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 […]
Recently, the results of an early human phase clinical trial have shown that mRNA technology can be successfully applied to diseases other than COVID-19, such as skin cancer. Moderna and Merck used an mRNA anti-cancer vaccine based on the same technology used to develop some COVID-19 vaccines, except that instead of using proteins from a […]
Men and women are different. It has been long known that pregnancy and motherhood alter women’s brains. What was so far not clear was what happens to the brains of fathers. Recent research has shown that having children rewires fathers’ brains as well. Mother’s brains change to adapt to the demands of their babies, that […]
Clinical research has fundamentally discriminated women, assuming that they are nothing more than “small” men and therefore, drugs should work mostly the same if just adjusting the dose to their lower weight. However, this has been proven not to be the case. The physiology of the two sexes differs in several parameters, that is why […]
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 […]
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 […]