A new study shows how neurochemicals affect fMRI readings
The brain is an incredibly complex and active organ that uses electricity and chemicals to transmit and receive signals between its sub-regions.
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The brain is an incredibly complex and active organ that uses electricity and chemicals to transmit and receive signals between its sub-regions.
6 hours ago
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30
A team of neuroscientists at the University of Pennsylvania has, for the first time, observed how social behavior is encoded in the brain when monkeys are doing normal, everyday things rather than sitting in a laboratory ...
For the first time, researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities showed that non-invasive brain stimulation can change a specific brain mechanism that is directly related to human behavior. This is a major step ...
Mar 15, 2024
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The mammalian brain is a web of densely interconnected neurons, yet one of the mysteries in neuroscience is how tools that capture relatively few components of brain activity have allowed scientists to predict behavior in ...
Mar 6, 2024
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When listening to music, the human brain appears to be biased toward hearing and producing rhythms composed of simple integer ratios—for example, a series of four beats separated by equal time intervals (forming a 1:1:1 ...
Mar 4, 2024
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A study led by Ryan W. Logan, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and neurobiology, has found mutations in key brain cells among individuals with chronic opioid use that could shift how we think about treatment strategies for ...
Mar 1, 2024
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The brain is typically depicted as a complex web of neurons sending and receiving messages. But neurons only make up half of the human brain. The other half—roughly 85 billion cells—are non-neuronal cells called glia.
Feb 28, 2024
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A research team at the RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research (BDR) in Japan has succeeded in establishing a model of the blood-brain barrier using modularized tissue derived from human cells. The "Tissue-in-a-CUBE" ...
Feb 28, 2024
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The candidate gene FKBP5 is involved in the development of stress-related psychiatric disorders. A few years ago, researchers at the MPI discovered that it is increasingly activated in the brains of patients and can permanently ...
Feb 27, 2024
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How does listening to live music affect the emotional center of our brain? A study carried out at the University of Zurich has found that live performances trigger a stronger emotional response than listening to music from ...
Feb 26, 2024
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The human brain is the center of the human nervous system and is a highly complex organ. Enclosed in the cranium, it has the same general structure as the brains of other mammals, but is over three times as large as the brain of a mammal with an equivalent body size. Most of the expansion comes from the cerebral cortex, a convoluted layer of neural tissue that covers the surface of the forebrain. Especially expanded are the frontal lobes, which are involved in executive functions such as self-control, planning, reasoning, and abstract thought. The portion of the brain devoted to vision is also greatly enlarged in humans.
Brain evolution, from the earliest shrewlike mammals through primates to hominids, is marked by a steady increase in encephalization, or the ratio of brain to body size. The human brain has been estimated to contain 50–100 billion (1011) neurons[citation needed], of which about 10 billion (1010) are cortical pyramidal cells.[citation needed] These cells pass signals to each other via approximately 100 trillion (1014)[citation needed] synaptic connections.
In spite of the fact that it is protected by the thick bones of the skull, suspended in cerebrospinal fluid, and isolated from the bloodstream by the blood-brain barrier, the delicate nature of the human brain makes it susceptible to many types of damage and disease. The most common forms of physical damage are closed head injuries such as a blow to the head, a stroke, or poisoning by a wide variety of chemicals that can act as neurotoxins. Infection of the brain is rare because of the barriers that protect it, but is very serious when it occurs. More common are genetically based diseases[citation needed], such as Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, and many others. A number of psychiatric conditions, such as schizophrenia and depression, are widely thought to be caused at least partially by brain dysfunctions, although the nature of such brain anomalies is not well understood.
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