The Great Brain Mapping Debate

Two leading neuroscientists debate...Debate Sebastian Seung (MIT) vs. Anthony Movshon (NYU) Does the brain's wiring make us who we are?

Pierwszy "genetyczny" atlas mózgu

Genetyczny atlas mózgu demonstruje między innymi, że "genetyka" kory mózgowej nie pokrywa się z funkcjonalnymi i fizjologicznymi mapami mózgu. Genetyczny atlas mózgu to nowe narzędzie pozwalające zrozumieć pracę mózgu, szczególnie na poziomie genetycznym.

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Chronic Pain: Simple Strategies for Hands-On Evaluation and Effective Management

The lecture originally presented on May 21, 2011 in Austin, Texas as part of the American Pain Society’s Managing the Patient in Pain Seminar, an adjunct offering for primary care providers, in association with the APS 30th Annual Scientific Meeting. Medscape is pleased to partner with the American Pain Society to bring this important program to pain professionals.

Clear Link Between Mood and Food

There is a strong link between higher levels of nutrient intake and better mental health. Bonnie Kaplan, PhD (University of Calgary in Alberta):...People who suffer from mood disorders function better when they are eating better...It really is true that you are what you eat... Significant correlations were found between Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) scores and calories, carbohydrates, fibre, total fat, linoleic acid, riboflavin, niacin, folate, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, pantothenic acid, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, and iron (P < .05 for all), and magnesium (r = 0.41, P < .001) and zinc (r = 0.35, P < .001). Nutrient Intakes Are Correlated With Overall Psychiatric Functioning in Adults With Mood Disorders Karen M Davison, PhD, RD1; Bonnie J Kaplan, PhD

The PTSD Trap: Our Overdiagnosis of PTSD In Vets Is Enough to Make You Sick

David Dobbs:...When PTSD was first added to the DSM-III in 1980, traumatic memories were considered reasonably faithful recordings of actual events. But as research since then has repeatedly shown, memory is spectacularly unreliable and extraordinarily malleable. We routinely add or subtract people, details, settings, and actions to our memories. We conflate, invent, and edit... ...to make PTSD diagnosis more rigorous, some have suggested that blood chemistry, brain imaging or other tests might be able to detect physiological signatures of PTSD. Studies of stress hormones in groups of PTSD patients show differences from normal subjects, but the overlap between the normal and the PTSD groups is huge, making individual profiles useless for diagnostics. Brain imaging has similar limitations, with the abnormal dynamics in PTSD heavily overlapping those of depression and anxiety... ...With memory unreliable and biological markers elusive, diagnosis depends on clinical symptoms. But as a 2007 study showed starkly, PTSD’s symptom profile is as slippery as the would-be biomarkers... More

Why unhappy brains are better brains

David DiSalvo in his book What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite. That is are our predisposition to focus on or select the pieces of information that 'confirm' our opinion (of a person, a topic, anything) and disregard anything to the contrary.Since our brains like being happy, we like feeling right. DiSalvo:...Our need to be right is actually a need to "feel" right...In our everyday lives, though, feeling right translates into being right (because if we could admit that we only 'feel' right, then we might not really be right, and from our brains' point of view that's just not alright)...The brain doesn't merely prefer certainty over ambiguity...It craves it... In the book David DiSalvo cites a 2005 study conducted by psychologist Ming Hsu which found that even a small amount of ambiguity triggers increased activity in the amygdalae - brain clusters that relate to threat. The effect of our brains' natural inclinations, and how it can lead us to errors, biases, and distortions, is what he explores in his book. He also provides strategies for overcoming these limitations.

Personality Traits Traced in Brain

Berman, Drs. Mbemda Jabbi, Shane Kippenham, and colleagues, report on their imaging study in Williams syndrome online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Thomas R. Insel, M.D., NIMH Director ...This line of research offers insight into how genes help to shape brain circuitry that regulates complex behaviors – such as the way a person responds to others – and thus holds promise for unraveling brain mechanisms in other disorders of social behavior...

Long distance connections, white matter, between the insula and other parts of the brain are aberrant in Williams syndrome. Neuronal fibers of normal controls (left) extend further than those of Williams syndrome patients (right). Picture shows diffusion tensor imaging data from each patient superimposed on anatomical MRI of the median patient. (Source: Karen Berman, M.D., NIMH Clinical Brain Disorders Branch)