- Scientists Decode Brain Farts -

[Lantean]

Behold, my very first thread in this section.

Article:

Scientists decode brain farts

Up to 30 seconds before your goof, the brain starts acting abnormally


We've all goofed up and flubbed up things we've previously done time and again.

It turns out the root of these brain farts may be a special kind of abnormal brain activity that begins up to 30 seconds before a mistake even happens.

The solution to such screw-ups could be a kind of mind-reading hat, a device to predict and even prevent mindless errors that can threaten lives.

When people blunder after performing the same task over and over, scientists had suspected that such lapses were due to momentary hiccups in concentration. Still, little was known about what the brain was actually doing before such errors.

To investigate further, the brains of volunteers were scanned as they performed a monotonous task — repetitively pushing buttons that matched images flashed at them.

Findings ‘spooked’ scientists

Unexpectedly, before volunteers made errors, their brains started displaying abnormal behavior ... up to a half-minute beforehand.

"We thought initially that it would be quite remarkable if we were to find abnormal activity six or so seconds ahead," said researcher Tom Eichele, a neuroscientist at the University of Bergen in Norway. "That the entire process spans across a much longer timescale was quite astonishing and spooked us, such that we checked this finding over and over again."

One set of brain regions that is normally active only when a person is awake and relaxed began firing up — in other words, it's as if the brain started resting. At the same time, another group of brain regions that is usually lively when a person is sustaining effort on a task began toning down. After people made and detected any mistakes, the abnormal behavior went away.

The international team of researchers suspects this abnormal behavior is the result of the brain attempting to save effort on a task. When the brain goes too far, errors occur.

"We did not find much evidence that the brain is just getting tired. However, I don't think that we understand it well enough to bet all our money yet," Eichele said.

If portable devices could detect this abnormal brain activity before an accident happened, they could save lives — say, by sounding an alert before a slip is made while driving a car or operating a piece of machinery in a factory.

The problem is the researchers scanned the brains of volunteers using functional MRI. This conventionally has patients lying down in a large tube while slowly getting probed with powerful magnetic fields and radio wave pulses — not exactly ideal helping people in everyday situations.

A mind-reading hat?

However, if such abnormal brain activity can get detected simply using electrodes on the scalp, then brain-scanning caps under development for video games and other applications might work, Eichele said. "It, at least, does not seem technically impossible," he told LiveScience.


Even if a mind-reading hat can detect this abnormal brain activity, there may be too many brain waves to decipher out any early warning signals, Eichele cautioned. "It might give out warnings all the time, which would be helpful, or not give you any warning, which is also not helpful," he said. "We have to figure out how sensitive and how specific we can go."

Eichele and his colleagues soon hope to see if electrodes on the scalp can detect these signals. "We might also take experiments into virtual reality — virtual car driving, virtual piloting — to look for these signals," he said.

The scientists detailed their findings online April 21 in the journal Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences.

© 2008 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.

Source.


How is this worthy of I:SB? Well, despite what you might think, brain farts are serious business. I myself, am a clumsy, forgetful, and absent-minded person. I'm a brain fart kind of guy. Sad, but true. But as this article points out, brain farts could be a possible danger. I never knew that. It might or might not explain some car accidents or other accidents. The new fact that up to thirty seconds of abnormal brain activity can happen before our brain glitches is spooky indeed, though interesting.

Do you really think we'd be able to make mind-reading hats? I don't know if it could save lives. It might prove to be a further distraction, like a cellular phone going off.

What do you guys think about this article/research/topic?

[Erimgard]

Hah, so when you do something over and over again, the brain eventually just gets bored of the monotony and slows down for a while? That explains a few things. It's a paradigm [I believe that's the correct word] just like the human as a whole, the brain gets lazy and bored and stops doing what it's supposed to.

[Notsil]

I read through that, but I don't have much to say at all.

But that's freaking cool. Its entirely possible that if we could figure this out, scientists could eventually use the same study techniques to possible "read minds".

As I said, freakin' cool.

[Hugh]

The whole thing is very interesting and I had no idea the brain worked like that, I thought that brain farts were just random drops in concentration but I doubt a mind-reading hat will be released, and if they did, I'd imagine that it would be more annoying than useful.

[Eggys]

Before we come to a conclusion, understand that the brain is right now impossible to understand completely. Every person's brain is naturally different, and that would probably force this "brain fart" to depend on the person's brain itself.

[ShadowLink92]

Originally Posted by Eggys

Before we come to a conclusion, understand that the brain is right now impossible to understand completely. Every person's brain is naturally different, and that would probably force this "brain fart" to depend on the person's brain itself.

True, true. If we apply neural-sensing headsets to detecting abnormal brain activity, they should first be configured to recognize its specific owner's brain patterns, as what is normal in one person could very well be dangerous in another.

It is indeed spooky that "brain farts" are preceded by such a long period of abnormal brain function.