Lifeboat Foundation

While pain and fear are very different experiences, past studies showed that they can sometimes be closely related to one another. For instance, when many animals and humans are in dangerous or life-threatening situations, acute fear can suppress their perception of pain, allowing them to fully focus their attention on what is happening to them.

Conversely, research showed that when humans experience high levels of pain, they can create long-term and associative fear memories that make them fearful of situations that they associate with the pain they felt. These memories can in turn increase their sensitivity to pain or lead to the development of unhelpful behavioral patterns aimed at avoiding pain.

The increase in the intensity with which animals or humans perceive pain after very painful past experiences could be liked to their fearful anticipation of pain. The exact neural underpinnings of this process, however, are still poorly understood.

Improved, innovative strategies are needed for the prevention and promotion of recovery from mental illness as these disorders leading cause of disability worldwide. This article will review the evidence linking dietary pattern to brain-based illnesses and provide an overview of the mechanisms that underlie the association between brain health and the food we eat. Considerations for dietary intervention will be discussed including encouraging a shift towards a traditional or whole foods dietary pattern.

Robert, a 43-year-old married man who presents with irritability and a low mood for two months. He has a history of attention deficit disorder, first diagnosed two years ago, and is currently treated with Vyvanse 70 mg. While his focus and work function are improved, he reports low appetite, fatigue, and difficulty sleeping. He notes that he tends to be quite irritable during mealtimes to the extent that his wife has asked him to stay at work past dinnertime to “stay out of the way.” He feels guilty and, concerned about not connecting emotionally to his young children ages 1 and 3. Further history and medical workup reveal no substance use, no active medical issues, and blood work reveals no abnormalities.

The evidence is growing: food choice is strongly implicated in mental health risk. In cases like Robert’s, a food history is a vital piece of data, both in assessing low appetite as a possible medication side effect, or as a symptom of depression. Furthermore, a food history is imperative to understand whether targeted dietary recommendations could assist in his recovery.

Continue reading “Food, Mood, and Brain Health: Implications for the Modern Clinician” »

Led by researchers from NYU Grossman School of Medicine and University of Szeged in Hungary, a new study in mice and rats found that restoring certain signals in a brain region that processes smells countered depression.

Publishing in the journal Neuron online May 9, the study results revolve around nerve cells (neurons), which “fire”—or emit electrical signals —to transmit information. Researchers in recent years discovered that effective communication between brain regions requires groups of neurons to synchronize their activity patterns in repetitive periods (oscillations) of joint silence followed by joint activity.

One such rhythm, called “gamma,” repeats about 30 times or more in a second, and is an important timing pattern for the encoding of complex information, potentially including emotions.

Summary: The neuroscience of fitness explores how regular exercise profoundly impacts our brain and nervous system.

Exercise stimulates neurogenesis – the creation of new neurons – primarily in the hippocampus, influencing memory and learning while increasing key mood-regulating neurotransmitters. It also enhances brain plasticity, essential for recovery from injury and aging, and improves cognitive functions such as attention and memory.

Despite ongoing research, the current evidence underscores the powerful role of physical activity in promoting brain health and cognitive function, emphasizing the importance of integrating regular exercise into our lifestyles.

American pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly announced last week that it had seen encouraging clinical trial results of its new Alzheimer’s medication.

According to the company, their experimental drug, donanemab, was shown in a late-stage trial to slow cognitive decline by 35 percent.

While these results do sound promising, the full data is not yet released, so there’s still a lot we don’t know.

Sdominick/iStock.

One aspect they want to crack is communicating with dreamers while they are in sleep paralysis.

Summary: Music engages a multitude of brain areas, showcasing a complex interplay between auditory processing, emotion, and memory centers. It elicits emotions through the release of dopamine, our brain’s pleasure molecule, explaining the joy we often find in a favorite tune.

Moreover, music’s power to evoke vivid memories highlights its connection to the hippocampus, our memory storage center.

This broad influence of music on our brain mechanisms is also harnessed in therapeutic contexts, such as treating neurological disorders or improving mental health.

New research has found that blind individuals tend to have better interoceptive abilities than sighted individuals, particularly when it comes to detecting signals related to the heart. The new findings have been published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

The study aimed to investigate how blindness affects interoception, which refers to the ability to perceive internal bodily sensations. The researchers were specifically interested in examining how blindness affects cardiac interoception, which involves perceiving the sensations of the heartbeat.

The study was motivated by previous research that has shown that blindness can lead to heightened crossmodal plasticity, which is the ability of the brain to reorganize and compensate for sensory deprivation by enhancing other senses.

The early detection and treatment of dementia such as Alzheimer’s is still one of the great challenges of modern medicine. It is already known that certain proteins in the cerebrospinal fluid can be used to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease. However, the current detection methods for such biomarkers by means of biochemical tests can only confirm and quantify the presence of such pathological proteins. No conclusions can be drawn about their original morphology of the proteins using biochemical assays, which holds information on disease stages.

However, such information if obtained directly in a label-free manner could allow conclusions to be drawn about the stage of the disease and evaluate the efficiency of a prescribed treatment. A team from the Transport at Nanoscale Interfaces Laboratory at Empa and the Department of Neurology at the Cantonal Hospital in St. Gallen has now used atomic force microscopy (AFM) to visualize the proteins that are indicative of Alzheimer’s disease under conditions that are as close to reality as possible. The researchers recently published their results in the journal Communications Biology.

With the new study, the researchers add another piece of the puzzle to their insights into Alzheimer’s development and diagnosis.