A yet unidentified component of coffee interacts with the beverage’s caffeine, which could be a surprising reason why daily coffee intake protects against Alzheimer’s disease. A new Alzheimer’s disease mouse study by researchers at the University of South Florida found that this interaction boosts blood levels of a critical growth factor that seems to fight […]
Gestalt psychology contends that the human brain organizes what the eyes see based on traits such as similarity, common background, and proximity. But a new illusion that took second place in the 2011 Best Illusion of the Year Contest — a competition held annually by the Neural Correlate Society — illustrates that our brains can […]
If you want to keep your brain healthy, it turns out that visiting friends, attending parties, and even going to church might be just as good for you as crossword puzzles. According to research conducted at Rush University Medical Center, frequent social activity may help to prevent or delay cognitive decline in old age. The […]
The human brain loses 5 to 10% of its weight between the ages of 20 and 90 years old. While some cells are lost, the brain is equipped with two compensatory mechanisms: plasticity and redundancy. Based on the results of a recent clinical study published in the online version of Brain, A Journal of Neurology, […]
The growing numbers of new cases of substance abuse disorders are perplexing. After all, the course of drug addiction so often ends badly. The negative consequences of drug abuse appear regularly on TV, from stories of celebrities behaving in socially inappropriate and self-destructive ways while intoxicated to dramatization of the rigors of drug withdrawal on […]
A new study from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) has found that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy with meditation provides equivalent protection against depressive relapse as traditional antidepressant medication. The results are published in the current issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.
A commercial brain fitness program has been shown to improve memory in older adults, at least in the period soon after training. The findings are the first to show that practicing simple visual tasks can improve the accuracy of short-term, or “working” visual memory. The research, led by scientists at UCSF, is also one of […]
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