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Brain enhancement through cognitive training: a new insight from brain connectome - PubMed

  • ️Thu Jan 01 2015

Review

Brain enhancement through cognitive training: a new insight from brain connectome

Fumihiko Taya et al. Front Syst Neurosci. 2015.

Abstract

Owing to the recent advances in neurotechnology and the progress in understanding of brain cognitive functions, improvements of cognitive performance or acceleration of learning process with brain enhancement systems is not out of our reach anymore, on the contrary, it is a tangible target of contemporary research. Although a variety of approaches have been proposed, we will mainly focus on cognitive training interventions, in which learners repeatedly perform cognitive tasks to improve their cognitive abilities. In this review article, we propose that the learning process during the cognitive training can be facilitated by an assistive system monitoring cognitive workloads using electroencephalography (EEG) biomarkers, and the brain connectome approach can provide additional valuable biomarkers for facilitating leaners' learning processes. For the purpose, we will introduce studies on the cognitive training interventions, EEG biomarkers for cognitive workload, and human brain connectome. As cognitive overload and mental fatigue would reduce or even eliminate gains of cognitive training interventions, a real-time monitoring of cognitive workload can facilitate the learning process by flexibly adjusting difficulty levels of the training task. Moreover, cognitive training interventions should have effects on brain sub-networks, not on a single brain region, and graph theoretical network metrics quantifying topological architecture of the brain network can differentiate with respect to individual cognitive states as well as to different individuals' cognitive abilities, suggesting that the connectome is a valuable approach for tracking the learning progress. Although only a few studies have exploited the connectome approach for studying alterations of the brain network induced by cognitive training interventions so far, we believe that it would be a useful technique for capturing improvements of cognitive functions.

Keywords: biomarkers; brain connectome; cognitive training; electroencephalography (EEG); functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1

A schematic diagram depicting connections between the three different topics. Improvement of cognitive functions through cognitive training interventions is the ultimate goal of the brain enhancement system we propose. EEG biomarkers can facilitate learners’ learning process through a real-time monitoring of cognitive states while brain connectome approach can improve detection of cognitive states as well as understanding of neural mechanism underlying cognitive training.

Figure 2
Figure 2

Cross-frequency causal interactions revealed by Phase Locking Values (PLV) for multiple cognitive workload levels during a mental arithmetic task. Three different thresholds have been applied to each type of coupling (F/θ, POα2, CFC) (Adapted from Dimitriadis et al., 2014). a permission will be obtained from the publisher after acceptance, the image will be replaced with high-resolution version.

Figure 3
Figure 3

Functional connectivity patterns in the low alpha (8–10 Hz) frequency band obtained for (A) 1st and (B) 4th quartile during the PVT task performance. The cortical connections are weaker at left prefrontal cortex compared to right one in the 4th quartile (Adapted from Sun et al., 2014a).

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