Neuroscience Fun Fact: Losing half of your brain doesn't equal losing half of your brain function.
Neuroscience Fun Fact 2: Performance suppresses the self, but activates socialization.
Cut off half of the brain, read and recognize people without worry
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) recently published a stunning brain science discovery: People who underwent hemispherectomy as children accurately recognized the difference between two words or two faces more than 80% of the time.
This achievement demonstrates the enormous plasticity of the brain for the first time ever. Brain tissue that lacks half its volume can still have such recognition power, and can complete the task that should be divided and cooperated by the left and right hemispheres, which shows the potential of the brain to reconstruct neural networks and adapt to serious defects.
Corresponding author Dr. Marlene Behrmann, a professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, said: "Does the brain function from birth, or does it dynamically form its functions as it matures, as it experiences its environment?" This question drives the development of vision science and neurobiology. ”
"Through the observational analysis of hemiceremy patients, we can understand the functional upper limit of a single cerebral hemisphere. With this result, we embarked on a journey to uncover human neuroplasticity and began to focus on the brain's ability to reorganize. ”
"Neuroplasticity" refers to processes that "allow the brain to change its activity and rewire itself structurally or functionally in response to changes in the environment."
The brain in its early development has the greatest plasticity. As we age, the left and right hemispheres of the brain become more and more divided, each with different responsibilities: the mature left hemisphere is the main area for reading words, and the mature right hemisphere is the main force for recognizing faces.
However, when the nervous system matures to a certain stage, the division of the left and right brains tends to be rigid (so that the left and right cannot replace each other), and some adults who have brain lesions due to stroke or tumor may have dyslexia (left brain damage) or face blindness (right brain damage).
So what happens when the brain is forced to change and adapt during a stage that is still highly plastic: childhood? This question is also the starting point for this new work of the Bellman team.
As mentioned earlier, the team recruited 40 special patients who underwent complete hemiceremy as children to control epilepsy.
Bellman and colleagues measured the volunteers' word recognition and face recognition skills.
The test methods are to show English word pairs and character photo pairs. Each pair of words may be the same, or there may be a difference in one letter, such as "soap" and "soup", "tank" and "tack", and the faces of each pair of characters may or may not be the same. The word and photo pairs only stay on the screen for a fraction of a second, and the volunteers must judge the same or different in a split second.
The results were very unexpected, with the average accuracy of hemicerebral resection distinguishing text and faces more than 80%, and the difference in recognition ability between them and ordinary people was less than 10%.
Dr Michael Granovetter, first author of the paper, said: "Surprisingly, losing half of the brain is not the same as losing half of the brain function. While we cannot definitively predict the impact of hemienceresection, we are encouraged by the performance of these patients. The more we learn about neuroplasticity, the more information we can provide for parents facing difficult decisions. ”
The actor's self-cultivation inhibits self-awareness
Russian dramatist Stanislavsky pointed out in his book "The Self-Cultivation of Actors" that acting is ultimately a form of pretence, in which the actor pretends to be another person, not just memorizing lines in a routine.
So, will an actor in a performing state believe, or to what extent, that he is the character?
From a cognitive science perspective, by measuring changes in specific brain activity, we can assess how much "sense of self" an actor has—if his self-awareness when acting is significantly weaker than usual, then we can infer that he has "entered the play" and believes that he is the character himself.
Using wearable brain imaging technology and other physiological measurement devices, a research team at UCL recently measured the brain activity of professional actors during rehearsals of Shakespeare's comedy "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and published the results in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.
The results showed that when the six actors who were subjected to the experiment heard their real names during the performance, each person's response was inhibited by the left prefrontal cortex, and the activity of the left prefrontal cortex is usually related to self-awareness.
On the other hand, when the actors are not performing, they react normally when they hear the name.
Dwaynica Greaves, lead author of the paper, said:
Calling out a person's name is a powerful, convincing calling that generally makes the other person turn his head; The other party's neural response will involve the prefrontal cortex. Our work shows that actors seem to learn to inhibit self-awareness.
This is the first time neuroscientists have recorded the brain activity of actors in real performance states. We hope this work will help us understand the role of drama training on the brain and create new connections between neuroscientists and theater professionals.
A similar exploration was made in a 2019 work, but the team lacked wearable measurement equipment, so the performance students could only lie down on the MRI equipment, ask them to face the machine, perform lines without movement, and finally came to the conclusion that "the activity of the prefrontal cortex is inhibited".
In addition to analyzing self-awareness, Graves et al. investigated interpersonal coordination between pairs of rehearsal actors, observing the synchronization of their limbs, heart rate, and brain activity.
The results showed that the right inferior frontal gyrus and the right frontal cortex activity patterns of the two actors rehearsed in pairs were similar. These brain regions are involved in social interaction and action planning. In other words, in the process of complex social interaction, the specific brain regions of the interaction object do have coordination.
Graves put it this way:
These findings tell us that collaboration between cognitive science and theater may help lead to new theories about social interaction. Our team will continue to study the impact of drama training on actors' sense of self. Drama training is expected to help people develop important social cognitive skills, for example, people with autism may be able to learn social skills by participating in performances.
Source:
Word and face recognition can be adequately supported with half a brain
Theater neuroscience: Actors suppress their sense of self when playing new character
Study shows people give up part of themselves when acting
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