Music is not only a pleasure for our brains, it seems that learning it at an old age can help prevent grey matter loss. This non-medicinal intervention would be a very interesting way of delaying the onset of dementia and loss of cognitive abilities associated with ageing. Recently, a team of researchers recruited a group […]
Biochemistry • Biomedicine • Health • Medicine • Neuroscience
Recent research has demonstrated that obesity impairs the mechanisms that allow our brains to realize when our stomachs are full and that these changes are maintained despite dieting, giving insights into why it is difficult for obese people to avoid excessive eating and why there is often a yo-yo effect after dieting. It has been […]
In humans, biological sex is determined by the chromosomes X or Y. People having a Y chromosome are typically male, as this small chromosome –which evolution seems to be doing away with– contains a gene which determines the formation of male sexual organs in the embryo. However, despite its small size, the Y chromosome is […]
Mental illness is associated with accelerated ageing, namely with shorter life span and ageing-related diseases such as diabetes or cardiovascular problems, with worse effects observed in men than women (the average lifespan for men having suffered from mental illness is 10 years shorter than for peers without those issues, for women the difference is seven […]
While for long in neuroscience, computers were used to model brain function, organoid intelligence, a new scientific field, aims to do the opposite by developing biological computers which would benefit from the efficiency of our most complex biological machine: the brain. Fear not. The objective is not to connect humans by their brains to power […]
So far, contraception has been practically exclusive to women. They are the ones not only responsible for the matter, but also the ones to suffer the brunt of the side effects of current contraceptive methods. Arrdc5, a new gene identified in mice, might hold the key to male contraception. This gene, common to several mammal […]
We reflect other people’s emotions through an ingrained, unconscious process. According to the facial feedback hypothesis, seeing a happy or angry face would make us contract or relax the appropriate face muscles to emulate that expression and better identify and experience the associated emotion. Since botox impairs some facial muscles from contracting in response to […]
Typically, psychiatric disorders come more than one at a time. That is why patients often fit the profile of more than one illness. Until now, it was unclear why this was the case. Recent research seems to have thrown light on this question, as it identified a brain network common to at least six psychiatric […]
Intermittent fasting, that is, eating only over a certain time period during the day, can have positive mental health effects, at least according to a recent study . Intermittent fasting for 16 hours a day, that is a 16:8 fasting paradigm, for five days a week during three months improved quality of life while decreasing […]
We, humans, have evolved pretty big brains compared to other mammals, and even compared to our primate cousins. Recent research seems to have found the reason for the higher number of neurons in our brains (about 86 billion). It appears that a single gene is responsible for our bigger brain. The Neanderthals are an extinct […]