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Category: neuroscience – Page 31

Beyond BMI: Analysis links fat distribution to distinct brain aging patterns

Research led by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University finds that regional fat distribution exerts distinct effects on brain structure, connectivity and cognition, revealing patterns not explained by body mass index (BMI).

Obesity has been associated with structural and functional changes in the brain, including reductions in , disruptions in white matter and impaired connectivity, which have been associated with cognitive decline.

Previous studies frequently used BMI as the central measure of obesity, a highly generalized metric that cannot capture the biological differences in fat depots. Adipose tissue in different body regions is known to affect metabolic and inflammatory pathways differently, and earlier work has suggested that visceral (around organs in the ) and leg fat contribute unequally to disease risk.

Drinking any amount of alcohol likely increases dementia risk

Drinking any amount of alcohol likely increases the risk of dementia, suggests the largest combined observational and genetic study to date, published in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine.

Even light drinking—generally thought to be protective, based on observational studies—is unlikely to lower the risk, which rises in tandem with the quantity of alcohol consumed, the research indicates.

Current thinking suggests that there might be an “optimal dose” of alcohol for brain health, but most of these studies have focused on and/or didn’t differentiate between former and lifelong non-drinkers, complicating efforts to infer causality, note the researchers.

Through multiplexed theta waves, brain’s place cells navigate using both external and internal cues

Place cells are specialized neurons in a brain region known as the hippocampus, which have been found to fire when animals are in specific locations. These cells don’t fire randomly, but their activity is known to be organized by theta oscillations, which in rats means that they fire in sync with rhythmic brain waves between 7–9 Hz.

While many past studies have explored the role and firing patterns of place cells, the extent to which their activity is influenced by different types of spatial cues has not yet been fully elucidated. Spatial cues are essentially pieces of information that help animals and humans to determine where they are and where they should head toward to reach a desired location.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University gathered new experimental evidence suggesting that the multiplexed theta phase coding of place cells, or, in other words, their ability to tackle different tasks in the same “wave” of theta rhythm activity, is controlled by external (i.e., allothetic) and self-motion-related (i.e., idiothetic) spatial cues.

People’s neural responses while watching videos predict whether they will become friends in the future, study finds

Throughout the course of their lives, people typically encounter numerous other individuals with different interests, values and backgrounds. However, not all these individuals will become their good friends, life partners, or meaningful people in their lives.

Many past psychology and behavioral science studies investigated the relationships between different people and what contributes to their perceived affinity to others. While some of these studies linked friendship to physical proximity, interpersonal similarities and other factors, the associated with between people have not yet been fully elucidated.

Researchers at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and Dartmouth College recently carried out a study exploring the possibility that people who end up becoming friends exhibit similar neural activity patterns. Their findings, published in Nature Human Behavior, suggest that people are in fact drawn to others who exhibit similar emotional and mental responses to their surroundings.

Activity of large-scale cortical networks follows cyclical pattern, study finds

The human brain can concurrently support a wide range of advanced mental functions, including attention, memory and the processing of sensory stimuli. While past neuroscience studies have gathered valuable insight into the neural underpinnings of each of these processes, the mechanisms that ensure that they are performed efficiently and in a timely fashion have not yet been fully elucidated.

Researchers at the University of Oxford and other institutes recently set out to explore how the activity of large-scale cortical functional networks, interconnected in the brain’s outermost layer, changes over time. Their findings, published in Nature Neuroscience, suggest that the overall order in which these networks become active follows an inherently cyclical pattern.

“This research was inspired by observations that transitions between large-scale brain networks are asymmetric: we have seen that in many cases it is much more likely that network X follows network Y than the other way around,” Dr. Mats W.J. van Es, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford and first author of the paper, told Medical Xpress.

Brain Cells Behind Depression Identified for the First Time

Research on rare post-mortem brain tissue shows changes in gene activity, offering new insight into the biological basis of depression. Researchers from McGill University and the Douglas Institute have discovered two distinct types of brain cells that show alterations in individuals with depressi

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