Neuroscience In The News On May 9

These are articles that I found of interest relating to news about Neuroscience.  In this issue, I have highlighted articles about everyone's brain being different, what is attention, and the discovery of a new protein in nerve growth.

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 May 9, 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 May 2, 2016

Everyone's Brain Is Different

Everyone's brain is different. Until recently neuroscience has tended to gloss this over by averaging results from many brain scans in trying to elicit general truths about how the organ works. But in a major development within the field researchers have begun documenting how brain activity differs between individuals. Such differences had been largely thought of as transient and uninteresting but studies are starting to show that they are innate properties of people's brains, and that knowing them better might ultimately help treat neurological disorders.

The latest study, published April 8 in Science, found that the brain activity of individuals who were just biding their time in a brain scanner contained enough information to predict how their brains would function during a range of ordinary activities.

Article Link:

• New Evidence Points To Personal Brain Signatures
• Source:  www.scientificamerican.com
• Ido Tavor and Saad Jbabdi, University Of Oxford

What Is Attention?

Neuroscientists from Tübingen and Okasaki (Japan) have uncovered a mechanism that might clarify the meaning of "attention." This often non-quantifiable term is supposed to describe how strongly we react to a visual stimulus.  For several decades, "attention" was thought to be a barely definable state of certain brain regions.

Following up on these observations, Hafed and his team arrived at a hypothesis: what if the rhythm and direction of microsaccades directly trigger attentional capture and IOR?

Article Link:

• What Is Attention?
• Source:  www.laboratoryequipment.com
• Dr. Ziad Hafed, Centre for Integrative Neuroscience

New Protein In Nerve Growth

In the first research to be published on this protein's role in the nervous system, Benjamin Harrison, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Anatomical Sciences and Neurobiology and lead author of the article, and his colleagues show that CD2AP, an adaptor protein, orchestrates a complex arrangement of other proteins that controls the branching of nerve axons, the tendrils reaching out from the nerve cell to connect to other nerve cells, skin and organs. This nerve growth occurs in uninjured nerve cells as they extend their reach and create new connections.

Article Link:

• A New Player Revealed In Nerve Growth Process
• Source:  www.ScienceDaily.com
• Benjamin Harrison, Ph.D., University Of Louisville

Thank You Mom - Happy Mothers Day

Even through all the rough moments in life, we need to stop today and acknowledge someone special to our existence.  We need to stop and say "thank you mom!"  

Without our mothers, we would never have come into this world. 

Without our moms, we might not have made it as far as we have.

Hopefully your mom is one of the most precious people in your life.  If you haven't said thank you or told your mom that you loved her recently, make today that day!

Let your mom know how much you appreciate her.  Yes, you can buy expensive gifts for her, or you can just show her in the small ways what she means to you.  Remember actions speak louder than words.

It doesn't have to be an expensive gift.  Just by spending time with her, you're giving her a gift that is priceless.  She will know that you care about her as much as she cares about you.

Take a moment and celebrate Mom on this Mother's Day.  Make her feel special!

From all of us at MothersDayMusic.net, we say THANK YOU MOM!

---

Blog Post And Images (c) 2016 by Don Shetterly

• Permission required before any part of this blog post is reprinted, reworded or used in any form. 
• You are welcomed to share the LINK to this blog post.  

---

Does Dance Help Huntingtons Disease

I love it when I learn new things or how new things connect with stuff I already know.  One such article just came across my desk this morning and caught my attention.  An assistant professor of dance at the University of Massachusetts believes that dance can help Huntington's Disease.

Before today, I think I had heard of Huntington's Disease but like most things, that is about all I had heard about it.  In the article it explains that this disease causes a progressive degeneration of nerve cells in the brain.  It impacts a person's ability to function and causes difficulties in movement and thinking.

In the article, Paul Dennis explains that dance can help in balance, posture, coordination, motor learning, cognition and emotional well being.

One of the things I know from my own personal life healing from Conversion Disorder, is that in addition to healing the mind, I had to work on the body.  In the body centered therapy created by Dr. Paul Canali of Miami, FL, I learned that movement connected with the felt sense of the body could yield significant changes quickly for myself.

When I read about Paul Dennis and the work he is doing for a condition such as Huntington's Disease, it made perfect sense to me.  In the case of trauma, the body freezes and so if you offer the body something different than a freeze response, it can be life changing.  Movement of any type in that moment is what helps bring us out of freezing.

It isn't just movement by itself that I have seen others helped by, but the connected movement where the conscious brain of awareness is engaged.  Together, these things through the felt sense brings about a radical shift right before your eyes.

Healing is not just about following a standard protocol of paradigms that we know.  Healing is about advancing into the unknown thoughts that may present a fertile ground of moving through some of the physical limitations and difficulties we encounter.  There is much more than I think we realize alive in our bodies and so the work that Paul Dennis is doing is encouraging to me.

Article Source:  

Umass Assistant Professor Believes Dance Can Help Those With Huntington's Disease 


Paul A Dennis, Assistant Professor, University Of Massachusetts

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Blog Post And Images (c) 2016 by Don Shetterly

• Permission required before any part of this blog post is reprinted, reworded or used in any form. 
• You are welcomed to share the LINK to this blog post.  

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

032216