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hippocampus

·August 5, 2020·2 min read

Your Amygdala Gets Bigger If You’re Anxious and Depressed

Depression and anxiety have a profound effect on brain areas associated with memory and emotional processing. In people with depression and anxiety, researchers noted shrinkage to the hippocampus. By contrast, the amygdala increased in size.

Featured Psychology

·August 3, 2020·8 min read

Brain Scans of 9- to 11-Year-Olds Offer Clues About Aggressive and Antisocial Behavior

Compared to typically developing children, those with disruptive behavioral disorders, characterized by antisocial behaviors and aggression, had less gray matter in the amygdala and hippocampus.

Electrophysiology Featured Neuroscience Open Neuroscience Articles

·July 31, 2020·5 min read

To Distinguish Contexts, Animals Think Probabilistically

The act of remapping an area can be mathematically modeled as probabilistic reasoning in rodents.

Featured Neurology

·July 20, 2020·4 min read

Oxytocin Could Be Used to Treat Cognitive Disorders Like Alzheimer’s

Oxytocin, the so-called "love hormone," could help to treat cognitive disorders, including Alzheimer's disease. Researchers demonstrated oxytocin reversed the effects of amyloid-beta on hippocampal LTP in mice. The findings suggest oxytocin could be used as a therapeutic for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease and other dementias.

Featured Neurology

·July 16, 2020·4 min read

Eating Fish May Protect Brain From Effects of Air Pollution

Eating a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids appears to have a positive effect on brain health in older women who live in areas with high levels of air pollution. Women with lower levels of omega-3 fatty acids in their blood had more brain shrinkage, specifically in the hippocampus than women with higher levels of omega-3.

Featured Neuroscience Open Neuroscience Articles

·July 13, 2020·3 min read

Why Are Memories Attached to Emotions so Strong?

Hippocampal neurons that respond to fearful stimuli relay that information to the amygdala. These neurons synchronize when memories of the stimuli are later recalled. The synchrony is critical to establish fear memories and the greater the synchrony, the stronger the memory becomes.

This shows a scary shadow and an anxious man

Featured Neuroscience Open Neuroscience Articles Psychology

·July 9, 2020·6 min read

How Fear Transforms into Anxiety

In anxiety, neural activity becomes elevated across many specific brain regions, and normal coordination between the networks becomes decreased.

Featured Neuroscience Open Neuroscience Articles

·July 6, 2020·6 min read

To Let Neurons Talk, Immune Cells Clear Paths Through Brain’s ‘Scaffolding’

Dropping the level of the IL-33 immune molecule increased the number of synapses in the brain. In older mice, ramping up IL-33 helped push the number of new synapses toward a more youthful state.

Featured Neuroscience

·June 22, 2020·3 min read

Adult-born neurons grow more than their infancy-born counterparts

Neurons created as a result of adult neurogenesis mature for longer and grow larger than those created during infancy. Findings suggest adult-born neurons may have a more powerful function than those created during infancy and may play a critical role in neuroplasticity.

Featured Neuroscience Open Neuroscience Articles

·June 12, 2020·3 min read

Inhibitory interneurons in hippocampus excite the developing brain

GABAergic interneuron excitation is essential for network activity in the hippocampus of the fetal brain.

Featured Neurology Neuroscience

·June 9, 2020·4 min read

Noise-inducing neurons shut down memories in Alzheimer’s

In mouse models of Alzheimer's disease, active neurons still encode memory, and a group of active neurons encodes novel environmental information. The signal of the novelty containing neurons causes a superimposition disturbing the signal of memory encoding neurons.