The emotion disgust has long been recognized as having evolved to help our ancestors fend off infection. Now, researchers have been able to show the human disgust system is likely to be structured around the people, practices and objects that pose disease risk. This is the first time researchers have used the perspective of disease…
Author: Milla Bengstsson
FMRI Study Supports Predictive Coding Theories Of Vision
A better understanding of visual mechanisms, and how seeing is a constant two-way dialogue between the brain and the eyes, comes from a new study by neuroscientists at the University of Glasgow. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, they have shown how the human brain is able to predict what our eyes will see next. The…
Exosome Cargo Could Be Drug Target For Neuropathic Pain
A previously undiscovered mechanism of cellular communication, between neurons and immune cells in neuropathic pain, has been revealed in new research from King’s College London. Researchers identified a new method of treating neuropathic pain in mice, which could be more safe and effective than current treatments comprising of opioids and anti-epileptic drugs. Neuropathic pain is…
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Can Alter Musical Enjoyment
It is possible to increase or decrease our enjoyment of music, and our craving for more of it, by enhancement or disruption of certain brain circuits, researchers from the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital of McGill University have shown. Enjoyment of music is considered a subjective experience; what one person finds gratifying, another may find…
Can Brain-training Games Really Reduce Dementia Risk For Seniors?
A brain-training video game could help lower the risk of developing dementia in seniors by almost a third, the results of a decade-long study suggest. More than 2,800 people took part in the randomized clinical trial study. The exercises challenge a person’s ability to look at an object in the center of the screen, like…
Sleep Deprivation Disrupts Temporal Lobe Neural Response
The way in which sleep deprivation disrupts our brain cells’ ability to communicate with each other, leading to temporary mental lapses that affect memory and visual perception, is revealed in a new study. Senior author Dr. Itzhak Fried, professor of neurosurgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and Tel Aviv University, said:…
Healthy Dendritic Spines Confer Protective Effect Against Alzheimer’s
The shape, size, and number of dendritic spines in the brain could play a major role in whether someone gets Alzheimer’s disease, new research from the University of Alabama at Birmingham suggests. Dendritic spines are sub-units of neurons that act as the connector to other neurons. The research team demonstrated, for the first time, that…
What Are Mitochondria?
We’ve probably all heard of mitochondria, and we may even remember learning in school that they are the “powerhouses of the cell” – but what does that actually mean, and how did they evolve? To answer this question, we have to go back about two billion years to a time when none of the complexity…
Brazilian Peppertree Extract Effective Against Antibiotic-resistant Bacteria
The red berries of the Brazilian peppertree, a weedy, invasive species common in Florida, contain a compound that is able to defeat antibiotic-resistant staph bacteria, scientists at Emory University have discovered. The finding, made in the lab of Cassandra Quave, an assistant professor in Emory’s Center for the Study of Human Health and in the…