Research reveals that the mind-body connection is built into the structure of the brain

A calm body, a calm mind, mindfulness practitioners say. A new study by researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis shows that the idea that the body and mind are intimately intertwined is more than just an abstraction. Some indicate that they are connected to networks involved in thinking and planning, and controlling involuntary bodily functions such as blood pressure and heart rate. The findings reveal a literal connection between body and mind in the very structure of the brain.

A study published in the journal on April 19 Nature, which may help explain some puzzling phenomena, such as why anxiety makes some people want to walk back and forth. Why stimulating the vagus nerve, which regulates visceral functions such as digestion and heart rate, relieves depression. And why do people who exercise regularly report having a more positive outlook on life?

Meditators say that calming the body, such as through breathing exercises, calms the mind. For example, this kind of practice can be very helpful for people with anxiety, but so far there isn’t much scientific evidence of how it works. I found We’ve discovered where the hyperactive, goal-oriented “go, go, go” part of the mind connects to the part of the brain that controls breathing and heart rate. Soothing one should definitely have a feedback effect on the other. ”

Evan M. Gordon, PhD, First Author, Assistant Professor of Radiology, Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, School of Medicine

Gordon and lead author Nico Dosenbach, M.D., associate professor of neurology, did not attempt to answer age-old philosophical questions about the relationship between body and mind. Using , we set out to validate long-established maps of brain regions that control movement.

In the 1930s, neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield, MD, mapped the motor cortex of the brain by delivering small electrical shocks to the exposed brains of people undergoing brain surgery and noting their response. He found that stimulating thin strips of tissue in each half of the brain caused spasms in specific body parts. Furthermore, the control regions in the brain are arranged in the same order as the body parts they direct, with the toes on one end of each strip and the face on the other. Penfield’s map of motor regions of the brain -; depicted as a homunculus, or “little man” -; has become a staple in neuroscience textbooks.

Gordon, Dosenbach, and colleagues set out to replicate Penfield’s study using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). They recruited seven healthy adults to undergo fMRI brain scans for hours while they were resting or working.From this dense dataset, an individual brain map was created for each participant. Did. We then validated our results using his three large publicly available fMRI datasets. The Human Connectome Project, the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, and the UK Biobank – which together contain brain scans of about 50,000 people.

To their surprise, they found that Penfield’s map was incorrect. Foot control was where Penfield identified. Same hands and face. However, another three of his regions that were interspersed with these three key areas did not appear to be directly involved in movement, despite being in motor regions of the brain.

Furthermore, the non-motor areas looked different than the motor areas. They appeared paler and were strongly connected to each other and to other parts of the brain involved in controlling internal organs and functions such as thinking, planning, mental alertness, pain, blood pressure and heart rate. When I went, I found that the motionless areas did not become active while I was in motion, but became active when I thought about moving.

“All these connections make sense when you consider what the brain is really for,” said Dosenbach. “The brain is about navigating in your environment so that you can achieve your goals without hurting or killing yourself. Pain is the most powerful feedback, isn’t it?

Dosenbach and Gordon named the newly identified network the Somato (body)-Cognitive (mind) Action Network, or SCAN.To understand how networks have developed and evolved, they
We scanned the brains of newborns, 1-year-olds, and 9-year-olds. They also analyzed previously collected data in nine monkeys. This network was undetectable in neonates, but was clearly evident at 1 year of age and almost adult-like at 9 years of age. Monkeys had smaller, more rudimentary systems without the extensive connections found in humans.

“It could have started as a simpler system to integrate movement and physiology, for example, to avoid fainting when standing up,” Gordon said. “But as we evolved into more complex thinking and planning organisms, our systems were upgraded to incorporate highly complex cognitive components.”

Clues to the existence of mind-body networks have been around for a long time, littered with isolated papers and cryptic observations.

“Penfield was brilliant, his ideas were dominant for 90 years and created a blind spot in the field,” says Biomedical Engineering, Pediatrics, Occupational Therapy, Radiology, and Psychology and Brain Science. “Once we started researching, we found a lot of published data that didn’t quite match his thinking, as well as alternative interpretations that had been ignored. I synthesized it and came up with a new way of thinking about how the body and mind are connected.”