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Some brain signals are rhythmic, others non‑rhythmic – the latter long dismissed as mere neural noise. Now, an international research team led by the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (Moritz Gerster, Arno Villringer, and Vadim Nikulin) has revealed that this so‑called “noise” represents a previously overlooked signature that reflects Parkinson’s disease symptoms. The new study, published in eBioMedicine, analyzed data from 119 patients—making it one of the largest investigations of its kind.
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While popular wisdom associates the heart with emotions and the brain with reason, the scientific world seems to be increasingly convinced that all mental processes are determined solely by the brain. Interestingly, however, there is growing evidence that the heart, which also contains nerve cells, has a strong influence on thinking and feeling. In an opinion paper recently published in the journal Trends in Neurosciences, Arno Villringer, Vadim Nikulin and Michael Gaebler from the MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MPI CBS) propose a new concept that explains both the important role of the heart in many mental processes and the frequent co-occurrence of cardiovascular and mental illnesses.
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We know this from sport or rehabilitation: if you imagine a movement and practise it with the corresponding kinaesthetic feeling in your head, you can often improve your performance. Magdalena Gippert, Arno Villringer, Bernhard Sehm and Vadim Nikulin from MPI CBS in Leipzig have now investigated whether imagining just a part of a motor sequence is sufficient to support the learning of the entire movement. They used an exoskeleton robot to measure the motor learning of the study participants. The results of the study now published in PNAS could, among other things, help to improve the recovery of motor skills after a stroke through targeted imagination training.
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