Tag: autism

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 brain has an inbuilt sense of justice

In this week’s round-up of the latest discoveries in the field of neuroscience,  New Scientist is asking the question of why we remember some dreams but not others? And Live Science takes a look at the top 10 mysteries of the mind, while a new study from the Karolinska Institute and Stockholm School of Economics shows that the brain has a built-in sense of justice.

The Telegraph reports on how brain scans reveal the power of art while researchers in Oslo and Sweden revealed that musicians’ brains are highly developed in a way that makes the musicians alert, interested in learning, disposed to see the whole picture, calm, and playful. The same traits have previously been found among world-class athletes, top-level managers, and individuals who practice transcendental meditation.

How does fear alter memory? A new study reveals that it can literally change our perception, a process that may help researchers better understand post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), other anxiety disorders and possibly conditions like autism. Dr Melanie Greenberg has also been looking at PTSD and the complexity of its mind-body effects and how our brains process trauma.

Weekly Round-Up

Your brain is more responsive to your friends than to strangers

Researchers from UT Southwestern Medical Center have described for the first time how the brain’s memory center repairs itself following severe trauma – a process that may explain why it is harder to bounce back after multiple head injuries.

People with autism use their brains differently from other people, which may explain why some have extraordinary abilities to remember and draw objects in detail, according to new research from the University of Montreal.

Five more genes which increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease have been identified, according to research published in Nature Genetics. This takes the number of identified genes linked to Alzheimer’s to 10 – the new genes affect three bodily processes and could become targets for treatment. If the effects of all 10 could be eliminated the risk of developing the disease would be cut by 60%, although new treatments could be 15 years away.

The sudden understanding or grasp of a concept is often described as an “Aha” moment and now researchers from New York University are using a functional MRI (fMRI) scanner to study how these moments of insight are captured and stored in our brain.

Mark Changizi is asking the question how do we have reading areas for a brain that didn’t evolve to read?

In order to develop new medications for alcoholism, researchers need to understand how alcohol acts on the brain’s reward system. A previously unknown mechanism has been shown to block the rewarding effects of alcohol on the brain, reveals a thesis from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Researchers from the University of Valencia (UV)  investigating the brain structures involved with empathy have concluded that the brain circuits responsible are in part the same as those involved with violence.

And finally…your brain is more responsive to your friends than to strangers, even if those strangers have more in common with you, says a new study. Researchers looked at the brain areas associated with social information. The results of the study show that social connections override similar interests.