Learn more about the Cognitive Science Student Association and the California Cognitive Science Conference at https://cssa.berkeley.edu.
Amy Arnsten — Yale University.
Continue reading “The Effects of Stress on Prefrontal Cortical Function” »
The largest animals do not have proportionally bigger brains — with humans bucking this trend — a new study published in Nature Ecology and Evolution has revealed.
Researchers at the University of Reading and Durham University collected an enormous dataset of brain and body sizes from around 1,500…
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Continue reading “Brain size riddle solved as humans exceed evolution trend” »
Toronto, Ontario —A new ultra-high-performance brain PET system allows for the direct measurement of brain nuclei as never before seen or quantified. With its ultra-high sensitivity and resolution, the NeuroEXPLORER provides exceptional brain PET images and has the potential to spur advances in the treatment of many brain diseases. This research was presented at the 2024 Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) Annual Meeting, and the grouping of images highlighting targeted tracer uptake in specific brain nuclei has been selected as the 2024 SNMMI Henry N. Wagner, Jr., Image of the Year.
Each year, SNMMI chooses an image that best exemplifies the most promising advances in the field of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging. The state-of-the-art technologies captured in these images demonstrate the capacity to improve patient care by detecting disease, aiding diagnosis, improving clinical confidence, and providing a means of selecting appropriate treatments. This year, the SNMMI Image of the Year was chosen from more than 1,500 abstracts submitted for the meeting.
The image quality of PET systems has improved in recent years, mostly by increases in sensitivity, including enhanced time-of-flight capabilities. However, these systems have shown only minimal improvement in intrinsic resolution. To address these issues, researchers designed the NeuroEXPLORER PET scanner with a focus on ultra-high sensitivity and resolution, as well as continuous head motion correction.
The largest animals do not have proportionally bigger brains—with humans bucking this trend—a study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution has revealed.
Researchers at the University of Reading and Durham University collected an enormous dataset of brain and body sizes from around 1,500 species to clarify centuries of controversy surrounding brain size evolution.
Bigger brains relative to body size are linked to intelligence, sociality, and behavioral complexity—with humans having evolved exceptionally large brains. The new research reveals the largest animals do not have proportionally bigger brains, challenging long-held beliefs about brain evolution.
Researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have developed a potentially transformative approach to treating Alzheimer’s disease, A team from the former Cellular and Molecular Synaptic Function Unit have reported significant progress in reversing cognitive decline and restoring memory in transgenic mice using a synthetic protein. The findings, published in Brain Research, offer hope for a viable treatment to alleviate the debilitating symptoms associated with this neurodegenerative condition.
“We successfully reversed the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease in mice,” explained Dr Chia-Jung Chang, first author of the study and presently a member of the Neural Computation Unit at OIST. “We achieved this with a small, synthetic peptide, PHDP5, that can easily cross the blood-brain barrier to directly target the memory center in the brain [1].”
Longevity. Technology: There is a pressing need to find effective treatments for Alzheimer’s; along with other forms of dementia, this debilitating disease currently affects approximately 55 million people worldwide, and this number is predicted to nearly double every 20 years, reaching 78 million in 2030 and 139 million in 2050. As well as a health burden, Alzheimer’s is an economic burden – the annual global cost of dementia has now rocketed to more than US$1.3 trillion, with a projected rise to US$2.8 trillion by 2030 on the horizon [2].
Magnetic stimulation therapy could aid patients who don’t respond to antidepressants. Scientists from the University of Helsinki and Stanford University are refining techniques that may lead to personalized treatments in the future.
Not every patient with depression benefits from medication. Recent research highlights potential improvements in an alternative approach, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), for treating depression. TMS is distinct from electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), another treatment option for depression.
Researchers from the University of Helsinki and Stanford University investigated which factors in targeting TMS influence the brain’s electrical responses. They examined the behavior of a specific electrophysiological marker. This marker could potentially be used as a biomarker in the future to measure the efficacy of TMS treatment and thus help target and tailor the therapy.
Diapause is a peculiar sleep of insects in which the animal’s motor activity completely ceases. During this period, insects become a good target for parasitoids, freely attacking them with their mobile ovipositors. We found that the parasitic wasp, Eupelmus messene (Hymenoptera, Eupelmidae, Cynipidae), stirs the internal contents of the diapausing host pupa of Aulacidea hieracii (Bouché, 1834) with its long and flexible ovipositor “making a shake” inside the pupa. However, the attacked pupae stay morphologically indistinguishable from healthy diapausing ones for several months. Using non-invasive Raman spectroscopy (RS), we, for the first time, studied the molecular composition of live diapausing and parasitized A. hieracii pupae.
For the first time, scientists identify individual brain cells linked to the linguistic essence of a word.
We identified five themes centred on the impact of diagnosis: (i) Denial and acceptance (three sub-themes: Denial of diagnosis; Acceptance of diagnosis; Conflict between denial and acceptance); (ii) Stigma of diagnosis and selective disclosure; (iii) The process of diagnosis, (iv) Losing, maintaining, and finding a sense of the self (two sub-themes: The lost self; Constructing and maintaining a sense of self); and (v) Receiving, finding, and providing support.
Figure 1 shows a created a diagram on the potential connections between the themes and subthemes. The process of diagnosis spans the entire experience and has a bearing on denial, conflict and acceptance. Stigma also feeds into denial, conflict and lack of identity. Acceptance of a diagnosis is heavily based on the experience and process of healthcare services, and through supportive peer spaces that reinforce and maintains a clear sense of self/identity.
Objective: Cognitive loss in older adults is a growing issue in our society, and there is a need to develop inexpensive, simple, effective in-home treatments. This study was conducted to explore the use of olfactory enrichment at night to improve cognitive ability in healthy older adults.
Methods: Male and female older adults (N = 43), age 60–85, were enrolled in the study and randomly assigned to an Olfactory Enriched or Control group. Individuals in the enriched group were exposed to 7 different odorants a week, one per night, for 2 h, using an odorant diffuser. Individuals in the control group had the same experience with de minimis amounts of odorant. Neuropsychological assessments and fMRI scans were administered at the beginning of the study and after 6 months.
Results: A statistically significant 226% improvement was observed in the enriched group compared to the control group on the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test and improved functioning was observed in the left uncinate fasciculus, as assessed by mean diffusivity.
