scinerds:

How Your Brain Cleans Itself—Mystery Solved?

Talk about brainwashing—a newfound plumbing system, identified in mice, likely helps the brain empty its waste, a new study says. Because mouse biology is similar to ours, the same findings should apply to people too, experts say.

Thanks to a blood-brain barrier—a natural wall that protects the brain tissue—the organ never touches blood, thus protecting it from microbes, viruses, and other pathogens.

To get nutrients to brain tissue and remove its waste, the brain makes a liquid called cerebrospinal fluid. But exactly how the fluid removes gunk generated by brain cells wasn’t certain until now.

Experiments in the 1950s and ’60s hinted that diffusion—the passive method by which, say, food coloring spreads out in a glass of water—moved cerebrospinal fluid around the brain.

Yet this process is too slow to explain the brain’s lightning-fast activity and immaculate cleanliness.

It turns out that, while studying brain tissue, the researchers in the 1950s and ’60s unwittingly turned off the plumbing that washes the tissue.

“The idea of a cleaning system based on pressure has been around for a long time, but if you open the skull anywhere, like a hydraulic pump, it stops. They thought [the cleaning system] didn’t exist,” said study leader Maiken Nedergaard, a neuroscientist at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

The pump system is “on the order of a thousand times faster than diffusion,” she said. “I’m surprised that no one had discovered this until now.”

mothernaturenetwork:

Common cat parasite linked to personality changes in humans
A third of the world’s population is infected with Toxoplasma gondii and scientists find that the parasite can modify the brain.

prostheticknowledge:

Female Orgasm in Brodmann Brain Regions 

Visualization of stimulation in the brain with scans taken over a seven minute sequence - via The Visual MD:

The human brain can be separated into regions based on structure and function - vision, audition, body sensation, etc, known as Brodmann’s area map.

This animation shows the functional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI, brain data of a participant experiencing an orgasm and the corresponding relationships seen within these different regions based on utilization of oxygen levels in the blood. 20 snapshots in time of the fMRI data are taken from a 7 minute sequence. Over the course of the 7 minutes the participant approaches orgasm, reaches orgasm and then enters a quiet period.

Oxygen utilization levels are displayed on a spectrum from dark red (lowest activity) to yellow/white (highest). As can be observed, an orgasm leads to almost the entire brain illuminating yellow, indicating that most brain systems become active at orgasm.

You can see the video at the The Visual MD here [via The Guardian UK]

surrogateself:

360 Degree Brain

scinerds:

Sea Slug Offers Clues to Improving Long-Term Memory

Using sea slugs as models, scientists someday may be able to design learning protocols that improve long-term memory formation in humans, a new study suggests.

The researchers used information about biochemical pathways in the brain of the sea slug Aplysia to design a computer model that identified the times when the mollusk’s brain is primed for learning. They tested the model by submitting the animals to a series of training sessions, involving electric shocks, and found that Aplysia experienced a significant increase in memory formation when the sessions were conducted during the peak periods predicted by the model.

The proof-of-principle study may someday help scientists discover ways to improve human memory, the researchers said.

“This is very impressive,” David Glanzman, a neurobiologist at the University of California Los Angeles, said of the study, in which he was not involved. “If someone had asked me ahead of time, ‘Are you going to be able to improve learning if you model these two pathways?’ I would have predicted no.”

staceythinx:

Cerveae Éponge by Suzy Lelièvre

articulomortis:

MRI imaging of the brain.

ocelott:

~Schizophrenia

itzqueye:

Alex Grey, in his early 20s I believe, his haircut represents the two different hemispheres of the brain. Logical left and intuitive right.