Published: January 21, 2012
Image: by parrchristy:Flickr
ou – or more accurately, your brain – has control over how allergic your skin is, suggests new research.
A team of neuroscientists have found that if someone has a lesser sense of ownership over a part of their body, their immune system also responds differently to that body part, treating it as ‘non-self’ rather than ‘self’.
These findings have direct implications for understanding autoimmune disorders such as multiple sclerosis and a range of neurological and psychiatric conditions characterised by a disrupted sense of ownership over one’s body, such as stroke, schizophrenia, autism, epilepsy, neuropathic pain, anorexia nervosa and bulimia. [continue reading…]
Published: January 7, 2012
Meet Your Brain
Image: The Royal Institution
The Royal Institution’s 2011 Christmas lectures are now available to view online
Published: December 27, 2011
Image: istockphoto
oth children and the elderly have slower response times when they have to make quick decisions in some settings.
But recent research suggests that much of that slower response is a conscious choice to emphasize accuracy over speed.
In fact, healthy older people can be trained to respond faster in some decision-making tasks without hurting their accuracy – meaning their cognitive skills in this area aren’t so different from younger adults.
“Many people think that it is just natural for older people’s brains to slow down as they age, but we’re finding that isn’t always true,” said Roger Ratcliff, professor of psychology at Ohio State University and co-author of the studies.
“At least in some situations, 70-year-olds may have response times similar to those of 25-year olds.”
Ratcliff and his colleagues have been studying cognitive processes and aging in their lab for about a decade. In a new study published online this month in the journal Child Development, they extended their work to children.
Ratcliff said their results in children are what most scientists would have expected: very young children have slower response times and poorer accuracy compared to adults, and these improve as the children mature.
But the more interesting finding is that older adults don’t necessarily have slower brain processing than younger people, said Gail McKoon, professor of psychology at Ohio State and co-author of the studies.
“Older people don’t want to make any errors at all, and that causes them to slow down. We found that it is difficult to get them out of the habit, but they can with practice,” McKoon said. [continue reading…]
Published: December 21, 2011
Image: Stockxpert
We know a lot about the links between a pregnant mother’s health, behavior, and moods and her baby’s cognitive and psychological development once it is born. But how does pregnancy change a mother’s brain? “Pregnancy is a critical period for central nervous system development in mothers,” says psychologist Laura M. Glynn of Chapman University. “Yet we know virtually nothing about it.” Glynn and her colleague Curt A. Sandman, of University of the California Irvine, are doing something about that. Their review of the literature in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science, discusses the theories and findings that are starting to fill what Glynn calls “a significant gap in our understanding of this critical stage of most women’s lives.”
At no other time in a woman’s life does she experience such massive hormonal fluctuations as during pregnancy. Research suggests that the reproductive hormones may ready a woman’s brain for the demands of motherhood—helping her becomes less rattled by stress and more attuned to her baby’s needs. Although the hypothesis remains untested, Glynn surmises this might be why moms wake up when the baby stirs while dads snore on. Other studies confirm the truth in a common complaint of pregnant women: “Mommy Brain,” or impaired memory before and after birth. “There may be a cost” of these reproduction-related cognitive and emotional changes, says Glynn, “but the benefit is a more sensitive, effective mother.” [continue reading…]
