Deep brain stimulationDeep brain stimulation (DBS) is a neurosurgical procedure involving the placement of a medical device called a neurostimulator, which sends electrical impulses, through implanted electrodes, to specific targets in the brain (the brain nucleus) for the treatment of movement disorders, including Parkinson's disease, essential tremor, dystonia, and other conditions such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and epilepsy. While its underlying principles and mechanisms are not fully understood, DBS directly changes brain activity in a controlled manner.
Self-awarenessIn philosophy of self, self-awareness is the experience of one's own personality or individuality. It is not to be confused with consciousness in the sense of qualia. While consciousness is being aware of one's environment, body, and lifestyle, self-awareness is the recognition of that awareness. Self-awareness is how an individual experiences and understands their own character, feelings, motives, and desires. Neural basis of self There are questions regarding what part of the brain allows us to be self-aware and how we are biologically programmed to be self-aware.
HallucinationA hallucination is a perception in the absence of an external stimulus that has the qualities of a real perception. Hallucinations are vivid, substantial, and are perceived to be located in external objective space. Hallucination is a combination of two conscious states of brain wakefulness and REM sleep. They are distinguishable from several related phenomena, such as dreaming (REM sleep), which does not involve wakefulness; pseudohallucination, which does not mimic real perception, and is accurately perceived as unreal; illusion, which involves distorted or misinterpreted real perception; and , which does not mimic real perception, and is under voluntary control.
Motor cortexThe motor cortex is the region of the cerebral cortex involved in the planning, control, and execution of voluntary movements. The motor cortex is an area of the frontal lobe located in the posterior precentral gyrus immediately anterior to the central sulcus. The motor cortex can be divided into three areas: 1. The primary motor cortex is the main contributor to generating neural impulses that pass down to the spinal cord and control the execution of movement. However, some of the other motor areas in the brain also play a role in this function.
Time perceptionThe study of time perception or chronoception is a field within psychology, cognitive linguistics and neuroscience that refers to the subjective experience, or sense, of time, which is measured by someone's own perception of the duration of the indefinite and unfolding of events. The perceived time interval between two successive events is referred to as perceived duration. Though directly experiencing or understanding another person's perception of time is not possible, perception can be objectively studied and inferred through a number of scientific experiments.
Brain–computer interfaceA brain–computer interface (BCI), sometimes called a brain–machine interface (BMI) or smartbrain, is a direct communication pathway between the brain's electrical activity and an external device, most commonly a computer or robotic limb. BCIs are often directed at researching, mapping, assisting, augmenting, or repairing human cognitive or sensory-motor functions. They are often conceptualized as a human–machine interface that skips the intermediary component of the physical movement of body parts, although they also raise the possibility of the erasure of the discreteness of brain and machine.
Motor controlMotor control is the regulation of movement in organisms that possess a nervous system. Motor control includes reflexes as well as directed movement. To control movement, the nervous system must integrate multimodal sensory information (both from the external world as well as proprioception) and elicit the necessary signals to recruit muscles to carry out a goal. This pathway spans many disciplines, including multisensory integration, signal processing, coordination, biomechanics, and cognition, and the computational challenges are often discussed under the term sensorimotor control.
AwarenessIn philosophy and psychology, awareness is a concept about knowing, perceiving and being cognizant of events. Another definition describes it as a state wherein a subject is aware of some information when that information is directly available to bring to bear in the direction of a wide range of behavioral actions. The concept is often synonymous to consciousness and is also understood as being consciousness itself. The states of awareness are also associated with the states of experience so that the structure represented in awareness is mirrored in the structure of experience.
Functional magnetic resonance imagingFunctional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI (fMRI) measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow. This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled. When an area of the brain is in use, blood flow to that region also increases. The primary form of fMRI uses the blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) contrast, discovered by Seiji Ogawa in 1990.
Auditory hallucinationAn auditory hallucination, or paracusia, is a form of hallucination that involves perceiving sounds without auditory stimulus. While experiencing an auditory hallucination, the affected person would hear a sound or sounds which did not come from the natural environment. A common form of auditory hallucination involves hearing one or more voices without a speaker present, known as an auditory verbal hallucination. This may be associated with psychotic disorders, most notably schizophrenia, and this phenomenon is often used to diagnose these conditions.
