?kh=-1&uddg= If you are looking forward to your first stiff drink after a dry January, be warned: it may feel bittersweet. You may feel you deserve an alcoholic beverage after toughing it out all month – but have you forgotten what it feels like to wake up haunted by worries about what you said or did the night before? These post-drinking feelings of guilt and stress have come to be known colloquially as “hangxiety”. But what causes them? David Nutt, professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College, London, is the scientist who was fired in 2009 as the government’s chief drug adviser for saying alcohol is more dangerous than ecstasy and LSD. Alcohol, he says, targets the Gaba (gamma-aminobutyric acid) receptor, which sends chemical messages through the brain and central nervous system to inhibit the activity of nerve cells. The first two drinks lull you into a blissful Gaba-induced state of chill. The body registers this new imbalance in brain chemicals and attempts to put things right.
Novel discovery offers hope for treatment of Alzheimer's and other neurological diseases August 10, 2018 There is new hope for the treatment of Alzheimer's and other neurological diseases following a ground-breaking discovery made by an Australian-Chinese research collaboration. Researchers from the University of South Australia and the Third Military Medical University in China have discovered a signal pathway within cells, and also invented a potential drug that could stop degeneration and actually improve learning and memory in affected patients. UniSA's Professor Xin-Fu Zhou and colleagues have been investigating tauopathies – which refers to a class of diseases caused by misfolding of the tau protein inside nerve cells that results in cell damage and eventually cell death. These diseases include Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Motor Neuron Disease, all of which presently have no cure. "Right now there is no treatment available at all," Prof Zhou says.
Bizarre Discovery Shows Your Bones Could Be Triggering The 'Fight-or-Flight' Response When faced with a threat, hormones flood our bodies in preparation either for battle or a quick escape - what's commonly known as the 'fight-or-flight' response. For decades, we've generally thought this response was driven by hormones such as adrenaline. But it now seems that one of the most important of these messengers could come from a rather unexpected place – our skeleton. We usually think of chemicals like cortisol and adrenaline as the things that get the heart racing and muscles pumping. But the real star player could actually be osteocalcin, a calcium-binding protein produced by our bones. As a response to acute stress, steroids of the glucocorticoid variety are released by the body's endocrine system, where they manage the production of a cascade of other 'get ready to rumble' chemicals throughout various tissues. Researchers from the US, the UK, and India argue there's one tiny problem with this explanation of the fight-or-flight reaction.
Dementia Warning Signs Caregivers Should Look For A loved one showing symptoms of dementia needs to see a medical expert who can conduct tests and come up with a diagnosis. If a loved one has dementia, you’ll want to plan how you will manage that care, especially as the condition progresses. But it’s also important to rule out other medical conditions with dementia-like symptoms that may disappear with treatment such as infections and side effects of medications. What to watch for Here are some of the warning signs identified by dementia experts and mental health organizations: • Difficulty with everyday tasks. They also may find it hard to concentrate on tasks, take much longer to do them or have trouble finishing them. • Repetition. • Communication problems. • Getting lost. • Personality changes. • Confusion about time and place. • Troubling behavior. Some people who experience memory loss or have difficulty with attention, decision-making language or reasoning may have a condition known as mild cognitive impairment. Where to find help
What Happens When You Spend a Year Using Science to Improve Your Brain - The Verge - Pocket Illustration James Bareham / The Verge Here are two things that are both true. Neuroplasticity is real — that is, the brain really can change and learn and improve based on experience. And there’s little evidence that brain-training games are any better than placebo. “So,” wondered science journalist Caroline Williams, “if brain training isn’t the way to apply it, what should we be doing?” The Verge spoke to Williams about her expectations, more successful (and failed) experiments, and how to avoid the hype. Photo: Ann Ayerst What was your approach going into these experiments? I went with an open mind. One of the poster children for neuroplasticity are the London taxi drivers, and studies show that as taxi drivers learn to navigate the streets and memorize the routes, the hippocampus — the part of the brain that does spatial navigation — gets larger. Of the three brain areas that are activated when you make sense of place, two of them were normal and one just didn’t respond at all.
New leads on treating dementia and Alzheimer's A new study by scientists in Australia and the US provides an explanation for why clinical trials of drugs targeting proteins in the brain that were thought to cause dementia and Alzheimer's have failed. The study has opened the way for potential new treatments with existing drugs. Published online in the journal Human Molecular Genetics, the researchers assembled evidence from a wide range of human studies and animal models of dementia-related diseases to show that inflammation is a major cause, not just a consequence. They show that many genes linked with dementia regulate our susceptibility and response to inflammatory damage. "For decades, scientists have thought that dementia and Alzheimer's Disease are caused by protein aggregates forming in the brain. Inflammation has long been known to increase as dementia-related diseases progress, but only now is it identified as the cause. The new work turns previous thinking around. He likens the brain inflammation to a virus infection.
Cause of antibiotic resistance identified Scientists have confirmed for the first time that bacteria can change form to avoid being detected by antibiotics in the human body. Studying samples from elderly patients with recurring urinary tract infections, the Newcastle University team used state-of-the art techniques to identify that a bacteria can lose its cell wall—the common target of many groups of antibiotics. The research by the Errington lab which turns on its head current thinking about the bacteria's ability to survive without a cell wall, known as "L-form switching", is published today in Nature Communications. The World Health Organisation has identified antibiotic resistance as one of the biggest threats to global health, food security, and development today. Lead author, Dr. "In this form the body can't easily recognise the bacteria so doesn't attack them—and neither do antibiotics." L-form—flimsy but survives In this L-form the bacteria are flimsy and weaker but some survive, hiding inside the body. Dr. Diagnosis
Dementia vs Alzheimer's: How to Tell the Difference Getty Images Doctors usually rely on observation and ruling out other factors to diagnose Alzheimer's. The terms “dementia” and “Alzheimer’s” have been around for more than a century, which means people have likely been mixing them up for that long, too. But knowing the difference is important. While Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia (accounting for an estimated 60 to 80 percent of cases), there are several other types. A correct diagnosis means the right medicines, remedies and support. What it is Dementia In the simplest terms, dementia is a nonreversible decline in mental function. It is a catchall phrase that encompasses several disorders that cause chronic memory loss, personality changes or impaired reasoning, Alzheimer’s disease being just one of them, says Dan G. Alzheimer's It is a specific disease that slowly and irreversibly destroys memory and thinking skills. Eventually, Alzheimer’s disease takes away the ability to carry out even the simplest tasks. Dementia