The DHA-deprived rats also developed signs of resistance to insulin, a hormone that controls blood sugar and regulates synaptic function in the brain. A closer look at the rats' brain tissue suggested that insulin had lost much of its power to influence the brain cells.

"Because insulin can penetrate the blood–brain barrier, the hormone may signal neurons to trigger reactions that disrupt learning and cause memory loss," Gomez-Pinilla said.

He suspects that fructose is the culprit behind the DHA-deficient rats' brain dysfunction. Eating too much fructose could block insulin's ability to regulate how cells use and store sugar for the energy required for processing thoughts and emotions.

"Insulin is important in the body for controlling blood sugar, but it may play a different role in the brain, where insulin appears to disturb memory and learning," he said. "Our study shows that a high-fructose diet harms the brain as well as the body. This is something new."

Gomez-Pinilla, a native of Chile and an exercise enthusiast who practices what he preaches, advises people to keep fructose intake to a minimum and swap sugary desserts for fresh berries and Greek yogurt, which he keeps within arm's reach in a small refrigerator in his office. An occasional bar of dark chocolate that hasn't been processed with a lot of extra sweetener is fine too, he said.

Still planning to throw caution to the wind and indulge in a hot-fudge sundae? Then also eat foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids, like salmon, walnuts and flaxseeds, or take a daily DHA capsule. Gomez-Pinilla recommends one gram of DHA per day.

"Our findings suggest that consuming DHA regularly protects the brain against fructose's harmful effects," said Gomez-Pinilla. "It's like saving money in the bank. You want to build a reserve for your brain to tap when it requires extra fuel to fight off future diseases."

The UCLA study was funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Gomez-Pinilla's lab will next examine the role of diet in recovery from brain trauma.

To the unaided eye, the most striking feature of the human brain is its squiggly pattern of bumps and grooves. But within those curves is a latticework of nerve fibers that cross each other at roughly right angles (above), according to a study published March 30 in Science.
The researchers used a recently-developed method called diffusion spectrum imaging to infer the position of nerve fibers in the living human brain from the way water flows through and around them. These scans revealed an orderly weave of fibers — a much simpler organization than many scientists would have suspected.
Scans in four monkey species found a similar pattern. The researchers suggest that this grid-like organization may be advantageous during brain development, providing the equivalent of highway lane markers to help growing nerve fibers find their way to the appropriate destination.

An emerging body of research suggests that Alzheimer's disease may be linked to insulin resistance, constituting a third type of diabetes.  This model is based on several observations including an increased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease for diabetic patients, and reduced insulin levels in the brain tissue of Alzheimer's disease patients. Though intriguing, the existing evidence does not reveal if defective insulin signaling is causative of Alzheimer's or how insulin resistance impacts cognitive function.
Type 2 diabetes is known to increase the risk for Alzheimer's disease. Recent research has found that insulin resistance also develops in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's, which scientists sometimes call "brain diabetes." This brain insulin signaling deficit results in learning and memory disability and could potentially be known as Type 3 Diabetes.
There is much that still remains unknown about the cause of Alzheimer's disease (AD), a form of dementia that affects memory, thinking, and behavior. Two brain changes have long been known to form in the brains of patients with dementia – neurofibrillary tangles and beta-amyloid plaques. Tangles are twisted fibers of tau protein that builds up inside the cells. Plaques are accumulations of protein fragments that build up in the spaces between nerve cells. The two abnormal structures combine to block communication between nerve cells and disrupt the processes needed for them to survive.
But now, a third brain change is emerging as a likely suspect contributing to cognitive deficits in patients with Alzheimer's disease. Brain levels of insulin and insulin receptor (IR) are lower in AD and insulin signaling impairments have been documented in human postmortem analysis and in animal models....
The University of Pennsylvania team examined insulin signaling in human brain tissue postmortem, and concluded that the activation state of many insulin signaling molecules were highly related to memory and cognitive function. They further suggest that insulin resistance is a common and early feature of Alzheimer's disease.
The De Felice group further observed impaired insulin signaling in Alzheimer's brain tissue in rodent and non-human primate model systems as well as from tissue from human patients. They went on to show in a mouse model system of Alzheimer's disease that treatment with a new anti-diabetic drug normalized insulin signaling and remarkably improved cognitive function. Cumulatively, these two new studies strongly support a connection between insulin resistance and Alzheimer's disease and provide hope for new therapeutics in Alzheimer's disease treatment.

Rich evidence has shown that cannabis products exert a broad gamut of effects on emotional regulation. The main psychoactive ingredient of hemp, Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), and its synthetic cannabinoid analogs have been reported to either attenuate or exacerbate anxiety and fear-related behaviors in humans and experimental animals.
The heterogeneity of cannabis-induced psychological outcomes reflects a complex network of molecular interactions...The high degree of interindividual variability in the responses to cannabis is contributed by a wide spectrum of factors, including genetic and environmental determinants, as well as differences in the relative concentrations of THC and other alkaloids (such as cannabidiol) within the plant itself.
The present article reviews the currently available knowledge on the herbal, synthetic and endogenous cannabinoids with respect to the modulation of anxiety responses, and highlights the challenges that should be overcome to harness the therapeutic potential of some of these compounds, all the while limiting the [adverse] effects associated with cannabis consumption. In addition the article presents some promising patents on cannabinoid-related agents.

Cannabis has long been known to produce cognitive and emotional effects. Research has shown that cannabinoid drugs produce these effects by driving the brain's endogenous cannabinoid system and that this system plays a modulatory role in many cognitive and emotional processes.
This review focuses on the effects of endocannabinoid system modulation in animal models of cognition (learning and memory) and emotion (anxiety and depression). We review studies in which natural or synthetic cannabinoid agonists were administered to directly stimulate cannabinoid receptors or, conversely, where cannabinoid antagonists were administered to inhibit the activity of cannabinoid receptors. In addition, studies are reviewed that involved genetic disruption of cannabinoid receptors or genetic or pharmacological manipulation of the endocannabinoid-degrading enzyme, fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH).
Endocannabinoids affect the function of many neurotransmitter systems, some of which play opposing roles. The diversity of cannabinoid roles and the complexity of task-dependent activation of neuronal circuits may lead to the effects of endocannabinoid system modulation being strongly dependent on environmental conditions. Recent findings are reviewed that raise the possibility that endocannabinoid signaling may change the impact of environmental influences on emotional and cognitive behavior rather than selectively affecting any specific behavior.

For Dr. Seung, it is self-evident that you are more than your genes. The real you sits firmly within your skull, and while your brain’s 100 billion nerve cells may carry your genes, the “you” they form is shaped by the ways they connect to one another...
["Connectomics" seems a particularly egregious barbarism to coin for this field, dispensing as it does with what I think of as the indispensable "n" from the *nom* root.—DMM]
As a newborn, Dr. Seung writes, you are pretty much just a product of your genes and some initial random connections, but every second of your first few years adds to the cumulative web of connections that form you. By the time you are a toddler you have more synapses, or connections among your neurons, than you ever will again: In some ways the adult you is just an edited 2-year old, one of many eminently pleasing thoughts he sets forth.
This is complicated stuff, and it is a testament to Dr. Seung’s remarkable clarity of exposition that the reader is swept along with his enthusiasm, as he moves from the basics of neuroscience out to the farthest regions of the hypothetical, sketching out a spectacularly illustrated giant map of the universe of man.

Some studies have suggested that consumption of diet soft drinks may be associated with Type 2 diabetes and development of the condition known as metabolic syndrome — high blood pressure, abdominal obesity and other risk factors. Now a 10-year epidemiological study has found a link between diet soft drinks and cardiovascular disease.

[Among] 2,564 adults over 40 living in Manhattan,] diet and regular soft drink consumption were both associated with a number of risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

Even after controlling for many of those risks, including diabetes, the researchers found that daily consumption of diet soda was still independently associated with an increased risk for stroke, heart attack and death.

According to the World Health Organization, depression is the leading cause of disability and the fourth leading contributor to the global burden of disease, projected to reach second place by 2020. There is also strong evidence that it is an independent risk factor for heart disease, and several studies show that prolonged depression is associated with selective and possibly permanent damage to the hippocampus, a region of the brain critical to memory and learning.
Add the fact that 2 percent to 12 percent of depressed people eventually commit suicide, and the [supposed evolutionary] “advantages” of depression suddenly don’t look so good....
What is natural, the thinking goes, is best. If we are designed to suffer depression in response to life’s ills, there must be a good reason for it, and we should allow it to take its painful and natural course.
But unlike ordinary sadness, the natural course of depression can be devastating and lethal. And while sadness is useful, clinical depression signals a failure to adapt to stress or loss, because it impairs a person’s ability to solve the very dilemmas that triggered it.
Even if depression is “natural” and evolved from an emotional state that might once have given us some advantage, that doesn’t make it any more desirable than other maladies. Nature offers us cancer, infections and heart disease, which we happily avoid and do our best to treat. Depression is no different.

In obese versus lean individuals, brain glucose metabolism was significantly higher in the brain's striatal regions, which are involved in processing of rewards. Moreover, obese individual’s reward system responded more vigorously to food pictures, whereas responses in the frontal cortical regions involved in cognitive control were dampened.
"The results suggest that obese individuals’ brains might constantly generate signals that promote eating even when the body would not require additional energy uptake"....
The participants were morbidly obese individuals and lean, healthy controls. Their brain glucose metabolism was measured with positron emission tomography [while] the body was satiated in terms of insulin signalling. Brain responses to pictures of foods were measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging.

[Investigators, to their surprise, found that education and an active mind] offered no protection...Instead, they found hints that Alzheimer's disease could have already begun in some women by the time they entered the convent.
The nuns whose sentences were grammatically complex and packed with ideas when they were in their 20's remained sharp of mind when they were in their 80's. In contrast, almost all those whose sentences were simple and comparatively devoid of complex grammatical constructions were demented six decades later. [Without knowing the fate of the writer of each sample, researchers could] predict with 90% accuracy which ones would develop Alzheimer's disease when they were old...
[The nuns] lived together in the same environment for 60 years, so vagaries of diet or other environmental influences did not affect their risk]....
The most telling linguistic feature was idea density, a measurement imported from the field of psycholinguistics that looks at how many ideas are in a given piece of writing. [Researchers measured idea density] to categorize texts according to how difficult they are to read and understand....
"To me, it was the most bizarre finding on earth," [author James] Mortimer said. But he added that he was now convinced that Alzheimer's disease might well be "a lifelong disease," one that progresses very slowly and manifests itself as dementia only when a certain threshold in brain damage is reached....
Other researchers said they had also struggled with disbelief when they learned of the study results but found the research design elegant and the evidence compelling. Many said the study might mark a turning point in the way researchers think about Alzheimer's disease....
Dr. Neil Buckholtz [of the National Institute on Aging] cautioned that the results might not mean that Alzheimer's disease starts when people are in their 20's. Another hypothesis [is] "a difference in the brains of these two groups [that interacts with an Alzheimer's process that may occur later...Whatever] the process of Alzheimer's disease is, it occurs earlier than the symptoms...[We really don't know] how far back it goes."
[The study's conclusions fit with research by Tomas G. Ohm et al. who examined 887 brains of people 20 to 104 years old and reported] that neurofibrillary tangles, the pathological changes characteristic of Alzheimer's disease, could be present even when people were 20 years old.
In a recent paper published in Neuroscience, the German group concluded that "the deep roots of Alzheimer's disease-related neurofibrillary changes can be traced about 50 years back and may even extend into adolescence."
[Dr. David A. Snowden] and his colleagues had begun their research expecting that nuns who had spent their lives teaching would be less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease than those with a high school education or less who had handled household chores at the convent.
But the researchers found no such effect. When the investigators restricted their analysis of the writing samples to the 85 nuns with college degrees, "the results were just as striking," Dr. Snowden said.
[Psycholinguist and study author Susan J.] Kemper said it was not yet known whether idea density was related to intelligence or to measures like verbal scores on college entrance exams or an ability to do well on analogies tests...
The investigators also looked at the nuns' writings when they were older to see if the idea density in their writings remained constant. It did. Those with the prose rated most dense in ideas when they were 20 had the most idea-dense prose when they were 80, and vice versa....
The investigators are also working with Dr. Allen D. Roses of Duke University to see if one genetic risk factor, the inheritance of apo E4 genes, was more prevalent among the nuns whose writings had low idea densities.
One thing the study shows, Dr. Roses said, is that "we ought to be less seriously wed to our beloved hypotheses."

Scientists have proven that cannabis does have medical usefulness, and the more we learn the more intriguing these discoveries become. Since the early 1980s, medical researchers have published about how cannabis relieves pressure in the eye, thus easing the symptoms of glaucoma, a disease that causes blindness. THC is also "neuroprotective," meaning in essence that it prevents brain damage. Some studies have suggested that cannabis could mitigate the effects of Alzheimer's for this reason.
At the same time, we know that THC interferes with memory, and it's still uncertain what kinds of long-term effects the drug could have on memory functioning. No one has been able to prove definitively that it does or does not erode memory strength over time.
[Article strength: quite specific about potentially adverse effects on brain and body before the cautious statement above about neuroprotective effects.
Weaknesses: Ignores action of other cannabinoids and cannabinols. Sets up a false opposition insofar as the short-term memory effects seem to be about memory formation, not memory retention or loss. No citations.—DMM]

Anderson and colleagues suggest that this association between early childhood experiences and teen obesity has origins in the brain. The limbic system in the brain controls responses to stress as well as the sleep/wake cycle, hunger and thirst, and a variety of metabolic processes, mostly through the regulation of hormones.
“Sensitive parenting increases the likelihood that a child will have a secure pattern of attachment and develop a healthy response to stress,” Anderson said. “A well-regulated stress response could in turn influence how well children sleep and whether they eat in response to emotional distress – just two factors that affect the likelihood for obesity.”
Obesity may be one manifestation of dysregulation in the functioning of the stress response system. Parents help children develop a healthy response to stress by protecting children from extreme levels of stress, responding supportively and consistently to normal levels of stress, and modeling behavioral responses to stress.
“The evidence here is supportive of the association between a poor-quality maternal-child relationship and an increased chance for adolescent obesity,” Anderson said. “Interventions are effective in increasing maternal sensitivity and enhancing young children’s ability to regulate their emotions, but the effect of these interventions on children’s obesity risk is not known, and we think it would be worth investigating.”

A single night of total sleep loss in young normal weight men curbed the energy expenditure the next morning...[S]ubjects had increased levels of hunger...[Researchers have] systematically examined which regions in the brain involved in appetite sensation are influenced by acute sleep loss....
“After a night of total sleep loss, these males showed a high level of activation in an area of the brain that is involved in a desire to eat...[O]ur results may explain why poor sleep habits can affect people’s risk to gain weight in the long run. It may therefore be important to sleep about eight hours every night to maintain a stable and healthy body weight.”

Inflammation and the [age-related accumulation of the toxic molecule amyloid beta contribute to] increased risk of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the largest cause of blindness in people over 50 in the developed world...
"When we gave older mice the vitamin D we found that deposits of amyloid beta were reduced in their eyes and the mice showed an associated improvement of vision. [Amyloid beta is linked to Alzheimer's disease;] new evidence suggests that vitamin D could have a role in reducing its build up in the brain"...
Professor Jeffery and his team...found that the mice that had been given the vitamin D supplement also had significantly less amyloid beta built up in their blood vessels, including in the aorta...
"[V]itamin D could be useful in helping to prevent a range of age-related health problems, from deteriorating vision to heart disease"....
For much of human history our ancestors lived in Africa, probably without clothes, and so were exposed to strong sunlight all year round. This would have triggered vitamin D production in the skin. Humans have only moved to less sunny parts of the world and adopted clothing relatively recently and so might not be well adapted to reduced exposure to the sun.

* Higher chocolate intake is related to a decreased risk for cardiometabolic disorders overall in 5 of 7 studies.
* Higher chocolate intake is related to a reduced risk for cardiovascular disease by 37%, diabetes by 31%, and stroke by 29%. There is no link between chocolate intake and heart failure.

Buitrago-Lopez A, Sanderson J, Johnson L, et al. Chocolate consumption and cardiometabolic disorders: systematic review and meta-analysis. BMJ 2011; DOI:10.1136/bmj.d4488

Talking and listening to young children develops [social and literacy skills; reading aloud is a good way to practise.]. <br />
Babies love [parents' voices and reading aloud can calm during times of distress or unease. [Their favourite book or character can soothe your child and help build bonds.] <br />
Books [help children learn to express] thoughts and emotions. <br />
Stories [help overcome adult inhibitions about talking and listening to children, and provide topics.]<br />
Reading together gives babies and young children the chance to respond. A gurgle in anticipation of a favourite story ending, or a smile of enjoyment, shows [that even the youngest children like to communicate.]. <br />
Characters, words and sounds [in books can be talked about outside story] time. Books are an important source of new vocabulary....<br />
Reading aloud combines the benefits of talking, listening and storytelling...and helps to build the foundation for language development. <br />
[Most] brain development occurs in the first 3 years...

Babies who are slow to develop their motor skills at 9 months are significantly more likely to be identified as behind in their cognitive development, and also likely to be less well behaved at age 5... <br />
London University's Institute of Education analysed the progress of 14,853 children, born in 2000 and 2001...The children's cognitive development was assessed at the age of 5 through a series of vocabulary, spatial reasoning and picture tests, and their results compared with those from separate assessments years earlier. <br />
The results at 5 were strongly linked to the babies' abilities in tests for gross motor development, such as crawling, and fine motor development, such as holding objects with their fingers, at 9 months. The researchers also found that children who are read to every day at 3 are likely to [flourish] in a wide range of subjects by the age of 5. <br />
The correlation [was] significant even after the researchers considered the impact of poverty on children's development.

there is work from a lot of other labs that suggests that as a function of growing up bilingual, babies are learning something more general.<br />
<br />
FLATOW: So we should not try to teach them just one language. Having a bilingual family is an advantage.<br />
<br />
Dr. WERKER: Well, I think that's what the work shows. And I don't think it's the case that if you are monolingual you should run out tomorrow and try to learn a new language so that you can grow - you know, so you can speak two languages to your child and give them the opportunity to grow up bilingual.<br />
<br />
I think what the work shows is that if you - if in your home more than one languages is spoken, that that's something to be comfortable with, and it's an opportunity to provide your infant with both languages because there may be advantages that accrue.

LiveScience: Is there any reason to think these differences could affect other types of learning, beyond language?<br />
<br />
Werker: Well, yeah. I think Aggie Kovács and Jacques Mehler's work suggests it can lead to more flexibility in learning more generally. In learning one rule, and then learning a second rule. So that's really interesting.<br />
<br />
So I think there is evidence that growing up with two languages confers certain cognitive advantages. But I wouldn't go so far as to say you have to grow up bilingual to have those cognitive advantages. I think this is one natural route. And I think more generally what the work shows is that babies are just as prepared to learn two languages from birth as they are one, and that if parents speak two languages in the home they should be comfortable continuing to do so.

The skull exhibits a suite of traits in common with australopithecines, particularly A. africanus. Yet it also shares [traits with Homo—more] than any other australopithecine....[Mixed traits include] the apelike ribcage and long arms combined with the humanlike hand, with its short fingers and long thumb.... <br />
[Increasing brain size in the Homo lineage has been argued as driving the evolution of the Homo pelvis from the australopithecine], because in early Homo fossils a larger braincase accompanies the modified pelvis. [H]owever, A. sediba, with its tiny brain, has a pelvis that looks a lot like that of early Homo.... <br />
“I would say it’s the shift from habitual bipedalism to more humanlike obligate bipedal locomotion"...[B]ipedalism probably evolved in two stages: in the first...represented by Lucy’s species, early humans still spent a fair amount of time climbing in the trees in addition to walking upright...In the second, they lost their climbing ability and became fully bipedal.

[Dr. Michael Fitzgerald notes that as Wain's art became more abstract], his technique and skill as a painter did not diminish as one would expect from a schizophrenic...[Elements of visual agnosia—a key element in some cases of AS—may have manifested itself in Wain's] extreme attention to detail. <br />
A series of five of his paintings is commonly used as an example in psychology textbooks to putatively show the change in his style as his psychological condition deteriorated. However, it is not known if these works were created in the order usually presented, as Wain did not date them. Rodney Dale, author of Louis Wain: The Man Who Drew Cats, has criticised the belief that the five paintings can be used as an example of Wain's deteriorating mental health, writing: "Wain experimented with patterns and cats, and even quite late in life was still producing conventional cat pictures, perhaps 10 years after his [supposedly] 'later' productions which are patterns rather than cats."

The brains of people who call themselves liberals tend to have larger anterior cingulate cortexes than the brains of [their political opponents]. The anterior cingulate cortex is a collar-shaped region around the corpus collosum, a structure that relays signals between the right and left hemispheres of the brain. <br />
[Conservatives'] brains brains tend to have larger amygdalas. The amygdala is an almond-shaped structure located deep within the brain... <br />
[R]esearchers believe the structural differences support the notion that liberals are better equipped to make sense of conflicting information while conservatives are better able to recognize a threat. <br />
"Previously, some psychological traits were known to be predictive of an individual's political orientation," study author Dr. Ryota Kanai of University College London Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, said in a written statement. "Our study now links such personality traits with specific brain structure."

[The PVT measures the sustained attention] vital for pilots, truck drivers, astronauts. Attention is also key for focusing during long meetings; for reading a paragraph just once, instead of five times; for driving a car. It takes the equivalent of only a two-second lapse for a driver to veer into oncoming traffic.... <br />
[Results in the 4- and 6-hour groups] declined steadily with almost each passing day. [The 4-hour subjects performed far worse;] the 6-hour group also consistently fell off-task. By the 6th day, 25% of the 6-hour group was falling asleep at the computer...[By study's end, they were lapsing 5 times as much as on the 1st day, and also steadily declined on a test of working memory in which they had to remember numbers and symbols and substitute one for the other, and on] an addition-subtraction task measuring speed and accuracy. After 2 weeks, 6-hour sleepers were as impaired as those] sleep-deprived for 24 hours straight—the cognitive equivalent of being legally drunk.

Service in a war zone is stressful and traumatic, whether you are physically wounded or not. Feeling that you are in danger all the time will weaken your immune system and create insulin resistance...Using violence against others is also traumatic.
Trauma, if not treated and resolved, can leave your body stressed for life. It’s no wonder veterans have high rates of drinking and smoking, both of which are perceived as stress relievers. Some veterans may also medicate with sugars, which can temporarily reduce stress. But even without these problem behaviors, chronic stress tends to raise blood pressure and blood glucose levels.
Agent Orange was one major pollutant, but the Pentagon uses all kinds of chemicals and now uses [depleted uranium]. Many closed military bases become Superfund sites because they are so polluted. The communities near those bases suffer, but soldiers [who worked on those bases had even higher exposure. P]ollution has strong links with diabetes. [links]

Whether an insulin shortage “causes [schizophrenia], contributes to the disease, or it’s the brain’s response to injury, we don’t know yet.... <br />
"[I]nsulin problems in the brain may, in turn, make people more vulnerable to Type 2 diabetes.” Lab mice modified to block insulin processing in the brain became obese and showed signs of diabetic insulin resistance. <br />
For a while, doctors were treating schizophrenia by putting people into insulin shock. Some, such as John Nash, Jr., the mathematician portrayed in the movie “A Beautiful Mind,” actually benefited, but up to 10% of the patients died, and by the early 1960’s the treatment had been stopped. <br />
In 2005, researchers at Psychiatric Genomics discovered that the same 14 genes that are missing in the brains of people with schizophrenia are also missing in muscle tissue of people with diabetes. In the lab, they were able to increase the availability of those genes by giving insulin, which could lead to new therapies for schizophrenia.

A recent meta-analysis of studies about exercise and mortality showed that, in general, a sedentary person’s risk of dying prematurely from any cause plummeted by nearly 20% if he or she began brisk walking (or the equivalent) for 30 minutes 5 times a week. If he or she tripled that amount to 90 minutes of exercise four or five times a week, his or her risk of premature death dropped by only another 4%. So the one indisputable aspect of the single best exercise is that it be sustainable.... <br />
[An innovative, 5-month-long program for elders of brisk, interval-style walking—3 minutes fast, 3 minutes slower, repeated 10 times—yields striking results.] “Physical fitness—maximal aerobic power and thigh muscle strength—increased by about 20%...which is sure to make you feel about 10 years younger than before training...[S]ymptoms of lifestyle-related diseases (hypertension, hyperglycemia and obesity) decreased by about 20%"...while their depression scores dropped by half.

Diabetes Symptom Checklist-Revised

After adjusting for age, sex, education, and race, a higher purpose of life was associated with a substantially reduced risk of death...[A] person with a higher purpose in life was about half as likely to die over the follow-up period (up to five years)... <br />
The association of purpose in life with mortality did not differ [by sex or ethnicity. Findings persisted after controlling for depression, disability, neuroticism,] number of medical conditions, and income.... <br />
[Regular exercise is very good for the brain and may protect against Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. Physically active older adults show healthier and younger looking brains...Aerobically active individuals exhibit a blood vessel pattern in the brain similar to younger adults.... <br />
[San Francisco’s VA Medical Center looked at 3,075 adults aged 70 to 79 and found the physically active experienced slower rates of memory loss and cognitive decline over seven years.]

Constantly engaging this executive control function is a form of mental exercise, explains Bialystok, and some researchers, including herself, believe that this can be beneficial for the brain. Bilingual speakers have been shown to perform better on a variety of cognitive tasks, and one study Bialistok did found that dementia set in four to five years later in people who spent their lives speaking two languages instead of one.<br />
<br />
"They can get a little extra mileage from these cognitive networks because they have been enhanced throughout life," said Bialystok.<br />
<br />
And the advantages of bilingualism may be due to more than just "mental fitness." Bialystok says there's some preliminary evidence that being bilingual may physically remodel parts of the brain. It's something researchers are only beginning to look into, but she says there is reason to believe that speaking a second language may lead to important changes in brain structure as well.

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have identified a signaling pathway in the brain that’s sufficient to induce cellular leptin resistance, a problem that decreases the body’s ability to “hear” that it is full and should stop eating.... <br />
Leptin is a hormone released by fat cells that is known to indicate fullness, or satiety, in the brain. If the body is exposed to too much leptin, however, it will become resistant to the hormone. Once that occurs, the body can’t “hear” the hormonal messages telling the body to stop eating and burn fat. Instead, a person remains hungry, craves sweets and stores more fat instead of burning it. <br />
Leptin resistance also causes an increase in visceral, or belly, fat, which has been shown to predispose people to an increased risk of heart disease, diabetes and metabolic syndrome.

There’s quite a story to how that first public demonstration [of anesthesia at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1846] happened. Apparently, there was a social practice in that era called “ether follies.” People got together and they sniffed ether. At one of these, someone fell and cut himself, but felt no pain. And the story got out, which led a Boston dentist to start experimenting with ether for painless oral surgery. He brought the idea to the great surgeon John Collins Warren, and together they used it in an operation here to remove a neck tumor. “Gentlemen, this is no humbug,” Dr. Warren declared after the successful procedure, meaning that this was the real thing and that it was going to change medicine. Before that, surgery was mostly butchery. The most successful surgeon was the one who could lop off a limb quickest. To this day, most inhaled anesthetics are ether. They’ve been embellished a bit, but they are basically ether.

RT @pourmecoffee: Why are easy decisions so hard? People confuse variety of options with importance. (Cold medicine!)

The question of what is going on in your head as you experience...the life all around you has baffled so many great minds that it is known simply as "the hard problem". <br />
Neuroscientists have yet to find anything in the brain they are happy calling consciousness, and philosophers are far from agreement over a way of talking about what happens after we wake up.... <br />
[Psychologhist Nicholas Humphrey claims] people have been looking in the wrong place[:] "Scientists and philosophers have assumed all along that consciousness is somehow helping us think better, somehow improving our intelligence or our cognitive skills"...<br />
Consciousness, he argues in his book Soul Dust, is not so much about thinking, but rather the way our brain generates for itself powerful feelings, colours, sounds and smells with you at the centre[:] "Consciousness is a kind of theatre...We generate this magical mystery show in order to enchant the world and to give ourselves a sense of our own importance and place in it."

“Insulin has this fundamentally important ability of suppressing lipolysis, [during which triglycerides in fat are broken down and fatty acids are released. Finding] this is mediated in a large part by the brain is surprising...The major lipolysis-inducing pathway in our bodies is the sympathetic nervous system and here the studies showed that brain insulin reduces sympathetic nervous system activity in fat tissue. In patients who are obese or have diabetes, insulin fails to inhibit lipolysis and fatty acid levels [rise]. The low-grade inflammation throughout the body...commonly present in these conditions is believed to be mainly a consequence of these increased fatty acid levels...When brain insulin function is impaired, the release of fatty acids is increased. This induces inflammation, which can further worsen insulin resistance, the core defect in type 2 diabetes. [I]mpaired brain insulin signaling can start a vicious cycle since inflammation can impair brain insulin signaling.”

Certain cannabinoids can protect neurons from the deleterious effects of beta-amyloid and are capable of reducing tau phosphorylation. The propensity of cannabinoids to reduce beta-amyloid-evoked oxidative stress and neurodegeneration, whilst stimulating neurotrophin expression neurogenesis, are interesting properties that may be beneficial in [Alzheimer's treatment. THC] can also inhibit acetylcholinesterase activity and limit amyloidogenesis which may improve cholinergic transmission and delay...progression. Targeting cannabinoid receptors on microglia may reduce the neuroinflammation that is a feature of Alzheimer's disease...[C]annabinoids offer a multi-faceted approach for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease by providing neuroprotection and reducing neuroinflammation, whilst simultaneously supporting the brain's intrinsic repair mechanisms by augmenting neurotrophin expression and enhancing neurogenesis.

Alzheimer's disease is the leading cause of dementia among the elderly, and with the ever-increasing size of this population, cases of Alzheimer's disease are expected to triple over the next 50 years....Here, we demonstrate that the active component of marijuana, Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), competitively inhibits the enzyme acetylcholinesterase (AChE) as well as prevents AChE-induced amyloid β-peptide (Aβ) aggregation, the key pathological marker of Alzheimer's disease. Computational modeling of the THC−AChE interaction revealed that THC binds in the peripheral anionic site of AChE, the critical region involved in amyloidgenesis. Compared to currently approved drugs prescribed for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease, THC is a considerably superior inhibitor of Aβ aggregation, and this study provides a previously unrecognized molecular mechanism through which cannabinoid molecules may directly impact the progression of this debilitating disease.

Injections of Al to animals produce behavioral, neuropathological and neurochemical changes that partially model AD. Aluminum has the ability to produce neurotoxicity by many mechanisms. Excess, insoluble amyloid beta protein (A beta) contributes to AD. Aluminum promotes formation and accumulation of insoluble A beta and hyperphosphorylated tau. To some extent, Al mimics the deficit of cortical cholinergic neurotransmission seen in AD. Al increases Fe-induced oxidative injury. The toxicity of Al to plants, aquatic life and humans may share common mechanisms, including disruption of the inositol phosphate system and Ca regulation. Facilitation of Fe-induced oxidative injury and disruption of basic cell processes may mediate primary molecular mechanisms of Al-induced neurotoxicity. Avoidance of Al exposure, when practical, seems prudent.

The study involved 135 people with an average age of 67 from Hisayama, Japan. The participants had several diabetes glucose tests to measure blood sugar levels. They were also monitored for symptoms of Alzheimer's disease over the next 10 to 15 years. During that time, about 16 percent developed Alzheimer's disease. <br />
After the participants died, researchers examined their autopsied brains for the physical signs of Alzheimer's disease, called plaques and tangles. While 16 percent had symptoms of Alzheimer's disease while alive, a total of 65 percent had plaques. <br />
The study found that people who had abnormal results on three tests of blood sugar control had an increased risk of developing plaques. Plaques were found in 72 percent of people with insulin resistance and 62 percent of people with no indication of insulin resistance. However, the study did not find a link between diabetes factors and tangles in the brain.

"In Type 1 diabetes, your pancreas isn't making insulin. In Type 2 diabetes, your tissues are insensitive to insulin because of problems in the insulin receptor. Type 3 is where that insulin receptor problem is localized in the brain....[Some older] individuals start to have less effective insulin signaling, including in the brain"[, making the brain more vulnerable to large sticky plaques of amyloid beta protein,] a hallmark of Alzheimer's...<br />
[Short strands of the protein, known as] ADDLs, attack memory-forming brain cells...[In lab tests, insulin blocked the effects of ADDLs in rat nerve cells, an effect amplified by a drug that] increases insulin sensitivity. <br />
Several studies have found that diabetics have a higher risk of getting Alzheimer's... <br />
[Earlier research reports] diabetics who take insulin plus a range of anti-diabetic medications, including an older pill known as a sulfonylurea], have a lower risk of developing Alzheimer's than diabetics who only take insulin.

Although an increase in brain glucose metabolism happens during normal brain function, the question is whether repeated artificial stimulation as a result of exposure to electromagnetic radiation might have a detrimental effect.
Although speculative, one theory about how an artificial increase in brain glucose metabolism could be harmful is that it could potentially lead to the creation of molecules called free radicals, which in excess can damage healthy cells. Or it may be that repeated stimulation by electromagnetic radiation could set off an inflammatory response, which studies suggest is associated with a number of heath problems, including cancer.
Among cancer researchers and others interested in the health effects of cellphones, the study, listed in the medical journal under the heading “Preliminary Communications,” was met with enthusiasm because of the credibility of the researchers behind it and the careful methods used.
“The bottom line is that it adds to the concern that cellphone use could be a health hazard,” said [commentator] Dr. Lai. “Everybody is worried about brain cancer, and the jury is still out on that question. There are actually quite a lot of studies showing cellphone radiation associated with other events, like sleep disturbances. But people have not been paying a lot of attention to these other types of studies.”
[Researcher] Dr. Volkow said future research may even show that the electromagnetic waves emitted from cellphones could be used to stimulate the brain for therapeutic reasons. She said the research should not set off alarms about cellphone use because simple precautions like using a headset or earpiece can alleviate any concern.

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. As, first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

The stethoscope let doctors realize that what had been thought of as 17 conditions—like coughing up blood and shortness of breath—could all be different symptoms of the same disease, tuberculosis. <br />
“The advent of the stethoscope made it possible to unify tuberculosis,” said Dr. Jacalyn Duffin, a professor of the history of medicine at Queen's University in Ontario. <br />
The shift from symptoms to anatomical measurements had big implications for patients[, said Dr. Duffin:] “Up until the 18th century, you had to feel sick to be sick"...But now people can be considered sick based on measurements like high blood pressure without feeling ill at all. <br />
Indeed, Dr. Duffin said, people who feel sick nowadays “don’t get to have a disease unless the doctor can find something” and instead might be told that it’s all in their head. Doctors argue, for instance, about whether fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome, which have no obvious anatomical causes, are really diseases.

Images of attractive acquaintances were not very effective painkillers, but gazing at the faces of significant others and playing the word game reduced reported pain on average between 36 and 44% and high pain between 12 and 13%. <br />
Only photos of loved ones, however, sparked activity in reward centers within the amygdala, hypothalamus and medial orbitofrontal cortex. The faces of romantic partners also decreased activity in major pain-processing areas, such as the left and right posterior insula. Because the reward centers did not flutter in response to the distracting word game, the researchers argue that the salve of romantic affection is not mere distraction—it is a bliss as potent as that of drugs such as cocaine, which invigorate the same pleasure pathways.

[Experiments at UCSF show] that when rats have a new experience, like exploring an unfamiliar area, their brains show new patterns of activity. But only when the rats take a break from their exploration do they process those patterns in a way that seems to create a persistent memory. <br />
[Imaging studies of people's brains show major cross sections becoming surprisingly active during downtime, suggesting] that periods of rest are critical in allowing the brain to synthesize information, make connections between ideas and even develop the sense of self... <br />
[T]hese studies have particular implications for young people, whose brains have more trouble focusing and setting priorities. <br />
“Downtime is to the brain what sleep is to the body...But kids are in a constant mode of stimulation...[B]ring back boredom,” added [Harvard's] Dr. Rich, who last month gave a speech to the American Academy of Pediatrics entitled, “Finding Huck Finn: Reclaiming Childhood from the River of Electronic Screens.”

• Cognition • <br />
[A larger brain] came at a cost of increased fuel requirements. A human brain uses at least 20% of an individual's resting metabolism...[E]arly humans' use of fire could be used to mark how they overcame their energy needs...Heat helps free up energy by softening foods, denaturing their proteins and breaking down toxins...which is why cooking may explain human brain size as well as small canine teeth and small guts in comparison to other primates. <br />
• Culture • <br />
In the wild, a lone human would not be able to survive without culture..."Think about what is necessary to live in Alaska...You’d need a kayak, a harpoon, a float to not sink. Nobody invents a kayak. People learn the proper way to make a kayak from others." <br />
• Cooperation • <br />
[Whether] hunting, foraging, child rearing or migrating, humans with culture, in pursuit of shared goals, had much to gain through cooperation. Cooperating humans would lead to greater survival, greater reproduction and colonization.

Ms. Taylor was always reminding the class of how limited her grasp of any situation was. “Sorry, I get distracted easily,” she’d say, or, “Sorry, sometimes I jump to conclusions too quickly.” In this way, she communicated the distinction between mental strength (the processing power of the brain) and mental character (the mental virtues that lead to practical wisdom). She stressed the importance of collecting conflicting information before making up one’s mind, of calibrating one’s certainty level to the strength of the evidence, of enduring uncertainty for long stretches as an answer became clear, of correcting for one’s biases. As Keith E. Stanovich, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, writes in his book “What Intelligence Tests Miss” (2009), these “thinking dispositions” correlate weakly or not at all with I.Q. But, because Ms. Taylor put such emphasis on these virtues and because Harold admired her so much, he absorbed and copied her way of being.

[As Allied forces stormed the beaches of southern Italy. a] nurse was assisting an anesthetist named Henry Beecher, who was tending to US troops under heavy German bombardment. When the morphine supply ran low, the nurse assured a wounded soldier that he was getting a shot of potent painkiller, though her syringe contained only salt water. Amazingly, the bogus injection relieved the soldier's agony and prevented the onset of shock. <br />
Returning to his post at Harvard after the war, Beecher became one of the nation's leading medical reformers....[He promoted testing new medicines against placebos] to find out whether they were truly effective. At the time, [p]harmaceutical companies would simply dose volunteers with an experimental agent until the side effects swamped the presumed benefits. Beecher proposed that [testing against placebos would give health officials] an impartial way to determine whether a medicine was actually responsible for making a patient better.

"Nature develops highly advanced structures in combination to solve what at first seems to be an impossible challenge," says Kim Blackburn, an engineer at Cranfield University...which specialises in automotive impact studies. "It may inform our thinking on regenerative dampers for vehicles, redirecting the energy into a form more easily recoverable than dumping it to heat...We need to learn from the woodpecker to recover energy and not give the driver a headache." <br />
Nick Fry, chief executive of Formula One team Mercedes GP Petronas...says such ideas could feed into crash protection for drivers taking part in motorsport: "One big issue with Formula One is protecting the driver by getting them to decelerate in an accident situation in such a way that his internal organs and brain aren't turned to mush...We do that with clever design of composites, very sophisticated seatbelts and a head and neck restraint system...But this research might be something we can draw on in future..."

Margaret Darst Corbett [teacher of the Bates method, stated,] "the optic nerve is really part of the brain, and vision is nine-tenths mental and one-tenth only physical." <br />
In [1940, Corbett was charged with violating] the Medical Practice Act of California for treating eyes without a licence. [M]any of her students testified on her behalf, describing...how she had enabled them to discard their glasses. One witness testified that he had been almost blind from cataracts, but that...his vision had improved to such an extent that for the first time he could read for 8 hours at a stretch without glasses. Corbett explained in court that she was practicing neither optometry nor ophthalmology and represented herself not as a doctor but only as an “instructor of eye training”.....<br />
The trial attracted widespread interest, as did the “not guilty” verdict. [The California State Legislature rejected a bill that would have] made such vision education illegal without an optometric or medical licence.

In 1952, ten years after writing The Art of Seeing, Huxley spoke at a Hollywood banquet, wearing no glasses and, according to Bennett Cerf, apparently reading his paper from the lectern without difficulty. In Cerf's words: <br />
"Then suddenly he faltered—and the disturbing truth became obvious. He wasn't reading his address at all. He had learned it by heart. To refresh his memory he brought the paper closer and closer to his eyes. When it was only an inch or so away he still couldn't read it, and had to fish for a magnifying glass in his pocket to make the typing visible to him. It was an agonizing moment." <br />
In response to this, Huxley wrote "I often do use magnifying glasses where conditions of light are bad, and have never claimed to be able to read except under very good conditions." This underscored that he had not regained anything close to normal vision, and in fact never claimed that he had.

[A useful summary and example of limitations of research method and inference. Membership site.—DMM]<br />
"This enthusiasm is predicated upon data from observational studies—which are subject to confounding, and are hypothesis-generating rather than hypothesis-testing—rather than randomized controlled trials...Calls for widespread vitamin D supplementation are premature on the basis of current evidence."<br />
[In a study of almost 3,200 Finnish men and women aged 50 to 79 who did not have Parkinson's disease, over 29 years of follow-up, 50 people developed Parkinson's. P]eople with the highest levels of vitamin D had a 67% lower risk of developing Parkinson's...compared with those with the lowest levels of vitamin D.<br />
"In conclusion, our results are in line with the hypothesis that low vitamin D status predicts the development of Parkinson's disease...Because of the small number of cases and the possibility of residual [factors that might influence the results], large cohort studies are needed."

[A new evidence review suggests that] specific training regimes are not any better than simple conversations at improving memory in older adults. <br />
Some studies show that healthy older adults, and those with mild cognitive impairment, do remember words better after some memory training. However, seniors with memory training do not improve their memory any more than do seniors who participate in a discussion about art, for instance, instead of drilling with a list of words.... <br />
Other researchers are exploring another type of training to keep the brain fit: physical activity, from aerobics to balance exercises. For instance, in small studies led by Teresa Liu-Ambrose, Ph.D., of the University of British Columbia, resistance training for older women was associated with improved mental focus. "This has important clinical implications because cognitive impairment is a major health problem that currently lacks a clearly effective pharmaceutical therapy," Liu-Ambrose said.

Cognitive rehabilitation therapy is designed to retrain the brain to do basic tasks such as memorization and word recall. Tricare, which covers nearly four million service members and many veterans, refuses to pay for the treatment, pointing to a study it funded in 2009 that found a lack of scientific evidence showing the therapy is effective.<br />
<br />
But a report by NPR and ProPublica showed that Tricare's study came under attack from top brain specialists in confidential reviews.<br />
<br />
<br />
Some called the study "deeply flawed" and a "misuse" of science for failing to consider all the evidence. Our investigation also found that Tricare officials had ignored the recommendations of a Pentagon panel, federal health organizations and other studies, which endorsed the treatment.

I stood in a long line for the men's room during a coffee break. The women's room next door was empty. I thought how only at a meeting like the Singularity Summit would I find myself in this situation....<br />
[Boyden's team wanted to make mouse retinal neurons blind due to mutation sensitive to light]. They loaded genes for light-sensitive channels onto viruses and injected [the mice, targeting retinal neurons in hopes that the eyes would incorporate the genes and make channels to replace their own missing receptors. They put the mice into a little pool with a maze of barriers.]. At one end of the pool the mice could get out of the water by climbing onto an illuminated platform. Regular mice quickly followed the light to the platform while blind mice swam around randomly. When Boyden and his colleagues put the mice infected with neuron channels in the pool, they headed for the exit almost as often as the healthy mice. As far as Boyden and his colleagues can tell, the mice can see again.

"A smaller brain is the signature of selection against aggression...Another way to say that is an increase in tolerance"....[F]or a variety of domesticated animals like apes, dogs or turkeys, you can see certain physical characteristics emerge. Among these traits are a lighter and more slender skeleton, a flattened forehead—and decreased brain size... <br />
[Chimpanzees and bonobos, in evolutionary terms,] are much like humans, but are physically quite different from one another. Bonobos have smaller brains than chimpanzees—and are also much less aggressive. <br />
While both have the cognitive ability to solve a given puzzle...chimpanzees are much less likely to accomplish it if it involves teamwork. Not so with bonobos. <br />
"If the food is quite sparse and it's not easy to share, [bonobos] can solve the problem...Chimpanzees, in that same context—where there's not much food and it's not easy to share—they just refuse to work together. They can't solve the problem, even though they know how."

Thirty-three children (age: 6-11.4 years) were divided into two groups: 17 children with ABI and 16 controls matched for age, gender and maternal education...Participants experienced three video-captured virtual environments and completed the SFQ child at the end of each...Participants with ABI experienced three virtual reality (VR) sessions over a period of 10 days. Attention was evaluated using the TEA-Ch. Upper extremity motor abilities were evaluated with the Melbourne Assessment, and self-care abilities were evaluated with the PEDI...The video-capture projected system differentiated between the performance of children with ABI and control[s. VR performance correlated with] some attention factors and self-care abilities. No significant correlations were found between performance in the Melbourne assessment and performance within VR. Conclusions. The results highlight the potential of the video-capture virtual reality as a tool in the rehabilitation process of children with ABI.

More than half of adult Americans report they have had a spiritual experience that changed their lives. Now, scientists from universities like Harvard, Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins are using new technologies to analyze the brains of people who claim they have touched the spiritual — from Christians who speak in tongues to Buddhist monks to people who claim to have had near-death experiences. Hear what they have discovered in this controversial field, as the science of spirituality continues to evolve.

[People who suffer brain injuries seem to benefit from "cognitive rehabilitation therapy",] in which patients relearn basic life tasks such as counting, cooking or remembering directions...[Neurologists, several] insurance companies and even some medical facilities run by the Pentagon [endorse] the therapy...[D]espite pressure from Congress and the recommendations of military and civilian experts, the Pentagon’s health plan for troops and many veterans refuses to cover the treatment—[potentially affecting] tens of thousands of service members....<br />
Tricare [covers] nearly 4 million active-duty military and retirees...<br />
• [Its] analysis of cognitive rehabilitation discounted studies showing [patient benefit.]<br />
• [S]cientific reviews denounced the analysis as a "misuse" of science.<br />
• [T]roops without aggressive advocates or high-level connections have been denied care or never sought treatment.<br />
• Some civilian brain clinics [are reluctant to treat troops and veterans for fear of no] payment.

[cf. with research on horizontal eye movements, which evolutionarily would correlate with walking.—DMM]