If the brain goes hungry, Twinkies look a lot better, a study led by researchers at Yale University and the University of Southern California has found.
Brain imaging scans show that when glucose levels drop, an area of the brain known to regulate emotions and impulses loses the ability to dampen desire for high-calorie food, according to the study published online September 19 in The Journal of Clinical Investigation. (more…)
Are you wooed by advertising? Of course you are. After all, it’s one thing to go out and buy a new washing machine after the old one exploded, quite another to impulse-buy that 246-inch flat screen TV that just maybe, in hindsight, you didn’t really need.
Advertisers come at you in two ways. There is the just-the-facts type of ad, called “logical persuasion,” or LP (“This car gets 42 miles to the gallon”), and then there is the ad that circumvents conscious awareness, called “non-rational influence,” or NI (a pretty woman, say, draped over a car). (more…)
Animal’s brains are only roughly aware of how high-up they are in space, meaning that in terms of altitude the brain’s ‘map’ of space is surprisingly flat, according to new research.
In a study published online in Nature Neuroscience, scientists studied cells in or near a part of the brain called the hippocampus, which forms the brain’s map of space, to see whether they were activated when rats climbed upwards. (more…)
On April 26, Dr. Ketan Bulsara, using state-of-the-art technology, threaded a catheter less than one centimeter in width from the femoral artery in Norbert Tibeau’s thigh into an aneurysm in his brain. The aneurysm had grown to a diameter of two centimeters and bordered on such critical structures as the optic nerve and pituitary gland. If left untreated chances were high that within five years it would either kill Tibeau or devastate him neurologically. (more…)
Crossing your arms reduces the intensity of pain you feel when receiving a painful stimulus on the hand, according to research by scientists at UCL.
Published in the current issue of the journal PAIN, the research shows that crossing your arms over the midline (an imaginary line running vertically down the centre of the body) confuses the brain and reduces the intensity of the pain sensation. (more…)
People’s moral responses to similar situations change as they age, according to a new study at the University of Chicago that combined brain scanning, eye-tracking and behavioral measures to understand how the brain responds to morally laden scenarios.
Both preschool children and adults distinguish between damage done either intentionally or accidently when assessing whether a perpetrator had done something wrong. Nonetheless, adults are much less likely than children to think someone should be punished for damaging an object, especially if the action was accidental, said study author Jean Decety, the Irving B. Harris Professor in Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Chicago and a leading scholar on affective and social neuroscience. (more…)
EAST LANSING, Mich. — While recent studies have shown long-term exposure to estrogen can be a danger to women – overturning physicians’ long-held beliefs that the hormone was good for their patients’ hearts – the process by which estrogen induces high blood pressure was unclear.
In a new study, Michigan State University researchers found long-term estrogen exposure generates excessive levels of the compound superoxide, which causes stress in the body. The buildup of this compound occurs in an area of the brain that is crucial to regulating blood pressure, suggesting that the estrogen-induced buildup causes increased blood pressure. (more…)
The brain is apparently programmed from birth to develop the ability to determine sunrise and sunset, new research on circadian rhythms at the University of Chicago shows.
The research sheds new light on brain plasticity and may explain some basic human behaviors, according to Brian Prendergast, associate professor in psychology, and co-author of a paper published April 27 in the journal PLoS One. The lead author is August Kampf-Lassin, an advanced graduate student at the University. (more…)
