Sara Moser/Washington University
Key points:
- New findings show the mind and body are literally connected in a specific area of the brain.
- Researchers showed that parts of the brain area that control movement are plugged into networks involved in thinking and planning, and in control of involuntary bodily functions such as blood pressure and heartbeat.
- The research could help explain some phenomena, such as why anxiety makes some people want to pace back and forth.
In a new study, scientists have found that “calm body, calm mind” is more than just a phrase—the body-mind connection is literally built into the brain.
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis discovered that parts of the brain that control movement are plugged into networks involved in thinking and planning, and in control of involuntary bodily functions such as blood pressure and heartbeat.
In the 1930s, neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield mapped such motor areas of the brain by applying small jolts of electricity to the exposed brains of people undergoing brain surgery. Penfield’s map of the motor regions of the brain—depicted as a homunculus, or “little man”—has become a staple of neuroscience textbooks.
But, when the team at Washington University went to replicate Penfield’s work with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), they discovered a few inconsistencies. For example, control of the feet was in the spot Penfield had identified, and the same went for the hands and the face. But interspersed with those three key areas were another three areas that did not seem to be directly involved in movement at all, even though they lay in the brain’s motor area.
Moreover, the non-movement areas looked different than the movement areas. Further imaging experiments showed that while the non-movement areas did not become active during movement, they did become active when the person thought about moving.
“All of these connections make sense if you think about what the brain is really for,” said senior author Nico Dosenbach, associate professor of neurology. “The brain is for successfully behaving in the environment so you can achieve your goals without hurting or killing yourself. You move your body for a reason. Of course, the motor areas must be connected to executive function and control of basic bodily processes, like blood pressure and pain.”
Dosenbach and colleague Evan Gordon named the newly identified network the Somato (body)-Cognitive (mind) Action Network, or SCAN. To better understand the network, they scanned the brains of a newborn, a 1-year-old and a 9-year-old. They also analyzed data that had been previously collected on nine monkeys. The network was not detectable in the newborn, but it was clearly evident in the 1-year-old and nearly adult-like in the 9-year-old. The monkeys had a smaller, more rudimentary system without the extensive connections seen in humans.
“This may have started as a simpler system to integrate movement with physiology so that we don’t pass out, for example, when we stand up,” Gordon said. “But as we evolved into organisms that do much more complex thinking and planning, the system has been upgraded to plug in a lot of very complex cognitive elements.”