Neurology Diagnostics

Posts Tagged ‘brain’

Since its concept and its timing, falling in love is not synonymous with love. Psycho-brain processes associated with such states explain the difference.

Falling in love is considered by some scholars psychologists as a state of temporary psychosis, a crazy, to the surprise of a feeling that overpowers and confounds, which pushes to want to run faster than the wind and eat the world. Logic, reason trial and never could come into play in the psyche of a person in love. As stated by the psychiatrist and writer Irvin Yalom , a leading proponent of contemporary humanistic psychology, psychologists do not want to meet people in love, at least not during the short time that this state away from the clouded reason, because, simply, is useless to try to reason with them.

However, the person who has reached the certain conclusion that his sentiment is reflected in the verb to love , regardless of the intensity of acute and falling in love, logic, reasoning and self-analysis play important roles in decision making and the impact of each step to take. You can retain some impulsivity, if this is part of the personalities involved, but the long term are sought, as opposed to falling in love, in which the next thing to live is important.

In each process, the brain behaves differently, and thus the psyche of the individual, intimate relationship with the brain circuits activated express different behaviors.

The brain mechanisms involved in infatuation and love

According to researchers Bianchi-Demicheli, Grafton and Ortique University Hospital of Geneva, Switzerland, the site of brain processing of love “romantic” correlates with subcortical structures involved in reward, motivation and the development of emotions . This finding suggested that love as a feeling, have a clearly directed toward complacency and is much more than a simple and spontaneous emotion .

In the early stages, when the attraction is overpowering and unmanageable from reason, mediate goals and long term can not be defined, although, paradoxically, is often the most time fantasizing the future. The intense emotions beyond any process of maturation and the words flow without a rationale or strong mental processing.

The behavior of a person in love, Bianchi-Demicheli state and its partners, once the love is transformed into a feeling, it becomes predictable and intended for a particular purpose. The authors demonstrated that brain function in cognitive tasks markedly rises to relate, even subliminally, by the name of the loved one, suggesting a facilitative action of love over many brain circuits, including that of cognition.

During the crush, the brain seems sunk to an obsession or addiction unmanageable related intimately to the idea of being that has captivated not seem to have cognitive processing circuits involved, but emotions and feelings associated with passionate instinctive behavior.

When love calls for decisions

Decisions made during the period of infatuation ethereal usually no real decisions. They are, however, fits with the feet not anchored to the mainland.

The feelings of joy and spiritual well-being confused with the physical excitement and euphoria of falling in love causes, and the mixture of the four emotions up to a conscious decision but a strong desire expressed as a plan equivalent to an imperfect future model of a real decision.

Over time the “madness of love” or transient psychosis, as Yalom calls it, the sudden feeling of love begins to take root on land and only then, decisions decisions or processes can be considered complete brain.

Being loving, he starts to feel their emotional needs, and not only physical or instinctive, and that which should fill in a period of infatuation could become an incomplete project according to their basic needs for shelter, company, projection and joint plans. This is the time in which reality imposes on the imagination.

The left brain (logical, thinking and the benefits and risks sopesante) begins to play a leading role on any decision to take. The vision of the beloved is expanded markedly, beginning the stage of real vision of others and their circumstances. The analysis of the reality surpasses the words heard.

The brain circuits that are involved and are more cognitive, including mathematical, speculative gains and losses of their own.

The right brain tends to balance the logical analysis of the left hemisphere, keeping emotions in a space supremacy over rational thought, until the latter rigidly imposed to save the self-esteem based on unmet needs, and preserve the emotional health of those who may be damaged if not met as scheduled or expected. The expectations are confronted with promises, to the facts. The thought process takes over bottom and emotional figure in a game of self-defense and conquest.

The limbic system, processor par excellence of the emotions, and empathy , the supreme condition of man, mark the route and destination of each connection once both hemispheres participate in the analysis of the appropriateness of that love as an emotion experienced before overpowering.
Conclusion

The infatuation excites the senses and clouds the reasoning but does the cycle in a few months to produce, or not, the true feeling of love, which is based on processes anchored in both hemispheres.

During the infatuation of the reasons or logical theories have no place whatsoever, nor self-analysis, but after initial instinctive emotion processed to become a feeling rooted and projects, such love demands from basic needs of those who love, the reason amalgamates the feeling and focus on the limbic and cortical areas and processing suborticales than evaluating every aspect of that feeling with full power to alter human behavior.

Virtually all the energy consumed comes from our brain glucose consumption is 20% of basal metabolism.

For about four decades we have accurate methods that allow us to quantify what is cerebral oxygen consumption in a living being. With this information we can calculate the energy consumption and compare it with the rest of the body (basal metabolism). So we know that the brain of a 70 kg person weighs about 1,400 g (2% of total body weight) and consumes 20% of the energy of our body. The brain is very glutton !

But what about other animals? When the same calculation is done in other animals see that your brain uses less power. Thus, the brains of our cousins ​​the monkeys consume only 9% of basal metabolism and a horse, a pig or a dog is reduced to 3%.

Another interesting aspect is that consumer spending brain power is not equal at all stages of life. In a newborn of 3,400 g weight of your brain is only about 390 g (11% of body weight) but the brain energy consumption rises to almost 50% of basal metabolism. In other words, half of what you eat goes to the brain.

What do you eat your brain?

The major brain fuel is glucose , our brain consumes about 120 g per day (about 420 Kcal). This figure is much higher than needed to meet energy needs from cerebral oxygen consumption. During prolonged fasting ketone bodies (acetoacetate and 3-hydroxybutyrate), synthesized in the liver, partly replace glucose as brain fuel.

Why do you need so much energy our brain? Most, nearly 50% – intended to keep the ions from the cells “in place” so that they can excite neurons and conduction of nerve impulses. A small part used to synthesize the proteins, neurotransmitters , etc..

Where does the brain ” for food “? The brain gets glucose from three different sources:

Foods rich in glucose.
Decomposition of carbohydrates: sugar is broken down and is delivered to the brain.
Since the liver produces glycogen and stores from the breakdown of fats and proteins.

In 2011 a group of researchers from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda (USA) published a study in JAMA that showed that 50 minutes of mobile phone use was associated with increased metabolism glucose in the brain. The study conducted in 47 participants and found that the major effect of the metabolic abnormality was located in the brain area closest to the mobile antenna (orbitofrontal cortex and temporal pole). This finding demonstrated that our brain is sensitive to the effects of electromagnetic fields. Now, have any significance of this discovery? We do not know if this finding is of clinical importance, both in the neuronal damage as potential carcinogenic effects, we must wait for other clinical trials to evaluate these effects.
Glucose and caffeine: a good partnership

The combination of caffeine and glucose appear to be the perfect combination to study, because they improve performance on attention and working memory by increasing the efficiency of the brain areas related to these two functions. Scientific studies have shown with these two substances is decreased brain activation related to the activity in bilateral parietal cortex and left prefrontal cortex, two regions that are actively involved in the processes of attention and working memory. The decrease in brain activity, coupled with the absence of differences in behavioral performance type, suggests that the brain is more efficient since it requires less resources to get the same performance.

In short, our brain consumes a high amount of glucose daily and the union of the same to caffeine can increase your performance.

Study and work. Keeping the home or help the family. Caring for family and friends. Designing a better future and while surfing today. Today, young people have the full agenda and report, confirmed by experts, begins to fail. The reason for these “blackouts”, has a name: stress, invisible enemy that eats away the heads and bodies, and that he was no longer the exclusive preserve of adults. The concern of the experts is that very few reported that they forget that their activities or have trouble concentrating because they are depleted or too pressured. And if the query is not done in time, is more difficult to reverse the picture. Read the rest of this entry »

Seldom can study the role of different parts of the brain with as much accuracy as when an individual is totally devoid of such structure or their action, something rare. But that is the case of a U.S. citizen known by the initials SM, who suffers from a rare condition that caused the two tonsils were destroyed and lives without fear.

These structures (located one in each hemisphere of the brain) are formed by thousands of cores, as part of the limbic system, involved in regulating emotions. Among them, the fear. Animal studies from rats to monkeys, have shown that the amygdala is crucial to terror, from processing to recognition and induction of a response. “But little is known about its role in inducing aware of behaviors related to fear,” the authors write in the journal Current Biology. Read the rest of this entry »

All research points to the same effect. Fun activities such as completing puzzles, crossword puzzles, reading and listening to the radio may delay the first signs of dementia. A new study published in Neurology has discovered a surprising fact. It concluded that in those cases in which dementia occurs later, the progression seems to be faster.

As explained by the principal author of this work, Robert Wilson, “Our results suggest that the benefit of delaying the signs of cognitive decline could lead to more rapid evolution of dementia in later years, but the question is why this happens.” Read the rest of this entry »

The latest research shows that mental activity changes the brain and leads to what is known as “Wisdom.”

These latest findings are part of what is known:

Neuroplasticity.

For many years it was believed that after a certain age, the provision of neurons and are not renewable.

Recent research in neuroscience shows that the brain can be regenerated through use and promotion.
The key to this is called: “Neuroplasticity“, which is shaping the mind, brain, through the activity.

“The brain changes shape, according to the areas that we use, as mental activity.”

In March 2000, researchers at the University of London, found that taxi drivers in that city, were part of the brain, the hippocampus-region important for spatial memory, “particularly developed, much more than other people.
Taxi drivers developed over the area because exercising more, every day memorizing streets and roads.
In these men and women, their ability to memorize streets and roads not waned but increased with age.
In 2002 German scientists found the same findings in the Heschl gyrus of musicians, cerebral cortex area important for processing music … Read the rest of this entry »

Some are very handsome, others not so and there’s plenty. But they all have one thing in common: when they look in the mirror, the image that it brings back is of someone ugly and deformed. They are people with body dimorphic disorder, a psychiatric condition that affects an estimated 1% to 2% of the population. A study just to verify that the brains of these individuals react differently to the contemplation of his own face.

Examples of images used in the study. (Photo: Archives of General Psychiatry) Know exactly what happens in the minds of those who suffer the condition is vital to help them move forward and leave behind the anxiety generated by their appearance. Many are unable to lead a normal, half requiring hospitalization at some point in their lives and about 25% attempt suicide.

Research published in the latest issue of Archives of General Psychiatry compared the brain areas were activated in 17 affected and 16 other healthy while viewing a photograph of themselves and another for a famous actor.

To tune a bit more on analysis of visual processing, scientists, University of California (United States) – Digital images were shown in three different resolutions: standard, in a format that highlights the details (spots, profile of the nose and eyes, hair) or a configuration in which only perceived the spatial relationship between different parts of the face and shape of it.

The medical imaging technique used was the fMRI, which allows observing in real time what brain areas are activated by performing a particular activity.

When individuals with body dimorphic disorder looked at his face, there was a hyper activation of brain structures related to the specific visual processing. This does not happen if they looked the picture of famous actor and healthy people do not happen or your own image or that of the celebrities. Read the rest of this entry »

The resoncia shows the modulation of brain activity of illiterates and literacy process.

A group of researchers identified brain regions modulated literacy, located where the expertise lies in the vocabulary and visual recognition.

The scientists conducted experiments to locate the footprint of learning to read and write public so the Spanish newspaper El Pais.

For this research were used functional MRI techniques in the brains of 63 volunteers Brazilian and Portuguese: 11 illiterate adults literate and 22 and 31 who learned to read and write for children.

The study found that literacy improves the function of speech, but do not yet know whether these changes in brain anatomy, decrease or no capacity, for example, to recognize faces.

Stanislas Dehaene researcher at the University of Paris-Sud and a group of leading scientists in their research published in the journal Science, which not only differences were found in the brain between the illiterate and literate, but also differences in those who learned adults. Read the rest of this entry »

The research, carried out by a Spanish team, was awarded first prize at the III World Congress on Controversies in Neurology.

A group of Spanish researchers has identified the areas in the brain that are impaired when a neurodegenerative process is initiated and appears mild cognitive impairment. “The findings are relevant because they give us clues about the brain areas that we should look to in future make an early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease,” said Juan Antonio Hernandez Tamames, director of the Laboratory of Medical Image Analysis and Biometrics URJC center where images were analyzed in the study.

The research, carried out by the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (URJC), in collaboration with Queen Sofia Foundation Alzheimer’s Project and the Department of Basic Psychology, National University of Distance Education (UNED), analyzed a total of 40 patients -18 and 22 healthy subjects with mild cognitive impairment-selected sample of 140 individuals used in the study, three-year Early detection of MCI and progression to Alzheimer’s Disease. Analysis of MCI subtype, markers, and Risk Factors. Patients with cognitive impairment were classified as amnestic, amnestic and multidomain not, ie those with amnesia problems and problems in the execution of daily tasks.

The work, which has received the first prize at the III World Congress on Controversies in Neurology held in the Czech Republic last October, shows that in subjects with mild cognitive impairment amnestic begins turning parahippocampal damage the brain – an area close to the memory and memories in the brain. Read the rest of this entry »