by Carrie Wells, The Baltimore Sun
What can we learn about attention by studying bats and owls? In one corner of the basement of Ames Hall at the Johns Hopkins University, Cynthia Moss opened the door of a room where about a dozen Egyptian fruit bats dozed inside a milk crate attached to the wall.
"Come on, sweeties," she said, stirring them up, and they raced in circles around her head.
Adjacent to the climate-controlled bat rooms live 14 barn owls, whose spaces are quieter and where the floors are littered with the remains of bloodied mice - a recent meal - and droppings. Shreesh Mysore often places the owls, tummies down, inside a boxlike apparatus and places little headphones over their ears as part of his research into how the birds focus their attention.
The two professors, who work in Hopkins' department of psychological and brain sciences, share an interest in the study of attention and hope to find ways to collaborate. They believe their work may lead to a better understanding of how blind people navigate the world, or the cause of disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, schizophrenia and autism.
Mysore explains how humans use attention to move through the world like this: As children learn to walk, the task requires great concentration. Once they master walking, it becomes almost automatic, requiring less of their immediate attention unless they trip or run into something. They store the knowledge of how to walk as a memory.
Mysore and Moss believe bats and owls also use memory to navigate.
"There's been an observation over the years that bats make mistakes," Moss said. "They make sounds but aren't listening to the echoes. So if they make mistakes, we infer that they're relying on memory."
Moss's bat lab is covered in black soundproofing material and features a battery of high-speed cameras lined up on the wall and 32 microphones. On a recent day, Wu-Jung Lee, a postdoctoral researcher, was hunched over a laptop on the floor, testing audio of moths' wings flapping. Lee brought in a luna moth in on a string harness to demonstrate how they would record the sound of the insect, and then replay it later with bats in the room.
Such experiments, in which the bats' movements would be captured on the high-speed cameras and their squeaks recorded on the audio equipment, are an attempt to learn more about how bats process information. Moss has about 70 bats representing four different species for her work.
Moss said some blind people use a sort of echo-location - tongue clicks - to navigate, and once had a group of them visit the lab.
"We invited them to the lab thinking we could ask them questions we couldn't ask the bats," she said. "They use a combination of echo-location and memory and experience. I thought, of course this is true for the bats as well."
In Mysore's experiments, once the owl is still, he sticks electrodes as thin as a human hair into its brain while the room is darkened. The owl watches a giant TV screen where white dots flash occasionally against a black background, and various noises are played through headphones. The researchers simultaneously monitor the owl's brain activity to determine how the owl's neural circuits are processing the competing demands for attention.
Mysore said it's not well understood how disorders like ADHD, where there's an inability to focus attention, and autism, where attention is hyper-focused, occur. Much is known about how the brain processes one thing at a time, he said, but not the competing demands for attention that are common in the real world.
By doing the research with the owls, Mysore said, he's learning more about how their brains determine which thing requires more immediate attention - the sound or the white dot - and what that means.
Such experiments can't be performed on humans, Mysore said. "We are very far from figuring out what is going on in the neural circuits," he said.
Hopkins is building new cages for the owls and bats for the building's roof, which are expected to be ready by the spring. They'll have heaters in the winter and the professors hope they will offer a more natural home for the animals than the cages in the basement.
The roof cages, will, of course, be separated and the animals wouldn't be able to see each other.
"Owls are carnivorous," Moss said, "so they would eat the bats if they could."
Explore further: Study shows long tail on luna moth helps to thwart bat attacks (w/ Video)
©2015 The Baltimore Sun
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
Medical Xpress on facebook
Related Stories
Study shows long tail on luna moth helps to thwart bat attacks (w/ Video)
Feb 17, 2015
(Phys.org)—A team of researches with members from several institutions in the U.S. has found that the long tails sported by the luna moth exist as a means to foil attacks by bats. In their paper published ...
'Non-echolocating' fruit bats actually do echolocate, with wing clicks
Dec 04, 2014
In a discovery that overturns conventional wisdom about bats, researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on December 4 have found that Old World fruit bats—long classified as "non-e ...
Hunting bats rely on 'bag of chips effect'
Jan 08, 2015
When bats hunt in groups at night, they rely on the sounds of their fellow bats to tip them off on the best places to a grab a good meal. Researchers reporting their findings in the Cell Press journal Current Bi ...
Rats' and bats' brains work differently on the move
Apr 18, 2013
A new study of brain rhythms in bats and rats challenges a widely used model - based on studies in rodents - of how animals navigate their environment. To get a clearer picture of the processes at work in ...
Study finds analysis of many species required to better understand the brain
Apr 29, 2013
To get a clear picture of how humans and other mammals form memories and find their way through their surroundings, neuroscientists must pay more attention to a broad range of animals rather than focus on ...
Recommended for you
People with multiple sclerosis may have lower levels of key nutrients
Feb 19, 2015
Women with multiple sclerosis (MS) may have lower levels of important antioxidant and anti-inflammatory nutrients, such as folate from food and vitamin E, than healthy people, according to a new study released ...
New brain mapping reveals unknown cell types
Feb 19, 2015
Using a process known as single cell sequencing, scientists at Karolinska Institutet have produced a detailed map of cortical cell types and the genes active within them. The study, which is published in ...
New insights into underlying cellular mechanisms of information processing in the brain
Feb 18, 2015
Researchers at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience and the Pasteur Institute have uncovered a key factor in regulating information transmittal during the early stages of auditory processing.
Stroke researchers report uniqueness of KF-NAP for assessing spatial neglect after stroke
Feb 18, 2015
Stroke researchers have determined that the Kessler Foundation Neglect Assessment Process (KF-NAP) measures severity of spatial neglect during activities of daily living. "Kessler Foundation Neglect Assessment ...
Help for people with muscle cramps?
Feb 18, 2015
A new treatment may bring hope for people who suffer from muscle cramps or spasms from neuromuscular disorders, diseases such as multiple sclerosis or simply from nighttime leg cramps that keep people from sleeping, according ...
Chicken pox virus may be linked to serious condition in the elderly
Feb 18, 2015
A new study links the virus that causes chicken pox and shingles to a condition that inflames blood vessels on the temples and scalp in the elderly, called giant cell arteritis. The study is published in the February 18, ...
User comments
Please sign in to add a comment. Registration is free, and takes less than a minute. Read more
Click here to reset your password.
Sign in to get notified via email when new comments are made.
© Medical Xpress 2011-2014, Science X network
by Carrie Wells, The Baltimore Sun
What can we learn about attention by studying bats and owls? In one corner of the basement of Ames Hall at the Johns Hopkins University, Cynthia Moss opened the door of a room where about a dozen Egyptian fruit bats dozed inside a milk crate attached to the wall.
"Come on, sweeties," she said, stirring them up, and they raced in circles around her head.
Adjacent to the climate-controlled bat rooms live 14 barn owls, whose spaces are quieter and where the floors are littered with the remains of bloodied mice - a recent meal - and droppings. Shreesh Mysore often places the owls, tummies down, inside a boxlike apparatus and places little headphones over their ears as part of his research into how the birds focus their attention.
The two professors, who work in Hopkins' department of psychological and brain sciences, share an interest in the study of attention and hope to find ways to collaborate. They believe their work may lead to a better understanding of how blind people navigate the world, or the cause of disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, schizophrenia and autism.
Mysore explains how humans use attention to move through the world like this: As children learn to walk, the task requires great concentration. Once they master walking, it becomes almost automatic, requiring less of their immediate attention unless they trip or run into something. They store the knowledge of how to walk as a memory.
Mysore and Moss believe bats and owls also use memory to navigate.
"There's been an observation over the years that bats make mistakes," Moss said. "They make sounds but aren't listening to the echoes. So if they make mistakes, we infer that they're relying on memory."
Moss's bat lab is covered in black soundproofing material and features a battery of high-speed cameras lined up on the wall and 32 microphones. On a recent day, Wu-Jung Lee, a postdoctoral researcher, was hunched over a laptop on the floor, testing audio of moths' wings flapping. Lee brought in a luna moth in on a string harness to demonstrate how they would record the sound of the insect, and then replay it later with bats in the room.
Such experiments, in which the bats' movements would be captured on the high-speed cameras and their squeaks recorded on the audio equipment, are an attempt to learn more about how bats process information. Moss has about 70 bats representing four different species for her work.
Moss said some blind people use a sort of echo-location - tongue clicks - to navigate, and once had a group of them visit the lab.
"We invited them to the lab thinking we could ask them questions we couldn't ask the bats," she said. "They use a combination of echo-location and memory and experience. I thought, of course this is true for the bats as well."
In Mysore's experiments, once the owl is still, he sticks electrodes as thin as a human hair into its brain while the room is darkened. The owl watches a giant TV screen where white dots flash occasionally against a black background, and various noises are played through headphones. The researchers simultaneously monitor the owl's brain activity to determine how the owl's neural circuits are processing the competing demands for attention.
Mysore said it's not well understood how disorders like ADHD, where there's an inability to focus attention, and autism, where attention is hyper-focused, occur. Much is known about how the brain processes one thing at a time, he said, but not the competing demands for attention that are common in the real world.
By doing the research with the owls, Mysore said, he's learning more about how their brains determine which thing requires more immediate attention - the sound or the white dot - and what that means.
Such experiments can't be performed on humans, Mysore said. "We are very far from figuring out what is going on in the neural circuits," he said.
Hopkins is building new cages for the owls and bats for the building's roof, which are expected to be ready by the spring. They'll have heaters in the winter and the professors hope they will offer a more natural home for the animals than the cages in the basement.
The roof cages, will, of course, be separated and the animals wouldn't be able to see each other.
"Owls are carnivorous," Moss said, "so they would eat the bats if they could."
Explore further: Study shows long tail on luna moth helps to thwart bat attacks (w/ Video)
©2015 The Baltimore Sun
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
Medical Xpress on facebook
Related Stories
Study shows long tail on luna moth helps to thwart bat attacks (w/ Video)
Feb 17, 2015
(Phys.org)—A team of researches with members from several institutions in the U.S. has found that the long tails sported by the luna moth exist as a means to foil attacks by bats. In their paper published ...
'Non-echolocating' fruit bats actually do echolocate, with wing clicks
Dec 04, 2014
In a discovery that overturns conventional wisdom about bats, researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on December 4 have found that Old World fruit bats—long classified as "non-e ...
Hunting bats rely on 'bag of chips effect'
Jan 08, 2015
When bats hunt in groups at night, they rely on the sounds of their fellow bats to tip them off on the best places to a grab a good meal. Researchers reporting their findings in the Cell Press journal Current Bi ...
Rats' and bats' brains work differently on the move
Apr 18, 2013
A new study of brain rhythms in bats and rats challenges a widely used model - based on studies in rodents - of how animals navigate their environment. To get a clearer picture of the processes at work in ...
Study finds analysis of many species required to better understand the brain
Apr 29, 2013
To get a clear picture of how humans and other mammals form memories and find their way through their surroundings, neuroscientists must pay more attention to a broad range of animals rather than focus on ...
Recommended for you
People with multiple sclerosis may have lower levels of key nutrients
Feb 19, 2015
Women with multiple sclerosis (MS) may have lower levels of important antioxidant and anti-inflammatory nutrients, such as folate from food and vitamin E, than healthy people, according to a new study released ...
New brain mapping reveals unknown cell types
Feb 19, 2015
Using a process known as single cell sequencing, scientists at Karolinska Institutet have produced a detailed map of cortical cell types and the genes active within them. The study, which is published in ...
New insights into underlying cellular mechanisms of information processing in the brain
Feb 18, 2015
Researchers at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience and the Pasteur Institute have uncovered a key factor in regulating information transmittal during the early stages of auditory processing.
Stroke researchers report uniqueness of KF-NAP for assessing spatial neglect after stroke
Feb 18, 2015
Stroke researchers have determined that the Kessler Foundation Neglect Assessment Process (KF-NAP) measures severity of spatial neglect during activities of daily living. "Kessler Foundation Neglect Assessment ...
Help for people with muscle cramps?
Feb 18, 2015
A new treatment may bring hope for people who suffer from muscle cramps or spasms from neuromuscular disorders, diseases such as multiple sclerosis or simply from nighttime leg cramps that keep people from sleeping, according ...
Chicken pox virus may be linked to serious condition in the elderly
Feb 18, 2015
A new study links the virus that causes chicken pox and shingles to a condition that inflames blood vessels on the temples and scalp in the elderly, called giant cell arteritis. The study is published in the February 18, ...
User comments
Please sign in to add a comment. Registration is free, and takes less than a minute. Read more
Click here
to reset your password.
Sign in to get notified via email when new comments are made.
© Medical Xpress 2011-2014, Science X network
0 comments:
Post a Comment