Neuroscience In The News On April 25

These are articles that I found of interest relating to news about Neuroscience.  In this issue, I have highlighted articles about how the brain processes emotions, the natural forgetting of long-term memories and the neuroscience of how to fix creative block.

Please check out the article links below and feel free to comment with other information related to these subjects.  I enjoy learning as much as I can about the brain and passing this information on to everyone else that shares these passions.

This is for the week beginning April 25, 2016.

Please come back each week and hopefully I will have some more highlights.  Feel free to share with me ones that you have found and I may highlight those as well.

Feel free to check out the highlighted articles from April 18, 2016

How The Brain Processes Emotions

Some mental illnesses may stem, in part, from the brain’s inability to correctly assign emotional associations to events. For example, people who are depressed often do not feel happy even when experiencing something that they normally enjoy.

A new study from MIT reveals how two populations of neurons in the brain contribute to this process. The researchers found that these neurons, located in an almond-sized region known as the amygdala, form parallel channels that carry information about pleasant or unpleasant events.

Learning more about how this information is routed and misrouted could shed light on mental illnesses including depression, addiction, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder, said Kay Tye, the Whitehead Career Development Assistant Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and a member of MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory.

Article Link:

• How the Brain Processes Emotions
• Source:  www.Biosciencetechnology.com
• Anna Beyeler, Praneeth Namburi, MIT

Natural Forgetting Of Long-Term Memories

"Our study looks at the biological processes that happen in the brain when we forget something."

Typically, the process of forgetting is seen as a failure of one or more basic memory functions such as acquisition, encoding, maintenance and retrieval.

However, in this latest study of rats, Dr. Hardt and colleagues suggest that forgetting may involve a well-organized process of active deletion rather than simply failure to remember.

Article Link:

• Brain study yields clues about 'natural forgetting of long-term memories
• Source:  www.MedicalNewsToday.com 
• Dr. Oliver Hardt, University Of Edinburgh

Neuroscience Fix For Creative Block

“When [people] are improvising, there tends to be a pattern of activation where they have decreased activation in a part of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex,” Berlin says. “And that part of the brain has to do with your sense of self, your sort of inner critic, making sure that your behavior conforms to social norms.”

Translation? When you’re at your most creative, “basically you lose your sense of self,” Berlin says. “You kind of release your inhibition. The second you become too self-aware that comes back online and you lose that flow state.”

Article Link:

• Creative Block?  Here's the neuroscience of how to fix that
• Source:  Pri.Org  (Public Radio International)