Latest news with #brain
Daily Mail
14-06-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
The key to being happier, smarter and ageing better, by leading neuroscientist DR JOSEPH JEBELLI. An extraordinary scientfic breakthrough shows what part of modern life is destroying our brains - now his new book has the cure
You're sitting at your desk, trying to look busy, and your work isn't going well. OK, it's time to double down and try a bit harder... but for some reason your brain fails to ignite. It's just one of those things we all experience at work – and until recently, no one really understood how to kick-start the brain back into action.
The Sun
09-06-2025
- Science
- The Sun
How many circles can you see in 10 seconds in this mind-boggling optical illusion?
TEST your IQ by finding as many circles as possible in ten seconds in the optical illusion below. Take a look at the image to put your observational skills to the test. 2 It shows black and white squares atop a grey background. But when you start to look at the picture, the squares start to shift into a not-so-circular pattern. Set yourself a ten second timer and count how many circles you find before it runs out. T h e image has left social media users confused as they try to make sense of the illusion. Even if you concentrate hard, the lines never become fully clear, making it challenging to accurately count. As you look at the image, it morphs into a 'pretzel' pattern, created by the circles appearing to overlap. Being able to accurately count the circles could be a sign of creativity, and strong intuition. Optical illusions can be a great way to test your brain function. To decipher the puzzles, your brain and eyes have to work together to make sense of what you're observing. Everyone can see the pearls, but you need the eyes of a hawk to spot the diamond in less than 10 seconds While your brain determines what is logical, it might not actually be what your eyes are seeing. The shocking answer to the image reveals that there are, in fact, four circles. While the alternating monochromatic colours make it difficult to put the image into perspective, if you stare long enough the shapes should become clearer. The image is then revealed to show four rings, rather than the obscure 'pretzel' shape that was originally observed. How can optical illusions and brainteasers help me? Engaging in activities like solving optical illusions and brainteasers can have many cognitive benefits as it can stimulate various brain regions. Some benefits include: Cognitive stimulation: Engaging in these activities challenges the brain, promoting mental agility and flexibility. Problem-solving skills: Regular practice enhances analytical thinking and problem-solving abilities. Memory improvement: These challenges often require memory recall and can contribute to better memory function. Creativity: They encourage thinking outside the box, fostering creativity and innovative thought processes. Focus and attention: Working on optical illusions and brainteasers requires concentration, contributing to improved focus. Stress relief: The enjoyable nature of these puzzles can act as a form of relaxation and stress relief. You can also test other parts of your brain with different types of brainteasers. This image of pearls can be a great way to test your eyesight - as you're asked to find the diamond in less than 10 seconds. Brainteasers offer a great way to test your IQ and keep your mind sharp. This maths-based brainteaser is a great way to train your brain and improve your critical thinking. 2
Yahoo
08-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
If anxiety is in my brain, why is my heart pounding? A psychiatrist explains the neuroscience and physiology of fear
Heart in your throat. Butterflies in your stomach. Bad gut feeling. These are all phrases many people use to describe fear and anxiety. You have likely felt anxiety inside your chest or stomach, and your brain usually doesn't hurt when you're scared. Many cultures tie cowardice and bravery more to the heart or the guts than to the brain. But science has traditionally seen the brain as the birthplace and processing site of fear and anxiety. Then why and how do you feel these emotions in other parts of your body? I am a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who researches and treats fear and anxiety. In my book 'Afraid,' I explain how fear works in the brain and the body and what too much anxiety does to the body. Research confirms that while emotions do originate in your brain, it's your body that carries out the orders. While your brain evolved to save you from a falling rock or speeding predator, the anxieties of modern life are often a lot more abstract. Fifty-thousand years ago, being rejected by your tribe could mean death, but not doing a great job on a public speech at school or at work doesn't have the same consequences. Your brain, however, might not know the difference. There are a few key areas of the brain that are heavily involved in processing fear. When you perceive something as dangerous, whether it's a gun pointed at you or a group of people looking unhappily at you, these sensory inputs are first relayed to the amygdala. This small, almond-shaped area of the brain located near your ears detects salience, or the emotional relevance of a situation and how to react to it. When you see something, it determines whether you should eat it, attack it, run away from it or have sex with it. Threat detection is a vital part of this process, and it has to be fast. Early humans did not have much time to think when a lion was lunging toward them. They had to act quickly. For this reason, the amygdala evolved to bypass brain areas involved in logical thinking and can directly engage physical responses. For example, seeing an angry face on a computer screen can immediately trigger a detectable response from the amygdala without the viewer even being aware of this reaction. The hippocampus is near and tightly connected to the amygdala. It's involved in memorizing what is safe and what is dangerous, especially in relation to the environment – it puts fear in context. For example, seeing an angry lion in the zoo and in the Sahara both trigger a fear response in the amygdala. But the hippocampus steps in and blocks this response when you're at the zoo because you aren't in danger. The prefrontal cortex, located above your eyes, is mostly involved in the cognitive and social aspects of fear processing. For example, you might be scared of a snake until you read a sign that the snake is nonpoisonous or the owner tells you it's their friendly pet. Although the prefrontal cortex is usually seen as the part of the brain that regulates emotions, it can also teach you fear based on your social environment. For example, you might feel neutral about a meeting with your boss but immediately feel nervous when a colleague tells you about rumors of layoffs. Many prejudices like racism are rooted in learning fear through tribalism. If your brain decides that a fear response is justified in a particular situation, it activates a cascade of neuronal and hormonal pathways to prepare you for immediate action. Some of the fight-or-flight response – like heightened attention and threat detection – takes place in the brain. But the body is where most of the action happens. Several pathways prepare different body systems for intense physical action. The motor cortex of the brain sends rapid signals to your muscles to prepare them for quick and forceful movements. These include muscles in the chest and stomach that help protect vital organs in those areas. That might contribute to a feeling of tightness in your chest and stomach in stressful conditions. The sympathetic nervous system is the gas pedal that speeds up the systems involved in fight or flight. Sympathetic neurons are spread throughout the body and are especially dense in places like the heart, lungs and intestines. These neurons trigger the adrenal gland to release hormones like adrenaline that travel through the blood to reach those organs and increase the rate at which they undergo the fear response. To assure sufficient blood supply to your muscles when they're in high demand, signals from the sympathetic nervous system increase the rate your heart beats and the force with which it contracts. You feel both increased heart rate and contraction force in your chest, which is why you may connect the feeling of intense emotions to your heart. In your lungs, signals from the sympathetic nervous system dilate airways and often increase your breathing rate and depth. Sometimes this results in a feeling of shortness of breath. As digestion is the last priority during a fight-or-flight situation, sympathetic activation slows down your gut and reduces blood flow to your stomach to save oxygen and nutrients for more vital organs like the heart and the brain. These changes to your gastrointestinal system can be perceived as the discomfort linked to fear and anxiety. All bodily sensations, including those visceral feelings from your chest and stomach, are relayed back to the brain through the pathways via the spinal cord. Your already anxious and highly alert brain then processes these signals at both conscious and unconscious levels. The insula is a part of the brain specifically involved in conscious awareness of your emotions, pain and bodily sensations. The prefrontal cortex also engages in self-awareness, especially by labeling and naming these physical sensations, like feeling tightness or pain in your stomach, and attributing cognitive value to them, like 'this is fine and will go away' or 'this is terrible and I am dying.' These physical sensations can sometimes create a loop of increasing anxiety as they make the brain feel more scared of the situation because of the turmoil it senses in the body. Although the feelings of fear and anxiety start in your brain, you also feel them in your body because your brain alters your bodily functions. Emotions take place in both your body and your brain, but you become aware of their existence with your brain. As the rapper Eminem recounted in his song 'Lose Yourself,' the reason his palms were sweaty, his knees weak and his arms heavy was because his brain was nervous. Leer en español. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Arash Javanbakht, Wayne State University Read more: Pain and anxiety are linked to breathing in mouse brains – suggesting a potential target to prevent opioid overdose deaths Medication can help you make the most of therapy − a psychologist and neuroscientist explains how New research supports brain cell transplantation as a treatment for some neurological disorders Arash Javanbakht does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Yahoo
08-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Caffeine Has a Weird Effect on Your Brain While You're Asleep
We already know that the stimulating powers of caffeine make it an unsuitable choice for a late-night drink – at least if you want to get any shut-eye. But a new study adds a whole extra level of detail to our understanding of caffeine's impact on the brain during sleep. Caffeine was shown to increase brain signal complexity, and shift the brain closer to a state of 'criticality', in tests run by researchers from the University of Montreal in Canada. This criticality refers to the brain being balanced between structure and flexibility, thought to be the most efficient state for processing information, learning, and making decisions. However, this state might prevent restful sleep, the researchers suggest. The caffeine isn't just keeping us alert, but actually changing how the brain is operating. What's more, they found younger adults aged 20 to 27 were more greatly affected in this way. Further analysis revealed that caffeine influenced the slow oscillations of electrical activity known as delta, theta, and alpha waves. These are indicators of deeper, more restorative sleep, but caffeine weakened them – especially during the non-rapid eye movement sleep phase the brain uses to fix memories in place and recharge our cognitive functions. "These changes suggest that even during sleep, the brain remains in a more activated, less restorative state under the influence of caffeine," says neuroscientist Karim Jerbi, from the University of Montreal. "This change in the brain's rhythmic activity may help explain why caffeine affects the efficiency with which the brain recovers during the night, with potential consequences for memory processing." For the study, the researchers recruited 40 volunteers, and measured their brain patterns via electroencephalograms (EEGs) across two nights. On one night, the participants were given a placebo, and on the other, a capsule containing 200 milligrams of caffeine (equivalent to about one or two cups of coffee). A variety of statistical methods was used to validate the results, and to make sure the differences seen in brain activity were related to the caffeine intake – showing that shift towards criticality and more excited neurons. "While this is useful during the day for concentration, this state could interfere with rest at night," says neuroscientist Julie Carrier, from the University of Montreal. "The brain would neither relax nor recover properly." When it comes to the different reactions across different ages, the researchers suggest that changes in the brain as we age might be responsible. Adenosine molecules gradually build up in the brain during the day, leading to a greater feeling of fatigue as bedtime approaches. Caffeine works by blocking the receptors that adenosine interacts with, giving us a temporary jolt of energy. Adenosine receptors are more abundant in younger brains, which may explain why younger people seem to be more sensitive to caffeine's powers. That includes both the positive energizing effects, and the negative effects of keeping the brain too active overnight. "Caffeine is a psychoactive stimulant that is consumed by people across all age groups on a daily basis through a wide variety of products such as coffee, tea, soft drinks, energy drinks, chocolate, and several pharmaceutical drugs," write the researchers in their published paper. "It is therefore critical to understand how caffeine affects the brain during sleep, and across age." The research has been published in Communications Biology. Can This Blue Chemical Really Boost Your Brain? Here's What We Know. Confirmed: Breakfast Cereals Are Getting Sweeter And Less Nutritious Rosemary Can Sharpen Your Mind, And Could Help Fight Alzheimer's
Globe and Mail
06-06-2025
- Health
- Globe and Mail
New book humanizes Canada's most famous neurosurgeons, Wilder Penfield and William Cone
'There are more connections between the hundred billion neurons in a human brain than there are particles of matter in the known universe.' This description of the brain's complexity appears late in Eric Andrew-Gee's story of neurosurgeons Wilder Penfield and William Cone. Along with a reference to Emily Dickinson, who said the brain is 'wider than the Sky,' the words serve to remind at once how little and how much we know about the organ and, thus, ourselves. But much of what we do know is thanks to the pioneering achievements of the famous Penfield and the forgotten Cone – the men who worked together for decades in what they called a 'double harness.' In The Mind Mappers: Friendship, Betrayal and the Obsessive Quest to Chart the Brain, Andrew-Gee, who is the Quebec correspondent for The Globe and Mail, recounts the story of Penfield's work on the brain, taking us well beyond what readers of a certain age will recall from the 'I can smell burnt toast' Heritage Minute, a reference to which opens the book. Andrew-Gee writes the history of not just Penfield, but also of the people who made his discoveries possible through his surgeries on patients with epilepsy, especially those conducted at Montreal's famous Neurological Institute, known as the Neuro. At the centre of Penfield's work was his best friend, Cone, also a groundbreaking and 'natural' neurosurgeon, but one who shunned credit and spotlight and was overshadowed by his partner. Beyond 'burnt toast': Eric Andrew-Gee probes the story of Penfield and Cone in The Mind Mappers Cone's story is equal parts extraordinary and tragic. As a scientist and surgeon, he was instrumental to the creation of the Neuro, to the mapping of the brain, to Penfield's success and to the care and well-being of his many patients. He invented surgical tools. He revolutionized methods of making surgical processes sterile. He helped lead a neurosurgery hospital in England during the Second World War. He also died by suicide in 1959 after struggling with mental health issues and, quite likely, his own sexuality (and possibly romantic and unrequited feelings toward Penfield). He died during a time, as Andrew-Gee notes, when approaches to both mental health and homosexuality were barbarous. This book is remarkable because it tells several stories in parallel, including histories in miniature of brain science, Canada, Quebec, Montreal and McGill University throughout the early-to-mid 20th century. Each of these intersects and enlivens the rest without any seeming superfluous, but Mind Mappers is first and foremost two stories. One is the mapping of the brain during an exciting and often gruesome era of discovery. The other is the relationship between Penfield and Cone, which is heavy with pathos in its biographical details and the author's own capacity for insight and compassion. For all the book's intricate and interesting folds, the story of Penfield and Cone is the most compelling of the lot. As Andrew-Gee concludes, 'Cone and Penfield mapped the brain but lost each other.' The theme of their story is asymmetry. Penfield became rich, famous and known to history. Cone did not. Penfield ran the Neuro and was known as 'the Chief.' When it came time to retire and find a replacement, he passed over Cone, who was known around the institute as 'the Boss,' but who was never seriously considered for the top job despite his tireless, at times compulsive, work ethic. Even the private practice the two ran was unevenly split, with Penfield doing fewer surgeries but making the lion's share of the money. Andrew-Gee nonetheless declares in the afterword that Penfield 'can stand easy about the body of work he left behind.' It's an important conclusion drawn from a nuanced reading of history that the author, to his credit, recognizes by way of acknowledging the scope of his own work and focus. 'The crux of my story,' he writes, 'was the worst chapter of Penfield's life – his betrayal of Cone and Cone's subsequent suicide.' Andrew-Gee calls this 'the period that saw Penfield at his least admirable, his most exploitative and self-centered.' The time Andrew-Gee focuses on is of historical importance because it's a relatively short period of several decades, from the 1920s to the late 1950s, during which neuroscience and neurosurgery were professionalized and grew by leaps and bounds. To put it plainly: One would have been desperate, if not utterly foolish, to risk brain surgery in earlier years. By the time Cone died, one's odds of a good outcome had shot way up. The shift in chances of surviving a surgery without serious and permanent damage, and of being cured, grew throughout the intervening years, in large part thanks to Penfield and Cone. And yet Penfield is remembered and Cone is not. Thus Mind Mappers is not just a book, but also the project of rebalancing history and recalling Cone to a contemporary audience. 'In trying to elevate Cone from obscurity,' Andrew-Gee writes, 'I also came to see how much of Penfield's reputation rests on the hidden work of others.' Thanks to this book, that work and those stories, especially Cone's, are no longer so hidden.
