brain news
Brain News
Fish Power for Brain Power
Found this article in Daily Nation about recent findings into the diet of early humans. I think it does offer additional evidence that certain foods (10 Top Brain Foods) help with brain health and brian power. We do know that brain research is certaily speeding up and brain health and brain exercise are important topics.
Evolution of early man was fuelled by discovery of aquatic food two million years ago
Scientists have discovered that early man started eating fish, crocodiles and turtles more than two million years ago.
This, they say, explains what may have helped fuel the evolution of the human brain at about that time.
Scientists at the National Museums of Kenya and colleagues from the United States, UK, Australia and South Africa say man may have stumbled on the now highly commercialised omega-3 or essential fatty acids many years ago in Turkana.
Archaeologists working at a site discovered in 2004 near Lake Turkana, unearthed evidence that our ancestors ate a wide variety of animals including fish, turtles and even crocodiles in what today is increasingly called "brain food."
The study appeared on Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Earlier, a press statement from George Washington University in the US said the early human's brain size increased dramatically about two million years ago.
Growing a large brain requires an enormous investment in calories and nutrients and places considerable costs on the mother and developing infant.
Anthropologists have long considered meat in the diet as key to the evolution of a larger brain. However, until now, there was no evidence that human ancestors this long ago had incorporated into their diets animal foods from lakes and rivers.
The scientists say they excavated thousands of fossilised bones and stone tools, and were able to determine that at least 10 individual animals were butchered by early humans at the Koobi Fora research area on the eastern side of Lake Turkana in Marsabit District.
"Many of these bones showed evidence of cut marks made by early human ancestors as a result of using sharp stone tools to cut meat from the bones or crush long bones to access the fat-rich bone marrow," says the statement.
'Mind-reading' brain-scan software for integrated wellness
By SAMANTHA GROSS , Associated Press Writer
Mind reading may no longer be the domain of psychics and fortune tellers - now some computers can do it, too.
Software that uses brain scans to determine what items people are thinking about was among the technological innovations showcased Wednesday by Intel Corp., which drew back the curtain on a number of projects that are still under development.
The software analyzes functional MRI scans to determine what parts of a person's brain is being activated as he or she thinks. In tests, it guessed with 90 percent accuracy which of two words a person was thinking about, said Intel Labs researcher Dean Pomerleau.
Eventually, the technology could help the severely physically disabled to communicate. And Pomerleau sees it as an early step toward one day being able to control technology with our minds.
"The vision is being able to interface to information, to your devices and to other people without having an intermediary device," he said.
For now, the project's accomplishments are far more modest - it can only be used with prohibitively expensive and bulky fMRI equipment and hasn't yet been adapted to analyze abstract thoughts.
The system works best when a person is first scanned while thinking of dozens of different concrete nouns - words like "bear" or "hammer." When test subjects are then asked to pick one of two new terms and think about it, the software uses the earlier results as a baseline to determine what the person is thinking.
The software works by analyzing the shared attributes of different words. For example, a person who is thinking of a bear uses the same parts of the brain that light up when he or she thinks of a puppy or something else furry. A person thinking of a bear also shows activity in the amygdala - home of the fight-or-flight response.
While Intel primarily makes computer processors and other hardware, it often works to develop and demonstrate new technologies in an effort to stimulate the market and advance its reputation. Other innovations on display at Wednesday's Intel event in Manhattan included:
-Cell phone technology that would use motion, GPS and audio data gathered through users' cell phones to track what they're doing and who they're with. The technology can distinguish activities such as walking, giving a business presentation and driving. It also compares audio readings from different cell phones to determine who is in the same room.
This would allow users to share their activity information with their close friends and watch avatar versions of their friends throughout the day. It would also let users track and analyze data about how they spend their time.
-"Dispute Finder" technology that monitors users' conversations and Internet browsing to warn them when they encounter contested or inaccurate information. The software mines the Internet to find instances in which writers have claimed something is untrue. It then uses speech recognition technology to monitor conversations.
-A transparent holographic shopping display that could be used in department stores to point consumers to featured items. Shoppers could also use the giant screen to search the store's inventory, call up maps, and send item information to their cell phones.
-A TV set-top box that connects wirelessly to your laptop and monitors your Internet search history, as well as your TV viewing, to offer relevant video.
Top 10 Best Foods for a Healthy Brain
Eating well means thinking well. Some food have been shown to improve general brain health and others can help prevent or at least slow down the effects of certain brain diseases. That’s why it’s important to include these foods in your diet as often as possible.
- Tomatoes contain lycopene, which helps fight the cell damage that can be found in Alzheimer’s disease.
- Fish has plenty of omega 3, which help maintain a healthy nervous system, and iodine, to improves mental clarity.
- Whole-grain foods contain folic acid, B12, B6,which all improve in memory.
- Blueberries have been shown to improve short term memory.
- Blackcurrants contain vitamin C, for increased mental agility.
- Pumpkin seeds contain zinc, which enhances memory and thinking skills.
- Fortified cereals are a good source of B12, which reduces homocysteine levels that may contribute to Alzheimer’s disease.
- Broccoli provides Vitamin K, which enhances cognitive function.
- Sage is good for improving memory.
- Nuts are a great source of Vitamin E, which improves memory.
Top 10 healthy activities for your brain
In order to save attentional resources, our brain will always seek a shortcut for doing things. When repeating an action over and over again, it becomes automotive, as the brain invests less effort in executing it. When attempting to achieve brain fitness, the key is to seek a novel activity, or a new way of doing a familiar activity. This will require some brain effort that would eventually translate into brain fitness. Below are 10 suggestions for healthy brain activities:
- Trying a new route on the way to work
- Learn a new language
- Travel to a new and unfamiliar destination
- Read new sections of the newspaper
- Learn to play a new musical instrument
- Use your non-dominant hand to eat or write
- Solve crossword puzzles or Sudoku
- Engage in a challenging game of chess or bridge
- Try and learn a new word each day
- Engage in a brain fitness training program
Super Sharp Memory
Probing the secrets of sharp memory in old age
(ACS - March 23, 2010) Probing the secrets of sharp memory in old age
A study of the brains of people who stayed mentally sharp into their 80s and beyond challenges the notion that brain changes linked to mental decline and Alzheimer's disease are a normal, inevitable part of aging.
In a presentation here today at the 239th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), Changiz Geula, Ph.D. and colleagues described their discovery of elderly people with super-sharp memory — so-called "super-aged" individuals — who somehow escaped formation of brain "tangles." The tangles consist of an abnormal form of a protein called "tau" that damages and eventually kills nerve cells. Named for their snarled, knotted appearance under a microscope, tangles increase with advancing age and peak in people with Alzheimer's disease.
"This discovery is very exciting," said Geula, principal investigator of the Northwestern University Super Aging Project and a professor of neuroscience at the Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center. "It is the first study of its kind and its implications are vast. We always assumed that the accumulation of tangles is a progressive phenomenon throughout the normal aging process. Healthy people develop moderate numbers of tangles, with the most severe cases linked to Alzheimer's disease. But now we have evidence that some individuals are immune to tangle formation. The evidence also supports the notion that the presence of tangles may influence cognitive performance. Individuals with the fewest tangles perform at superior levels. Those with more appear to be normal for their age."
The findings are based on examination of the nine brains from super-aged individuals. Subjects who volunteer for this study get a battery of memory and other tests and agree to donate their brains for examination after death. They are considered 'super- aged' because of their high performance on the tests. The tests include memory exercises to evaluate their ability to recall facts after being told a story or their ability to remember a list of more than a dozen words and recall those words sometime later. The super-aged individuals recruited for study so far are all more than 80 years old, but they performed the memory tasks at the level of 50-year-olds. The scientists are recruiting more volunteers for the study, with the goal of eventually including about 50 people.
Geula pointed out that previous studies tended to focus on what goes wrong with the brain as people age. It established that tangles and other deposits termed plaques accumulate at higher levels in the brains of people with Alzheimer's Disease. Geula said the new study is unique in its focus on what's right with the brains of older people. It seeks insights into what lifestyle, genetic[s?], or other factors may protect super-aged individuals from the age-related memory loss that affects most other people.
The scientists found that super-aged people appear to fall into two subgroups: Those who are almost immune to tangle formation and those that have few tangles.
"One group of super-aged seems to dodge tangle formation," Geula explained. "Their brains are virtually clean, which doesn't happen in normal-aged individuals. The other group seems to get tangles but it's less than or equal to the amount in the normal elderly. But for some reason, they seem to be protected against its effects."
The next step, Geula said, involves determining why one subgroup is immune to tangle formation and the other seems to be immune to its effects. Environment, lifestyle, and genetics may be key factors. For example, some super-aged individuals might have a genetic predisposition to being super-aged, while others may help preserve high brain function by maintaining a healthy diet or staying physically active. Others may keep mental decline at bay by keeping the brain itself active: By reading books, playing crossword puzzles, or engaging in other mentally demanding activities.
"Ultimately, chemistry is one of the keys to understanding what makes these tangles form," Geula said. "By understanding the specific anatomic, pathological, genetic, and molecular characteristics of high-performing brains, we may eventually be able to protect normal brains from age-related memory loss."
Provided by American Chemical Society News Web
Ritalin helps learning
Ritalin research into brain performance
ScienceDaily (March 2010) - In animal research, the scientists showed for the first time that Ritalin boosts both of these cognitive abilities by increasing the activity of the neurotransmitter dopamine deep inside the brain. Neurotransmitters are the chemical messengers neurons use to communicate with each other. They release the molecule, which then docks onto receptors of other neurons. The research demonstrated that one type of dopamine receptor aids the ability to focus, and another type improves the learning itself.
The scientists also established that Ritalin produces these effects by enhancing brain plasticity -- strengthening communication between neurons where they meet at the synapse. Research in this field has accelerated as scientists have recognized that our brains can continue to form new connections -- remain plastic -- throughout life.
"Since we now know that Ritalin improves behavior through two specific types of neurotransmitter receptors, the finding could help in the development of better targeted drugs, with fewer side effects, to increase focus and learning," said Antonello Bonci, MD, principal investigator at the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center and professor of neurology at UCSF. The Gallo Center is affiliated with the UCSF Department of Neurology.
Bonci is co-senior author of the paper, published online in Nature Neuroscience on March 7, 2010.
Bonci and his colleagues showed that Ritalin's therapeutic action takes place in a brain region called the amygdala, an almond-shaped cluster of neurons known to be critical for learning and emotional memory.
"We found that a dopamine receptor, known as the D2 receptor, controls the ability to stay focused on a task -- the well-known benefit of Ritalin," said Patricia Janak, PhD, co-senior author on the paper. "But we also discovered that another dopamine receptor, D1, underlies learning efficiency."
Janak is a principal investigator at the Gallo Center and a UCSF associate professor of neurology. Lead author of the paper is Kay M. Tye, PhD, a postdoctoral scientist at the Gallo Center when the research was carried out.
The research assessed the ability of rats to learn that they could get a sugar water reward when they received a signal -- a flash of light and a sound. The scientists compared the behavior of animals receiving Ritalin with those that did not receive it, and found those receiving Ritalin learned much better.
However, they also found that if they blocked the dopamine D1 receptors with drugs, Ritalin was unable to enhance learning. And if they blocked D2 receptors, Ritalin failed to improve focus. The experiments established the distinct role of each of the dopamine receptors in enabling Ritalin to enhance cognitive performance.
In addition, animals that performed better after Ritalin treatment showed enhanced synaptic plasticity in the amygdala. Enhanced plasticity is essentially increased efficiency of neural transmission. The researchers confirmed this by measuring electrical activity in neurons in the amygdala after Ritalin treatment.
The research confirmed that learning and focus were enhanced when Ritalin was administered to animals in doses comparable to those used therapeutically in children.
"Although Ritalin is so frequently prescribed, it induces many brain changes, making it difficult to identify which of those changes improve learning." said Kay Tye. "By identifying the brain mechanisms underlying Ritalin's behavioral enhancements, we can better understand the action of Ritalin as well as the properties governing brain plasticity."
For products to help your brain and thinking - Brain Health
Longevity News - It is looking good
Longevity genes identified
(Daily Express) - Lead scientist Dr Nir Barzilai said: “The advantage of finding a gene that involves longevity is we can develop a drug that will imitate what this gene is doing. If we can imitate that, then long life can be terrific.”
Professor Judith Phillips, president of the British Society of Gerontology, said the discovery would change how people look at growing old.
She said: “It’s a huge opportunity because the ageing population is growing anyway. They would be a huge resource because people would be able to work longer and they would have a healthier life, and it would revolutionise the way we look at older people.
“And it would reduce costs in terms of care.”A US study looked at 500 Ashkenazi Jews living in New York with an average age of 100.
They were chosen after previous studies found the group to have a very specific genetic footprint because their bloodline had been kept very pure.
Although a third were obese or had smoked two packets of cigarettes a day for more than 40 years, they shared three “super-genes” that extended life expectancy.
Two genes produced “good” cholesterol, which reduced the risk of heart disease and strokes, while a third gene protected against diabetes.
Those with the longevity genes had a one in 500 chance of reaching 100, compared with a one in 10,000 chance in the rest of the population.
Dr Barzilai, from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, said: “Because our centenarians have longevity genes, they are protected against many effects of the environment.
“That’s why they do whatever they want to do and they get through anyhow.”
He said two of the genes “increase good cholesterol in a significant way”. He added: “There’s no drug that does it so effectively.”
The specific genotype that seemed to protect against diabetes also appeared to radically cut that person’s chances of developing Alzheimer’s.
Professor Jeremy Pearson, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said: “I think it’s optimistic to say we’re going to have pills in three years but it would certainly add significantly to the ways in which we can help prolong life.
“It’s perfectly logical that if you have heart disease, you’re likely to live less long so if you stop that happening, you might live longer.”
Music and Brain Actvity
ScienceDaily (Jan. 16, 2010) — Have you ever accidentally pulled your headphone socket out while listening to music? What happens when the music stops? Psychologists believe that our brains continuously predict what is going to happen next in a piece of music. So, when the music stops, your brain may still have expectations about what should happen next.
A new paper published in NeuroImage predicts that these expectations should be different for people with different musical experience and sheds light on the brain mechanisms involved.
Research by Marcus Pearce Geraint Wiggins, Joydeep Bhattacharya and their colleagues at Goldsmiths, University of London has shown that expectations are likely to be based on learning through experience with music. Music has a grammar, which, like language, consists of rules that specify which notes can follow which other notes in a piece of music. According to Pearce: "the question is whether the rules are hard-wired into the auditory system or learned through experience of listening to music and recording, unconsciously, which notes tend to follow others."
The researchers asked 40 people to listen to hymn melodies (without lyrics) and state how expected or unexpected they found particular notes. They simulated a human mind listening to music with two computational models. The first model uses hard-wired rules to predict the next note in a melody. The second model learns through experience of real music which notes tend to follow others, statistically speaking, and uses this knowledge to predict the next note.
The results showed that the statistical model predicts the listeners' expectations better than the rule-based model. It also turned out that expectations were higher for musicians than for non-musicians and for familiar melodies -- which also suggests that experience has a strong effect on musical predictions.
In a second experiment, the researchers examined the brain waves of a further 20 people while they listened to the same hymn melodies. Although in this experiment the participants were not explicitly informed about the locations of the expected and unexpected notes, their brain waves in responses to these notes differed markedly. Typically, the timing and location of the brain wave patterns in response to unexpected notes suggested that they stimulate responses that synchronise different brain areas associated with processing emotion and movement. On these results, Bhattacharya commented, "… as if music indeed 'moves' us!"
These findings may help scientists to understand why we listen to music. "It is thought that composers deliberately confirm and violate listeners' expectations in order to communicate emotion and aesthetic meaning," said Pearce. Understanding how the brain generates expectations could illuminate our experience of emotion and meaning when we listen to music.
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Fish Power for Brain Power
Found this article in Daily Nation about recent findings into the diet of early humans. I think it does offer additional evidence that certain foods (10 Top Brain Foods) help with brain health and brian power. We do know that brain research is certaily speeding up and brain health and brain exercise are important topics.
Evolution of early man was fuelled by discovery of aquatic food two million years ago
Scientists have discovered that early man started eating fish, crocodiles and turtles more than two million years ago.
This, they say, explains what may have helped fuel the evolution of the human brain at about that time.
Scientists at the National Museums of Kenya and colleagues from the United States, UK, Australia and South Africa say man may have stumbled on the now highly commercialised omega-3 or essential fatty acids many years ago in Turkana.
Archaeologists working at a site discovered in 2004 near Lake Turkana, unearthed evidence that our ancestors ate a wide variety of animals including fish, turtles and even crocodiles in what today is increasingly called "brain food."
The study appeared on Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Earlier, a press statement from George Washington University in the US said the early human's brain size increased dramatically about two million years ago.
Growing a large brain requires an enormous investment in calories and nutrients and places considerable costs on the mother and developing infant.
Anthropologists have long considered meat in the diet as key to the evolution of a larger brain. However, until now, there was no evidence that human ancestors this long ago had incorporated into their diets animal foods from lakes and rivers.
The scientists say they excavated thousands of fossilised bones and stone tools, and were able to determine that at least 10 individual animals were butchered by early humans at the Koobi Fora research area on the eastern side of Lake Turkana in Marsabit District.
"Many of these bones showed evidence of cut marks made by early human ancestors as a result of using sharp stone tools to cut meat from the bones or crush long bones to access the fat-rich bone marrow," says the statement.
'Mind-reading' brain-scan software for integrated wellness
By SAMANTHA GROSS , Associated Press Writer
Mind reading may no longer be the domain of psychics and fortune tellers - now some computers can do it, too.
Software that uses brain scans to determine what items people are thinking about was among the technological innovations showcased Wednesday by Intel Corp., which drew back the curtain on a number of projects that are still under development.
The software analyzes functional MRI scans to determine what parts of a person's brain is being activated as he or she thinks. In tests, it guessed with 90 percent accuracy which of two words a person was thinking about, said Intel Labs researcher Dean Pomerleau.
Eventually, the technology could help the severely physically disabled to communicate. And Pomerleau sees it as an early step toward one day being able to control technology with our minds.
"The vision is being able to interface to information, to your devices and to other people without having an intermediary device," he said.
For now, the project's accomplishments are far more modest - it can only be used with prohibitively expensive and bulky fMRI equipment and hasn't yet been adapted to analyze abstract thoughts.
The system works best when a person is first scanned while thinking of dozens of different concrete nouns - words like "bear" or "hammer." When test subjects are then asked to pick one of two new terms and think about it, the software uses the earlier results as a baseline to determine what the person is thinking.
The software works by analyzing the shared attributes of different words. For example, a person who is thinking of a bear uses the same parts of the brain that light up when he or she thinks of a puppy or something else furry. A person thinking of a bear also shows activity in the amygdala - home of the fight-or-flight response.
While Intel primarily makes computer processors and other hardware, it often works to develop and demonstrate new technologies in an effort to stimulate the market and advance its reputation. Other innovations on display at Wednesday's Intel event in Manhattan included:
-Cell phone technology that would use motion, GPS and audio data gathered through users' cell phones to track what they're doing and who they're with. The technology can distinguish activities such as walking, giving a business presentation and driving. It also compares audio readings from different cell phones to determine who is in the same room.
This would allow users to share their activity information with their close friends and watch avatar versions of their friends throughout the day. It would also let users track and analyze data about how they spend their time.
-"Dispute Finder" technology that monitors users' conversations and Internet browsing to warn them when they encounter contested or inaccurate information. The software mines the Internet to find instances in which writers have claimed something is untrue. It then uses speech recognition technology to monitor conversations.
-A transparent holographic shopping display that could be used in department stores to point consumers to featured items. Shoppers could also use the giant screen to search the store's inventory, call up maps, and send item information to their cell phones.
-A TV set-top box that connects wirelessly to your laptop and monitors your Internet search history, as well as your TV viewing, to offer relevant video.
Top 10 Best Foods for a Healthy Brain
Eating well means thinking well. Some food have been shown to improve general brain health and others can help prevent or at least slow down the effects of certain brain diseases. That’s why it’s important to include these foods in your diet as often as possible.
- Tomatoes contain lycopene, which helps fight the cell damage that can be found in Alzheimer’s disease.
- Fish has plenty of omega 3, which help maintain a healthy nervous system, and iodine, to improves mental clarity.
- Whole-grain foods contain folic acid, B12, B6,which all improve in memory.
- Blueberries have been shown to improve short term memory.
- Blackcurrants contain vitamin C, for increased mental agility.
- Pumpkin seeds contain zinc, which enhances memory and thinking skills.
- Fortified cereals are a good source of B12, which reduces homocysteine levels that may contribute to Alzheimer’s disease.
- Broccoli provides Vitamin K, which enhances cognitive function.
- Sage is good for improving memory.
- Nuts are a great source of Vitamin E, which improves memory.
Top 10 healthy activities for your brain
In order to save attentional resources, our brain will always seek a shortcut for doing things. When repeating an action over and over again, it becomes automotive, as the brain invests less effort in executing it. When attempting to achieve brain fitness, the key is to seek a novel activity, or a new way of doing a familiar activity. This will require some brain effort that would eventually translate into brain fitness. Below are 10 suggestions for healthy brain activities:
- Trying a new route on the way to work
- Learn a new language
- Travel to a new and unfamiliar destination
- Read new sections of the newspaper
- Learn to play a new musical instrument
- Use your non-dominant hand to eat or write
- Solve crossword puzzles or Sudoku
- Engage in a challenging game of chess or bridge
- Try and learn a new word each day
- Engage in a brain fitness training program
Super Sharp Memory
Probing the secrets of sharp memory in old age
(ACS - March 23, 2010) Probing the secrets of sharp memory in old age
A study of the brains of people who stayed mentally sharp into their 80s and beyond challenges the notion that brain changes linked to mental decline and Alzheimer's disease are a normal, inevitable part of aging.
In a presentation here today at the 239th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), Changiz Geula, Ph.D. and colleagues described their discovery of elderly people with super-sharp memory — so-called "super-aged" individuals — who somehow escaped formation of brain "tangles." The tangles consist of an abnormal form of a protein called "tau" that damages and eventually kills nerve cells. Named for their snarled, knotted appearance under a microscope, tangles increase with advancing age and peak in people with Alzheimer's disease.
"This discovery is very exciting," said Geula, principal investigator of the Northwestern University Super Aging Project and a professor of neuroscience at the Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center. "It is the first study of its kind and its implications are vast. We always assumed that the accumulation of tangles is a progressive phenomenon throughout the normal aging process. Healthy people develop moderate numbers of tangles, with the most severe cases linked to Alzheimer's disease. But now we have evidence that some individuals are immune to tangle formation. The evidence also supports the notion that the presence of tangles may influence cognitive performance. Individuals with the fewest tangles perform at superior levels. Those with more appear to be normal for their age."
The findings are based on examination of the nine brains from super-aged individuals. Subjects who volunteer for this study get a battery of memory and other tests and agree to donate their brains for examination after death. They are considered 'super- aged' because of their high performance on the tests. The tests include memory exercises to evaluate their ability to recall facts after being told a story or their ability to remember a list of more than a dozen words and recall those words sometime later. The super-aged individuals recruited for study so far are all more than 80 years old, but they performed the memory tasks at the level of 50-year-olds. The scientists are recruiting more volunteers for the study, with the goal of eventually including about 50 people.
Geula pointed out that previous studies tended to focus on what goes wrong with the brain as people age. It established that tangles and other deposits termed plaques accumulate at higher levels in the brains of people with Alzheimer's Disease. Geula said the new study is unique in its focus on what's right with the brains of older people. It seeks insights into what lifestyle, genetic[s?], or other factors may protect super-aged individuals from the age-related memory loss that affects most other people.
The scientists found that super-aged people appear to fall into two subgroups: Those who are almost immune to tangle formation and those that have few tangles.
"One group of super-aged seems to dodge tangle formation," Geula explained. "Their brains are virtually clean, which doesn't happen in normal-aged individuals. The other group seems to get tangles but it's less than or equal to the amount in the normal elderly. But for some reason, they seem to be protected against its effects."
The next step, Geula said, involves determining why one subgroup is immune to tangle formation and the other seems to be immune to its effects. Environment, lifestyle, and genetics may be key factors. For example, some super-aged individuals might have a genetic predisposition to being super-aged, while others may help preserve high brain function by maintaining a healthy diet or staying physically active. Others may keep mental decline at bay by keeping the brain itself active: By reading books, playing crossword puzzles, or engaging in other mentally demanding activities.
"Ultimately, chemistry is one of the keys to understanding what makes these tangles form," Geula said. "By understanding the specific anatomic, pathological, genetic, and molecular characteristics of high-performing brains, we may eventually be able to protect normal brains from age-related memory loss."
Provided by American Chemical Society News Web
Ritalin helps learning
Ritalin research into brain performance
ScienceDaily (March 2010) - In animal research, the scientists showed for the first time that Ritalin boosts both of these cognitive abilities by increasing the activity of the neurotransmitter dopamine deep inside the brain. Neurotransmitters are the chemical messengers neurons use to communicate with each other. They release the molecule, which then docks onto receptors of other neurons. The research demonstrated that one type of dopamine receptor aids the ability to focus, and another type improves the learning itself.
The scientists also established that Ritalin produces these effects by enhancing brain plasticity -- strengthening communication between neurons where they meet at the synapse. Research in this field has accelerated as scientists have recognized that our brains can continue to form new connections -- remain plastic -- throughout life.
"Since we now know that Ritalin improves behavior through two specific types of neurotransmitter receptors, the finding could help in the development of better targeted drugs, with fewer side effects, to increase focus and learning," said Antonello Bonci, MD, principal investigator at the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center and professor of neurology at UCSF. The Gallo Center is affiliated with the UCSF Department of Neurology.
Bonci is co-senior author of the paper, published online in Nature Neuroscience on March 7, 2010.
Bonci and his colleagues showed that Ritalin's therapeutic action takes place in a brain region called the amygdala, an almond-shaped cluster of neurons known to be critical for learning and emotional memory.
"We found that a dopamine receptor, known as the D2 receptor, controls the ability to stay focused on a task -- the well-known benefit of Ritalin," said Patricia Janak, PhD, co-senior author on the paper. "But we also discovered that another dopamine receptor, D1, underlies learning efficiency."
Janak is a principal investigator at the Gallo Center and a UCSF associate professor of neurology. Lead author of the paper is Kay M. Tye, PhD, a postdoctoral scientist at the Gallo Center when the research was carried out.
The research assessed the ability of rats to learn that they could get a sugar water reward when they received a signal -- a flash of light and a sound. The scientists compared the behavior of animals receiving Ritalin with those that did not receive it, and found those receiving Ritalin learned much better.
However, they also found that if they blocked the dopamine D1 receptors with drugs, Ritalin was unable to enhance learning. And if they blocked D2 receptors, Ritalin failed to improve focus. The experiments established the distinct role of each of the dopamine receptors in enabling Ritalin to enhance cognitive performance.
In addition, animals that performed better after Ritalin treatment showed enhanced synaptic plasticity in the amygdala. Enhanced plasticity is essentially increased efficiency of neural transmission. The researchers confirmed this by measuring electrical activity in neurons in the amygdala after Ritalin treatment.
The research confirmed that learning and focus were enhanced when Ritalin was administered to animals in doses comparable to those used therapeutically in children.
"Although Ritalin is so frequently prescribed, it induces many brain changes, making it difficult to identify which of those changes improve learning." said Kay Tye. "By identifying the brain mechanisms underlying Ritalin's behavioral enhancements, we can better understand the action of Ritalin as well as the properties governing brain plasticity."
For products to help your brain and thinking - Brain Health
Longevity News - It is looking good
Longevity genes identified
(Daily Express) - Lead scientist Dr Nir Barzilai said: “The advantage of finding a gene that involves longevity is we can develop a drug that will imitate what this gene is doing. If we can imitate that, then long life can be terrific.”
Professor Judith Phillips, president of the British Society of Gerontology, said the discovery would change how people look at growing old.
She said: “It’s a huge opportunity because the ageing population is growing anyway. They would be a huge resource because people would be able to work longer and they would have a healthier life, and it would revolutionise the way we look at older people.
“And it would reduce costs in terms of care.”A US study looked at 500 Ashkenazi Jews living in New York with an average age of 100.
They were chosen after previous studies found the group to have a very specific genetic footprint because their bloodline had been kept very pure.
Although a third were obese or had smoked two packets of cigarettes a day for more than 40 years, they shared three “super-genes” that extended life expectancy.
Two genes produced “good” cholesterol, which reduced the risk of heart disease and strokes, while a third gene protected against diabetes.
Those with the longevity genes had a one in 500 chance of reaching 100, compared with a one in 10,000 chance in the rest of the population.
Dr Barzilai, from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, said: “Because our centenarians have longevity genes, they are protected against many effects of the environment.
“That’s why they do whatever they want to do and they get through anyhow.”
He said two of the genes “increase good cholesterol in a significant way”. He added: “There’s no drug that does it so effectively.”
The specific genotype that seemed to protect against diabetes also appeared to radically cut that person’s chances of developing Alzheimer’s.
Professor Jeremy Pearson, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said: “I think it’s optimistic to say we’re going to have pills in three years but it would certainly add significantly to the ways in which we can help prolong life.
“It’s perfectly logical that if you have heart disease, you’re likely to live less long so if you stop that happening, you might live longer.”
Music and Brain Actvity
ScienceDaily (Jan. 16, 2010) — Have you ever accidentally pulled your headphone socket out while listening to music? What happens when the music stops? Psychologists believe that our brains continuously predict what is going to happen next in a piece of music. So, when the music stops, your brain may still have expectations about what should happen next.
A new paper published in NeuroImage predicts that these expectations should be different for people with different musical experience and sheds light on the brain mechanisms involved.
Research by Marcus Pearce Geraint Wiggins, Joydeep Bhattacharya and their colleagues at Goldsmiths, University of London has shown that expectations are likely to be based on learning through experience with music. Music has a grammar, which, like language, consists of rules that specify which notes can follow which other notes in a piece of music. According to Pearce: "the question is whether the rules are hard-wired into the auditory system or learned through experience of listening to music and recording, unconsciously, which notes tend to follow others."
The researchers asked 40 people to listen to hymn melodies (without lyrics) and state how expected or unexpected they found particular notes. They simulated a human mind listening to music with two computational models. The first model uses hard-wired rules to predict the next note in a melody. The second model learns through experience of real music which notes tend to follow others, statistically speaking, and uses this knowledge to predict the next note.
The results showed that the statistical model predicts the listeners' expectations better than the rule-based model. It also turned out that expectations were higher for musicians than for non-musicians and for familiar melodies -- which also suggests that experience has a strong effect on musical predictions.
In a second experiment, the researchers examined the brain waves of a further 20 people while they listened to the same hymn melodies. Although in this experiment the participants were not explicitly informed about the locations of the expected and unexpected notes, their brain waves in responses to these notes differed markedly. Typically, the timing and location of the brain wave patterns in response to unexpected notes suggested that they stimulate responses that synchronise different brain areas associated with processing emotion and movement. On these results, Bhattacharya commented, "… as if music indeed 'moves' us!"
These findings may help scientists to understand why we listen to music. "It is thought that composers deliberately confirm and violate listeners' expectations in order to communicate emotion and aesthetic meaning," said Pearce. Understanding how the brain generates expectations could illuminate our experience of emotion and meaning when we listen to music.
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