Category archives: Neuroscience

What if Alzheimer’s disease was caused by fungi?

What if Alzheimer’s disease was caused by fungi?

HealthMedicineNeurobiologyNeuroscience

By Ignacio Amigo

More than a hundred years have passed since the German physicist Alois Alzheimer associated the traits of dementia of one of her patients with morphological changes in her brain after her death. While we know a great deal about what today is known as Alzheimer’s disease, we still need to answer two fundamental questions: what […]

Metacognition in nonhumans

Metacognition in nonhumans

EthologyNeuroscience

By José Ramón Alonso

Metacognition is «cognition about cognition», or «knowing about knowing». It comes from the root word «meta», meaning beyond, and the word «cognition» that includes all mental abilities and processes related to knowledge: attention, memory, judgment and evaluation, reasoning, biological computation, problem-solving, decision making, comprehension and production of language, etc. Metacognition can take many forms; it […]

The brain has a direct connection to the lymphatic system

The brain has a direct connection to the lymphatic system

BiomedicineNeurobiologyNeuroscience

By José Ramón Alonso

The lymphatic system performs important immune functions, and runs parallel to the blood circulatory system to provide a secondary circulation that transports excess interstitial fluid, proteins and metabolic waste products from the systemic tissues back into the blood. For centuries, it was thought that the central nervous system lacks a lymphatic drainage system and the […]

The poor brain

The poor brain

NeurobiologyNeuroscience

By José Ramón Alonso

The human brain continues its development postnatally. It is a long process that extends throughout, at least, the first two decades of life. Along these years, environmental factors influence brain functions and, not surprisingly because of its high plasticity, brain structure. Among the variables that may affect the cognitive development is the socioeconomic status. Three […]

I see your pain

I see your pain

NeurobiologyNeuroscience

By José Ramón Alonso

True empathy is considered by most researchers to be an exclusive ability of primates, particularly humans and apes, the result of complex reasoning and abstract thought. However, empathy may be a phylogenetically continuous ability with particular types such as «emotional contagion» present in all classes of mammals. In fact, it has been shown that empathy […]