Health News

Stress can impair memory, reduce brain size in middle age

Adults in their 40s and 50s with higher levels of cortisol — a hormone linked to stress — performed worse on memory and other cognitive tasks than peers of the same age with average cortisol levels, research found. Higher cortisol in the blood also was associated with smaller brain volumes, according to the study, published […]

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Breathing through the nose aids memory storage

The way we breathe may affect how well our memories are consolidated (i.e. reinforced and stabilised). If we breathe through the nose rather than the mouth after trying to learn a set of smells, we remember them better, researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden report in The Journal of Neuroscience. Research into how breathing affects […]

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Modifiable dementia risk factor in older adults identified

For older adults, it may seem as though the die is already cast regarding their odds of developing dementia, but new research from the University of Pittsburgh has identified a dementia risk factor among older adults that should be modifiable even well into old age. The study, which draws on data collected from following hundreds […]

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Abnormal vision in childhood can affect brain functions

A research team has discovered that abnormal vision in childhood can affect the development of higher-level brain areas responsible for things such as attention. The researchers from the University of Waterloo, University of British Columbia, and the University of Auckland uncovered differences in how the brain processes visual information in patients with various types of […]

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How nature, nurture shape the sleeping brain: Study of teenage twins teases apart influence of genes, environment on brain activity during sleep

Some patterns of electrical activity generated by the brain during sleep are inherited, according to a study of teenage twins published in JNeurosci. Pinpointing the relative contributions of biology and experience to sleep neurophysiology could inform therapies for numerous psychiatric disorders in which alterations in brain activity during sleep can be detected. Leila Tarokh and […]

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Nerve cells in the human brain can ‘count’

How do we know if we’re looking at three apples or four? Researchers at the Universities of Bonn and Tübingen are now one step closer to answering this question. They were able to demonstrate that some brain cells fire mainly for quantities of three, others for quantities of four and others for other quantities. A […]