listening to music affects your mood" is very different from the proposition "listening to a certain frequency of tone causes your brain to produce waves at a corresponding frequency."

Re: Evidence that the brain’s ability to control thinking relies on beta rhythms

#29

Post by tw1010 »

tree_of_item wrote: post #27
tw1010 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dismissing it based on nothing more than a feeling, and no data, is just as irrational as homeopaths.

No it isn't. You should default to disbelieving such extraordinary claims.

You should default to having no strong opinion at all.

Re: Evidence that the brain’s ability to control thinking relies on beta rhythms

#30

Post by tree_of_item »

tw1010 wrote: post #29
tree_of_item wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't. You should default to disbelieving such extraordinary claims.

You should default to having no strong opinion at all.

Turmeric added to coffee adds twenty years to your lifespan.

Are you completely ambivalent to such a ridiculous claim? No, you should disbelieve it unless you get a sufficient amount of evidence.

Post reply on HN