All posts tagged: neurology

A Neurology Professor Says Many People Over 50 Still Do These 4 Brain-Damaging Habits

A Neurology Professor Says Many People Over 50 Still Do These 4 Brain-Damaging Habits

Published by Jenni Sidey

As you age into your 50s and 60s, your routine and habits impact your brain health in the long term, so you are unknowingly harming your brain health a little daily. Dr. Rudolph E. Tanzi, a professor of Neurology, blames these reckless routines that are harming your cognition and pushing you toward neurodegenerative diseases. These everyday, brain-damaging habits are so normalized that they have now become the norm. It’s a way of life that is not only accepted but appreciated. Here are the four everyday habits that are hurting your cognition and memory. A neurology professor says many people over 50 still do these 4 brain-damaging habits: 1. Working more than 8 hours a day can damage your brain Marcus Aurelius / Pexels It is the norm to work for at least 8 hours a day. There’s no denying that the pressure and workload of most jobs will have you put in at least 8 hours daily. Corporate has made it a norm that you can not get any job with less work time, but …

Hidden body fat may put you at greater brain disease risk

Hidden body fat may put you at greater brain disease risk

Published by Jenni Sidey

Body fat rarely stays in one place. A new imaging study suggests that the spots where fat settles can line up with changes in your brain. Researchers at The Affiliated Hospital of Xuzhou Medical University in Xuzhou, China, analyzed MRI scans from nearly 26,000 adults in the UK Biobank. The team focused on how fat spreads across organs and tissues, not just on body mass index. Their results were published today in Radiology, the flagship journal of the Radiological Society of North America. The study links two underrecognized fat patterns to smaller brain volumes, more signs of tissue damage, slower thinking speed, and higher odds of certain neurologic and psychiatric conditions. Those patterns showed up in both men and women, with some differences by sex. A new way to sort body fat Body fat is often reduced to a single score, such as BMI. That number can hide major differences in fat placement. MRI lets researchers measure “ectopic” fat stored inside organs, along with fat around the abdomen, heart, and muscles. Latent profile analysis identified …

The immense interconnectivity of the brain: Best ideas of the century

The immense interconnectivity of the brain: Best ideas of the century

Published by skeptic

You have probably heard the parable of the blind men and the elephant. One feels the trunk and says it’s a snake, another feels a leg and claims it’s a tree. It warns of how focusing on single parts can obscure the whole. Neuroscience made the same mistake for decades, viewing the brain as a collection of specialised regions, each working on a distinct function. Our understanding of what each region did often stemmed from incredible accidents, like the case of Phineas Gage, a 19th-century railway worker who survived having an iron rod blown through his brain. His personality change was blamed on frontal lobe damage. More recently, we have gained insights from brain stimulation studies that tied the amygdala to emotions, the occipital lobe to vision, and so on. Brain regions do specialise, but that isn’t the whole picture. Advances in imaging technologies in the late 1990s and early 2000s, notably functional MRI and PET, allowed scientists to observe the whole brain in action. What they discovered transformed neuroscience. Brain regions don’t operate alone …

Neurodiversity reveals there’s no such thing as a normal brain: Best ideas of the century

Neurodiversity reveals there’s no such thing as a normal brain: Best ideas of the century

Published by skeptic

Once upon a time, science worked on the assumption that there was such a thing as a “normal” brain that neatly conformed to society. Those who were different might be diagnosed with an illness or mental health condition, and were treated as though something was wrong with them. Over the decades, scientists honed the concept that neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia and dyspraxia should be considered distinct and were reflective of sharply different brains. Then, in the late 1990s, a new idea started to emerge. What if these “disorders” were better understood as natural variation in the way human brains can be wired? What if, instead of a hard line between normal and abnormal function, human traits and abilities existed on a spectrum along which we all fit somewhere? And while people towards the extremes experience challenges, their unusual brains also come with unique strengths. When seen this way, diverse brains aren’t a problem to be solved, but an asset that, if properly supported, could benefit everyone. The concept of neurodiversity grew out of …

What the evolution of tickling tells us about being human

What the evolution of tickling tells us about being human

Published by skeptic

Lyndon Stratford / Alamy Stock P In a grey-walled room in the Dutch city of Nijmegen, a strange activity is underfoot. Wearing a cap covered in sensors and positioning themselves into a chair, a person places their bare feet over two holes in a platform. Beneath this lies a robot, which uses a metal probe to begin to tickle their soles. Soon, shrieking, yelps and pained laughter ring around the space. Here, at Radboud University’s Touch and Tickle lab, volunteers are being mercilessly tickled in the name of science. “We can manipulate how strong the stimulation is, how fast and where it is going to be applied on your foot,” says Konstantina Kilteni, who runs the lab, of the robot tickling experiment. Meanwhile, the researchers record participants’ brain activity and physiological parameters such as their heart rate, breathing and sweating. With the help of neural and physiological recordings, the researchers have one goal in mind: to finally crack questions that have troubled thinkers from Socrates to René Descartes. Why are we ticklish, what does it …