Measuring thoughts
When a jazz musician improvises or a religious
person prays to God, it results in brain activity. In recent years,
brain researchers have been interested in finding out exactly what
happens when thoughts and feelings are created. Many of the
research findings can be used to treat the numerous diseases that
occur in the brain.
Aarhus University is perhaps the most advanced university in the world when it comes to probing what happens in the human consciousness and why we behave the way we do. The technical term for this research is cognitive neuroscience research. A grant of EUR 16 million from the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation made it possible to create a unique multidisciplinary research forum that was given the name MindLab.
The grant was allocated after an international expert panel had given the brain research at Aarhus University top marks for the last seven to eight years of work in this field. With the creation of MindLab, the university has the best possible opportunities to maintain its position as a leader in the field.
Multidisciplinary research environment
“We’ve succeeded in attracting the world’s best researchers in this field to Aarhus because we can offer a unique research environment. One of the things that makes foreign experts spend a couple of years in Aarhus is the multidisciplinary research environment that Aarhus University is known to foster,” says Professor Leif Østergaard, DrMedSc, Director of MindLab.
The new research centre will be built in the course of 2009, and the 120 researchers from six different faculties have many different backgrounds. Physicists, mathematicians, statisticians, psychologists, doctors, language researchers, researchers in religion, anthropologists and music researchers will be working together in their efforts to discover as many different aspects as possible of the complex structure of man’s brain and consciousness.
“At many universities, the competition between researchers is so fierce that individual scientists are afraid to talk to colleagues in the next office about their work. The tradition at Aarhus University, however, is to open up to other subject groups, and this has given us a good reputation around the world,” says Professor Østergaard.
He also experiences that many students are attracted to the multidisciplinary environment.
“The students also wish to break with the restrictive traditional way of thinking, where you only associate with people from your own faculty. They’ve realised that they discover completely new aspects of their subjects when different competences are combined at a high level,” says Professor Østergaard.
Modern technology
Students and researchers have the latest technology at their disposal. Aarhus University has recently received a grant of EUR 2.1 million for the purchase of a so-called MEG brain scanner – the first of its kind in Denmark. The scanner records images of brain activity at intervals of 1/1000 of a second. This is much faster than the familiar PET and MRI scanners, which record images at intervals of a couple of seconds or minutes. The new MEG technology enables the researchers to see how the brain reacts when a thought arises.
The new scanner will be located at the Danish Neuroscience Research Centre at Aarhus University Hospital, Aarhus Hospital. The collaboration with the hospital sector is extremely important for MindLab. Today, brain diseases account for a third of the burden on the Danish health system, and MindLab therefore wishes to make a great effort to produce research results that can be used to cure patients.
“One of the huge challenges will be to convert all the knowledge we have about the brain so it can be used to treat serious brain diseases. Knowledge about how we learn and remember language, for instance, can be used to train the brain to remember once more after suffering brain damage,” says Professor Østergaard.
In addition, MindLab will contribute to improved diagnosis and treatment of illnesses such as depression, autism, schizophrenia and cerebral thromboses.
The MindLab grant is divided over five years, and Professor Østergaard believes considerable progress will be made during this period.
“I’m sure we’ll go a long way with mapping human consciousness, and I’m also sure that we’ll attract many students,” he says.
More information
Read more about brain research at Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience (CFIN)
Professor Leif Østergaard is Director of MindLab, a new
multidisciplinary brain research forum, which will be built in the
course of 2009.