Category: Alzheimers

Weekly Round-Up

Peer pressure is hard-wired into our brains

A new study explains why people take stupid chances when all of their friends are watching that they would never take by themselves. According to the study,the human brain places more value on winning in a social setting than it does on winning when you’re alone. Scientists have identified the part of the brain responsible for controlling whether we conform to expectations and group pressure.

Does a blind person reading Braille process words in the brain differently than a person who reads by sight? Mainstream neuroscience thinking implies that the answer is yes because different senses take in the information. But a recent study in Current Biology finds that the processing is the same, adding to mounting evidence that using sensory inputs as the basis for understanding the brain may paint an incomplete picture.

New research sheds light on how and why we remember dreams–and what purpose they are likely to serve.

Child neurologist and neuroscientist Dr. Tallie Z. Baram has found that maternal care and other sensory input triggers activity in a baby’s developing brain that improves cognitive function and builds resilience to stress.

University of British Columbia scientists may have uncovered a new explanation for how Alzheimer’s disease destroys the brain.

The brains of people who relapse into depression differ from those of people who maintain a recovery, a new study shows. The results may provide insight into why some people relapse and why certain therapies may help, the researchers said.

Researchers using scanning technology say they discovered physical differences in the brains of older children with autism compared to those of kids without autism.

And finally, in an effort to understand what happens in the brain when a person reads or considers such abstract ideas as love or justice, Princeton researchers have for the first time matched images of brain activity with categories of words related to the concepts a person is thinking about. The results could lead to a better understanding of how people consider meaning and context when reading or thinking.

 

Weekly Round Up

Latest study shows buddhist meditation promotes rational thinking

Studies looking at the brains of people playing a fairness game found very different responses between Buddhist meditators and other participants.

It’s possible that depression could be cured by reducing mild swelling in your brain.

New York University neuroscientists have identified the parts of the brain we use to remember the timing of events within an episode. The study, which appears in the latest issue of the journal Science, enhances our understanding of how memories are processed and provides a potential roadmap for addressing memory-related afflictions.

A leading University of Chicago researcher on empathy is launching a project to understand psychopathy by studying criminals in prisons.

A new study at the University of California at Davis has made progress in determining the factors that affect brain degeneration and why our brains shrink with age and a new drug to prevent the development of Alzheimer’s disease could be tested on patients within six years according to researchers at Lancaster University.

Weekly Round-Up

Transcranial magnetic stimulation can minimize forgetfulness

Memory failure is a common occurrence yet scientists have not reached a consensus as to how it happens. However, according to a new study at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is able to minimize forgetfulness by disrupting targeted brain regions as they compete between memories.

A new study which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, finds changes in brain activity after only five weeks of meditation training.

In an ongoing quest to map the brain, scientists have determined how the brain works to understand others. According to a new study, the brain generates empathy in one manner for those who differ physically and in another method for those who are similar. In a paper published online by Cerebral Cortex, researcher Dr Lisa Aziz-Zadeh, suggests empathy for someone to whom you can directly relate — (for example, because they are experiencing pain in a limb that you possess) — is mostly generated by the intuitive, sensory-motor parts of the brain. However, empathy for someone to whom you cannot directly relate relies more on the rationalizing part of the brain.

The brain holds on to false facts, even after they have been retracted according to a report in Scientific American.

Psychologists have found that thought patterns used to recall the past and imagine the future are strikingly similar. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging to show the brain at work, they have observed the same regions activated in a similar pattern whenever a person remembers an event from the past or imagines himself in a future situation. This challenges long-standing beliefs that thoughts about the future develop exclusively in the frontal lobe.

Many dementia patients being prescribed antipsychotic drugs could be better treated with simple painkillers, say researchers from Kings College, London, and Norway.

Brain damage can cause significant changes in behaviour, such as loss of cognitive skills, but also reveals much about how the nervous system deals with consciousness. New findings reported in the July 2011 issue of Cortex demonstrate how the unconscious brain continues to process information even when the conscious brain is incapacitated.

Years after a single traumatic brain injury (TBI), survivors still show changes in their brains. In a new study, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania suggest that Alzheimer’s disease-like neurodegeneration may be initiated or accelerated following a single traumatic brain injury, even in young adults.

Weekly Round Up

Pathways within the brain can be strengthened by reading and language exposure

 Recent research shows that reading  boosts brain pathways and can actually affect understanding in nearly all school subjects – a great reason to encourage the reading habit in your children.

Scientists at the University of Michigan Health System have demonstrated how memory circuits in the brain refine themselves in a living organism through two distinct types of competition between cells. Their results, published  in Neuron, mark a step forward in the search for the causes of neurological disorders associated with abnormal brain circuits, such as Alzheimer’s disease, autism and schizophrenia.

The left and right halves of the brain have separate stores for working memory, the information we actively keep in mind, suggests a study published online yesterday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Over time, and with enough Internet usage, the structure of our brains can actually physically change, according to a new study.

Bringing the real world into the brain scanner, researchers at The University of Western Ontario from The Centre for Brain and Mind can now determine the action a person was planning, mere moments before that action is actually executed.

And finally good news at last for coffee addicts.For years we’ve been told that caffeinated coffee was bad for us. It’s unhealthy and addictive, doctors warned. But as vindication for all who stuck by their energizing elixir, a new study published early online in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease,  shows that guzzling caffeinated coffee may actually be good for our brains. In fact, it may help keep Alzheimer’s at bay.  So enjoy that cuppa joe!

Weekly Round Up

The neuroscience of dreaming

In this week’s round-up of the latest discoveries in the field of neuroscience – the neuroscience of dreaming and eureka moments, the teenage brain and new research into Parkinson’s and Alzheimers.

Scientists have long puzzled over the many hours we spend in light, dreamless slumber. But a new study from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests we’re busy recharging our brain’s learning capacity during this traditionally undervalued phase of sleep, which can take up half the night.

Perhaps while sleeping we are gaining new insight into our problems. A new brain-imaging study looks at the neural activity associated with insight. The research, published by Cell Press in the March 10 issue of the journal Neuron, reveals specific brain activity that occurs during an “A-ha!” moment that may help encode the new information in long-term memory.

I’ve written previously about the brain of a teenager being hot-wired to take risk, but now new research shows that just when teens are faced with intensifying peer pressure to misbehave, regions of the brain are actually blossoming in a way that heighten the ability to resist risky behavior.

Brain scans are being used to spot the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease in a UK-based pilot that could revolutionise its diagnosis. Doctors are using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to look at whether particular parts of the brain have started to shrink, which is a key physiological sign of Alzheimer’s. The MRI project is an example of “translational research” – that which will have a direct benefit for patients. And in more translational research news, it emerges that in studies of more than 135,000 men and women regular users of ibuprofen were 40% less likely to develop Parkinson’s disease.

Weekly Round-Up

 

Why do we love to learn about the brain?

In today’s weekly round-up..how patients with signs of dementia may improve their brain health with exercise, how brain cooling could aid stroke recovery, how brain scans can predict the likely success of giving up smoking, and finally why learning about the brain can become addictive. 

 According to researchers, just 40 minutes of moderate exercise in pensioners physically grows the brain and helps people enhance their brain power. It was found that regular exercise programs work on people already showing signs of dementia and loss of brain function. Meanwhile, McGill’s Dr Véronique Bohbot, believes that spatial strategies can reduce risk of dementia.

Cooling the brain of patients who have suffered a stroke could dramatically improve their recovery, according to research at the Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh.

Were you one of the many who made a New Year’s Resolution to give up smoking?  Brain scans showing neural reactions to pro-health messages can predict if you’ll keep that resolution to quit smoking more accurately than you yourself can. That’s according to a new study forthcoming in Health Psychology.

Finally, in the Psychology Today blog, Dr David Rock asks the question “why is it so engaging, almost addictive, to learn about how your brain functions” and concludes that it is “because it makes life feel richer, and enables us to achieve our intentions”.

What better way to end this week’s round-up! May the learning continue…

Weekly Round-Up

Does sleep help you learn? (Image: Big Stock)

In today’s weekly round-up..how memories take better hold during sleep, nature vs nurture, fake it til you make it, the nature of heroism, the pathology of Alzheimer’s, the neuroscience of fear and loathing, and more.

It appears from the latest research that the best way to hold onto a  newly learned poem, card trick or algebra equation may be to take a quick nap, for the brain is better during sleep than during wakefulness at resisting attempts to scramble or corrupt a recent memory. The study, published in Nature Neuroscience, provides new insights into the complex process by which we store and retrieve deliberately acquired information.

Athena Stalk in Your Brain and The Power of Rehearsing Your Future explains that the advice to “fake it til you make it” is backed up by some of the latest findings on the brain.

Interesting article from Jonah Lehrer in the Wall Street Journal on the perennial nature vs nurture debate. And in a similar vein,  is there a gene for heroism or is it down to social or economic factors?  Can neuroscience explain the nature of heroism?

The Neuroscience of Fear and Loathing is an interesting look at this universal emotion. 

Findings from a new study from the University of Haifa shows that people diagnosed as psychopathic have difficulty showing empathy, just like patients who have suffered frontal head injury.

Article in this week’s New York Times on a new brain scan tech­nol­ogy to detect Alzheimer’s pathol­ogy in the brain.

How Perception Reveals Brain Differences explores the ways in which brains differ from one another and the ways in which we owners perceive the world accordingly.