How Your Brain Registers Loneliness Could Have a Strange Link to Wisdom
9 MARCH 2021
New insights into the neural activity linked to loneliness could help us improve the way we treat it, researchers say – and reduce the numerous physical and mental health impacts associated with feelings of being lonely.
Our brains react to loneliness in an almost exactly opposite way to the way they react to feelings of
wisdom, according to a new study. This adds to a growing body of research that suggests that the wiser we think we are, the less lonely we feel.
While the loneliness-wisdom association has been spotted before, this is the first time scientists have been able to look at the apparent link on the neural level.
Researchers from the University of Sheffield's Institute of Translational Neuroscience (SITraN) have been awarded over £1 million from Parkinson's UK to.
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People over 65 shouldn t take three or more medicines that act on their brain and nervous system, experts strongly warn, because the drugs can interact and raise the risk of everything from falls to overdoses to memory issues.
But a new study finds that 1 in 7 people with dementia who live outside nursing homes are taking at least three of these drugs.
Even if they received the drugs to calm some of dementia s more troubling behavioral issues, the researchers say, taking them in combination could accelerate their loss of memory and thinking ability, and raise their chance of injury and death.
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IMAGE: Mireia Seuma (left), first author of the study and researcher at IBEC next to Benedetta Bolognesi (right), one of the lead authors of the study and Junior Group Leader at. view more
Credit: The Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia, IBEC
A study published in the journal
eLife made all the possible mutations in the amyloid beta peptide and tested how they influence its aggregation into plaques, a pathological hallmark of Alzheimer s disease.
The comprehensive mutation map, which is the first of its kind, has the potential to help clinical geneticists predict whether the mutations found in amyloid beta can make an individual more prone to developing Alzheimer s disease later in life.
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IMAGE: The image depicts myelin (Cyan) and specialised brain stem cells Oligodendrocyte Progenitor Cells (OPCs) in the grey and white matter of the brain. Myelin is an insulation produced by cells. view more
Credit: Dr Andrea Rivera
A new study led by the University of Portsmouth has identified that one of the major factors of age-related brain deterioration is the loss of a substance called myelin.
Myelin acts like the protective and insulating plastic casing around the electrical wires of the brain - called axons. Myelin is essential for superfast communication between nerve cells that lie behind the supercomputer power of the human brain.