Cerebrum : the Dana forum on brain science最新文献

The unpredictable and sometimes incomprehensible moods and behaviors of a teenager can be a head-scratching mystery-especially to parents. Hormones, boredom, social media, peer pressure, and drugs and alcohol are just a few of the factors to consider. Frances E. Jensen, M.D., professor and chair of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania and the mother of two sons who are now in their twenties (along with Washington Post health and science reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner Amy Ellis Nutt) look at the emerging science of the adolescent brain and provide advice based on Jensen's own research and experience as a single mother.

Whether it's a special episode on the PBS series, "The Secret Life of the Brain" or an entire issue dedicated to the topic in the journal Science, a better understanding of the aging brain is viewed as a key to an improved quality of life in a world where people live longer. Despite dementia and other neurobiological disorders that are associated with aging, improved imaging has revealed that even into our seventies, our brains continue producing new neurons. Our author writes about how mental health functions react to the normal aging process, including why an aging brain may even form the basis for wisdom.

Science has always relied on reproducibility to build confidence in experimental results. Now, the most comprehensive investigation ever done about the rate and predictors of reproducibility in social and cognitive sciences has found that regardless of the analytic method or criteria used, fewer than half of the original findings were successfully replicated. While a failure to reproduce does not necessarily mean the original report was incorrect, the results suggest that more rigorous methods are long overdue.

Our brain has two hemispheres that specialize in different jobs-the right side processes spatial and temporal information, and the left side controls speech and language. How these two sides come together to create one mind is explained by pioneering neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga in his new book, Tales from Both Sides of the Brain : A Life in Neuroscience (Ecco/Harper Collins, 2015). Gazzaniga is director of the SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a Dana Alliance member.

Who hasn't dipped into that pint of Häagen-Dazs with the best of intentions and ended up finishing the entire container? Knowing where the line is when it comes to out-of-control impulse consumption is at the heart of binge-eating disorder (BED), a newly recognized mental condition that effects affects millions of people and that we are just beginning to better understand-from both a neurobiological and clinical standpoint.

From teenagers dying from heroin overdoses to crime tied to Vicodin and OxyContin addiction to road fatalities in which sedatives and muscle relaxants are involved, 20,000 deaths in the United States in 2014 were attributed to problems associated with narcotics and prescription drug use. Our author, whose research involves the neurobiological basis of drug addiction, traces the history and evolution of narcotics and leans on his clinical experience to discuss why certain drugs are powerful, addicting-and dangerous.

"Holy Grail" is a well-known metaphor for the eternal spiritual pursuit for truth and wisdom. It suggests that in order for us to find what no one has found, we must search where few have looked. In 2013, a group led by Helen Mayberg published a groundbreaking paper that sought an answer to one of the most discussed conundrums in psychiatry and neuroscience: Can specific patterns of brain activity indicate how a depressed person will respond to treatment with medication or psychotherapy? Our author examines the findings and discusses their potential impact on treatment for a public health problem that affects millions of people worldwide.

Why are we reviewing a book written by someone who shared in the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physics for work on superconductivity? Because shortly after winning the prize, Leon N. Cooper transitioned into brain research-specifically, the biological basis of memory. He became director of the Brown University Institute for Brain and Neural Systems, whose interdisciplinary program allowed him to integrate research on the brain, physics, and even philosophy. His new book tackles a diverse spectrum of topics and questions, including these: Does science have limits? Where does order come from? Can we understand consciousness?

In July 2014, an international consortium of schizophrenia researchers co-founded by the author mounted the largest biological experiment in the history of psychiatry and found eighty new regions in the genome associated with the illness. With many more avenues for exploring the biological underpinnings of schizophrenia now available to neuroscientists, hope may be on the way for the estimated 2.4 million Americans and 1 in 100 people worldwide affected by the illness, one in which drugs have limited impact and there is no known cure.