Disconnection between Rat’s Left and Right Hemisphere Impairs Short-Term Memory but Not Long-Term Memory

The brain is a remarkably complex organ comprised of billions of interconnected neurons and glia cells. It controls all functions of the body and interprets information from the outside world. Intelligence, emotion, memory, creativity, and movement are a few of the many things governed by the brain. Some researchers believe that the function of the…

The Combined Effects of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Cannabis Use on the Brain: Are Co-Use and Tri-Use More Damaging than Alcohol Use Alone?

Alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis are three commonly used drugs, and they may be used independent of one another, in a combination of the two, or all three may even be used by an individual. Use, co-use, and tri-use are terms that can be used to describe these conditions. Previous research has found evidence that when…

Exercising and Psychoeducation Bettering the Mental Heath of Adolescence

Adolescents with mood disorders including depression can have a difficult time trying to deal with their mood disorder, but a new study can help. Exercising and psychoeducation a few times, a week could have promising effects to better the mood of the adolescent. Psychoeducation consists of group games, poetry reading, and singing. When the only…

Proposed Mechanism and Routes of Action Of COVID-19 Induced Neurological Dysfunction

Proposed Mechanism and Routes of Action Of COVID-19  Induced Neurological Dysfunction           COVID-19, arguably one of the greatest public health crises of the generation, is misinterpreted commonly and thought by many to only affect our respiratory (breathing) system due to the overwhelming damage it is capable of causing to our lungs.…

Prefrontal and Hippocampal Structure: How Are Young Children Capable of Statistical learning?

Statistical learning is how humans extract regularities from the environment that are not explicitly taught. In other words, it is the explanation for how humans take meaningful information from the world without ever learning how. Rather than being taught, these regularities are often picked up over-time without a learner’s effort or awareness. Statistical learning is…

The Link Between Brain Volume and Prenatal Alcohol Exposure: Does SES Play a Role?

It has been known that the consumption of alcohol during pregnancy can negatively alter the developing brain in a variety of ways. Any amount of alcohol consumed while pregnant could potentially lead to fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), a disorder that is greatly associated with behavioral and memory problems. Some potential causes of these factors…

Designer Drugs and Their Implication on Behavior

The association between drugs and behavior is a field of research that has been essential in prescription medicines. Drugs hold the ability to influence behavior in a number of different ways; therefore studies are required to investigate these influences. Iig, Enkel, Bartsch, and Bähner (2018) are four psychologists who were interested in examining the effects…

Structural neuroplasticity in expert pianists depends on the age of musical training onset

Professional musicians make excellent subjects for neuropsychology research. Music performance requires a complex interaction of auditory and touch sensory perception, bimanual coordination, muscle memory and fine motor control, all directed to shape the artistic interpretation of the music. Expert musicians often begin their study at a young age, during the ‘critical period’ of neural development…

Brain Responses of 3-month-olds Indicates a Rapid Association of Objects and Words

How much do babies really understand? Infants are constantly developing and acquiring knowledge and as they grow older, their brains become more and more powerful. Researchers believed infants initially obtain language-specific phonemes (word sounds), phoneme clusters and word prosody (the pattern of stress and pitch on words) then use what they have learned to gradually…

Orexin gene transfer into the amygdala suppresses both spontaneous and emotion-induced cataplexy in orexin-knockout mice

Around 1 in 2000 people suffer from the sleep disorder narcolepsy. The word comes from narco, meaning numbness, and lepsy, meaning seizures. It is a life-long disorder characterized by daytime sleepiness, sleep paralysis and fragmentation, vivid hallucinations during sleep transition, and cataplexy, which is the sudden loss of muscle tone while conscious often triggered by…

Loss of Dopaminergic Neurons and its Role in Parkinson’s Disease

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is described as a neurodegenerative disease characterized by akinesia (loss or impairment of voluntary movement), rigidity, tremors and difficulty walking. The clinical symptoms are thought to be mainly caused by the dopaminergic (DA) neurodegeneration, with other neurotransmitters such as serotonin or acetylcholine being partially responsible as well. Neurodegeneration is the deterioration of…