Students reported that their state of mind actually changed after they practiced self-reflection by themselves. I assumed that once their mind has changed, there might be some changes in the brain as well. And I would like to ask your professional opinion in the perspective of neuroscience. It is now generally understood that there's been remarkable advances in the field of neuroscience. Could you maybe explain what scientists have been discovering in neuroscience? >>Brain science is about understanding the structure and the function of the brain. Its function is pretty much all the things that goes on in our lives: thinking, feeling, getting angry, behaving, and eating. Furthermore, our creative activities and so many philosophical ideas are all results of the brain function. Of course, religion too, is included. Without the brain nothing can be done. However, in neuroscience, we are trying to figure out how exactly it works in order to perform such abilities. In order to understand the function properly, we should now the core components of the brain, which are brain cells called neurons; understanding the shape of the cell, how they're activated in response to a stimulus, and also, all the proteins and molecules that are involved in the process are necessary at the level of cell biology. There are many types of brain cells, and glial cells compromise 70% of the brain which are much more than actual brain cells. So, neuroscience is the research on the structure and the operation of the human brain. I understand. Since each individual has a different brain, doesn't in insinuate the possibility that people see the same thing differently? Like the difference between real world and the perceived world. I think there should be quite a difference. I know that your recent research topic was about observational fear learning in mice. Could you elaborate on the idea of your research? There are several questions here. Differences between individual brains, disconnect between the real and the perceived, and the one about fear in mice. What shall I start with? How about the fear one on fear? There's something called fear conditioning. You can, for example, find this in soldiers who went to war in Iraq. When they hear loud noises in daily life, it reminds them of the bomb explosions and they become extremely anxious and stressed out. We call that PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). We can experiment on animals with that fear condition. We can expose mice to electric shock coupled with beep sound. Then, mice exhibit a fear response whenever they hear the beep sound, even in a different environment. Which means mice remember the association between the beeping sound and the electric shock. When mice are struck with fear, they don't move at all; they just freeze. This fear research system has already been established and studied. After listening to the beeping sound without the shock stimulus, mice learn a new fact that beeping does not necessarily bring the shock stimulus. This is called fear extinction. However, if there's something wrong with the mice, their brain cannot perform fear extinction properly, and continue to show fear response to the beeping, just like the PTSD syndrome in human. Once we solve the problem in the mouse brain that cannot execute fear extinction, we may be able to apply that to PTSD patients. The reason for the animal study is that we can identify the brain circuit that is involved in the fear response. Furthermore, by targeting specific brain cells and proteins with electrical stimulus and medications, we can find which cells and molecules participate in fear extinction. We cannot perform such procedures on humans. In mice model, we found out which area of the brain is important in fear extinction. There's a brain region called thalamic nuclei, deep in our brain, that is particularly activated during fear extinction. If we block the firing of those neurons, fear response cannot be extinct. A more direct evidence is that, one we electrically stimulate the thalamic nuclei, it causes the firing rate of neurons to increase, and speed up the process of fear extinction. Those activated thalamic nuclei directly influence fear extinction mechanism. >>I think the old saying "A burnt child dreads the fire", some people feel fear while others don't in the same environment. Different people react to the same reality differently. In neuroscience, why do we think that people show different reactions under the same situations? >>After all, we found out that fear conditioning and fear extinction are all results from the function of brain circuits. Each of us has different brain circuits due to different DNA sequence, and different background. Different circuits mean different structures; note that it doesn't mean a lack of circuit, but the functional connectivity within the circuits and how strong it is. >>Actually, I personally had the experience with claustrophobia during a flight in the early 80s. I went to the hospital and took medication for my symptoms. however, I found my own remedy for claustrophobia; I tried to not sleep at all, or eat a lot of candy on the flight. Anyhow, as I was practicing self-reflective meditation, the particular scene from my childhood that may have triggered the claustrophobia came to mind. I was maybe 6 years old. I was able to discard the images of that memory. And just like that, the claustrophobia was gone, and it was surprising yet seemed natural at the same time. I asked neuroscientists about how this is possible. They said by cognitive learning, we can reinforce or reduce the neural plasticity. What's your professional view on this, relating to the neural circuit conditioning and extinction? >>The process of creating, storing, discarding, and recreating memories is a very important topic. If an infrequent memory is emerged from the subconscious and recreated, that means the corresponding memory circuit is exposed to open and gain the potential to be changed. When it wasn't being remembered, it was firmly static somewhere in the circuit. The memory was stored. The moment it is replayed, it is exposed. It is now possible for it to be changed. And this is my personal opinion: we can logically evaluate the surfaced memory, and if it is just a very old memory that is not harmful to me in any way, it could possibly be discarded by such methods and efforts as you mentioned. Actually thinking about the problem is the first step to solve the problem. This is the principle used in psychiatric treatments. >>Thinking about the problem is helpful, sure, but actively eliminating the traumatic memories with imagination can accelerate the process, would you agree? >>Yes, that seems plausible. >>It would be great to discuss more as your research progresses. Fear is easily regarded as an emotion. However, our everyday lives are full of stereotypes, which vary depending on individuals, region, culture, etc. Because of stereotypes we create conflicts, discontent, and collision. Could you tell us about your view on stereotypes with respect to neuroscience? In PTSD patients, brain circuits related to anxiety and fear are likely to be activated. The fundamental mechanism of the PTSD is that some circuits are unnecessarily over-activated, to a degree that does not correspond to the reality. So, if we're talking about circuits that are not related to emotions, but rather with decision making process, morals, or other values in life, this is still being studied. When those parts are over-activated to be at odds with reality, This can be considered as fixed ideas, or stereotypes. This process of stereotype is formed throughout our lives. When people say stereotype, it is typically discounted as a bad thing. However, our lives are full of stereotypes. There are a lot of basic stereotypes that aren't negative. It can also be thought of as the process of forming one's character. In case of children, they're developing values in their lives; society, parents, and teachers are trying to imbue a good value system as they grow. The problem is that the meaning of good value system can vary, depending on people, culture, religion. When those differences are particularly detrimental to society, we call that stereotypes. >>Thank you. You mentioned philosophy in the beginning; Kant was into the philosophical issue on human cognition that people cannot really see the world as it is. The gist was that people cannot properly see the real world, let alone perceiving it. I guess this is where most of the philosophical conundrums arise. Now, hundreds of years have passed since then, and neuroscience has made leaps and bounds. What do you think we should do in order to actually live and perceive the real world we are living? Video cameras are quite excellent in regenerating the recorded scenes and playing it on the screen if there's no technical or mechanical issues. It's replayable. However, the human body is much weaker in that sense. For example, our eyes can get easily tired or the nerve can get weakened as external images are projected in our visual cortex. More importantly, when images are projected on the screen, we don't call that seeing; it's just projecting. When the security guard is seeing the situation, we call that seeing. in their brain there's a system that makes the projected images in visual cortex to be "perceived." That system is the work of neural circuits. Pathway to the visual cortex can be similar, but the perceiving process can be different from people to people since each of us has different neural circuits. We all have different memories, and those memories are stored in neural circuits interacting with our visual information. That's why people see the same object and yet feel differently and perceive differently. >>So that's what Kant meant, when he said nobody can see the true nature of things. >>He is such an exceptional one for figuring out the fact with only logical thinking in his mind. Seems so obvious that nobody is actually seeing the true nature, but it is remarkable for him to be able to define it. >>It was nice to learn about discoveries in neuroscience. Thank you very much for your professional opinion in the perspective of brain science.
