Alzheimer's Prevention

Did you know that Alzheimer's may not be inevitble even if you have a genetic predisposition? According to Gary Small MD, director of the UCLA Longevity Center, reducing risk factors such as smoking, diabetes, obesity, and inactivity by 25% could prevent half-a-million cases annually in the USA. The goal is to stave off the disease long enough so you can live life without ever suffering Alzheimer's symptoms. (Small, Gary MD. The Alzheimer's Prevention Program: Keep Your Brain Healthy for the Rest of Your Life.)

Mnemonism and Synesthesia

Are your a mnemonist or a synaesthete? Russian psychologist Aleksandr Luria has been credited with documenting the famous case of a Russian, Solomon Shereshevskii, who was both. He could deliberately memorize virtually unlimited amounts of information and also exemplified an interesting case of five-fold synaesthesia. If Solomon heard a musical tone played he would immediately see a color, touch would trigger a taste sensation, and so on. Some have suggested that superior autobiographical memory may be tied to time-space synaesthesia.

CAD and Forgiveness

Did you know that forgiveness appears to be beneficial to your heart? A study on “The effects of a forgiveness intervention on patients with coronary artery disease” (published in Psychology & Health) assessed the effects of a psychology of forgiveness pilot study on anger-recall stress induced changes in myocardial perfusion, forgiveness, and related variables. Patients assigned to the forgiveness group showed significantly fewer anger-recall induced myocardial perfusion defects from pre-test to the 10-week follow-up as well as significantly greater gains in forgiveness from pre-test to post-test and from pre-test to follow-up compared to the control group. Forgiveness intervention may be an effective means of reducing anger-induced myocardial ischemia in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD).

Autism Risk: Genes-Environment

Did you know that according to CDC (Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia) about one in 88 children in the United States has some type of autism spectrum disorder? Data was provided by the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, operational in 14 states. The incidence in boys is said to be about five times higher than in girls. A 2011 study of twins by scientists at Stanford University concluded that genes account for 38 percent of autism risk (not 90 percent as previously believed) and environmental factors for 62 percent. Attempts to identify the environmental factors are the subject of two large studies funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Smiling

How many times a day do you smile? Children smile about 400 times a day. Adults on the other hand, don't. Only a third of adults smile more than 20 times a day. Ron Gutman (he presented a TED talk on the topic) said, "Smiling can reduce the level of stress-enhancing hormones like cortisol and adrenaline while increasing mood-enhancing hormones like endorphins." You may want to increase the number of times you smile today--and every day.

Glial Cells and Your Brain

Ever heard of glial cells? Your brain has lots of them. As their name implies (Latin and\or Greek for glue), they help keep things together. Questions abound regarding the ratio of glial cells to neurons. Some say a 9:1 ratio; others that 80% are glias. Neurophysiologist Suzana Herculano-Houzel and colleagues have developed a new technique for estimating numbers of glial cells. An interesting finding is that rather than an overall constant glia-neuron ratio, the numbers change in different parts of the brain (e.g., there are much higher numbers of glial cells in the cerebral cortex as compared to the cerebellum). Regardless of the true glia to neuron ratio, scientists have already shown that glia are, functionally, the brain’s other half: some watch for bacteria and viruses that infect the brain and then mobilize to fight the invaders, others form myelin insulation to coat neuronal axons, while still others secrete food for neurons. They are indispensible!

Neural Speech Fingerprint

Did you know that speech sounds and voices can be identified by means of a unique 'neural fingerprint' in the listener's brain? The results of studies at Studies at Maastricht University (Netherlands)implied a less hierarchal processing of speech than previously thought. Rather than occurring primarily in the auditory cortex, for example, it appears that decoding of speech sounds may be spread out more across the brain. (http://www.physorg.com/news145535708.html)