Neuroscience- Thoughts on Thinking

New approach to Alzheimer’s diagnosis...

Posted by williams in Disorders, Neuroscience on July 13, 2010 | No Comments

Alzheimer’s disease is a debilitating, ultimately fatal neurological disorder which affects more than 5 million Americans. The disease has no cure, but the recent decade has seen many promising treatments which all depend upon diagnosing Alzheimer’s as early as possible. Typically, Alzheimer’s...

Adjusting your moral compass...

Posted by williams in Neuroscience, Research Techniques on April 6, 2010 | 1 Comment

It can be kind of frightening to think about it, but there really is such a thing as mind control. Now, we are not talking Hypnotoad or Professor-X style mind control (not yet at least) but a simple experiment that demonstrates how mind and brain interact and can be manipulated. In the study conducted...

Music, Education, Neuroscience...

Posted by williams in Disorders, Neuroscience on February 22, 2010 | No Comments

At the recent annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the topics of music-education and neuroscience were highlighted by Nina Kraus, Professor of Neurobiology, Physiology and Communication Sciences at Northwestern University. In a study to be published in the April...

Childhood Indications of Schizophrenia...

Posted by williams in Disorders, Neuroscience on January 25, 2010 | No Comments

A recent 30 Year longitudinal study of individuals from New Zealand has revealed early indications of schizophrenia development later in life. Unlike many mental disorders, schizophrenia usually strikes much later in life (usually in mid to late adolescence) and so parents and patients alike may be unaware...

New Technique may Unravel Secrets of Bio...

Posted by connolly in Disorders, Neuroscience, Research Techniques on January 11, 2010 | 5 Comments

A new paper from David Kleinfeld’s Laboratory at UC San Diego details an exciting new technique for studying biochemistry in the brain. The paper, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, outlines a novel method for studying cell-to-cell signals that are the basis of neurotransmission. It has...

Remembering Kim Peek...

Posted by williams in Disorders, Neuroscience on December 28, 2009 | No Comments

Kim Peek (November 11, 1951 – December 19, 2009) was an inconceivably gifted savant. In today’s terms we might describe him as a living version of Google, but far better. He could of course, give you driving directions to any place in the country, and open the entire course of human history with...

Your teacher was wrong!...

Posted by connolly in Archived Content, Neuroscience, Research Techniques on November 12, 2009 | 5 Comments

I studied neuroscience in college and subsequently taught it for three years at university. One of the central tenants of the course I studied and taught was the dogma of synaptic transmission. The basic tenant of this dogma is that neurons communicate exclusively by sending chemical signals across the...

SNP Snoop: BDNF and driving ability; fai...

Posted by williams in Archived Content, Neuroscience on November 2, 2009 | 2 Comments

Could an alternative version of your brain-derived neurotropic factor be an excuse for your failed road test? According to research published in the Journal, Cerebral Cortex, by Stephanie McHughen et.al., a key SNP in BDNF (valine 66 mutated to methionine) impacts learning and memory functions, cognitive...

White Matter Matters!...

Posted by connolly in Archived Content, Neuroscience, Research Techniques on October 19, 2009 | 1 Comment

Can you change the structure of your brain with practice? A slew of papers in the last decade affirm that yes, you very much can. Probably the best known is a study by Maguire and colleagues, who found structural differences in the hippocampi of London taxi drivers — presumably the result of having...

Smart Drugs and Should We Take Them...

Posted by connolly in Archived Content, Medication, Neuroscience on September 21, 2009 | 10 Comments

I was looking back through the ADHD section of G2C Online this week, namely the interview with Philip Shaw on ADHD and medication. According to Dr. Shaw, up to 90% of children with ADHD who take Ritalin, Adderall or Strattera show improvements on cognitive tasks . This is quite an impressive statistic...