Betaine, a dietary supplement extracted from sweet beets, reduces behavioral symptoms of schizophrenia in mice with genetic risk factors for the disorder. The supplement may help protect proteins that build the cellular skeletons of neurons.
Multilingual people have similar brain activation to that of bilingual people, but the activation is much more sensitive and a lot faster.
Within months of learning a new language, increased activity in brain areas associated with auditory processing, memory, and grammatical comprehension occurs. As language skills improve, the activity decreases.
Writing by hand increases brain activity in recall tasks over taking notes on a tablet or smartphone. Additionally, those who write by hand on paper are 25% quicker at note-taking tasks than those who use digital technology.
Using data from MRI brain scan images, machine learning was 85% accurate at providing a diagnosis of psychiatric disorders that matched psychiatrists' assessments. The algorithm could also distinguish between patients with ASD, schizophrenia, risk factors for psychosis, and those with no history of mental health problems.
Trained musicians exhibited an increased ability to predict rhythmic patterns over non-musicians, with more subtle differences between those trained in Japanese or Western classical music styles.
Researchers investigate the role the dopamine 2 receptor plays in psychosis.
Mouse study reveals a gene that influences memory recall at different times of the day. Researchers identified how the gene causes mice to be more forgetful just before they normally wake.
Participating in exercise improved synaptic pruning in mouse models of autism. The study also found microglia dependant synaptic pruning is impaired by maternal inflammation, which has been previously connected to the development of ASD.
Optical illusions are helping researchers better understand attention and visual perception. Findings suggest attention operates periodically on the perceptual binding of visual information.
Domestic cats are able to discriminate the content of human speech, including recognizing their names, based upon phonemic differences.
Researchers report histamines can help improve memory of objects up-to 25 days longer than normal in mice, as well as improving people's long term memory test scores. The study suggests taking histamines may help alleviate symptoms of memory disorders such as Alzheimer's and other dementias.
