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Neuroscience news

Neuroscience

Everyday conversations can delay eye movements, essential for safe driving

Talking while driving is widely recognized as a major source of distraction, but the specific ways conversation interferes with the earliest stages of visual processing have remained largely unclear. While previous research ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

No, your brain doesn't suddenly 'fully develop' at 25. Here's what the neuroscience actually shows

If you scroll through TikTok or Instagram long enough, you'll inevitably stumble across the line: "Your frontal lobe isn't fully developed yet." It's become neuroscience's go-to explanation for bad decisions, like ordering ...

HIV & AIDS

Brain chemistry can reactivate or suppress dormant HIV

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections are still fairly common and an estimated 40 million people worldwide are currently living with this condition. The HIV virus attacks the body's immune system and thus makes those ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

Humans could have as many as 33 senses

Stuck in front of our screens all day, we often ignore our senses beyond sound and vision. And yet they are always at work. When we're more alert, we feel the rough and smooth surfaces of objects, the stiffness in our shoulders, ...

Neuroscience

To flexibly organize thought, the brain makes use of space

Our thoughts are specified by our knowledge and plans, yet our cognition can also be fast and flexible in handling new information. How does the well-controlled and yet highly nimble nature of cognition emerge from the brain's ...

Neuroscience

How age affects recovery from spinal cord injury

A study published in Neurology looks at how age may affect recovery for people with spinal cord injuries. "With population growth and improvements in medicine, the number of people diagnosed with spinal cord injury is increasing ...

Neuroscience

Why there's always room for dessert—an anatomist explains

You push back from the table after Christmas lunch, full from an excellent feast. You really couldn't manage another bite—except, perhaps, a little bit of pudding. Somehow, no matter how much you've eaten, there always ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

Compulsive behaviors may stem from too much (misguided) self-control

A long-held view is that compulsive behaviors involve individuals getting stuck in a "habit loop" that overrides self-control, but new research in rats from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) suggests this might not ...

Oncology & Cancer

How brain tumor cells influence neurons and vice versa

Gliomas are cancers that originate directly in the brain, instead of spreading to the brain from other parts of the body. These cancers cannot be cured with conventional cancer treatments, as they spread into healthy brain ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

Exploring why some people tend to persistently make bad choices

When people learn that surrounding visuals and sounds may signify specific choice outcomes, these cues can become guides for decision making. For people with compulsive disorders, addictions, or anxiety, the associations ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

After early-life stress, astrocytes can affect behavior

Astrocytes in the lateral hypothalamus region of the brain, an area involved in the regulation of sleep and wakefulness, play a key role in neuron activity in mice and affect their behavior, Canadian researchers have found.

Psychology & Psychiatry

Music therapy can ease back pain for ED visitors

Playwright William Congreve wrote in the Restoration period that music "hath charms to soothe a savage breast." And, as it turns out, back pain in 21st-century patients as well.

Neuroscience

Mouse study links chronic pain to disrupted sleep patterns

Pain and sleep disturbances often go hand in hand—more than 30% of the U.S. population lives with pain, and a majority of those with pain also report sleep disorders—but the relationship between the two has remained largely ...

Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes

Happy music could help you recover from motion sickness

Scientists studying ways of improving motion sickness have found that playing different types of music may help people recover more effectively. Using a specially calibrated driving simulator, they induced car sickness in ...