Making Connections

The article we read for today, "Dynamic cycles of cognitive and brain development: Measuring growth in mind, brain, and education," was especially interesting to me because the concepts it discussed were directly connected to the research I'm currently doing. There was a specific passage (p. 138) which spoke about monitoring the EEG energy and correlations between brain waves from different parts of the brain certain activities. The research I am involved in looks at the P300 brainwave in rats which we believe has a correlation with memory. We are looking at the central and parietal sections (both left and right for both) and, similarly to the article, started at one level and once the rats seem to remember the activity and show that memory and practice, tweak the level a bit and see if they can adjust. The rats first learned that by pushing a lever a food pellet would come out. The P300 brainwave grew gradually bigger each day until it tapered off, then we added a "food tone" which indicated the food would come out and the rats had to learn that not every time they pushed the lever food came out, instead they had to push the lever and if they heard a tone food would come out. We are currently in the stage in which there are two tones: a food tone and a non-food tone and are seeing if the rats can distinguish between the two. It's interesting how accurate figure 8.10 on p.143 is to what we've experienced.