One of the priority objectives in autism research is to have a biological marker that allows early, rapid and reliable diagnosis. In the past year there have been several important studies that identified children with autism at ages as early as 6 or 12 months measuring volumetric changes in various regions of the brain or […]
The Mediterranean diet is a modern nutritional reference originally inspired by the dietary patterns of Greece, Southern Italy, and Spain in the 1940s and 1950s. The main components of this diet include proportionally high consumption of olive oil, legumes, unrefined cereals, fruits, and vegetables, moderate to high consumption of fish, moderate consumption of dairy products […]
Sleep is a naturally recurring state of mind and body characterized by altered consciousness, relatively repressed sensory inputs, inhibition of nearly all voluntary muscles, and reduced interactions with surroundings. We spend around one third of our lives sleeping although why we sleep is still theme of debate. Sleep seems to assist animals with improvements in […]
Nature is one of my favourite places to look for scientific-related answers. As life did start roughly three billion years ago, it has been encountering endless difficulties that needed to be solved in order to prosper. To make things even more complicated, living organisms had to get adapted in multiple different ways because of the […]
Charles Lullin knew that the figures and people he was seeing were illusions. It was 1759, Charles Lullin was almost ninety years old and he had lost most of his vision: he was still able to distinguish some objects but he was not able to read or write. A servant used to read him the […]
Predation is a biological interaction between a hunting organism, the predator, and another organism that is hunted, the prey. Predators may hunt actively for prey in pursuit predation, or sit and wait for prey as in ambush predators. In all cases, it is a complex behavior requiring honed skills and perfect and fast coordination among […]
Many women mention to have memory lapses, cognitive impairment and difficulties to focus associated to pregnancy and motherhood. It is called «baby brain», «brain pregnancy» or «momnesia». In surveys, up to four-fifths of pregnant women report slight mental troubles such as problems remembering phone numbers or stringing a complex sentence together. It is considered a […]
Flavor is a brain construction: we have olfactory and taste receptors and our central nervous system combines both types of information in what we call flavor. Malaria is an infectious disease affecting humans and other animals caused by parasitic protozoans belonging to the Plasmodium genre. It is transmitted by the bite of the female Anopheles […]
Men have been drowning their love sorrows in alcohol since the dawn of times. What probably none of those lonely broken-hearted drinkers might have imagined, is that their despair would serve as inspiration for an interesting research involving sex, alcohol and flies. As the story goes, a group of researchers at the University of California […]
Group activities like dancing, laughing, and singing, release endorphins in the brain. These endogenous opioid neuropeptides produce a feel-good sensation, increase pain tolerance acting as analgesics, and presumably help to form stronger bonds between members of the group. One conceivable explanation for our amusement of comedy might be that it makes us laugh, and thus […]