A man is shown thinking about pictures of Michael Jackson and Marilyn Monroe in a conceptual rendering of the experiments in the study.
A recent study, published in Nature found that when research subjects had their brains connected to a computer displaying two merged images, they could force the computer to display one of the images and discard the other. The signals transmitted from each subject’s brain to the computer were derived from just a handful of brain cells. [Read more…]
According to a recent report, the more you drink the smaller your brain becomes. It is estimated that 1.9 percent decrease in brain volume per decade accompanies an increase in white matter lesions.
The progression of dementia and problems with thinking, learning and memory are accompanied by lower brain volumes and larger white matter lesions. Moderate alcohol consumption has been associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease; because the brain receives blood from this system, researchers have hypothesized that small amounts of alcohol may also attenuate age-related declines in brain volume. The study results were published in the October, 2008 issue of Archives of Neurology.
Members of the Framingham Offspring Study, which began in 1971 and included 1,839 adults with an average age of 60, were studied by Carol Ann Paul, M.S., of Wellesley College, Mass., and colleagues. The Study also included children of the original Framingham Heart Study participants and their spouses. Between 1999 and 2001, participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and a health examination. They reported the number of alcoholic drinks they consumed per week, along with their age, sex, education, height, body mass index and Framingham Stroke Risk Profile (which calculates stroke risk based on age, sex, blood pressure and other factors).
“Most participants reported low alcohol consumption, and men were more likely than women to be moderate or heavy drinkers,” the authors write. “There was a significant negative linear relationship between alcohol consumption and total cerebral brain volume.”
Although men were more likely to drink alcohol, the association between drinking and brain volume was stronger in women, they note. This could be due to biological factors, including women’s smaller size and greater susceptibility to alcohol’s effects.
“The public health effect of this study gives a clear message about the possible dangers of drinking alcohol,” the authors write. “Prospective longitudinal studies are needed to confirm these results as well as to determine whether there are any functional consequences associated with increasing alcohol consumption. This study suggests that, unlike the associations with cardiovascular disease, alcohol consumption does not have any protective effect on brain volume.”
Source: Archives of Neurology,