Category Archives: Neuroscience

Neuroscience

Senior Snapshot, Alex Edwards ’23: I Can See the Ties Between … – Wellesley College

Everything ties together for Alex Edwards 23. A neuroscience major, Edwards says she has benefited from the interdisciplinary nature of Wellesleys academic program, which led her to areas she never would have explored otherwise. She says she messed around with classes during her first semester and took advantage of shadow grading by enrolling in courses in archaeology and sociology (which eventually became her minor).

Just being able to explore so widely has been so fascinating, so empowering, and so valuable in facilitating an interdisciplinary education, says Edwards. She loves how her courses have built on one another: I can see the ties between every single class Ive taken.

Edwards, who is from the Bay Area, took a class at UC Berkeley in high school that sparked her interest in neuroscience. Before she applied to Wellesley, she reached out to Barbara Beltz, Allene Lummis Russell Professor of Neuroscience. After an initial video call, Edwards met with Beltz over lunch during her first visit to campus. That kind of professor-student interaction is what really drew Edwards to the College. She remarks that she was impressed by how much professors at Wellesley genuinely cared about students and their success and how much they wanted to help them achieve whatever their goals were. Now, Beltz is Edwards thesis advisor, research advisor, and major advisor, and Edwards has worked in Beltzs lab for three years.

Its incredibly valuable that Ive been able to have my first real lab experiences in spaces that are dominated by women and are so much more gender inclusive.

Alex Edwards 23

Edwards is also grateful for the opportunities that can kind of spring up out of nowhere. She landed an internship in a neuroscience research lab at theNational Institutes of Healthstudying fruit flies, in part because shed already studied fruit flies as part of her regular neuroscience coursework. Her rsums uncommon pairing of classwork and research stood out, thanks to Wellesleys distribution requirements.

Edwards also especially values the gender dynamics of working in a lab at Wellesley. To compete in her high school multivariable calculus class, in which only four out of 30 students were female, she felt she had to prove she had the brains, but at Wellesley, Edwards says, she has never felt that and its the best feeling in the world. Its incredibly valuable that Ive been able to have my first real lab experiences in spaces that are dominated by women and are so much more gender inclusive, she says.

Edwards has learned to not let fear of rejection hold her back from building relationships with her fellow students and professors. In her free time, she likes to challenge herself by climbing with the Babson Olin Wellesley climbing organization and playing sudoku. Though, for Edwards, professor-student relationships have defined her Wellesley experience. She appreciates that her professors have taken the time to get to know her and care about helping her balance her health, life, and academics while still pushing her to meet her goals.

In that vein, Beltz added Edwards name to one of her labs publications based on data Edwards gathered for her thesis project on neuron growth in adult crayfish. Edwards thesis will be the final paper published out of Beltzs lab; Beltz will retire at the end of the semester. After graduation, Edwards plans to move to Chicago to work as a research assistant in a lab at Northwestern University, researching the link between the immune system and Alzheimers disease.

Edwards is grateful for the freedom she has had to mix and match classes at Wellesley, which she says has expanded her understanding of every subject she has explored, from anthropology to religion to neuroendocrinology. She offers this advice to incoming Wellesley students: Take classes way outside of your interests, because you are going to love them. The professors here are so good. Theres no way youre not going to at least learn one super, super cool thing thats going to stick with you.

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Senior Snapshot, Alex Edwards '23: I Can See the Ties Between ... - Wellesley College

Neuroscience

Tiny Eye Movements Are Under a Surprising Degree of Cognitive … – Neuroscience News

Summary: Ocular drift, or tiny eye movements that seem random can be influenced by prior knowledge of an expected visual target, researchers report.

Source: Weill Cornell University

A very subtle and seemingly random type of eye movement called ocular drift can be influenced by prior knowledge of the expected visual target, suggesting a surprising level of cognitive control over the eyes, according to a study led by Weill Cornell Medicine neuroscientists.

Thediscovery, described Apr. 3 inCurrent Biology, adds to the scientific understanding of how visionfar from being a mere absorption of incoming signals from the retinais controlled and directed by cognitive processes.

These eye movements are so tiny that were not even conscious of them, and yet our brains somehow can use the knowledge of the visual task to control them, says study lead author Dr. Yen-Chu Lin, who carried out the work as a Fred Plum Fellow in Systems Neurology and Neuroscience in the Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Dr. Lin works in the laboratory of study senior authorDr. Jonathan Victor, the Fred Plum Professor of Neurology at Weill Cornell Medicine.

The study involved a close collaboration with the laboratory ofDr. Michele Rucci, professor of brain and cognitive sciences and neuroscience at the University of Rochester.

Neuroscientists have known for decades that information stored in memory can strongly shape the processing of sensory inputs, including the streams of visual data coming from the eyes. In other words, what we see is influenced by what we expect to see or the requirements of the task at hand.

Most studies of cognitive control over eye movement have covered more obvious movements, such as the saccade movements in which the eyes dart across large parts of the visual field. In the new study, Drs. Lin and Victor and their colleagues examined ocular drift, tiny jitters of the eye that occur even when gaze seems fixed.

Ocular drifts are subtle motions that shift a visual target on the retina by distances on the order of a fraction of a millimeter or soacross just a few dozen photoreceptors (cones).

They are thought to improve detection of small, stationary details in a visual scene by scanning across them, effectively converting spatial details into trains of visual signals in time.

Prior studies had suggested that ocular drift and other small-scale fixational eye movements are under cognitive control only in a broad sensefor example, slowing when scanning across more finely detailed scenes. In the new study, the researchers found evidence for a more precise type of control.

Using sensitive equipment in Dr. Ruccis laboratory, the researchers recorded ocular drifts in six volunteers who were asked to identify which of a pair of letters (H vs. N, or E vs. F) was being shown to them on a background of random visual noise.

Based on computational modeling, the scientists expected that optimal eye movements for discriminating between letters would cross the key elements distinguishing the letters at right angles.

Thus, they hypothesized that a more precise cognitive control, if it existed, would tend to direct ocular drift in both vertical and oblique (lower left to upper right) directions for the H vs. N discrimination, compared to more strictly vertical movements for the E vs. F discrimination.

They found that the subjects eye movements did indeed tend to follow these patternseven in the 20 percent of trials in which the subjects, though expecting to see a letter, were shown only noise. The latter result showed that the cognitive control of ocular drift could be driven solely by specific prior knowledge of the visual task, independently of any incoming visual information.

These results underscore the interrelationship between the sensory and the motor parts of visionone really cant view them separately, said Dr. Victor, who is also a professor of neuroscience in the Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute at Weill Cornell.

He noted that the direction of fine eye movements is thought to come from neurons in the brainstem, whereas the task knowledge presumably resides in the upper brain: the corteximplying some kind of non-conscious connection between them.

The subjects are aware of the tasks they have to do, yet they dont know that their eyes are executing these tiny movements, even when you tell them, Dr. Victor said.

Studies of this pathway, he added, could lead to better insights not only into the neuroscience of vision, but possibly also visual disorderswhich traditionally have been seen as disorders of the retina or sensory processing within the brain.

What our findings suggest is that visual disorders may sometimes have a motor component too, since optimal vision depends on the brains ability to execute these very tiny movements, Dr. Victor said.

Author: Barbara PrempehSource: Weill Cornell UniversityContact: Barbara Prempeh Weill Cornell UniversityImage: The image is in the public domain

Original Research: Closed access.Cognitive influences on fixational eye movements by Jonathan Victor et al. Current Biology

Abstract

Cognitive influences on fixational eye movements

We perceive the world based on visual information acquired via oculomotor control,an activity intertwined with ongoing cognitive processes.Cognitive influences have been primarily studied in the context of macroscopic movements, like saccades and smooth pursuits. However, our eyes are never still, even during periods of fixation.

One of the fixational eye movements, ocular drifts, shifts the stimulus over hundreds of receptors on the retina, a motion that has been argued to enhance the processing of spatial detail by translating spatial into temporal information.Despite their apparent randomness, ocular drifts are under neural control.

However little is known about the control of drift beyond the brainstem circuitry of the vestibulo-ocular reflex.

Here, we investigated the cognitive control of ocular drifts with a letter discrimination task. The experiment was designed to reveal open-loop effects, i.e., cognitive oculomotor control driven by specific prior knowledge of the task, independent of incoming sensory information.

Open-loop influences were isolated by randomly presenting pure noise fields (no letters) while subjects engaged indiscriminating specific letter pairs.

Our results show open-loop control of drift direction in human observers.

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Tiny Eye Movements Are Under a Surprising Degree of Cognitive ... - Neuroscience News

Neuroscience

Affective Computing: Computers Have Feelings Too – Neuroscience News

Summary: Researchers turn to affective computing, a branch of artificial intelligence that promotes emotional intelligence in algorithms, to recognize, process, interpret, and simulate human empathy.

Source: Bentham Science Publishing

Affective Computing is an interdisciplinary field that involves Computer Science, Psychology, and Cognitive Science.

Designing affective computing systems aims to simulate and recognize emotions like humans. It can also be considered a part of emotional Intelligence, a subset of Artificial Intelligence.

The best example is the new Apple Watch Ultra which uses sensors to detect body temperature, skin temperature, and other psychological data through its sensors and communicate it to AI systems for health analysis.

Affective Computing is an emerging field that is placed at the intersection of artificial Intelligence and behavioural science. Affective Computing involves studying and developing systems that recognize, interpret, process and simulate human emotions. It has recently seen significant advances from exploratory studies to real-world applications.

Multimodal Affective Computingoffers readers a concise overview of the state-of-the-art and emerging themes in affective computing, including a comprehensive review of the existing approaches in applied affective computing systems and social signal processing.

It covers Affective facial expression recognition, affective body expression, affective speech processing, affective text, and dialogue processing. Moreover, it covers computational models of emotion, theoretical foundations, and affective speech and music processing.

This book identifies future directions for affective computing and summarizes guidelines for developing next-generation Affective computing systems that are effective, safe, and human-centred.

The book is an informative resource for Academicians, professionals, researchers, and students at engineering and medical institutions working in the areas of Applied Affective computing, sentiment analysis, and emotion recognition.

Author: Noman AkbarSource: Bentham Science PublishingContact: Noman Akbar Bentham Science PublishingImage: The image is in the public domain

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Affective Computing: Computers Have Feelings Too - Neuroscience News

Neuroscience

The neuroscience of spiritual experiences – Big Think

Patrick McNamara, an experimental neuroscientist, argues that the function of religion is not just to quell existential anxiety or stave off the fear of death, but to disrupt current models of the self and to update those models in relation to the world around us. Religious experiences promote imaginative simulation of other possible worlds, giving us space to update those models.

One core facet of the spiritual experience is what McNamara calls de-centering a powerful technique that promotes self-transformation and makes us incredibly vulnerable when triggered. When held in the context of a ritual, like many religious practices, we can achieve massive personal growth and transcendence. But de-centering isnt only effective within the context of religion: Secular people can re-discover or create their own rich traditions to support the de-centering experience.

The field of experimental neuroscience is uncovering some fundamental aspects of human nature and experience, simultaneously enhancing our understanding but also deepening the mystery. McNamaras research sheds light on the potential benefits of religion and ritual, and highlights how much more is still to be learned about how these processes can be harnessed for positive transformation.

Patrick McNamara: My particular work has uncovered aspects of religiosity that runs counter to standard theories of religion. Most scholars of religion subscribe to the theory that the function of religion is to modulate anxiety levels, or it's to stave off the fear of death. In other words, religion as a security blanket. But that's a side effect of what I think religion is really doing. The real thing that religion is doing is that it's looking for ways to disrupt current models of the self in its relation to the world. So the religious mind is constantly producing these other worlds. And when religion does that, it very interestingly calls into question the fundamental aspects of our world.I think if we want to understand human nature, we have to understand religion.

My name is Patrick McNamara, and I'm an experimental neuroscientist, and I have a special interest in studying relationships of brain activity to religious consciousness. Our identities are constantly under construction. Religions have provided the traditional tools to edit those self models, to update them, to shape them, to create them. Therefore, self and religion are bound up together because there's no way for the brain to function optimally, even normally without those self models. So, we have to understand that the brain is a prediction machine, it's a desiring machine, it's looking to build up models of what we can expect to occur next in the world. What the religious mind is doing is looking for evidence out in the world to disconfirm current models of the world, in particular current self models of the world, the individual, and his or her world. So there's no way that we're gonna thrive or flourish in the world, unless we get very good at updating our self models.

One of the most interesting things about religious experience and religious cognition is it constantly promotes imaginative simulation of other possible worlds. A good prediction machine is constantly spinning out scenarios of what might be, what could possibly be because when we disconfirm those current self models, we then know that our current models are not adequate, and so we gotta update them. My point of view is that religious experiences reflects a neurotechnology to update the current sense of self. It appears to be what nature has evolved for us to make self-transformation as easy as possible. And when you dig into that process, what you find is a very interesting set of cognitive processing routines: what's called a 'decentering.'

The decentering process is composed of four cognitive steps: The first one is the decentering itself where the executive sense of self is taken offline. That self that makes decisions, that forms intentions, that forms goals, wants to accomplish things in the world- gets decentered, gets downregulated. The second step is the individual undergoes what we call a 'liminal experience.' So they're no longer feeling in control, and so their sense of self just drifts, and they're immersed in a sea of images, affects, emotions. They experience these very intense emotional experiences that are labeled spiritual, and then the brain does a search and an updating process; a search for a stronger, better, more adequate self model. And then the last step in the decentering process is when that self model is then basically activated, and a new sense of self emerges from the decentering process.

And that's one of the main accomplishments of religiosity when it's working well. It gives the individual a set of tools to do that updating of the sense of self, so that you have an enriched sense of self, and the individual is able to live a more flourishing and thriving life. These processes that were normally held as sacred within all the world's religious traditions are now entering the secular arenas. And because they're so powerful, they're dangerous. In the wrong hands, it can create fanatics, people who are immune to updating their beliefs, and if you question those beliefs, you get violent reactions. The decentering process is such a powerful neurotechnology. It makes us incredibly vulnerable when we trigger it, so it needs to be held in a ritual process that will take it safely from step one right through the liminal process, the scary liminal process, through the editing, updating process, and then finally the reactivation of an enriched sense of self. Every one of those steps, if they go off the rails, it creates huge psychological and other problems.

So, as we understand this decentering process, a natural next question to ask is: How can we use that kind of knowledge to help people, or to find better ways to live in the world? With regard to people who consider themselves religious, one of the things that they might do is rediscover their own traditions. Things like aesthetical practices, ritual practices, scriptures, meditations, study. Some of the key ingredients of those tools are this decentering process; so religious believers can take that information and rediscover the riches of their own tradition in terms of those tools. Non-religious people, they can take this information regarding the neurotechnology of self-transformation, and find or create tools that promote the decentering process, 'cause it ain't easy, you know? If you try to do it consciously, it's not that easy. What makes me really excited about the field is that it is uncovering some fundamental aspects of human nature, human experience. It's interesting, it's simultaneously enhancing of our understanding of this realm of human experience but also deepening the mystery.

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Neuroscience

Palm Beach Can Lead in Connecting Neuroscience with the Arts – Dans Papers

The World Health Organizations (WHO) recently released position paper, Optimizing Brain Health Across the Life Course, states that optimizing brain health improves mental and physical health and also creates positive social and economic impacts, all of which contribute to greater wellbeing and help advance society.

It additionally states that multisectoral engagement and collaboration are urgently needed in order to move the brain health agenda forward for all people.

Palm Beach County is moving the brain health agenda forward through a unique collaboration that combines our world-class brain science institutions and robust cultural assets as a model for the emerging field of the neuroarts a convergence between science, the arts and technology.

Palm Health Foundation has convened the FAU Stiles-Nicholson Brain Institute, the Max Plank Florida Institute for Neuroscience, the Cultural Council for Palm Beach County and the Palm Beaches to form the Palm Beach County NeuroArts Collaborative to focus on identifying and mapping local partners, programs, resources and existing research to support the advancement of neuroarts in South Florida.

Neuroarts is the transdisciplinary study of how the arts and aesthetic experiences measurably change the body, brain and behavior, and how this knowledge is translated into specific practices that advance health and wellbeing.

The Palm Beach County Neuroarts Collaborative has caught the attention of the leaders in neuroarts, the Johns Hopkins International Arts + Mind Lab Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics, and the Aspen Institutes Health, Medicine and Society Program. These institutions have partnered to create the NeuroArts Blueprint initiative, designed to strengthen, standardize and propel the emerging field of neuroarts.

Our Palm Beach County collaborative is aligning with the NeuroArts Blueprint, and its leaders have invited us to become its first local Community Arts Coalition Partner.

The effect of the arts on health and wellbeing has long been experienced by generations of people and cultures. Now, as science and technological advances allow scientists to see and measure the effect of the arts on the brain, the field of neuroarts is catching fire, with the potential for learning and positive impact on mental health and neurodegenerative diseases that are top of mind for many Floridians, including dementia, Alzheimers and Parkinsons disease.

It is a field that could have worldwide impact as one in three people will develop a neurological disorder at some point in their lifetime, according to WHO.

Examples of the connection between the arts and the brain abound. A veteran who suffered a traumatic brain injury manages his epilepsy and PTSD by playing the ukulele. A young woman diagnosed with bipolar disorder paints to demystify her condition and work through her emotions.

A former prima ballerina with Alzheimers disease listens to Tchaikovskys Swan Lake and begins to spontaneously perform from her wheelchair, lifting her arms in sync with the choreography stored deep in her brain.

There is a role for all to play in contributing to human flourishing through the neuroarts. We are aligned with the NeuroArts Blueprint in their belief that to realize its potential, neuroarts must become a fully recognized field of research and practice, with educational and training pathways, dedicated funding, supportive public sector and private sector policies, effective leadership, well-crafted communications strategies and infrastructure capacity.

Optimizing brain health affects our families, workplaces, schools and our healthcare system. With our commitment to integrating science and the arts to help people reach their full health potential and the communitys support, we are taking one significant step toward South Florida becoming known as the Brain Coast, as highly recognized as Floridas Space Coast, and with far-reaching effects on wellbeing and society.

To learn more about the neuroarts efforts in Palm Beach County, visit palmhealthfoundation.org/train-the-brain.

Randy D. Blakely, Ph.D., is executive director of the FAU Stiles-Nicholson Brain Institute. Dave Lawrence is president and CEO of the Cultural Council for Palm Beach County. And Patrick J. McNamara, LCSW, is president and CEO of the Palm Health Foundation.

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Palm Beach Can Lead in Connecting Neuroscience with the Arts - Dans Papers

Neuroscience

Understanding the difference between the mind and the brain – Nature.com

Jean Mary Zarate: 00:04

Hello and welcome to Tales From The Synapse, a podcast brought to you by Nature Careers in partnership with Nature Neuroscience. Im Jean Mary Zarate, a senior editor at the journal Nature Neuroscience. In this series we speak to brain scientists all over the world about their life, their research, their collaborations, and the impact of th eir work. In episode eight, we meet a neuroscientist and author who focuses on and celebrates the differences between people's brains.

Chantel Prat: 00:40

Hi, my name is Chantel Prat. I am a professor in the departments of psychology, neuroscience and linguistics at the University of Washington in Seattle. And I love to study individual differences. I'm really interested in how individual brains operate and understand the world differently.

I feel like were living through a great social paradox. People are discussing the importance of having diverse minds and brains and decision-making spaces.

But yet, we dont seem to be getting any better at talking through our differences. I wrote the book The Neuroscience of You because I realized that my perspective, the way I understand the gap between our personal subjective realities, and the objective, ostensibly knowable world out there, makes a big difference in how I relate to others.

It drives a curiosity about people who believe differently than I do, instead of a defensiveness about my own perspective. And I thought it was really important that if I could give people some concrete data about the ways that different brains understand the world, and that these differences don't necessarily map on to being better or worse, or right or wrong, I might help give us the ability to connect with and understand others who work differently.

Its really ironic, because my book is called The Neuroscience of You. But there was a whole lot of new research going on when I wrote it. This wasnt helped by the fact that a few months after I started writing in earnest, the real-life experiment that we all participated in, the one that none of us signed a consent form for, that revolved around this pandemic that changed every bit of our surroundings, was happening to me as well. I was participating in this experiment. And I couldnt help but notice and be frustrated by the fact that my brain was responding to the pandemic in a way that seemed very different from the people around me.

I heard about people getting in the best shapes of their lives and cooking more than ever, while I didn't seem to be doing any of the things I always promised myself I would do if I had more time.

And, you know it was into the mixology chapter where I started thinking about stress and cortisol in the brain, that I realized the way that our genes and our neurotransmitters influenced the way we respond to stress.

My brain was changing in response to this chronic stress and the neurochemicals that it was being soaked in. And my brain was changing in a way that was different than other peoples, right? So, in many ways, as I was writing the book, I was going through this real-life experiment of having my environment change around me, and trying to figure out who I am in response to these changes in the environment.

I figure if people who read the book learn as much about themselves when they read it as I did when I wrote it, it will be a huge success.

Chantel Prat: 04:12

Phineas Gage was a railway worker who survived a horrific accident that resulted in a railway spike being blown through his cheek and out the top of the right hemisphere of his brain.

One of the remarkable things about the story is that he literally walked away from this gory accident. When he walked away, most of his physical abilities were intact, but the things that made him him, his characteristic ways of thinking, feeling and behaving, were changed.

As his physicians wrote, Gage was no longer Gage. Once a very dependable man, the kind of go-to guy you would want on your team, he became much more unpredictable, sort of abandoning implants for things that seemed more feasible, something that was attractive in front of him, a lot more uninhibited.

And this was the fact that actually captivated me and got me interested in neuroscience in the first place. As a pre-med student that was learning about the organs in our body and the jobs that they do, it struck me, more like hit me like a ton of bricks, that while the lungs have a job to oxygenate the blood in your body, the heart has a job to pump this oxygenated blood throughout the body, the brain is an organ that takes that oxygenated blood and translates it into the energy that creates every thought, feeling and behaviour that makes you you.

Any way that you change the brain, you change the individual. And so one thing that's characteristic about my work is I've always been interested in the relationship between the mind and the brain, at the level of the individual, not how do brains work in general.

Or how do most brains work. But what are the differences in ways that brains work that make you you, Phineas Gage, and the way his brain changed in a dramatic way, and it changed his personality? was my first inspiration into this question.

Chantel Prat: 06:30

I think one of the things that really allows me to appreciate differences is that I have in my lifetime occupied many different spaces.

And what I mean by that is, I grew up in a small rural town in northern California, you know, the kind of one-stoplight town that we could ride horses through main street where my dad lived in Calistoga.

And where not a lot of people leave and go to college. Neither one of my parents have college degrees. I'm a first-generation college student. And I really value the kind of practical knowledge that people that I was surrounded by growing up use to operate in the world.

And as I became more and more educated, I also appreciate the gap between the kinds of things you learn in books, and the kinds of ways that you behave in the real world, the kind of knowledge that you use in everyday life.

So I think, coming from a small town, coming from a background where people use practical knowledge rather than book knowledge to succeed, shapes my views in a large part.

Chantel Prat: 07:54

I also had a series of adventures and misadventures throughout my college training, one of which was becoming pregnant as a teenager. So I undertook all of the adventures in neuroscience. In fact, part of what got me my first job in neuroscience was having a child of my own.

I was 19 years old when I gave birth to my daughter, Jasmine, and I first recorded her brain when she was 17 months old.

Having experience with children got me this critical job in a cognitive neuroscience lab where we were looking at brain development, and they wanted people with baby-charming experiences, because we had to do what I still believe is one of the hardest jobs in neuroscience, and that's getting a baby to wear an EEG cap.

So for those of you out there that are parents and ever tried to get a kid to wear something on their head as part of a Halloween costume or to keep them warm, you know that this job is not for slouches.

Once you put an EEG cap, its kind of like a little swim cap that has microphone-like devices sewn into it that allows us to eavesdrop on the electrical activity of the brain.

Once you put that thing on the head of a baby and fill it with the goop thats necessary to listen to increase the conductivity, they pull it off, its game over. So you know, the fact that I had my own child and had this experience with, you know, getting babies to wear things on their heads and captivating their attention, really was was my first qualification.

Once I had decided I wanted to study the brain, I had no experience and the only kind of background I had was, Well look, I have my own child.

So I have significant experience with wrangling them, so to speak. And it just so turns out when we talk about nature versus nurture, which is one of the quintessential questions that drive psychologists and neuroscientists, it turns out that my daughter gets her temperament from her father, which is wonderful.

Because unlike her mother, she's very easygoing and has a long attentional span. And because of this, she participated in just about every psychology or neuroscience experiment that was happening at the University of California, San Diego, which is where I was as an undergraduate.

She loved it. She would sit there for hours, listen to sounds, look in boxes for things that had been hidden from her, get stickers, talk to the people around. And, and so I brought her into practice this capping procedure and to get good at it.

And when we did, we put her into the experimental room and played words that she knew and didn't know. And I got to see her brain understanding language. What was remarkable about this is that I went through the whole process of analyzing the data, looked at the results.

And we're sure I had done something wrong, because unlike the children that we were studying in the lab, who typically have language signals coming from either both halves of their brain, both hemispheres of their brain, or moving towards a left-lateralized specialization for language, my daughter, Jasmine showed the differences between words that she knew and words that she didnt know, over the right side of her brain the most strongly.

I thought I had definitely done something wrong. I called in my supervisor, we discussed it and she said, You know, is there any chance that Jasmine will be left handed?

It turns out (long story short), Jasmine's brain showed me she was left handed before her behaviour could. Most kids start stably reaching for things by about 20 months to 24 months. And she was 17 months old. And I got to see that her brain was actually reversed-lateralized for language.

Afterwards, we followed up with a bunch of other fun tests like an oddball paradigm where she just listened to tones of different frequencies. And it turns out that for everything that we looked at at the time, Jasmines brain showed the opposite pattern is to what is typically reported in the literature.

This just drove my curiosity about individual brains even more. So here I am, you know, having an atypical adventure of my own, going through undergraduate and graduate school as a parent and a single parent, and learning that my daughters brain in many ways, not only her temperament, but the place that her language and attentional processes wound up, was the opposite of mine, is fascinating.

Chantel Prat: 12:40

Whats interesting to me is that this world-building that different brains engage in doesnt only happen when youre reading something, when youre engaged in a fictional experience. We make inferences about whats happening around us in the real world all of the time.

So here in the US we had a popular version of this when people got up in arms because they couldn't agree about the colour of a dress, a picture of a dress that was printed on the Internet, whether the dress was black and blue, or white and gold.

And if you haven't seen the dress, and youre interested, you can go to Wikipedia and look up the dress. And lo and behold you will see the picture of a torso of a woman wearing a dress. And it will appear to be clearly either white and gold, or blue and black to you.

Now the reason that this was so controversial in America is because many of us have learned at some point in our education that the colours that we see in the world around us map on in some one-to-one fashion to the energy that is bouncing into our eyes, often object, right. Weve all learned at some point about this colour spectrum and how it relates to wavelengths of light.

But if the way we perceived colour was this simple, if it really were related in a one-on-one fashion to the characteristics of the light that's entering our eyes, then we would all see a green apple turn red in the sunset, and blue in a shadow.

Instead, our brains use the context that objects occur in to figure out what colour they are all the time. We learn from experience that an object is less likely to change colour than the quality of the light bouncing off of the object.

And so really, what we do is take a survey of the kinds of light energy in any situation and decide what colour an individual item is, based on the context. First, what made the dress controversial is that the context is largely clipped out of it.

And its unclear whether the lighting in this picture is coming from behind the individual, or coming from overhead. People who see the dress as blue and black, which it actually is in real life, are assuming that the person is standing in some kind of overhead or artificially-lit room, that theyre not in a shadow.

People who see white and gold, their brains are automatically assuming that the dress is lit from behind, and that the person is in a shadow. When we see things in shadows, we automatically subtract out these blue-black wavelengths to figure out what colour something is.

Whats really cool is vision researcher Pascal Wallisch found that you could predict some percentage of variability and how people would perceive that dress, based on their chronotypes, or what time of day they usually wake up, and what time of day they usually go to sleep.

This is a way of figuring out what kind of lighting people are usually exposed to. And if you spend a lot of time up in naturally-lit environments up in the sun, and you see things in shadows, it turns out youre more likely to see the dress as white and gold than people who are night owls and spend a lot of time awake after dark and in artificially-lit places.

This is just a tiny example of how our experiences shape this world-building that we're doing, the way our brains create inferences and connect the dots, even for something as elementary as colour. And they do this so quickly and so automatically that we, the kinds of conscious experiences that we identify with, are completely unaware that our brain is is taking shortcuts and making these decisions for us.

Chantel Prat: 17:05

There are two things that I really hope readers will take away when they read The Neuroscience of You.

The first is that the one-size-fits-all approach to neuroscience that has dominated the field for over a century doesnt fit anyone very well. Most of the books on the shelf talk about how brains work.

But this view is based on group averages, and its not even based on very representative group averages. What Im hoping to show people is that normal when it comes to brain functioning, is a mult-dimensional space and not a single value. And that in that space there are lots of different ways that brains can work that are not necessarily better or worse than one another, just different. They've evolved to solve different problems.

And when it comes to abnormal, you know the fact that normal is a variable multi-dimensional space is important to consider because the distinction between normal and abnormal is also not a, its not a bi- dimensional decision.

Abnormal can mean two different things in this multi-dimensional space. One is that a value or a particular way of being is rare, atypical, and that says nothing about the functionality of that way of being.

On the other hand, there are ways of being that have been characterized by modern society as dysfunctional, that are not at all abnormal.

For instance, almost one in 10 American children can meet the diagnostic criteria for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. This is because children whose brains work like this struggle to function under the constraints of modern society.

But its important to note that a brain design that has that survived and exists in one in 10 individuals is not at all atypical, and that there are benefits to these kind of organically-driven ways of focusing that we may not have considered yet.

So number one point. Normal is a space, not a place. And it's something that we have vastly under-considered when trying to describe how brains work.

The second point I want to make is about connecting to brains that work differently from yours. Social neuroscience is providing more and more whopping amounts of evidence that we tend to gravitate towards other people whose brains work like ours.

What this means is that knowing another person is a concept which I believe relates to reverse-engineering the mind that drives the behaviours you can see, When were trying to understand or know another person, we tend to default to how our own brain works.

This is because humans, like many other social primates, use mirror neurons as a way of understanding the behaviour of others.

In fact, if I watch a person execute some action, or even a primate, another (a nonhuman primate), my brain will activate the same programs that it takes to make me execute that same action.

Through mirroring, I can learn from the behaviors of others and by simulating them in my mind. But I think whats going wrong is that if the brain thats driving the behaviour of another doesnt work like mine, the inferences that I make when I connect the dots or fill in the gaps, and try to know that person, are wrong. I make assumptions, Im forced to make assumptions when all I have is observable behaviours, about the why, of how of why that person is behaving the way theyre behaving.

And if I dont have the knowledge or tools to understand that different brains might understand the world in different ways, and make decisions based on different understandings, I'm gonna get it wrong when Im put in front of somebody who thinks differently than I do.

So the second thing I hope a reader takes away from my book is a set of tools for understanding the mind of a person that is driven by a brain that works differently from their own.

Chantel Prat: 22:02

When I set out to write the book, I had two very clear goals. One was to write a book that was more accurate than the typical neuroscience book on the shelf, which tends to take the one size fits all approach. And the second was to make a book that was accessible to non-academics.

And it wasnt until I actually started writing the book that I realized how many places those two goals came into conflict with one another.

As an academic, I want to tell my reader everything I know, I want to build this case. But then everything I know has, like, 400 other back stories that support it.

And as a science communicator, I want to tell the reader what it all means. And I think that this is the biggest way that writing the book changed my perspective about science and where it belongs.

Because now Im engaged in conversations with thousands of people I may never meet. Its a one-way conversation. Theyre reading my book, and maybe having important haystack moments where they can bring their real-life knowledge and experiences to bear on my words, and we'll flesh out what it all means to them.

Thats incredibly powerful, and scary too, and vulnerable. But I dont think science belongs to academics alone. I think that if we have things that we know that might influence the way people understand themselves or one another, we need to do our best to share it and to share it in a way that might make somebody laugh or cry, or be fascinated or be angry, might make them feel something, It might make them learn something. It might make them curious. I think this is our responsibility. And that's how writing this book has really changed my perspective on science and life.

Jean Mary Zarate: 24:24Now thats it for this episode of Tales From The Synapse. Im Jean Mary Zarate, a senior editor at Nature Neuroscience. The producer was Don Byrne. Thanks again to Chantel Prat. And thank you for listening.

Continued here:
Understanding the difference between the mind and the brain - Nature.com

Neuroscience

The Cold Truth: Frequent Common Colds Linked to Alzheimers Risk – Neuroscience News

Summary: Suffering from frequent colds and flu may impact brain aging, accelerate cognitive decline, and could increase the risk of developing Alzheimers disease. In mice, intermittent experiences of moderate inflammation, such as that caused by the flu or common cold, caused impaired cognition and disrupted neural communication.

Source: Tulane University

Getting sick often may impact how quickly the brain ages and increase the risk of dementia or other forms of cognitive decline.

These are the findings of a Tulane University study conducted in partnership with West Virginia University and the National Institutes of Occupational Safety and Health and published in the journalBrain, Behavior and Immunity.

The study examined aging male mice and found that repeated, intermittent experiences with moderate inflammation, such as that caused by the flu or a seasonal head cold, caused impaired cognition and disrupted communication between neurons in those mice.

We were interested in asking whether differences in infection experience could account, at least in part, for the differences in rates of dementia we see in the population, said lead author Elizabeth Engler-Chiurazzi, PhD, a behavioral neuroscientist in the Tulane Department of Neurosurgery.

The mice we were studying were adults approaching middle age that had intact faculties, and yet, when exposed to intermittent inflammation, they remembered less and their neurons functioned more poorly.

This study is the first to model repeated, intermittent infections in mice and examine the long-term consequences for brain function and health.

Humans often experience infections and inflammation at substantially higher rates than laboratory mice. But given that impairments were observed in mice after only five intermittent inflammatory treatments, the cognitive change in humans may be more robust.

Our mice only experienced intermittent sickness-like inflammation a handful of times, so the fact that we observed impairments at all was surprising, Engler-Chiurazzi said.

The effects were subtle, but thats why I find these results meaningful: In a human, cognitive impairments from a similar number of inflammatory experiences might not be noticeable in their daily lives but could have cumulative effects that negatively impact the aging brain.

The findings may have important implications for standard of care around how infections are handled among the elderly and those at risk for dementia. And they are perhaps more relevant in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing research around the effects of long-COVID syndrome.

Going forward, Engler-Chiurazzi said more work needs to be done to understand why infections impact the brain and how to mitigate those effects. In addition, she hopes follow-up studies will investigate whether more vulnerable populations impacted by health disparities face a higher burden of neurological effects.

The biggest take away from this research, in our opinion, is the importance of staying as healthy and infection-free as possible, she said.

Author: Andrew YawnSource: Tulane UniversityContact: Andrew Yawn Tulane UniversityImage: The image is in the public domain

Original Research: Open access.Intermittent systemic exposure to lipopolysaccharide-induced inflammation disrupts hippocampal long-term potentiation and impairs cognition in aging male mice by Elizabeth Engler-Chiurazzi et al. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity

Abstract

Intermittent systemic exposure to lipopolysaccharide-induced inflammation disrupts hippocampal long-term potentiation and impairs cognition in aging male mice

Age-related cognitive decline, a common component of the brain aging process, is associated with significant impairment in daily functioning and quality of life among geriatric adults.

While the complexity of mechanisms underlying cognitive aging are still being elucidated, microbial exposure and the multifactorial inflammatory cascades associated with systemic infections are emerging as potential drivers of neurological senescence.

The negative cognitive and neurobiological consequences of a single pathogen-associated inflammatory experience, such as that modeled through treatment with lipopolysaccharide (LPS), are well documented. Yet, the brain aging impacts of repeated, intermittent inflammatory challenges are less well studied.

To extend the emerging literature assessing the impact of infection burden on cognitive function among normally aging mice, here, we repeatedly exposed adult mice to intermittent LPS challenges during the aging period. Male 10-month-old C57BL6 mice were systemically administered escalating doses of LPS once every two weeks for 2.5 months.

We evaluated cognitive consequences using the non-spatial step-through inhibitory avoidance task, and both spatial working and reference memory versions of the Morris water maze. We also probed several potential mechanisms, including cortical and hippocampal cytokine/chemokine gene expression, as well as hippocampal neuronal function via extracellular field potential recordings.

Though there was limited evidence for an ongoing inflammatory state in cortex and hippocampus, we observed impaired learning and memory and a disruption of hippocampal long-term potentiation. These data suggest that a history of intermittent exposure to LPS-induced inflammation is associated with subtle but significantly impaired cognition among normally aging mice.

The broader impact of these findings may have important implications for standard of care involving infections in aging individuals or populations at-risk for dementia.

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The Cold Truth: Frequent Common Colds Linked to Alzheimers Risk - Neuroscience News

Neuroscience

Neuroscience Market will Offer Increased Growth Prospects For … – Digital Journal

Neuroscience Market Report Description:

Coherent Market Insight has released a new research study titled Neuroscience Market 2023 analysis by the following subjects: Industry size, share, growth, segmentation, companies and developments, key trends, market drivers, restraints, regulations, distribution methods, opportunities, strategies, potential road maps, and annual forecast till 2030. The purpose of the market research study is to thoroughly investigate the industry in order to gain knowledge of the industry and its economic potential. As a result, the client has complete knowledge of the market and business from past, present, and prospective aspects enabling them to allocate resources and invest money wisely. This report has a complete table of contents, Market figures, tables, and charts, as well as insightful analysis.

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Neuroscience is the study of nervous system, which is related to evaluating and imaging of the brain activity. Neuroscience is a broad term, which focuses on molecular, cellular, developmental, structural, functional, evolutionary, computing, psychosocial, and medical aspects of the nervous system. The advancement in biology, pharmaceutical science, medicine, cognitive science, biomedical engineering is evolving neuroscience.

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Alpha Omega, Inc., GE Healthcare, Axion Biosystems, Inc., Siemens Healthineers, Scientifica Ltd., Blackrock Microsystems LLC, Femtonics Ltd., LaVision Biotec GmbH, Intan Technologies, NeuroNexus Technologies, Inc., Newport Corporation, Neuralynx Inc., Plexon Inc., Mediso Medical Imaging Systems, Noldus Information Technology, Sutter Instrument Corporation, Thomas Recording GmbH, and Trifoil Imaging Inc.

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Neuroscience

6 UI faculty honored with 2023 Regents Award for Faculty Excellence – Iowa Now

The Board of Regents, State of Iowa, has selected six outstanding University of Iowa faculty members to be honored for their extraordinary contributions and sustained record of excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service. Each recipient of the Regents Award for Faculty Excellence received a $1,500 stipend and will be honored at an awards celebration during the June Board of Regents meeting on the UIcampus.

The recipients were selected by committees appointed by shared governance in collaboration with the UI administration and confirmed by the Board ofRegents.

Ted AbelAbel, professor and chair of the Department of Neuroscience and Pharmacology in the Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine, is founding director of the Iowa Neuroscience Institute (INI) and co-director of the Hawkeye Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center. He has developed the INI into a world-class interdisciplinary research institute, involving more than 140 faculty members from seven UI colleges and 30 departments, and growing external grant funding for the institute to about $90 million in FY22. An internationally renowned neuroscientist, Abel has published more than 230 research articles focusing on neurobiology, epigenetics, and behavioral neuroscience. He is the principal investigator on three active NIH R01 grants, securing more than $2 million in funding for FY22. Committed to community engagement and education as well as research, he has overseen the creation of a new undergraduate neuroscience major that now enrolls more than 280 students, and he is active in various outreach events, including serving as the UI Presidential Lecturer in 2021. Abel is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement ofScience.

Joseph CavanaughCavanaugh, professor and head of the Department of Biostatistics in the College of Public Health, is a methodological and collaborative researcher who leverages his expertise in statistics and biostatistics to investigate a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary topics. He has published more than 170 peer-reviewed manuscripts and has made particularly important contributions in the areas of statistical model selection, time series analysis, infectious diseases epidemiology, and injury prevention. He played a significant role in the state of Iowas COVID-19 response, leading a team that partnered with the Iowa Department of Public Health to analyze data and develop predictive models to help the state respond to the pandemic. He has supervised 19 doctoral dissertations and 39 masters projects, and is active in service to the department, college, university, and profession. His efforts to foster diversity, equity, and inclusion within the Department of Biostatistics recently helped the department earn recognition from the American Statistical Association. He is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute and a fellow of the American Statistical Association, and has received numerous teaching and mentoring awards, including the UI Hancher-Finkbine Medallion, the College of Public Health Faculty Teaching Award, and the College of Public Health Faculty MentorAward.

Rebekah KowalKowal, professor and departmental executive officer in the Department of Dance in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS), is an accomplished scholar known for her fierce advocacy for the arts and dedication to providing students with the best educational experience possible. She has co-edited an influential volume on dance and published two books, including Dancing the World Smaller: Staging Globalism in Mid-Century America, which was a finalist for the prestigious 2021 Outstanding Book Award given by the Association for Theatre in Higher Education. She has taken on substantial service roles within the university and in the dance field, including service as a board member for the National Association of Schools of Dance, vice president for awards and prizes for the Dance Studies Association, vice president for the Society of Dance History Scholars, and executive co-editor of Dance Research Journal. An exceptional teacher who is devoted to fostering inclusion and collaboration among her students, she has mentored numerous MFA theses and honors projects, and was honored as the Outstanding Honors Teacher by the UI Honors Program in 2007. She was named the CLAS Deans Scholar in 2009 and CLAS Collegiate Scholar in2020.

Joseph Reinhardt Reinhardt is professor and Roy J. Carver Chair in Biomedical Engineering in the College of Engineering, where he has overseen remarkable growth in both the departments student and faculty populations. His leadership helped the department secure a $12 million naming gift from the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust, which has enabled a significant expansion of research and teaching activities. A highly respected expert in lung imaging and medical image analysis, he has received external research support from organizations including the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation, and he has published more than 120 peer-reviewed journal papers. He is an elected fellow of several engineering organizations, including the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association. Reinhardt is a popular teacher and mentor who has taught courses at all levels of the engineering curriculum, including the first-year Introduction to Engineering Computing course. He is committed to developing the next generation of scientists, engineers, and academics, and has successfully mentored 16 doctoral and 21 mastersstudents.

Karin Weber-GasparoniWeber-Gasparoni, professor and chair of the Department of Pediatric Dentistry in the College of Dentistry, is a respected dental scholar whose research focuses on dental care for patients with special needs, infants, and children from low-income, high-risk populations. She has authored seven book chapters, more than 43 published papers, and more than 100 abstracts, and has active grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Health Resources and Services Administration. Her demonstrated commitment to service at the local, university, and national levels includes membership on the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistrys Council of Clinical Affairs, helping set national standards for clinical pediatric dentistry. She led a $1 million fundraising campaign for the departments Pediatric Dental Excellence Fund and was instrumental in fundraising for the Dr. Jenn Wolfe Memorial Campaign for mental health resources for dental students and practitioners. As a teacher in a clinical setting, course director, lecturer, and mentor, she has positively influenced students and residents both in the College of Dentistry and in the Carver College of Medicine. She received the College of Dentistrys James McLeran Faculty Award in 2012 and the Hancher-Finkbine Medallion in2022.

Catherine Welch Welch is professor of educational measurement and statistics in the College of Education. As Feldt Faculty Scholar and co-director of the Iowa Testing Programs, Welch is highly regarded for her expertise in student assessment in K-12 education. Her work has shaped the assessment landscape across the state and country. She has authored multiple editions of the High School Equivalency Test and is a principal author of the Iowa Assessments, as well as a lead author of the Iowa Statewide Assessment of Student Progress. Dedicated to teaching and mentoring, Welch has played a crucial role in creating materials for the MA in teaching, leadership, and cultural competence program and providing advising and instruction in the educational measurement and statistics program. Her extensive service record includes contributions to the National Council on Measurement in Education, the National Research Council on Developing Assessments for Science Standards, and the Statewide Assessment System Advisory Committee. Her research on assessment practices has earned her numerous awards, including three Distinguished Research Awards from the Iowa Educational Research and Evaluation Association and six Inventor Awards from theUI.

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6 UI faculty honored with 2023 Regents Award for Faculty Excellence - Iowa Now

Neuroscience

A Handful of Blueberries a Day Could Help Improve Brain Function – Neuroscience News

Summary: Adding a handful of blueberries to your daily diet can help reduce blood pressure, improve memory and cognitive function, and boost reaction times.

Source: Kings College London

New research from Kings Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine has found that eating a handful of wild blueberries daily has health benefits, including lowered blood pressure, faster reaction time, and improved memory and brain cognition.

The study, published in theAmerican Journal of Clinical Nutrition, was led by researchers from Kings and the University of Reading.

It involved a randomised, double blind, placebo-controlled trial of 61 healthy men and women aged 65 to 80, who drank a beverage made with 26 grams of freeze-dried wild blueberry powder (equivalent to about 178 grams of whole berries) whilst the other group drank a matching placebo.

Over twelve weeks, researchers found that volunteers who consumed the berry powder in drinks experienced better memory and an improved accuracy on attention tasks, as well as lower blood pressure.

Also during this period, after consuming berries the blood pressure of the test group was lower when compared to the placebo group, in addition to having an increased flow mediated dilation (FMD), which leads to a lower risk of cardiovascular disease.

This study is the first of its kind and the results suggest that a daily intake of wild blueberries could help lower peoples risk of cardiovascular disease by lowering their blood pressure and improving blood vessel function, said Dr Ana Rodriguez-Mateos, Reader in Nutrition at the Department of Nutritional Sciences.

Dr Rodriguez-Mateos added: We know from previous research that there are potential advantages from consuming blueberries, but this study went further by exploring how a daily and dietary achievable measure of blueberries could benefit our cognitive and cardiovascular health simultaneously in a healthy older population.

We think the blue pigments in blueberries, the anthocyanins, which are a type of polyphenols also present in other foods such as strawberries, raspberries, red grapes and purple vegetables, are behind these effects as increases in their metabolites were seen in the urine of the volunteers after 12 weeks consumption.

Professor Claire Williams, Chair of the Neuroscience Department for University of Reading, said: Its clear from this study that consuming wild blueberries is beneficial to cognitive function, as well as vascular health.

The group who had the wild blueberry powder showed signs of better memory and greater mental flexibility when completing cognitive tasks. This is consistent with what we already know about the health benefits of anthocyanin-rich foods. It points to an important role of polyphenols in healthy aging.

Funding: The study was funded by theWild Blueberry Association of North America.

Author: Ana Rodriguez-MateosSource: Kings College LondonContact: Ana Rodriguez-Mateos Kings College LondonImage: The image is in the public domain

Original Research: Open access.Wild Blueberry (Poly)phenols can Improve Vascular Function And Cognitive Performance In Healthy Older Males And Females: A Double-Blind Randomized Controlled Trial by Ana Rodriguez-Mateos et al. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

Abstract

Wild Blueberry (Poly)phenols can Improve Vascular Function And Cognitive Performance In Healthy Older Males And Females: A Double-Blind Randomized Controlled Trial

Evidence suggests that intake of blueberry (poly)phenols is associated with improvements in vascular function and cognitive performance. Whether these cognitive effects are linked to increases in cerebral and vascular blood flow or changes in the gut microbiota is currently unknown.

A double-blind, parallel randomized controlled trial was conducted in 61 healthy older individuals aged 65-80 y. Participants received either 26g of freeze-dried wild blueberry (WBB) powder (302 mg anthocyanins) or a matched placebo (0 mg anthocyanins). Endothelial function measured by flow-mediated dilation (FMD), cognitive function, arterial stiffness, blood pressure (BP), cerebral blood flow (CBF), gut microbiome and blood parameters were measured at baseline and 12 weeks following daily consumption. Plasma and urinary (poly)phenol metabolites were analyzed using micro-elution solid phase-extraction coupled with LC-MS.

A significant increase in FMD and reduction in 24 h ambulatory systolic BP were found in the WBB group compared to placebo (0.86%; 95% CI 0.56, 1.17, p<0.001; -3.59 mmHg; 95% CI -6.95, -0.23, p=0.037; respectively). Enhanced immediate recall on the auditory verbal learning task, alongside better accuracy on a task-switch task were also found following WBB treatment compared to placebo (p<0.05). Total 24 h urinary (poly)phenol excretion increased significantly in the WBB group compared to placebo. No changes in CBF or gut microbiota composition were found.

Daily intake of WBB powder, equivalent to 178 g fresh weight, improves vascular and cognitive function, and decreases 24h ambulatory systolic BP in healthy older individuals. This suggests that WBB (poly)phenols may reduce future cardiovascular disease (CVD) disease risk in an older population, and may improve episodic memory processes and executive functioning in older adults at risk of cognitive decline.

NCT04084457

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A Handful of Blueberries a Day Could Help Improve Brain Function - Neuroscience News