Category: Music

Weekly Neuroscience Update

medium_46044113Advice to “sleep on it” before making a big decision may be wise, according to new brain-imaging research.

Scientists from the University of Southampton have identified the molecular system that contributes to the harmful inflammatory reaction in the brain during neurodegenerative diseases.An important aspect of chronic neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s or prion disease, is the generation of an innate within the brain. Results from the study open new avenues for the regulation of the inflammatory reaction and provide new insights into the understanding of the biology of , which play a leading role in the development and maintenance of this reaction.

A study conducted at the University of Granada and the University of York in Toronto, Canada, has revealed that bilingual children develop a better working memory –which holds, processes and updates information over short periods of time– than monolingual children.

Good mental health and clear thinking depend upon our ability to store and manipulate thoughts on a sort of “mental sketch pad.” In a new study, Yale School of Medicine researchers describe the molecular basis of this ability — the hallmark of human cognition — and describe how a breakdown of the system contributes to diseases such as schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Your eyes aren’t just advanced visual systems capturing images of what’s around you. New research published in the Journal of Neuroscience shows that when our eyes perceive visual stimuli, it gets encoded in our brains in ways that change our emotional reactions.

In a pair of new papers, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences upend a long-held view about the basic functioning of a key receptor molecule involved in signaling between neurons, and describe how a compound linked to Alzheimer’s disease impacts that receptor and weakens synaptic connections between brain cells.

Fear responses can only be erased when people learn something new while retrieving the fear memory. This is the conclusion of a study conducted by scientists from the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and published in the leading journal Science.

Injuries that result in chronic pain, such as limb injuries, and those unrelated to the brain are associated with epigenetic changes in the brain which persist months after the injury, according to researchers at McGill University.

Montreal researchers find that music lessons before age seven create stronger connections in the brain.

A team of political scientists and neuroscientists has shown that liberals and conservatives use different parts of the brain when they make risky decisions, and these regions can be used to predict which political party a person prefers.

Weekly Neuroscience Update

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The brains of deaf people reorganize not only to compensate for the loss of hearing, but also to process language from visual stimuli—sign language, according to a study published  in Nature Communications. Despite this reorganization for interpreting visual language, however, language processing is still completed in the same brain region.

Our love of music and appreciation of musical harmony is learnt and not based on natural ability – a new study by University of Melbourne researchers has found.

For many patients with difficult-to-treat neuropathic pain, deep brain stimulation (DBS) can lead to long-term improvement in pain scores and other outcomes, according to a study in the February issue of Neurosurgery.

New brain imaging research from Carnegie Mellon University provides some of the first evidence showing how the brain unconsciously processes decision information in ways that lead to improved decision making. Published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, the study found that the brain regions responsible for making decisions continue to be active even when the conscious brain is distracted with a different task.

An interdisciplinary team of researchers has found a new way to influence the vital serotonin signaling system—possibly leading to more effective medications with fewer side effects.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and UPMC describe in PLoS ONE how an electrode array sitting on top of the brain enabled a 30-year-old paralyzed man to control the movement of a character on a computer screen in three dimensions with just his thoughts. It also enabled him to move a robot arm to touch a friend’s hand for the first time in the seven years since he was injured in a motorcycle accident.

Researchers have discovered a molecule that accumulates with age and inhibits the formation of new neurons. The finding might help scientists design therapies to prevent age-related cognitive decline.

Wearing a nerve stimulator for 20 minutes a day may be a new option for migraine sufferers, according to new research published in the February 6, 2013, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

photo credit: Hindrik S via photopin cc

Inside A Musician’s Brain

This fascinating 3-minute music video of British musician Sivu’s single “Better Man Than He “is composed entirely of MRI images of his head, allowing the viewer to watch every movement of his throat and mouth as he sings.

Weekly Neuroscience Update

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A new clinical study in the journal Brain and Behavior, has been undertaken to decide whether a non-invasive method, using musical tones to regulate brain activity, can actually reprogram the brain, resulting in insomnia prevention.

Researchers have shown that synchronization emerges between brains when making music together, and even when musicians play different voices.

People are able to detect, within a split second, if a hurtful action they are witnessing is intentional or accidental, new research on the brain at the University of Chicago shows.

Everyone knows that men and women tend to hold different views on certain things. However, new research by scientists from the University of Bristol and published in PLoS ONE indicates that this may literally be the case.

All patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) lose brain cells, which leads to a shrinking, or atrophy, of the brain. But the pattern of gray matter loss is significantly different in men and women, according to a study presented recently at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.

Weekly Neuroscience Update

Could our neurological soundtrack reveal insights into our mental state? To answer that question scientists in China developed a method for converting two kinds of brain wave recordings into music.

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have identified a new pathway that appears to play a major role in information processing in the brain. Their research also offers insight into how imbalances in this pathway could contribute to cognitive abnormalities in humans.

Stanford researchers have designed the fastest, most accurate algorithm yet for brain-implantable prosthetic systems that can help disabled people maneuver computer cursors with their thoughts. The algorithm’s speed, accuracy and natural movement approach those of a real arm, and the system avoids the long-term performance degradations of earlier technologies.

Researchers have designed a light-sensitive molecule that can stimulate a neural response in cells of the retina and brain — a possible first step to overcoming degenerative eye diseases like age-related macular degeneration, or to quieting epileptic seizures.

A new study has found that participating in an 8-week meditation training program can have measurable effects on how the brain functions even when someone is not actively meditating.

This is your brain on improv

Musician and researcher Charles Limb wondered how the brain works during musical improvisation — so he put jazz musicians and rappers in an fMRI to find out. What he and his team found has deep implications for our understanding of creativity of all kinds.

Weekly Round Up

The Guardian newspaper reports on a new study on how video games can persist in our perception as fleeting hallucinations in an effect labelled ‘game transfer phenomena’.

Responding to faces is a critical tool for social interactions between humans. Without the ability to read faces and their expressions, it would be hard to tell friends from strangers upon first glance, let alone a sad person from a happy one. Now, neuroscientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), with the help of collaborators at Huntington Memorial Hospital and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, have discovered a novel response to human faces by looking at recordings from brain cells in neurosurgical patients.

New medical research tends to confirm that the human brain does not stop developing in adolescence, but continues well into our 20s, according to investigators at the University of Alberta.

A review of the evidence to date suggests that music therapy can help patients recover their movements after experiencing brain damage.

Frontotemporal dementia—triggered by cell death in the front and sides of the brain—accounts for about one-fourth of all cases of early-onset dementia. Now, scientists at UCLA have discovered that a certain signaling pathway plays a key role in the brain disorder and may offer a potential target for treatment.

Finally, the latest research shows that your learning can continue even while you sleep, so those adverts for products that help you learn while you sleep may be true after all!