(Medical Xpress) — A research team made up of people from a wide variety of biological sciences has found that mice fed a diet high in fat tend to see an increase in the number of neurons created in the hypothalamus, a region of the brain associated with regulating energy use in the body. The team, as they describe in their paper published in Nature Neuroscience, write that the increase in neurons occurs in a part of the hypothalamus called the median eminence, which lies outside the blood-brain barrier.
Neuroscience
Neuroscience and the pursuit of justice
Dr. Judith Edersheim, co-founder and co-director of the Center for Law, Brain and Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital, explores how neuroscience can enhance the pursuit of justice.
Transneuronal spread model fits neurodegenerative disease
(HealthDay) — Neurodegenerative diseases may be characterized by specific regions of the brain that are critical network epicenters, with disease-related vulnerability associated with shorter paths to the epicenter and greater total connectional flow, according to a study published in the March 22 issue of Neuron.
Highly flexible despite hard-wiring — even slight stimuli change the information flow in the brain
One cup or two faces? What we believe we see in one of the most famous optical illusions changes in a split second; and so does the path that the information takes in the brain. In a new theoretical study, scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, the Bernstein Center Göttingen and the German Primate Center now show how this is possible without changing the cellular links of the network. The direction of information flow changes, depending on the time pattern of communication between brain areas. This reorganisation can be triggered even by a slight stimulus, such as a scent or sound, at the right time.
Researchers show that memories reside in specific brain cells
Our fond or fearful memories that first kiss or a bump in the night leave memory traces that we may conjure up in the remembrance of things past, complete with time, place and all the sensations of the experience. Neuroscientists call these traces memory engrams.