Brain

Religious and spiritual experiences activate the brain reward circuits in much the same way as love, sex, gambling, drugs and music, according to a psychology paper based on interpretations of brain scans.

Over a year ago, trade reps for the kratom supplement business began calling everyone in media hoping to get scientific and political coverage for protesting a DEA ban they suspected was coming. Sure enough, it did, but much of the work that went into progress at that time is now bearing fruit for the kratom sales industry.

In most psychology papers, either women are better than men at identifying faces or there is no gender difference.

Taking music lessons increases brain fiber connections in children, according to a recent small study. The researchers studied 23 healthy children between the ages of five and six years old. All of the children were right handed and had no history of sensory, perception or neurological disorders. None of the children had been trained in any artistic discipline in the past.

The combination of augmented reality technology, geocaching, and other novel techniques to create innovative active video games (AVGs) has potential personal and public health implications, as discussed in the Editorial "Pokémon Go, Go, Go, Gone?" published in Games for Health.

A new study finds that 'an old dog can't learn new tricks' only applies to dogs. In people, older adolescents and adults not only learn certain thinking skills including non-verbal reasoning more effectively than younger people, they learn them better.

And providing a new boost for the marketing departments of 'brain training games', non-verbal reasoning skills can be readily trained and do not represent an innate, fixed ability.

According to a music researcher, discrimination of women is common in the club scene. Female DJs don’t get gigs because the music they play is “too feminine.”

A number of common conditions are mistaken for multiple sclerosis (MS), a disabling central nervous system disease, say researchers at four academic medical centers across the U.S. in a study published online today in the journal Neurology.

Many people today believe they possess a soul. While conceptions of the soul differ, many would describe it as an “invisible force that appears to animate us”.

Laterality is the preference of human beings for one side of our bodies; being left-handed or right-handed, for example, or having a preference for using one eye or ear or the other. In the view of the geologist and primatologist Eder Domínguez-Ballesteros, "lateralised behaviour in humans may in some way have been reflected in their technological products, in particular, in the things they made. Besides, flint knapping -inherent in our genus since the first stages in its evolution- is an excellent source of information for studying lateralization in humans".

A study shows that depression following childbirth can begin at different times and follow multiple distinct trajectories, emphasizing the need for clinicians to monitor for signs of postpartum depression and be aware of risk factors that may predispose a new mother to depression. The study is published in Journal of Women's Health.

A new pilot study has found that opioid dependence – which includes dependence on drugs such as heroin – affects how ‘cute’ we perceive images of children to be. As cuteness can trigger caregiving motivation, this result indicates that the opioid system may have significant effects on our ability to care for others. The implications of this may need to be considered in any consideration of medical or recreational opioid use.

The notion that low levels of electrical stimulation applied to the scalp, barely enough to create a mild tingling sensation, could activate the brain is a relatively new and somewhat controversial idea. The technique, called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been reported to modify mood, emotion, and cognition, yet researchers lack any evidence for how - or even if - it directly modulates brain activity. Still, some researchers see its potential for a new strategy to treat psychiatric disorders.

The following factors facilitate the formation of putatively toxic structures in the neuronal nuclei of Alzheimer’s patients.

Spherical structures in the nucleus of nerve cells, so-called nuclear spheres, are suspected to trigger Alzheimer’s disease. A team headed by Dr Thorsten Müller from the research group Cell Signaling in Neurodegeneration has for the very first time demonstrated the presence of the presumably toxic protein aggregates in the human brain. The researchers from Ruhr-Universität Bochum have published their article in the journal Neurobiology of Aging.

The sense of touch may play a more crucial role in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) than previously assumed. The main findings of the doctoral research of Eliane Deschrijver, which are now published, show that individuals with ASD may have difficulties to determine which tactile sensations belong to the action of someone else.

ASD: social problems and sensory sensitivities

Many individuals with ASD are over- or undersensitive to sensory information. Some feel overwhelmed by busy environments such as supermarkets, others are less sensitive to pain, or dislike being touched.