By adolescence, your brain already contains most of the neurons that you’ll have for the rest of your life. But a few regions continue to grow new nerve cells, and require the services of cellular sentinels, specialized immune cells that keep the brain safe by getting rid of dead or dysfunctional cells. Now, scientists have…
What’s Going On In Your Brain During Natural Reading
Neuroscientists have for the first time have come up with a way to observe brain activity during natural reading, the reading of actual text and not just individual words. The findings are already helping settle some ideas about how we read. Says John Henderson, a psychology professor at the University of California, Davis: “It’s a…
There Are No Schizophrenia Genes: Here’s Why
Genetic theories of schizophrenia were popular in the early part of the 20th century. They were built on 19th century concepts of eugenics that assumed a “tainted” gene pool that underpinned insanity, idiocy, prostitution, alcoholism, epilepsy and all other forms of physical or psychological “deviance”. Psychiatric geneticists of the period laid the foundation stones for…
How Heart Rate Variability Relates To Wisdom And Judgment
The variations in your heartbeat rate may affect your wisdom, according to new research from the University of Waterloo. The study suggests that heart rate variability and thinking process work together to enable wise reasoning about complex social issues. The work by Igor Grossmann, professor of psychology at Waterloo, and colleagues based at the Australian…
Biomarkers Predictive of Suicidality in Women Found
Researchers have identified blood-based biomarkers and developed questionnaire-based apps that may help clinicians spot which of their female patients being treated for psychiatric disorders are at greatest risk of suicidal ideation or behaviour. Women have a lower rate of suicide completion that men, likely because they tend to use less violent means. However, they have…
Auditory Brainstem Responses Also Come From The Auditory Cortex
An important discovery about the human auditory system and how to study it has been made by scientists at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital at McGill University. The findings could lead to better testing and diagnosis of hearing-related disorders. The researchers detected auditory brainstem responses, more properly referred to as frequency-following responses (FFR), coming…
Clozapine Side Effects Risk Gene Identified
Clozapine is a “gold standard” drug for managing treatment-resistant schizophrenia (TRS), who do not respond adequately to first-line antipsychotics. Schizophrenia is a serious mental disorder affecting up to one percent of the adult population. Antipsychotics are effective at relieving symptoms for most patients, but up to 30% do not respond well to standard treatments and…
Damage in Brain Communication Networks Linked to Insomnia
Using a sophisticated MRI technique, researchers have found abnormalities in the brain’s white matter tracts in patients with insomnia. Said researcher Shumei Li, M.S., from the Department of Medical Imaging, Guangdong No. 2 Provincial People’s Hospital, Guangzhou, China: “Insomnia is a remarkably prevalent disorder. However, its causes and consequences remain elusive.” Primary insomnia, in which…
Biomarker Of Poor Memory In Schizophrenia Patients Found
A pattern of brain activity that may be a sign of memory problems in people with schizophrenia has been identified by a new study. The biomarker, which the researchers believe may be the first of its kind, is an important step toward understanding and treating one of the most devastating symptoms of schizophrenia. Although schizophrenia…