Tag Archives: Brain

Books & Reading, Current Affairs, Memories & History, Science & Health

Keep Forgetting Things? Neuroscience Says This Memory-Fixing Brain Habit Works Best | Inc.com

‘The results were incontrovertible … regular, engaged reading strengthened older adults’ memory skills.’

By Bill Murphy Jr., http://www.billmurphyjr.com @BillMurphyJr

Photo: Getty Images

Tell me: Do these scenarios sound familiar?

You’re late for an important meeting, but you can’t find your car keys.

You know you have to do one more thing before you leave the office, but you can’t remember what.

You run into an acquaintance you’ve known for years, but suddenly, you can’t recall her name.

Forgetting things can be frustrating, anxiety-inducing, and … oh, man, what was the third thing? Fortunately, there’s good news. There are simple habits, backed by science, that can help people improve and even rejuvenate their memories. Even better, some of these habits are quite enjoyable.

Source: Keep Forgetting Things? Neuroscience Says This Memory-Fixing Brain Habit Works Best | Inc.com

Books & Reading, Current Affairs, Science & Health

Your Brain Is a Prediction Machine That Is Always Active – Neuroscience News

By Neuroscience News, August 4, 2022

Our brain is a prediction machine that is always active. Credit: AI-generated illustration, via: DALL-E, OpenAi – Micha Heilbron

Summary: The brain constantly acts as a prediction machine, continuously comparing sensory information with internal predictions.

Source: Max Planck Institute

This is in line with a recent theory on how our brain works: it is a prediction machine, which continuously compares sensory information that we pick up (such as images, sounds and language) with internal predictions.“This theoretical idea is extremely popular in neuroscience, but the existing evidence for it is often indirect and restricted to artificial situations,” says lead author Micha Heilbron.“I would really like to understand precisely how this works and test it in different situations.”

Brain research into this phenomenon is usually done in an artificial setting, Heilbron reveals. To evoke predictions, participants are asked to stare at a single pattern of moving dots for half an hour, or listen to simple patterns in sounds like ‘beep beep boop, beep beep boop.’

Source: Your Brain Is a Prediction Machine That Is Always Active – Neuroscience News

Current Affairs, Science & Health

Scientists find key brain abnormality that may explain why some people are psychopaths | ZME Science

A brain region that is associated with reward perception and impulsive behavior is 10% larger in psychopaths.

ByTibi Puiu, June 2, 2022, in Health & Medicine, News, Psychology

Credit:Pixabay.

Psychopathy is one of the most recognizable and well-studied personality disorders — and for good reason too: it can sometimes be deadly dangerous.

But with all the research that’s been poured into studying psychopathy and its anti-social traits, we still don’t have a clear picture as to what causes it.

Like other developmental disorders, there is not one single cause of psychopathy, with research indicating a complex interplay of genetic and environmental factors that work together to shape people into psychopaths. These factors could manifest themselves in fundamental biological differences at the neural level between psychopathic and non-psychopathic people — and a new study may have just spotted one such biological difference. …

By looking at the brain scans of the individuals who scored higher on the psychopathy test, the researchers noticed that an area of the forebrain, known as the striatum, was about 10% larger in psychopathic people compared to individuals with low or no psychopathic traits.

Editor’s Note: Read more, see link below for original item…

Source: Scientists find key brain abnormality that may explain why some people are psychopaths

Books & Reading, Current Affairs, Love & Relationships, Pleasures, Science & Health

4 New Scientific Findings About Hugging | Psychology Today

Sebastian Ocklenburg, Ph.D., The Asymmetric Brain, and Posted February 20, 2022 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

Photo by SHVETS production on Pexels.com

Key points

  • Research shows that getting hugged by others, but also hugging yourself, may reduce stress hormones.
  • Longer hugs are perceived as more pleasant than shorter hugs.
  • Older people who at least occasionally get hugs tend to feel better about their health.

During the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns and restrictions, one of the things many people missed most was getting hugged by their loved ones.

This led to an increased interest in the positive effects of hugging in the psychology research community and several studies published over the last year have yielded new insights on what it means to us to get hugged.

Here are four of the most interesting new insights into the science of hugging.

1. Getting hugged by others, but also hugging yourself, reduces stress hormones

A recent study by researcher Aljoscha Dreisoerner from the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, and his team focused on the positive effects of hugging on stress (Dreisoerner et al., 2021). Interestingly, the scientists not only investigated how getting hugged by other people could reduce stress, but also whether hugging yourself (e.g., when other people are not available during a lockdown) does also have a positive effect on stress. The scientists stressed 159 volunteers using the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST), a standard stress induction method in which people are stressed by asking them to perform a fake job interview. Volunteers also gave saliva samples, so their cortisol (an important stress hormone) could be measured. Volunteers were assigned to three different conditions. They either were hugged for 20 seconds by an assistant of the scientists, hugged themselves for 20 seconds, or received no hugs and were asked to build a paper plane.

The results showed clearly that volunteers in both the hugging and the self-hugging condition showed lower cortisol levels than those in the control condition. Thus, getting hugged by other people, but also hugging oneself, reduces the negative effects of stress.

Editor’s Note: Read more, see link below for original item…

Source: 4 New Scientific Findings About Hugging | Psychology Today

Current Affairs, Science & Health

How Do We Better Treat Chronic Pain? – The New York Times

The Pain Brain – Millions of Americans are living with chronic pain. A quiet revolution in research and treatment is finding new ways to help them heal.

By Erik Vance and others…

From article…

Even before the pandemic, about one in five Americans suffered from chronic pain.

After a year and a half filled with anxiety, grief and often sedentary behavior, that number has only increased. It is, of course, impossible to talk about chronic pain (typically defined as pain lasting longer than six months) in America without confronting another pandemic: opioid addiction.

With so few pain treatments available, many patients see their only options as continued anguish or risking a new, different sickness. In 2020 more than 93,000 people died from drug overdose, with about 70 percent caused by opioids. And opioids don’t always address the pain; only one in four chronic pain patients find enduring relief from painkillers.

Editor’s Note: Read more, see link below for original item…

Source: How Do We Better Treat Chronic Pain? – The New York Times

Science & Health

Human Evolution Offers Clues For Modern Brain Health : Shots – Health News : NPR

June 18, 20215:00 AM ET, by Bret Stetka

Reconstructions from the Daynès Studio in Paris depict a male Neanderthal (right) face to face with a human, Homo sapiens.
Science Source

It’s something that many of us reckon with: the sense that we’re not quite as sharp as we once were.

I recently turned 42. Having lost my grandfather to Alzheimer’s, and with my mom suffering from a similar neurodegenerative disease, I’m very aware of what pathologies might lurk beneath my cranium.

In the absence of a cure for Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, the most important interventions for upholding brain function are preventive — those that help maintain our most marvelous, mysterious organ.

Based on the science, I take fish oil and broil salmon. I exercise. I try to challenge my cortex to the unfamiliar. As I wrote my recent book, A History of the Human Brain, which recounts the evolutionary tale of how our brain got here, I began to realize that so many of the same influences that shaped our brain evolution in the first place reflect the very measures we use to preserve our cognitive function today.

Source: Human Evolution Offers Clues For Modern Brain Health : Shots – Health News : NPR