The human brain is complex. No matter how much scientists study it, there always seems to be more to learn about the human brain. Sometimes it seems the more we learn about the brain, the more we realize just how much we still do not understand. While this is by no means a complete explanation of everything going on neuroscience, here are three recent medical studies connected with the brain:
Brain Scans and Depression
Recently, researchers at King’s College London and The University of Manchester conducted a study involving 64 patients who were in remission from major depressive disorder. None of the participants were on prescription medication for depression at the start of the study. As part of the study, which was funded by the Medical …show more content…
Some participants simply lied still while others were given cognitive tasks related to language, motor skills, memory, and emotion. For the study, conducted over a two-day period, researchers divided the brain scans into 268 regions and looked at the neurological connectivity in the regions of the brain. While connectivity in some regions was similar for most participants, certain regions, such as the frontal, parietal, and temporal lobes, were unique to that person.
Interestingly, the unique nature of the person’s brain scans continued across both days of brain scanning. A brain scan of the same person doing the same task could be matched with 98-99 percent accuracy. When performing different tasks, the accuracy went down to 80-90 percent, still much higher than would be expected by a random matching of two brain scans. Emily Finn, Yale University PhD neuroscience student and one of the co-authors of the study, said:
Brain connectivity patterns are pretty dynamic, but they don’t change so much that they’re obscuring the identity of the …show more content…
Previous research showed that when someone has a migraine, there was an increase of the neuropeptides VIP and PACAP in the person’s bloodstream. To discover if the increased level of these neuropeptides was to blame for migraines, the two researchers injected both neuropeptides into rats’ brains. The two researchers then looked at the blood vessels as well as neural activity in the rats’ brains. While both caused blood vessels to widen, only PACAP caused an increase in neural activity, pegging it as the potential cause of
Brain Scans and Depression
Recently, researchers at King’s College London and The University of Manchester conducted a study involving 64 patients who were in remission from major depressive disorder. None of the participants were on prescription medication for depression at the start of the study. As part of the study, which was funded by the Medical …show more content…
Some participants simply lied still while others were given cognitive tasks related to language, motor skills, memory, and emotion. For the study, conducted over a two-day period, researchers divided the brain scans into 268 regions and looked at the neurological connectivity in the regions of the brain. While connectivity in some regions was similar for most participants, certain regions, such as the frontal, parietal, and temporal lobes, were unique to that person.
Interestingly, the unique nature of the person’s brain scans continued across both days of brain scanning. A brain scan of the same person doing the same task could be matched with 98-99 percent accuracy. When performing different tasks, the accuracy went down to 80-90 percent, still much higher than would be expected by a random matching of two brain scans. Emily Finn, Yale University PhD neuroscience student and one of the co-authors of the study, said:
Brain connectivity patterns are pretty dynamic, but they don’t change so much that they’re obscuring the identity of the …show more content…
Previous research showed that when someone has a migraine, there was an increase of the neuropeptides VIP and PACAP in the person’s bloodstream. To discover if the increased level of these neuropeptides was to blame for migraines, the two researchers injected both neuropeptides into rats’ brains. The two researchers then looked at the blood vessels as well as neural activity in the rats’ brains. While both caused blood vessels to widen, only PACAP caused an increase in neural activity, pegging it as the potential cause of