Neuroscience

When you drink a soda, you may not think it has much in common with horseradish or peppers, but your body does.  New research from USC says the carbon dioxide in fizzy drinks triggers the same pain sensors in the nasal cavity as mustard or other spicy foods, though at a lower intensity.  That burning sensation people feel in different degrees comes from a system of nerves that respond to sensations of pain, skin pressure and temperature in the nose and mouth. “Carbonation evokes two distinct sensations,” said Emily Liman,  associate professor of neurobiology at USC College and…

Researchers have created artificial neural networks that can distinguish between different kinds of tea leaves - most people can't do that.   But they do it by analyzing the mineral content. Their method makes it possible to distinguish between the five main tea varieties (white, green, black, Oolong and red) using chemometrics, a branch of chemistry that uses mathematics to extract useful information from data obtained in the laboratory. The concentrations of the chemical elements in the leaves were determined using 'inductively-coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy', which showed…

How the bundles of neurons in the brain control behavior remains an ongoing mystery and sexual behavior is among the biggest mysteries of all. Not only do animals come in different shapes and sizes, but they all exhibit different behaviors as well - each species is born with its own unique set of innate behaviors but how they are controlled by the brain is not well understood.   Drosophila melanogaster , the 'fruit fly', is a big help in this sort of research because sex is a behavior the fruit fly does well. Their reproductive prowess has ensured their place throughout the world. Unlike…

We know people have positive social behavior in part because of emotional reactions to real or imagined social harm  - we may not like seeing others slighted or we may not want to be perceived as the kind of person who does that sort of thing. But some are a lot more sensitive than others and a new study says that the neurotransmitter serotonin can directly alter both moral judgment and behavior through increasing our aversion to personally harming others, rather than just controlling violent impulses or helping you sleep. For their study they gave volunteers the anti-depressant…

Since man has been able to think about big issues, such as why we are the way we are, it has been known that what happens during the daytime, including emotional stress and physical activity, can affect sleep. When an animal is active and awake, research shows, regulatory substances also build up in the brain that induce sleep. But what in wakefulness is driving these sleep regulatory substances?  Sleep disorders affect between 50 and 70 million Americans, according to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. The Institute also estimates the lost productivity and mishaps…

Think boys mature faster than girls?  Or vice versa?   Let's go to the MRI! Researchers at Oregon Health&Science University and Washington University in St. Louis say they can now accurately predict a young person's age simply by taking an MRI brain scan and analyzing it with a numerical model.  OHSU researcher Damien Fair, Ph.D., and colleagues have been studying development of the brain using functional MRI. Traditional functional MRI allows for brain images to be taken while a person is performing an activity. However, in this instance, the scientists use the method to…

Can playing "Call of Duty 2" improve your brain power?   University of Rochester researchers say that, and other action video games, train people to make the right decisions faster.   Video games help players develop a heightened sensitivity to what is going on around them and that improves a wide variety of general skills that can help with everyday activities like driving, reading small print, keeping track of friends in a crowd, and even navigating around town.   Bring on "Halo:Reach" then! Video games are popular - 68 percent of American households have someone playing one…

People can learn to control the activity of some brain regions when they get feedback signals provided by functional magnetic resonance brain imaging (fMRI), according to researchers who used fMRI during training sessions with three groups of healthy participants who were asked to assess visual emotional stimuli (negative or neutral pictures). They were interested in the signals generated by the insula, a brain region implicated in emotion regulation. While performing the test, the investigators provided the subjects with specific, unspecific, or no feedback about the extent of the activation…

When nerve cells communicate with each other, they do so through electrical pulses.  Most everything in our bodies comes down to induction when you think about it.    Since the early days of neuroscience, the accepted idea was that nerve cells simply sum up tiny action potentials generated by the incoming pulses and emit an action potential themselves when a threshold is reached but Moritz Helias and Markus Diesmann from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute (Japan) and Moritz Deger and Stefan Rotter from the Bernstein Center Freiburg (Germany) say they have figured out exactly…

22 scientists have published a study they say provides clear evidence about the effectiveness of Non-pharmacological Therapies in Alzheimer's disease and are calling on governments to make these useful treatments readily available.  A cure for Alzheimer's is not in sight and available drugs have worthwhile but limited benefits the study says scientifically developed and rigorously tested Non-pharmacological Therapies can significantly improve the lives of people with dementia and their caregivers.  They say he strongest evidence is for individualized intervention packages for…