Author archives: Rosa García-Verdugo

Botox can affect emotional processing

Botox can affect emotional processing

Neuroscience

By Rosa García-Verdugo

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 […]

A single gene might be responsible for the bigger brain of modern humans

A single gene might be responsible for the bigger brain of modern humans

EvolutionGeneticsNeurobiology

By Rosa García-Verdugo

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 […]

Electrical stimulation allows nine paralysed patients to walk

Electrical stimulation allows nine paralysed patients to walk

MedicineNeurobiologyNeuroscience

By Rosa García-Verdugo

Electrical stimulation of the spinal cord can help recover mobility in some paralysed patients. However, the mechanism underlying this partial recovery of function remains unknown. A recent human study has confirmed the involvement of a group of cells previously identified in mice, paving the way to targeted treatments. In a recently published study in Nature […]

Preliminary research identifies brain changes associated with migraine

Preliminary research identifies brain changes associated with migraine

Neuroscience

By Rosa García-Verdugo

Why some people get migraines while others don’t? New research indicates that it might be due to specific brain changes in migraine sufferers, particularly, in the centrum semiovale, a white matter region underneath the cerebral cortex. New data presented at the yearly meeting of the Radiological Society of North America points towards brain differences among […]

First synthetic embryo with brain and beating heart independently produced twice  

First synthetic embryo with brain and beating heart independently produced twice  

BiologyBiomedicine

By Rosa García-Verdugo

Mostly, people think that an embryo can only (except in the case of parthenogenesis) result from the sum of sperm and an egg. However, two research teams, one in Israel and another multinational collaboration have recently reported producing a synthetic mouse embryo from stem cells which lasted enough to have a brain and a beating […]