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…

White matter alterations in narcolepsy patients with

Narcolepsy is recognized as a disabling sleep disorder which demonstrates sleep paralysis, excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS), indications of abnormal rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, cataplexy, and hallucinations either right before falling asleep or immediately after waking up. Functional imaging studies have shown metabolic (a process within a living organism to maintain life) and perfusion (oxygenated…

The Effect of Breastfeeding on Brain Development in Premature Infants

It has well been accepted that breastfeeding is the best method for feeding healthy, full term infants and is beneficial to neurodevelopment, either because of specific nutrients found in breast milk that are not found in formula, or because of increased maternal sensitivity shown by mothers who breastfeed. However, these effects may be quite different…

Language: The brain’s ability to process native speech sounds

It’s approximately 6 o’clock in the evening when the telephone rings. As I pick up the receiver, my 4-year-old nephew greets me. With great excitement, he demonstrates his ability to say words that he’s learned in his intensive French program. I proudly congratulate him, trying to mask my tone of jealously at how he pronounces…