These pregnancy - induced
brain changes involve the pruning of the size and structure of certain areas of the brain that process social information, such as the feelings, intentions, thoughts or beliefs of others.
«We should go back to the drawing board to understand
the brain changes involved in these subtypes of depression.»
Consistent with its important role in brain function, the team found that cocaine utilizes FMRP to facilitate
brain changes involved in addiction - related behaviors.
Their work concerned
the brain changes involved in the transformation of short - term memories to long - term memories.
To study
brain changes involved in IED, Coccaro and his colleagues performed high - resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans in 168 people, including 57 who were diagnosed with IED, 53 healthy control subjects and another 58 control patients with psychiatric diagnoses.
Not exact matches
Developmental scientists consider it to be one of the most massive reorganizations in the lifespan,
changing the
brains, endocrine systems, behaviors, identities, relationships, and more, of everyone
involved.
The latter study shows that the process of forming and
changing opinions is intimately connected to the
brain's neural hardware, where different parts of the
brain are
involved differently in shaping opinions, and the more beliefs are tied to community values, the more difficult it is to
change them.
She demonstrated that early experience leads to lasting
changes in the molecular structure of the
brain and discovered a gene
involved in the spread of
brain cancer cells into healthy
brain tissue.
«I'd be surprised if playing online games for 10 to 12 hours a day didn't
change the
brain,» says neuroscientist Nora Volkow of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, who wasn't
involved in the study.
The
brains of children who were more actively
involved in Kraus lab studies saw more robust
changes.
They found that one month after training, the children showed increased activation in the intraparietal sulcus and reduced neural activation elsewhere in the parietal lobes — a hint that their improvements in arithmetic were related to
changes involving brain areas that respond to number.
Changing brain chemistry Unlike with electroconvulsive, or electroshock, therapy, where patients must be unconscious and administered muscle relaxants in order to prevent seizures, patients receiving rTMS (which
involves trains of pulses during each session, hence the «repetitive» modifier) remain conscious and seated in outpatient settings.
This pruning
changes the relative density of receptors in the circuit linking the area of the
brain involved with processing rewards (the basal ganglia) and the area of the
brain implicated in inhibition and control (the prefrontal cortex).
Along with behavioural studies, imaging has helped to build the view that pain
involves many
brain areas and that chronic pain may cause long - term
changes to the morphology or function of some of these regions.
«In particular, the hippocampus — a part of the
brain that is
involved in the verbal recall memory task — is very sensitive to
changes in oestrogen and cortisol.»
The results of the study suggest that «people's performance on various cognitive tasks is better the fewer
changes they have to their
brain connectivity,» said John Dylan Haynes, a neuroscientist at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin who studies cognition and was not
involved in the study.
This expansion may have
involved a kind of snowball effect, in which initial mutations caused
changes that were not only beneficial in themselves but also allowed subsequent mutations that enhanced the
brain still further.
Each of the defense reactions, she explains,
involves activation of motor and arousal centers in the
brain and
changes in pain and sensory processing.
Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the research team also found anatomical
changes in the
brains of children whose reading abilities improved — in particular, a thickening of the cortex in parts of the
brain known to be
involved in reading.
An international team of scientists has sequenced the genome of an octopus, bringing researchers closer to discovering the genes
involved in the creature's unusual biology, including its ability to
change skin color and texture and a distributed
brain that allows its eight arms to move independently.
Scientists not
involved in the study noted that not only is it the first to demonstrate widespread anatomical
changes in the pregnant human
brain, but that it goes further by showing that the
changes last for at least 2 years.
The
changes occurred primarily in areas of the
brain involved in social tasks like reading the desires and intentions of others from their faces and actions.
In the past decade, researchers have used mouse models to unravel how cellular
changes in the nucleus accumbens (NAc), a
brain structure
involved in action selection associated with arousal and reward, may contribute to addiction - related behavior.
In a second experiment, the team investigated whether the treatment caused
changes in chemicals known to be
involved in «long - term potentiation» (LTP)-- a type of
brain activity key to memory formation.
The major advancement with the new study is that it demonstrates for the first time that self - repair in the adult
brain involves astrocytes entering a process by which they
change their identity to nerve cells.
The results show that this therapy induces structural
changes in areas of the
brain involved in verbal fluency in female - to - male transsexuals.
Since cocaine
changes the level of the
brain chemical dopamine, this new study may have implications for other mental illnesses such as depression and schizophrenia — where dopamine may also be
involved in how we recognise emotions.
In the
brain, germ - free mice had
changes in areas
involved in the descending pain modulation and its emotional regulation.
The researchers assessed how the mothers» nutrition affected epigenetic
changes (or DNA methylation) of IGF2, a gene
involved in fetal development and the
brain development of areas implicated in ADHD — the cerebellum and hippocampus.
When the researchers gave depressed people a placebo and told them it might help their symptoms, they saw
changes in
brain chemistry (left) in patients who responded to the placebo pill, in the areas of the
brain involved in emotional regulation.
Most other
changes to the
brain that take place throughout our lives, such as during adolescence and pregnancy,
involve pruning the connections between neurons.
«This is the first study to look at the way dads»
brains change with child care experience,» says Kevin Pelphrey, a neuroscientist at Yale University who was not
involved with the study.
Romantic love
involves a series of complex
changes in the
brain's reward system that make us crave the object of our affection
The discovery is surprising, because most
changes to the
brain as it matures
involve the altering of existing connections between neurons.
Previous studies have found that several years before the disease manifests itself, the
brains of people with the mutation undergo subtle
changes, with a thinning of the regions
involved in motor function.
Other results from the experiment conducted on Medaka and recently published in a PLOS ONE paper identified 11 genes
involved in
changes in other tissues, including the
brain and intestines.
Recordings from neurons in the amygdala, a part of the
brain involved in fear learning and implicated in anxiety disorders, showed that individual amygdala neurons responding to the tone
changed their preference («tuning») for tones of different pitch following fear learning.
The George lab has made seminal contributions to the field including: discovering a novel population of neurons in the
brain of humans, rats and mice that are
involved in nicotine dependence, identifying neuronal ensembles responsible for nicotine and alcohol addiction, and unveiled the cellular and molecular
changes associates with long term use of nicotine, cocaine, methamphetamine and alcohol use on the
brain.
Stacia Friedman - Hill, Ph.D., a program director at NIH's National Institute of Mental Health, says these findings are particularly relevant to the field of mental health research because many mental health disorders are marked by
changes in cognitive function, sometimes years before clinical symptoms become significant, and because mental health disorders often
involve changes in the developing
brain.
«We know that processes
involved in damaging the
brain in a disease like Alzheimer's can start many years before
changes become apparent on
brain scans or people experience any symptoms.
There are established ways to address these questions: we can assess unusual movements, analyze
changes in mood and thinking, and take images of the
brain areas
involved in HD.
Other
brain changes are likely also
involved in cognitive decline in PD.
While my initial interest lay in the chemico - physical properties of MR imaging probes, I became increasingly
involved in their application to functional MRI (fMRI), a method to map hemodynamic responses in the
brain as a surrogate for
changes in the underlying neuronal activity.
Attention - deficit / hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and Parkinson's disease (PD)
involve pathological
changes in
brain structures such as the basal ganglia, which are essential for the control of motor and cognitive behavior and impulsivity.
During hypnosis, there were significant
changes in activity across parts of the
brain involved in attention, muscle function, and environmental awareness.
«These results suggest that phytoestrogens can interfere with the normal estrogen feedback mechanisms with respect to release of gonadotropin in the ewe... although most studies into the effects of phytoestrogens have concentrated on
changes in the reproductive tract, there are indications that they interfere with the hormone balance between the ovaries and the hypothalamo - adenohypophysical system... ewes on phytoestrogens have shown follicular abnormalities such as numerous small follicles, deficient antrum formation and signs of early atresia... it is possible that the permanent
changes brought about by phytoestrogens in the
brain are a result of these compounds interacting with estrogen receptors in this tissue, and subsequently influencing the re-synthesis or replenishment of cyto - plasmic estrogen receptors... phytoestrogens can interfere with the delicate feedback mechanisms
involved in the release of the gonadotrophins.»
In the
brain, histamine can keep us awake, is
involved in our reflex reaction to pain, temperature
changes, vibration, and hormone balance.
This is further compounded by elevations in metabolic efficiency (whereby energy expenditure declines beyond that predicted from the
change in metabolic mass) and appetite which accompany weight - loss, and may ultimately predispose to weight re - gain.82 Moreover,
changes in neural activity within
brain regions known to be
involved in regulatory, emotional and cognitive control of food intake have also been observed following weight - loss.83
In the video, Professor Seyfried discusses how, as a metabolic disorder
involving the dysregulation of respiration, malignant
brain cancer can be managed through
changes in the metabolic environment.
Food addiction
involves overpowering cravings and
changes in your
brain chemistry that make it harder to resist eating certain foods.