Georgetown University Medical Center

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Georgetown University Medical Center

·August 19, 2021·4 min read

Key Mental Abilities Can Actually Improve During Aging

Orienting and executive inhibition, two key brain functions associated with attending to new information and focusing on important aspects of a situation, can improve in older individuals. These functions underlie aspects of cognition, including memory and decision making, and even navigation, math, and language.

Featured Neuroscience

·October 26, 2020·4 min read

Study of Reaching and Grasping With Hand or Foot Reveals Novel Brain Insights

The brain processes motor commands, not just through fine muscle contractions, but also via higher-level motor areas that provide a blueprint for performing more complex motor functions, such as grasping, no matter if the toes or fingers are used.

Featured Neuroscience Open Neuroscience Articles Psychology

·September 9, 2020·4 min read

Unconscious Learning Underlies Belief in a God

People whose brains are more predisposed to implicit pattern learning are more likely to believe in a deity, researchers report.

Featured Neuroscience

·September 7, 2020·4 min read

Children Use Both Brain Hemispheres to Understand Language, Unlike Adults

Unlike adults, infants and young children use both hemispheres of their brain to process language.

This shows a brain made up of cog wheels

Featured Neuroscience

·June 5, 2020·2 min read

Early-life education improves memory in old age, especially for women

Females who attend school for longer have better memory ability in old age, a new study reports. For each year of education, memory gains were, on average, five times greater for women than the losses experienced due to each year of aging.

Brain Cancer Featured Neurology Neuroscience Open Neuroscience Articles

·December 30, 2019·4 min read

Combining neurologic and blood pressure drugs reduces breast tumor development

Combining medications used to treat neurological disorders, such as epilepsy and migraines, with blood pressure medications reversed some aspects of breast cancer in mice at high risk of developing the disease due to the high-fat diets fed to their mothers during pregnancy.

Featured Neuroscience Open Neuroscience Articles Visual Neuroscience

·October 23, 2019·3 min read

Why, Sometimes, We Don’t See What We Actually Saw

Crashes in visual processing occur when neurons processing one image are tasked with processing another too quickly. This results in either one or both images being unable to reach our conscious awareness.

This shows a brain with the cerebellum highlighted

Featured Neuroscience Open Neuroscience Articles

·October 22, 2019·4 min read

Finding Upends Theory about the Cerebellum’s Role in Reading and Dyslexia

New findings dispute the popular cerebellar deficit hypothesis of dyslexia. Researchers report the cerebellum is not engaged during reading in typical readers and does not differ in children with dyslexia.

Featured Neuroscience

·October 22, 2019·3 min read

Exposure to environmental PCBs impairs brain function in mice

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), chemicals commonly used during the 20th century as flame retardants and in industrial products, disrupt the performance of astrocytes, leading to impaired function. Environmental exposure to PCBs could contribute to a range of neurodegenerative diseases.

Featured Neuroethics Neuroscience Neurotech

·September 19, 2018·6 min read

Using Electrical Brain Stimulation to Foster Creativity

Researchers debate the growing use of tES to enhance creativity, concluding there is a potential value in brain stimulation. However, researchers say, the use of tES raises a number of neuroethical, legal and social issues that must be addressed.

Featured Neurology

·February 19, 2018·4 min read

Newborn Babies Who Suffered Stroke Regain Language Function in Opposite Side of Brain

According to researchers, following a perinatal stroke that damages the language area in the left hemisphere, the brain remaps to use the right hemisphere for language.