Neurochemistry plays a crucial role in regulating the electrical brain waves that our brains produce. These brain waves, including Theta, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc., are directly influenced by the levels of neurotransmitters and hormones present in our brain. Here’s a closer look at how neurochemistry impacts the different types of brain waves:
This research suggests that examining brain wave activity could be helpful in figuring out how to teach people to learn certain kinds of information, or to perform certain tasks. Throughout the day your brain will utilise certain waves to process certain situations. For example, if you’re in a meeting with a business partner, chances are you’re exhibiting higher levels of Beta and Gamma waves.
It seemed interesting to us whether these various forms of spirituality have a different impact on the electrophysiological activity of the brain. We wondered whether the possible effect would be more pronounced in people with a higher level of spiritual transcendence. When we fall asleep we go from drowsy, light attention that’s easily roused (alpha), to being relaxed and no longer alert (theta), to being deeply asleep (delta). Eventually we invented “functional MRI”, which allows us to link brain activity with certain functions or behaviours in real time by measuring the brain’s use of oxygenated blood during a task. Anatomical localization of electrode placement was accomplished using independent processing pipelines for depth and surface electrode localization. For patients with MTL depth electrodes, hippocampal subfields and MTL cortices were automatically labeled in a pre-implant, T2-weighted MRI using the automatic segmentation of hippocampal subfields multi-atlas segmentation method42.
Electroencephalographic (EEG) frequency band studies of trauma and/or posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). More research is needed to further illustrate how theta brain wave patterns could be used to help people learn and form memories, and to ward off anxiety. They found that theta wave oscillations increased when the participants were trying to move around in an unfamiliar environment. Additionally, the researchers learned that theta wave activity tended to speed up when the study participants moved faster. Although research is limited, there is some information that’s come to light about theta brain waves in recent years. All five types of brain waves have different but important roles to play when it comes to your health and wellbeing.
Theta Waves
Negative weights indicate ROI pairs that, on average, desynchronized when a word was recalled successfully, and positive weights indicate ROI pairs that synchronized when a word was recalled successfully. We zeroed-out any ROI pairs in the adjacency matrix represented by less than 7 subjects’ worth of data, to limit the likelihood that our population-level matrix is driven by strong effects in a single or very small number of individuals. 1243 ROI pairs (out of a possible total of 2701) were excluded due to low subject counts, comprised largely of interhemispheric pairs (795 pairs, or 64% of those excluded) and pairs involving regions where electrodes are less commonly placed, including basal ganglia and occipital cortex. Delta brain waves are slow and loud brain waves that have a low frequency and are deeply penetrating, like a drumbeat. They are generated in deepest meditation, dreamless sleep, and healing and regeneration is stimulated in this state. Brainwaves regulate how well you can pay attention, and how much you are aroused.
Here, we investigated functional connectivity during a free-recall task, a prominent technique used to probe contextually mediated episodic memory. In freely recalling items from a previously studied list, subjects engage in a process of cue-dependent retrieval, wherein the cue for each recalled item includes information about the context of the target list and the previously recalled items. While this procedure disentangles neural activity from the influence of an external stimulus, experimenter-cued memory paradigms—especially cued recall and recognition—can provide additional valuable information about the timecourse of item retrieval. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that frontal, temporal, and MTL cortical regions became desynchronized from each other in HG during memory encoding.
When presented with a list of words during an episodic memory task, successful memory encoding more likely when waves propagated in the preferred encoding direction, as opposed to the opposite direction, characterized as the preferred recall direction. We hypothesize that preferred encoding and preferred recall TW propagation may reflect more general neural processes including feedforward and feedbackward cortical processing, respectively. Takahashi et al. revealed that during meditation there occurs an increase of theta high-frequency power and alpha low-frequency power in frontal brain areas, not observed by us [7].
Theta waves are typically associated with deep relaxation and meditation. These brain waves are influenced by neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine, which help regulate mood and emotions. An imbalance in these neurotransmitters can lead to either an increase or decrease in theta wave activity.
Alpha Waves
Alpha waves are linked to a state of wakeful relaxation. Neurotransmitters like GABA play a significant role in promoting alpha wave activity. GABA is an inhibitory neurotransmitter that helps calm the brain and reduce anxiety, leading to increased alpha wave production.
Beta Waves
Beta waves are prevalent during periods of focus and concentration. Neurotransmitters such as norepinephrine and glutamate are essential for increasing beta wave activity. These neurotransmitters help enhance cognitive function and keep the brain alert and attentive.
Gamma Waves
Gamma waves are associated with high-level cognitive processing and information retention. Neurotransmitters like acetylcholine and glycine play a crucial role in promoting gamma wave activity. These neurotransmitters help facilitate communication between brain regions, leading to improved cognitive abilities.
Conclusion
In conclusion, neurochemistry has a direct impact on the production and regulation of electrical brain waves. By understanding the relationship between neurotransmitters and brain waves, we can gain insights into how our brain functions and how we can optimize our mental performance through neurochemical interventions.
