Brain
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Studies Cite Head Injuries As Factor in Some Social Ills
Researchers studying brain injury believe they’ve found a common thread running through many cases of seemingly unrelated social problems: a long-forgotten blow to the head. They’ve found that providing therapy for an underlying brain injury often helps people with a variety of ills ranging from learning disabilities to chronic homelessness and alcoholism. If broadly verified, the findings could have a significant impact in dealing with such intractable difficulties.
Brain • Productivity/Performance • PTSD • (0) Comments • Permalink
Monday, January 21, 2008
Misreading the mind
If neuroscientists want to understand the mystery of consciousness, they’ll need new methods.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
The Role of Stress in Just About Everything
You live in a majorly stressed out world. You’re never very far from a ringing cell phone or a guilt-inducing laptop. Traffic makes you flip out. And as if stressing out over lines, health, your job, your grades, or global terrorism wasn’t enough, along comes the APS Observer with one more thing in your life to stress out over: Stress.
Anxiety • Brain • Cardiovascular Health • Emotions • Genetics • Hormones • Immune System • Optimism • Stress • (0) Comments • Permalink
Friday, January 11, 2008
Women with irritable bowel syndrome unable to regulate pain effectively
UCLA researchers have found that women who suffer from irritable bowel syndrome are unable to effectively turn off a pain-modulation mechanism in the brain, causing them to be more sensitive to abdominal discomfort than women without the condition.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Empathy: Could It Be What You’re Missing?
A Washington Psychotherapist Suggests How to Tell . . . and How to Treat the Symptoms
Brain • Emotions • Psychology • Relationships • (0) Comments • Permalink
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
New Study Raises Concerns about Current Test-Taking Requirements
There’s no doubt that today students are under intense pressure to perform academically, but at what cost? The Institute of HeartMath and Claremont Graduate University released a new study that depicts the high levels of anxiety students are shouldering due to the pressure to excel intellectually. Nearly two-thirds of the high school students who participated in the study reported being affected by test anxiety. The study underscores the detrimental impact of test anxiety on academic performance. Based on their findings, researchers say that students’ high levels of anxiety may jeopardize NCLB assessment validity and could be compromising testing results.
Anxiety • Autonomic Nervous System • Brain • Children • Cognition • Education • Heart Rate Variability • HeartMath • Memory • Productivity/Performance • Psychology • Stress • Teenagers • (0) Comments • Permalink
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Study Reveals How the Brain Generates the Human Tendency for Optimism
A neural network that may generate the human tendency to be optimistic has been identified by researchers at New York University. As humans, we expect to live longer and be more successful than average, and we underestimate our likelihood of getting a divorce or having cancer. The results, reported in the most recent issue of Nature, link the optimism bias to the same brain regions that show irregularities in depression.
Amygdala • Brain • Depression • Happiness • Mood • (0) Comments • Permalink
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Sweat Your Way to a Bigger Brain
You probably already know that regular, moderate exercise is one of the best things you can do for your health and well-being. What you may not know is that new research is showing that exercise beneficially affects your genes, helps reverse the aging process at a cellular level, gives you more energy, makes you smarter, and may even help you grow so many new brain cells (a process called neurogenesis) that your brain actually gets bigger.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Docs struggle with mysteries of TBI
The war in Iraq is not over, but one legacy is already here in this city and others across America: an epidemic of brain-damaged soldiers. Thousands of troops have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, or TBI. These blast-caused head injuries are so different from the ones doctors are used to seeing from falls and car crashes that treating them is as much faith as it is science.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
This Is Your Brain On 9/11
If you witnessed the attacks on 9/11 up close and then continually had bad dreams, felt jumpy, kept thinking about what you saw, and avoided the site even several years later, chances are that parts of your brain were altered in subtle ways. According to scientists, such lingering symptoms and physical changes reflect an undiagnosed and long-term toll on mental health resulting from the attacks.
9/11 • Amygdala • Brain • Children • Depression • Hormones • PTSD • (0) Comments • Permalink
The Hormone That Helps You Read Minds
We’ve long accepted that hormones can make you amorous, aggressive, or erratic. But lately neuroscience has been abuzz with evidence that the hormone oxytocin—which also acts as a neuromodulator—can enhance at least one cognitive power: the ability to understand the gist of what others are thinking.
Brain • Hormones • Relationships • (0) Comments • Permalink
Traumatic brain injury: Common wound of war
Since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001, about 2,100 troops have been formally diagnosed with TBI. But officials estimate up to 150,000 troops may have suffered concussions — mild TBIs — from roadside bomb attacks. According to the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, a research and treatment agency run by the Pentagon and Veterans Affairs Department, 64 percent of injured troops have suffered brain injuries.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Possible Mechanistic Link Between Stress And The Development Of Alzheimer Tangles
Subjecting mice to repeated emotional stress, the kind we experience in everyday life, may contribute to the accumulation of neurofibrillary tangles, one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease, report researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. While aging is still the greatest risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, a number of studies have pointed to stress as a contributing factor.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Area Responsible For Self-Control Found In The Human Brain
The area of the brain responsible for self-control-where the decision not to do something occurs after thinking about doing it-is separate from the area associated with taking action, scientists say. “The results illuminate a very important aspect of the brain’s control of behavior, the ability to hold off doing something after you’ve developed the intention to do it-one might call it ‘free won’t’ as opposed to free will,” says Martha Farah, PhD, of the University of Pennsylvania.
Friday, August 17, 2007
New Research Shows How Chronic Stress Worsens Neurogenerative Disease Course
The evidence is accumulating on how bad stress is for health. Chronic stress can intensify inflammation and increase a person’s risk for developing central nervous system infections, neurodegenerative diseases, like multiple sclerosis (MS), and other inflammatory diseases, say researchers. These researchers have demonstrated for the first time that stress-related increases in central nervous system inflammation are behind the adverse effects of stress in an animal model of MS.
Brain • Immune System • Stress • (0) Comments • Permalink