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The restless brain: how intrinsic activity organizes brain function
Traditionally studies of brain function have focused on task-evoked responses. By their very nature such experiments tacitly encourage a reflexive view of brain function. While such an approach has been remarkably productive at all levels of neuroscience, it ignores the alternative possibility that...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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The Royal Society
2015
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4387513/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25823869 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2014.0172 |
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author | Raichle, Marcus E. |
author_facet | Raichle, Marcus E. |
author_sort | Raichle, Marcus E. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Traditionally studies of brain function have focused on task-evoked responses. By their very nature such experiments tacitly encourage a reflexive view of brain function. While such an approach has been remarkably productive at all levels of neuroscience, it ignores the alternative possibility that brain functions are mainly intrinsic and ongoing, involving information processing for interpreting, responding to and predicting environmental demands. I suggest that the latter view best captures the essence of brain function, a position that accords well with the allocation of the brain's energy resources, its limited access to sensory information and a dynamic, intrinsic functional organization. The nature of this intrinsic activity, which exhibits a surprising level of organization with dimensions of both space and time, is revealed in the ongoing activity of the brain and its metabolism. As we look to the future, understanding the nature of this intrinsic activity will require integrating knowledge from cognitive and systems neuroscience with cellular and molecular neuroscience where ion channels, receptors, components of signal transduction and metabolic pathways are all in a constant state of flux. The reward for doing so will be a much better understanding of human behaviour in health and disease. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4387513 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | The Royal Society |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-43875132015-05-19 The restless brain: how intrinsic activity organizes brain function Raichle, Marcus E. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci Articles Traditionally studies of brain function have focused on task-evoked responses. By their very nature such experiments tacitly encourage a reflexive view of brain function. While such an approach has been remarkably productive at all levels of neuroscience, it ignores the alternative possibility that brain functions are mainly intrinsic and ongoing, involving information processing for interpreting, responding to and predicting environmental demands. I suggest that the latter view best captures the essence of brain function, a position that accords well with the allocation of the brain's energy resources, its limited access to sensory information and a dynamic, intrinsic functional organization. The nature of this intrinsic activity, which exhibits a surprising level of organization with dimensions of both space and time, is revealed in the ongoing activity of the brain and its metabolism. As we look to the future, understanding the nature of this intrinsic activity will require integrating knowledge from cognitive and systems neuroscience with cellular and molecular neuroscience where ion channels, receptors, components of signal transduction and metabolic pathways are all in a constant state of flux. The reward for doing so will be a much better understanding of human behaviour in health and disease. The Royal Society 2015-05-19 /pmc/articles/PMC4387513/ /pubmed/25823869 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2014.0172 Text en http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ © 2015 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Articles Raichle, Marcus E. The restless brain: how intrinsic activity organizes brain function |
title | The restless brain: how intrinsic activity organizes brain function |
title_full | The restless brain: how intrinsic activity organizes brain function |
title_fullStr | The restless brain: how intrinsic activity organizes brain function |
title_full_unstemmed | The restless brain: how intrinsic activity organizes brain function |
title_short | The restless brain: how intrinsic activity organizes brain function |
title_sort | restless brain: how intrinsic activity organizes brain function |
topic | Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4387513/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25823869 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2014.0172 |
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