What happens during a migraine attack?

The figure above shows our understanding of what happens during a migraine attack.  It is now thought that a migraine is triggered when a wave of electricity which starts in the trigeminal nerve on the side of the face stimulates the release of peptides such as CGRP and other substances that cause inflammation and makes other nerves more sensitive to pain. The wave of electricity then enters the brain and ripples across the surface of the brain – and together with CGRP causes blood vessels to dilate, as shown in Inset A above. In this way sensitization of the nerves often progresses from peripheral nerve cells on the skin to central neurons in the brain.

(Adapted from the American Society for Neuroscience).

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The Anatomy of a Migraine Attack

Weekly Neuroscience Update

Advertisers and public health officials may be able to access hidden wisdom in the brain to more effectively sell their products and promote health and safety, UCLA neuroscientists report in the first study to use brain data to predict how large populations will respond to advertisements.

A team led by psychology professor Ian Spence at the University of Toronto reveals that playing an action videogame, even for a relatively short time, causes differences in brain activity and improvements in visual attention.

A miniature atom-based magnetic sensor developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has passed an important research milestone by successfully measuring human brain activity. Experiments reported this week inBiomedical Optics Express verify the sensor’s potential for biomedical applications such as studying mental processes and advancing the understanding of neurological diseases.

A key protein, which may be activated to protect nerve cells from damage during heart failure or epileptic seizure, has been found to regulate the transfer of information between nerve cells in the brain. The discovery, made by neuroscientists at the University of Bristol and published in Nature Neuroscience and PNAS, could lead to novel new therapies for stroke and epilepsy.

Practices like physical exercise, certain forms of psychological counseling and meditation can all change brains for the better, and these changes can be measured with the tools of modern neuroscience, according to a review article now online at Nature Neuroscience.

A computer game designed to lift teenagers out of depression is as effective as one-on-one counselling, New Zealand doctors reported on Thursday in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

How to give your brain a break

Over a 24-hour period we can process up to 70,000 thoughts, even as we sleep. Each day contains 86,400 seconds, so that equates to a different thought every 1.2 seconds, or two thoughts for every heartbeat. Basically, your brain never shuts up!

Over a 24-hour period we can process up to 70,000 thoughts, even as we sleep. Each day contains 86,400 seconds, so that equates to a different thought every 1.2 seconds – your brain never stops!

Left unchecked, this incessant chatter can turn to the dark side and become an chorus of self-criticism and blame. Negative thinking can become much more dominant than the positive and supportive kind.

Left unchecked, this incessant chatter can turn to the dark side and become an chorus of self-criticism and blame. Negative thinking can become much more dominant than the positive and supportive kind.

These thoughts tend to become stuck and repetitive ¿ leading to anxiety, depression and burn-out. Only by freeing ourselves from them can we grow calmer, more focused, more present and happier.

These thoughts tend to become stuck and repetitive — leading to anxiety, depression and burn-out.  Only by freeing ourselves from them can we grow calmer,  more focused, more present  and happier.

There is a simple solution: meditation. It has been proven to ease stress, improve metabolism, reduce pain, lower blood pressure and enhance brain function.
Meditation has been proven to ease stress, improve metabolism, reduce pain, lower blood pressure and enhance brain function. And all you need to do is . .. nothing.

(Extracted from Quiet The Mind, an illustrated guide on how to meditate by Matthew Johnstone)

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Set your brain to meditate

Your brain and the art of confusion

Weekly Neuroscience Update

An elderly man who has spent over ten years in a nursing home, barely able to answer yes or no questions—come alive when listening to music from his past is a reminder of the powerful, inspiring, and affecting power of music.

Talking to yourself has long been frowned upon as a sign of craziness, but a recent study published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology suggests talking to yourself might actually help you find lost or hidden objects more quickly than being silent.

The longstanding mystery of how selective hearing works — how people can tune in to a single speaker while tuning out their crowded, noisy environs — is solved this week in the journal Nature by two scientists from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

Evidence is now mounting that when we attend to objects in the periphery, critical information about them is transmitted, or ‘fed back’, to an unexpected part of the brain: a region that neuroscientists have traditionally believed represents only the ‘fovea’, our central visual field.

A recent study looked at brain scans while adults were being taught new words. Greater activity was shown with average readers when the words were taught in isolation, not in a full sentence.

An international team of scientists reported the largest brain study of its kind had found a gene linked to intelligence, a small piece in the puzzle as to why some people are smarter than others.

TEDMED: Matters of the Mind

Here’s another very interesting TEDMED Scribe from last week’s TEDMED meeting. Artists and neuroscientists illuminate the mind in Session 5, giving us access to the musical symphonies that heal, the symphonic sounds our brains make, and the thoughts and yearnings of the minds of the nonverbal.

 

TEDMED Scribe

TEDMED is an annual conference focused on health and medicine and took place this past week in Washington, D.C. It was great to be able to keep up with the sessions via participant tweets, Facebook updates and the TEDMED Blog. I particularly enjoyed the TEDMED scribes – whereby the graphic designers of Alphachimp Studios, visually captured each presentation on iPads.

Weekly Neuroscience Update

Recent cough research, highlighted in a feature at ScienceNews, suggests that the neural circuitry of coughing also involves temperature perception and higher brain areas.

Research undertaken at UCLA, used MRI scans to compare the brains of 50 meditators to 50 non-meditators. What they discovered was that long-term meditators display large amounts of gyrification in the brain (the amount of folding in the cortex) which is what gives the brain its unique, ridged appearance. The folded a brain is, the quicker it can process information.

Anxious people have a heightened sense of smell when it comes to sniffing out a threat, according to a new study by Elizabeth Krusemark and Wen Li from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US.

Nerve cells from the brain’s emotion hub talk directly to a region that doles out attention, a new study shows. The connection, described in the April 11 Journal of Neuroscience, may help explain how people automatically focus on emotional events.

Nerve cells from the brain’s emotion hub talk directly to a region that doles out attention, a study of monkeys shows. The connection, described in the April 11 Journal of Neuroscience, may help explain how people automatically focus on emotional events.

University of Illinois scientists have mapped the physical architecture of intelligence in the brain in one of the largest and most comprehensive analyses so far of the brain structures vital to general intelligence and to specific aspects of intellectual functioning, such as verbal comprehension and working memory.Theirs is one of the largest and most comprehensive analyses so far of the brain structures vital to general intelligence and to specific aspects of intellectual functioning, such as verbal comprehension and working memory.