Imaging Metal-impregnated Neurons With Spectral Confocal Microscopy

Researchers have discovered a new method of visualizing neurons that promises to benefit neuroscientists and cell biologists alike by using spectral confocal microscopy to image tissues impregnated with silver or gold. Rather than relying on the amount of light reflecting off metal particles, this novel process involves delivering light energy to silver or gold nanoparticles…

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How Different Cultures Experience And Talk About Pain

Many things contribute to how we experience and express pain. Gender, age, education, socioeconomic status, the relative power of the participants in the conversation, and whether the person in pain is speaking in their mother tongue or another language all affect a person’s experience of pain. Each of these factors can have a crucial impact…

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What If The Five Senses Are Really Just One?

Ask even the youngest schoolchild how many senses we have and she’ll tell you five: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Neuroscientist Don Katz thinks this might be wrong. The correct answer, he says, will most likely turn out to be one. For nearly a decade, Katz, an associate professor of psychology at Brandeis University,…

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Kindness, Charitable Behavior Influenced By Amygdala

The amygdala, a small structure at the front end of the brain’s temporal lobe, has long been associated with negative behaviours generally and specifically with fear. But new research from Michael Platt, the James S. Riepe University Professor in the psychology, neuroscience and marketing departments at the University of Pennsylvania, along with Steve Chang from…

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Helping Others Eases The Effects Of Stressful Days

Providing help to friends, acquaintances, and even strangers can mitigate the impact of daily stressors on our emotions and our mental health, according to new research published in Clinical Psychological Science. Study author Emily Ansell of the Yale University School of Medicine explains : “Our research shows that when we help others we can also…

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Humans Evolved To Get Better Sleep In Less Time

Humans get by on significantly less sleep than our closest animal relatives. The secret, according to a new study of slumber patterns across 21 species of primates, is that our sleep is more efficient. Researchers from Duke University scoured the scientific literature and compiled a database of slumber patterns across hundreds of mammals including 21…

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How Multiple Sclerosis Can Be Triggered By Brain Cell Death

Multiple sclerosis (MS) may be triggered by the death of brain cells that make the insulation around nerve fibers, a surprising new view of the disease reported in a study from Northwestern Medicine and The University of Chicago. And a specially developed nanoparticle prevented MS even after the death of those brain cells, an experiment…

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Tiniest LED Implants Let Probes Illuminate Brain

Researchers have built neural probes that hold what may be the smallest implantable LEDs ever made. These new probes can control and record the activity of many individual neurons, measuring how changes in the activity of a single neuron can affect its neighbors. The team, which has tested the probes in mice, anticipates that experiments…

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Chemical Clears Alzheimer's Protein And Restores Memory In Mice

A research team in Korea has tested a chemical in mice genetically altered to develop features of Alzheimer’s, showing it can remove a build-up of protein in the brain associated with the disease as well as rescuing memory and behaviour problems in the animals. Alzheimer’s disease is associated with many abnormal changes in the brain,…

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