With brain injuries, as with many other severe traumas to the body, the worst damage is often done not by the initial wound but by the body’s attempt to heal it.
Brain
The Roots of Brain Diseases: One Team Finds 1,400 Culprits
Scientists are always trying to discover genetic origins of disease, and this week, one team announced a significant breakthrough.
House Watch: What Causes Delusions?
The season 7 premiere of House M.D. — “Now What?” — was re-aired last night on Fox. Since your House Watcher didn’t cover it the first time around, here’s a quick review. Spoiler alert: If somehow you missed this …
Study: Many Youth Offenders Have History of Traumatic Brain Injury
A survey of 197 youth offenders in England — boys aged 11 to 19 who have been incarcerated — found that they are three times more likely to have had a traumatic brain injury (TBI) than their non-offending counterparts.
Why We Conform to the Group: It Gets Your Brain High
You may remember the experiment from Psych 101: the one in which people are compelled to doubt their own good judgment and give wrong answers to simple questions, just to go along with the rest of the group.
Controlling Your World With a Single Neuron
Your brain is a busy place. How busy? Consider that everyday, 100 billion neurons punch in for work and they’re all linked to one another in trillions upon trillions of ways.
A Severe Migraine Could Give You a New Accent
After Kay Russell had a severe migraine attack in January, friends noticed a difference in her right away. The Gloucestershire native began to speak with what sounded like a French accent instead of her native southwestern …
Brain Science: Does Being Left-Handed Make You Angry?
We used to think that the left brain controlled your thinking and that the right brain controlled your heart. But neuroscientists have learned that it’s a lot more complicated.
Want to Make Quicker Decisions? Muzzle Your Brain
People with anxiety disorders such as OCD know that nothing can be more paralyzing than having too many options. Go to a store to buy a sweater, find four that you like and the odds are pretty good you’ll stare and stare…and …
A Five-Minute Brain Scan Tracks Kids’ Development and May Spot Disorders
Researchers have designed a scanning test that can measure the maturity of the brain, a technology that may someday help doctors determine whether children are developing normally and identify those who might be at risk of …
Training Your Brain to Learn Better (Even Without Drugs)
I’m excited to be starting my “new school year” as a blogger here on Healthland — and what better way to begin than with news about boosting your ability to learn, using neuroscience! One of the hottest articles flying around the Web today is Benedict Carey’s great New York Times science story headlined “Forget What You Know …
Was the JetBlue slide incident caused by head injury?
Many explanations have been offered for JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater’s meltdown and dramatic emergency slide exit on Monday—from “air rage” to suggestions of a relapse into alcoholism. But none of the media coverage has noted what could be the most obvious and chilling reason for his bizarre behavior: at the beginning of …
Menstrual pain can re-shape the brain
It’s a common gag that women don’t think quite the same they get their period. But according to neuroscientists in Taiwan, in some women menstruation may change the very structure of the brain.
In an MRI study of 32 women who suffer menstrual cramps and 32 similar women without pain — with members of the two groups matched on age and …
