Schizophrenia may leave a distinctive biological footprint across the brain’s communication network. Using specialized PET imaging, researchers have mapped where synaptic connections are most reduced in people with schizophrenia and identified a possible region from which the damage begins to spread. The study, which involved a Rutgers professor, was published in Molecular Psychiatry. Synapses are [...]
And you thought you were done with the three Rs
The post 30 Minutes, 3 Exercises: A Routine for an Aging Brain appeared first on Nautilus.
Any dog owner would tell you that their canine companions are attuned to their humans' emotional state and respond accordingly. Scientists have performed fMRI scans on dogs and identified a specific brain region that processes happy human facial expresses, like a smile, according to a new paper published in the journal iScience. They also found that dogs can tell the difference between negative facial expressions, specifically anger, sadness, and fear.
“Humans are really good at picking up small details on the face, and so are dogs,” said co-author Raúl Hernández-Pérez of the University of Vienna. “This makes dogs very interesting. By studying their brains, we can understand what adaptations have developed to support their remarkable social and emotional understanding of humans.”
Prior behavioral studies have shown that dogs are sensitive to emotion in human faces. Dogs will, for example, choose a box their human has identified with a happy expression over one the human treats with fear or disgust. Past fMRI studies found that an area in the canine left temporal cortex showed a stronger response to human faces compared to dog faces, as well as a greater response in the caudate, hippocampus, and amygdala to human faces showing emotion versus neutral faces.
© Laura V. Cuaya/CC BY-SA
Any dog owner would tell you that their canine companions are attuned to their humans' emotional state and respond accordingly. Scientists have performed fMRI scans on dogs and identified a specific brain region that processes happy human facial expresses, like a smile, according to a new paper published in the journal iScience. They also found that dogs can tell the difference between negative facial expressions, specifically anger, sadness, and fear.
“Humans are really good at picking up small details on the face, and so are dogs,” said co-author Raúl Hernández-Pérez of the University of Vienna. “This makes dogs very interesting. By studying their brains, we can understand what adaptations have developed to support their remarkable social and emotional understanding of humans.”
Prior behavioral studies have shown that dogs are sensitive to emotion in human faces. Dogs will, for example, choose a box their human has identified with a happy expression over one the human treats with fear or disgust. Past fMRI studies found that an area in the canine left temporal cortex showed a stronger response to human faces compared to dog faces, as well as a greater response in the caudate, hippocampus, and amygdala to human faces showing emotion versus neutral faces.
© Laura V. Cuaya/CC BY-SA
Deep dreaming may be more in tune with the body than we thought
The post When Dreaming Gets Your Heart Moving appeared first on Nautilus.
Triple-negative breast tumors may hijack immune cells to attract nerves that help the cancer grow. Nerves growing through a tumor may help an aggressive breast cancer survive, expand, and resist treatment. University of Oklahoma researchers have identified how triple-negative breast cancer may recruit those nerves by turning the body’s own immune cells into messengers. Networks [...]
Cardiovascular health in midlife may influence mental function later in life. A person’s activity level and blood sugar in middle age may help shape how quickly thinking skills decline decades later. Research from UT Health San Antonio, the academic health center of The University of Texas at San Antonio, found that physical activity and better [...] 
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