Shaping brain structure

so

who in this room has a brain

okay everybody has a brain so um

i think this is a good a good thing

because this enabled us

to listen to the ted talks that came

before me

to move to sit to feel

to be social to be antisocial

to laugh to sing

so i’m going to tell you why mapping the

brain and understanding its anatomy and

function

is important to understand ourselves and

also

important to understand brain disorder

so here i have a plastic brain which is

sort of

life-size it would fit in my head and as

you see it’s a bit

pinkish and it’s really like folded

which is super

convenient because in this way you

actually have a much bigger surface than

the brain is and the brain i’ll just put

this here

it’s has multiple regions or

lobes so you have the cortex which is

here

you have the cerebellum also called the

little brain

the brain stem it’s a cortical regions

which you don’t really see here

and also the corpus callosum which is

like the bridge between the two halves

of the brain

so looking inside brain

we have a map here you see also that

there’s a cortex

which is in light gray and below it is

the white matter

which is conveniently here in black

because i inverted the image

so importantly the white matter connects

the regions

of your cortex and helps them to form a

network which is also

seen here so you have regions that are

connected

and looking at the anatomy of the brain

this was something researchers or in

general people started to care about

around like mid 1900s

century because before they didn’t

really thought the brain was that

important for our thoughts for our minds

but then they thought maybe maybe it is

a cool organ maybe we should look at it

further

and actually the brain although it’s

pink here

it has a variable cyto architecture so

the layers of the brain

they have different distributions of

cell depending on which region

and this tells us also something about

the function that it’s processing

so right here you have the central

circuits and the

somatocentric cortex and this is the

region where you

feel and move and here in the back

there’s a visual cortex

which is roughly the region that helps

us see

but between these regions there’s a lot

of

brain i can tell you that and these

regions they help us to pay attention

to feel your feelings or to interpret

your feelings and control them

but also to have theory of mind to think

about the minds of other peoples

but also thinking about your own

perspective

so what is kind of what i find super

cool is that these structures they are

organized in a certain hierarchical way

so

the most distance from these primary

regions that support

seeing feeling moving are functions that

support our social our abstract mind

that help us to detach from reality

but also help us to cross the boundary

from within my head

to your head because in this way we can

also be social and understand

other people and we can cooperate think

about their mind think how we all can

act together such as in a climate crisis

so it is super relevant to know how it

works and what is the biology of this

not only to understand the brain and the

mind but also to understand what is the

biology that helps us to act together

and overcome our boundaries

so the pink brain is cool i like holding

it i like puzzling with it but it’s of

course not a real brain right so

the question is how can we look at a

brain

because we all have it but it’s it’s

inside our school and like i could kill

you all and look at your brain but that

would be

well not so productive and a bit morbid

and also a bit stationary because then i

will have one state of your brain

so what we do have and which is great

thing is that we have

mri which stands for magnetic resonance

imaging and this is maybe some of you

have been in an mri scanner

this is like a big magnet and it

pulsates

so you magnetize the hydrogen molecules

or

look in your head or in your body and

you move them to a certain direction so

you change their so-called spin

and then they start resonating and with

radio frequency

coils you can measure differences in how

they spin

and by this way using physics and for

rear transformations

reinvert the photo of your brain and

make a figure

like the one above here and using

different

technical approaches you can measure

different aspects of the brain

such as its function its structure and

its connectivity

so speaking about connectivity you see

here these nicely colored

well pathways between regions and this

is a way to to understand

how brain regions are connected and this

is an

example of structural connectivity but

you have also functional connectivity

which

points to the same thing because it’s

all about the relationship between

different brain regions and and how this

matters to our function

and to our understanding of our mind

so i work a lot with networks and

previously there was also a talk about

computer science

and and i like this yeah using

computational approaches

to understand big complicated systems

such as our brain

and above me you see a twin a pair of

twins

they’re also nasa astronauts which is

great

but for now it’s more important that

they’re mono-psychotic twins

which means that they’re genetically

about 100

identical on the other hand we all

know about dicyclotic twins and they are

not 100 identical they’re about 50

identical and then we also have cousins

for example which is about

25 identical so in this way you can get

a

so-called pedigree of genetic similarity

and using this information and using the

information that we have on the brain

we can compare how heritable every of a

specific feature is of our behavior or

our brain

and in this way we know what is the role

of genetics

in a certain aspect of brain

organization and this is

a thing i’m curious about because we

have this brain but

how did it come the way it is and how

much of it

is genetically determined and and if so

why and

to answer the why question we also have

to look at evolution

because we’re humans but we’re also

primates and

non-human primates such as the macaque

monkey you see over there

they also have a brain and it’s roughly

similar to that of humans but there are

also a lot of differences

and by understanding what are the

similarities between humans

and for example macaques we can know

what evolution

revolutionaries changed but also what

remained

the same and what are the evolutionary

organizational principles

that shape our brain and also shape our

mind

so what i found was that there are two

main organizational axes

that sort of shape the brain and

organize the brain and determine

where a certain region may be and one of

them goes from the back here

to the front of the brain and this is

has to do with neurogenesis so the time

point at which new neurons are born

and also how these neurons behave

whether they’re really well connected

or more local phenomena and

interestingly this axis also relates

from

vision to abstract thought so there’s

also

like more a behavioral relevance to this

axis

the other axis went from the bottom

bottom

to the upside so the inferior to the

superior part of your brain

and this axis relates to a theory of the

dual origin it’s called and it

says that like the brain has like a

differentiable

cyto architecture so so cells of

different brain regions they look

different in a sort of systematic way in

the brain

and this relates to the distance of

these two origins which are called the

hippocampus

and the olfactory cortex but you can

immediately forget it but

what is important that this is also a

relevant organizational principle of the

brain

and it’s seen in humans and macaques and

it’s heritable

and the upper part helps us understand

where

a thing is in a broad sense of where it

is and the lower part helps us

understand what is it

and what does it mean for us

so great access brain mapping

compass maybe we can like know where we

are and how evolution and genes shapes

shape what is inside our head but yeah

what does it mean for our thoughts like

aren’t we all like learning here in

school and if it’s all genetically

determined like

can we change and am i when i have my

thoughts i quit my goal

is this because my parents gave me these

genes or

because of evolution well no luckily

luckily not the brain is also built in a

way that we

can be flexible we can adapt we can

adapt to this changing environment we

can act upon the climate crisis

because our brain is built like it is so

we can we can change

or in different ways of course and

sometimes we cannot change but in

principle

we’re adaptive beings we can move

so one of the questions is that what

happens how can we change how can we

train our minds to be more attentive to

be more compassionate

to take more perspective and this is a

study i did in my

um or i started in my phd in the lab of

tanya singer

and we trained like three different

skills

the first one was about presence and

this is like feeling attention

feeling that you are in a body feeling

this interceptive feeling

um and understanding your breath so

maybe we can dim the lights a bit and

then

we can do a quick exercise here to

become a little bit more present

in case you are not there yet so

the lights are a bit dimp now slowly

and then if you want you can close your

eyes if you trust me but you can keep

them open

and you start breathing slowly

and then you feel your toes getting warm

and this warmth this attentive warmth

creeps up

to your ankles

to your knees

to your hips

and now you pay attention to your whole

leg and it’s warm

then the warmth creeps up to your belly

button

to your breast your shoulders

and then also your fingers get warm

your elbows your shoulders

the point of your nose your eyebrows

and then the upper part of your head

so you’ve now feel this attentive warmth

in your whole body

and maybe breathe out once twice and

open your eyes again

and thank you for undimming the lights

so this was an exercise to feel more

attentive of your body and and

like that we’re all part of not only

we’re not only in our head we’re also a

body right

and another important feature

that we’ve also talked about relative to

refugees in moria for example is

feeling compassion for other people

feeling feelings of care

and caring for people even that we don’t

know and this is this is something that

is not always natural to us right

we love the people we love we have our

friends but apart from that like do we

really care about the lady at the

supermarket

even if she’s like neutrally friendly

so an exercise to try to improve this is

loving-kindness meditation

and in doing so you first feel this

loving and kindness that you hopefully

feel for

some of your family members and for your

friends

and then you expand this to the nice

lady or mr in the supermarket

to the maybe not so friendly lady at the

bakery

and then you expand it further to the

people you don’t know

for example i feel this for you guys in

the audience i don’t know you well but

i can feel loving kindness for you and

then you expand it also

to people you really don’t know that are

far away maybe in the camps of moriah

and then you exercise to feel this also

for people you don’t understand

and don’t know and by feeling this

loving kindness and practicing

this feeling of warmth towards people

you don’t know

you can also maybe increase your

compassion

and on the other hand compassion and

having feelings it also has to do with

emotions and understand that

i have positive emotions i have negative

emotions in myself

and other people have it and i don’t

always understand the emotions

my friends or my kids or my partner feel

but talking about them

and realizing other people have feelings

too is a helpful thing so we did this

diatic exercise

with one other partner and the idea was

you speak for five minutes

in two minutes or two and a half you say

the positive things of your day

what make you feel happy for example

i was happy the sun was shining this

morning it made me feel really

really great and and the coffee tastes

so so good this morning it made me feel

super happy

and i’m so thankful for being here and

that the coffee is okay like this really

made my day but on the other hand

i also have some negative emotions for

example

my kid has this problem with getting

dressed like like he makes

huge tantrums he’s two so it’s normal

but still it’s really like

making me also sad and angry that it’s

always like this

this fight with him like 15 minutes and

i have to like

hold him really tightly and still he

doesn’t understand he needs a new diaper

and

as a parent this is just like takes so

much energy

and then and then i have to be here and

i’m tired and nobody cares and

you know so that’s that’s two things of

me and i i bet you guys

always have also positive and negative

emotions about your day so

by sharing this and listening also and

listening is important

to other people’s feelings you might

also be able to

to improve your compassion and to get

more aware of your

emotions on the other hand

emotions are cool but luckily we’re not

only emotional people we also have

a cognitive rationale side and this is

about having perspectives and different

roles

in your life so on the one hand you can

take perspective on your own thoughts

you can watch them go by you can think

okay i’m like in a train station of my

own mind and i see my mind think oh god

i’m bored or okay

what am i doing here what is what is she

talking about or

interesting the brain yeah

but on the other hand you also have

different roles in yourself so earlier i

mentioned i’m a mother

but i’m also well the child of two

people and these are different roles to

my parents i can still also act like a

child

but to my kids ideally i don’t i’m the

adult there

and right now i’m giving you kind of a

lecture right i’m explaining you about

the brain but

i also i know a bit about the brain

obviously but i’m also

i learned still i’m also still a student

and these roles

they of course also like changed the way

i approached

certain situations and i guess everybody

in this room

is also a child of parents right and and

it’s also a student a person that is

still learning but

it’s also teaching other people what is

right and wrong

maybe so so by acknowledging these roles

and also

telling about a certain perspective

about a certain live event

you and recognizing that other people

also talk about a certain perspective

about their

life events you can get a better it’s

called theory of mind

so understand that people have a

different mind than you and a different

perspective

from where they come from and also by

understanding it

might also be easier to to break the

boundaries that are within me

and the boundary that is in you so maybe

when i talked about my kids some

people that are also parents were like i

i know this so you kind of bond by

sharing

a certain aspect of you

cool social behavior complex behaviors

i guess a lot of examples already came

by in the talks

before me and what is kind of for me as

a

neuroscientist it’s also cool that these

behaviors relate to different

network so to call and regions of the

brain and

for convenience they’re called yellow

which is attention

red which is this compassion emotion and

on the other hand

green which is this theory of mind

taking perspective

and what to me as a more network-based

interested person and also interested in

the topology and place of functions and

behavior in the brain

it’s super nice that they have a

sequence right like it’s like

yellow red green yellow red green it’s a

pattern that emerges all over the brain

there seems to be some logic to it

and this might also tell us something

about the evolution

and the genetic development and

background of these regions

but i guess this is nice but

yeah you were maybe curious like okay

you can do these exercises and we did

this for three months each of these

three

blogs with people and we scanned them

before and after

and before i said the brain is a network

so let’s say this is a brain

and these are the regions and these are

the connections

so when you’re alive the brain can

integrate and segregate so regions can

become relatively functionally more

similar

or more dissimilar and what we found

when you do this mindfulness attention

so you do sort of a relaxation

is that also your brain your brain

doesn’t relax but in a way it relaxes

because regions

they become more segregated from each

other

on the other hand when you do this

effortful theory of mind and think about

your own perspectives and others

perspective

that’s not always easy and also your

brain

responds like that and you see that

regions they integrate more and they

become

closer together because this makes

information processing

across different networks more efficient

and on the other hand we didn’t find any

significant results for for emotions but

what it might be is that emotions are

like the glue

that balance these two end points so to

say of segregation

and integration so to me this is super

exciting

like i don’t understand every aspect of

it but

like it’s super exciting how this

dynamic network that is the brain

can change with experience and also can

learn

so great i’m a basic researcher

um i i do a lot of statistics behind my

computer

i calculate p-values which tell us how

relevant it is and

i told you about the brain and about

some evolution some theory and

okay but but what does it mean and i

already tried to convey why

understanding the brain can also help us

understand

not how to deal with the climate crisis

but why it’s so difficult to make people

cooperate

and how to how to improve that and how

to reach people

and we all have minds and it is relevant

to know

how they work because on the one hand we

can understand behavior a little bit

better

and also how to change it but on the

other hand

i read that one in four people have a

mental or

neurological disorder during their

lifetime and

maybe some of you know people or are

those people that have these issues

and it’s really hard to cure or or to

help these people that suffer

from such conditions and my my hope is

that by mapping the brain

and understanding on the one hand it’s

evolution and it’s genetic basis

and on the other hand also how it might

change in healthy people and

understanding

whether such changes can also occur in

people with disorder

this helps us really to understand maybe

disease and to find

new cures or approaches to connect with

these people

so with that i want to close and i

believe really that mapping the brain

helps us to understand where we are and

where we want to be

thank you

you