Brain Mysteries
New research from the University of York and the Hull York Medical School about the effects of acupuncture on the brain may provide an understanding of the complex mechanisms of acupuncture and could lead to a wider acceptability of the treatment.
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People with anxiety and depression are most likely to use a shade of gray to represent their mental state. Researchers writing in the open-access journal BMC Medical Research Methodology describe the development of a color chart, the Manchester Color Wheel, which can be used to study people's preferred pigment in relation to their state of mind.
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N-acetylserotonin, the immediate precursor to melatonin, activates the same growth circuits in the brain as BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor). The results have implications for how some antidepressants function and suggest that the molecules and pathways involved in mood regulation and circadian rhythms are intertwined.
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Seeing someone perform a virtuous deed (especially if they are helping another person), makes us feel good -- a positive, uplifting emotion, known as "elevation." New findings suggest that elevation may lead to helping behavior: participants who viewed an uplifting TV clip spent almost twice as long helping a research assistant than participants who saw a neutral TV clip or a comedy clip.
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Our need for stimulation and dopamine's action upon the brain are connected, which explains why people who constantly crave stimulation are in danger of addictive behavior such as drug abuse and gambling.
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People have typically viewed the benefits that accrue with social status primarily from the perspective of external rewards. A new paper in the Feb. 1 issue of Biological Psychiatry, published by Elsevier suggests that there are internal rewards as well.
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Until now, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder was related to alterations in the brain affecting attention and cognitive processes. Researchers at Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and the Vall d'Hebron University Hospital for the first time have discovered anomalies in the brain's reward system related to the neural circuits of motivation and gratification.
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 | Researchers at UCLA have determined that the brains of people with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), a psychiatric condition that causes them, wrongly, to believe they appear disfigured and ugly, have abnormalities in processing visual input when it comes to examining their own face. Further, they found that the same systems of the brain are overactive in BDD and in obsessive-compulsive disorder, suggesting a link between the two. ...> Full Article |
 | Neurobiologists at the University of Maryland have discovered information about how the brain processes sound that challenges previous understandings of the auditory cortex. Their research shows our brains are a lot more chaotic than previously thought, and that this might be a good thing. ...> Full Article |
 | Interconnected networks of neurons process information and give rise to perception by communicating with one another via small electrical impulses known as action potentials. In the past, scientists believed that adjacent neurons synchronized their action potentials. However, researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Germany said in a current report in the journal Science that this synchronization does not happen. ...> Full Article |
 | Restrictions should be placed on the use of Ginkgo biloba -- a top-selling herbal remedy -- because of growing scientific evidence that Ginkgo may increase the risk of seizures in people with epilepsy and could reduce the effectiveness of anti-seizure drugs, a new report concludes. The article appears in ACS' monthly Journal of Natural Products. ...> Full Article |
Despite the almost universal association of the right with life, right, positive and good things, and the left with death, inadequacy, negative and bad things, recent researches show that left-handed people hold the opposite association. A professor from the UGR has carried out a review of the bibliography on this subject in an article recently published in Ciencia Cognitiva: Revista Electrónica de Divulgación.
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People who experience memory loss or a decline in their thinking abilities may be at higher risk of stroke, regardless of whether they have been diagnosed with dementia, according to a new study published in the Feb. 2, 2010, print issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
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Chronic and severely stressful situations, like those connected to depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, have been associated with smaller volumes in "stress sensitive" brain regions, such as the cingulate region of the cerebral cortex and the hippocampus, a brain region involved in memory formation.
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Our memories are strengthened during periods of rest while we are awake, researchers at New York University have found. The findings, which appear in the latest issue of the journal Neuron, expand our understanding of how memories are boosted -- previous studies had shown this process occurs during sleep, but not during times of awake rest.
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