Neuroscience
Puberty is the defining process of adolescent development and it leads to variety of changes throughout the body - even including the brain.
Writing in
in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), researchers find that cerebral blood flow (CBF) levels decreased similarly in males and females before puberty, but then diverge sharply in puberty, with levels increasing in females while decreasing further in males, which could give hints as to developing differences in behavior in men and women and sex-specific pre-dispositions to certain psychiatric disorders.
"These…
A new study demonstrates the importance of considering developmental differences when creating programs for cochlear implants in infants.
Cochlear implants, which are surgically placed in the inner ear, provide the ability to hear for some people with severe to profound hearing loss. Because of technological and biological limitations, people with cochlear implants hear differently than those with normal hearing.
Think of a piano, which typically has 88 keys with each representing a note. The technology in a cochlear implant can't play every key, but instead breaks them into groups, or…
Mindfulness. Zen. Meditation drumming. Chakra. Buddhist and transcendental meditation. It evokes eastern mystics and hip elites in California pretending to to leave their corporeal forms behind and achieve some higher state of being.
But what about poor stressed-out wretches that can't afford to fly in big-name Yogis? What does the research say? Not much.
But researchers would like to change that - fMRI imaging can tell us very little about what is really happening, but it's a start. The authors of a new paper on meditation say that different meditation techniques can actually be…
Are you a control freak?
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is something else entirely. It is a condition marked by thoughts and images that chronically intrude in the mind and by engaging in repetitive behaviors aimed at reducing the associated anxiety. Some forms of the disorder can add an extra hour to the day's routine but some people are so disabled that they can't leave their homes.
Estimates say that OCD affects 1 percent of the U.S. population or more. Antidepressants known as SSRIs work for some, as does behavioral therapy. Its causes and mechanisms are as much guessing…
A research team from the Friedman Brain Institute of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has published evidence which finds that subtle changes of inhibitory signaling in the reward pathway can change how animals respond to drugs such as cocaine.
The authors say this is the first study to demonstrate the critical links between the levels of the trafficking protein, the potassium channels' effect on neuronal activity and a mouse's response to cocaine.
The authors investigated the role of sorting nexin 27 (SNX27), a PDZ-containing protein known to bind GIRK2c/GIRK3…
In a new paper, researchers used animal models to show that the fragile X mental retardation protein, or FMRP, plays a critical role in the development of addiction-related behaviors. FMRP is also the protein that is missing in Fragile X Syndrome, the leading single-gene cause of autism and intellectual disability.
Consistent with its important role in brain function, the team found that cocaine utilizes FMRP to facilitate brain changes involved in addiction-related behaviors.
"In our lab, we investigate the brain mechanisms behind drug addiction – a common and devastating…
People who have a variant of a longevity gene called KLOTHO also have improved brain skills such as thinking, learning and memory regardless of their age, sex, or whether they have a genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease.
Correlation but not causation, to be sure, except increasing KLOTHO gene levels in mice made them smarter.
Klotho is the name of a Greek mythological goddess of fate, "who spins the thread of life." People who have one copy of a variant, or form, of the KLOTHO gene, called KL-VS, tend to live longer and have lower chances of suffering a stroke whereas people who…
A new study looked into the modulatory effects that musical training could have on the use of the different sides of the brain when performing music and language tasks.
It found that brief musical training can increase the blood flow in the left hemisphere of our brain, which suggests that the areas responsible for music and language share common brain pathways.
Two separate studies which looked at brain activity patterns in musicians and non-musicians.
The first study looked for patterns of brain activity of 14 musicians and 9 non-musicians while they participated in music and word…
Why do we yawn? It's unclear. One hypothesis is that yawning helps to increase the oxygen supply but there no association between yawning and blood oxygen levels has been found.
Psychologists now have a different notion - that yawning cools the brain.
Sleep cycles, cortical arousal and stress are all associated with fluctuations in brain temperature, Yawning subsequently functions to keep the brain temperature balanced and in optimal homeostasis, according to a team of researchers led by Psychologist Andrew Gallup of SUNY College at Oneonta. According to their hypothesis, yawning…
Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed of Hungary was such a prolific serial killer she has been termed "The Blood Countess". Her vampire-like tendencies - especially bathing in the blood of young women to supposedly keep her skin young - became folklore.
Virginal blood is not going to prevent wrinkles - even Joe Mercola would not try to sell that as a remedy - but researchers say something — or some things — in the blood of young mice can restore mental capabilities in old mice. Will it hold true for humans? If so, poor kids need to watch out. Wealthy elites will find a way to make it…