Occasionally I receive groups of messages from families with autistic members and I know the reason: they have read in the press exciting news about autism, a spectacular treatment, even a miracle cure. Unfortunately, if all that news were true we would have solved autism hundreds of times by now. So let’s start with the […]
For a long time, it was thought that dreaming occurred in the rapid eye movement phase of sleep (REM sleep). It is now well established that it can occur at any stage of sleep and, therefore, is not exclusive to a specific global vigilance state. Today, there is no known physiological correlate of a dream […]
mTOR has nothing to do with Norse mythology, it stands for “mammalian target of rapamycin” or “target of rapamycin in mammalian cells”. mTOR is involved in important cellular processes, including growth, proliferation, motility, survival, protein synthesis, transcription and autophagy. The history of rapamycin is so suggestive that I cannot avoid mentioning it: in the 1960s […]
Since humans are not very good at predicting the future, even if the help of a magic ball, scientists have developed a new system based on artificial intelligence to help us predict the future risk of suffering from Alzheimer’s disease by analysing certain parameters in brain scans. The research, recently published in the journal Diagnostics […]
At a synapse, the plasma membrane of the neuron transmitting the information (the presynaptic neuron) is in close proximity to the membrane of the target cell (postsynaptic) and the two are separated by a space known as the synaptic cleft. Both the presynaptic and postsynaptic sites contain extensive assemblies of molecular machinery that link the […]
A significant portion of an organism’s genome is non-coding; that is, it does not carry information to make proteins. Part of the non-coding DNA is transcribed into functional non-coding RNA molecules (e.g., transfer RNA, ribosomal RNA and regulatory RNA). Other functions of non-coding DNA include transcriptional and translational regulation of protein coding sequences, nuclear scaffold […]
Mental wandering, sometimes referred to as off-task thinking or, colloquially, going on autopilot, is the experience of thoughts not staying on a single topic, but jumping without control from one thing to another. This is particularly striking when we are engaged in a task that requires focus. A common place for mental wandering is when […]
COVID-19 worsens the already existing social difficulties for older adults and the disabled involved in long-term care services and supports; i.e., nursing homes, skilled nursing facilities, and home and community-based services . A hug is a form of non-verbal communication. It can indicate familiarity, love, affection, friendship, brotherhood, or sympathy. We use it when we […]
Williams syndrome (WS) was first described in 1961 by New Zealand cardiologist John Williams. It is mostly caused by the microdeletion 7q11.23, a loss of a fragment of genetic material on chromosome 7. It is usually a “de novo” mutation, that is, it is not inherited from the parents, but rather arises in that child […]
From advertising to the workplace, it is often assumed that men and women are fundamentally different – from Mars and Venus, respectively. Of course, we all know people who are more androgynous, having a mix of personality traits that are stereotypically considered to be male or female. Importantly, such “psychological androgyny” has long been associated […]