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Greetings people, Since it’s Brain Awareness Week. We've decided to carry on the theme of infographics. The brain is a unique organ, but did you know? Aristotle, a famous Greek philosopher thought the brain was less important than the heart and the liver, however it is equally if not more important. So you can only imagine, if you were to suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or Dementia your quality of life would be atrocious.

The first brain infographic presents a collection of facts about the human brain.

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If you ever wondered why you act the way you do, the answer may lie in which side of the brain you tend to use more. The following infographic shows which side of the brain (right or left) is responsible of what function/actions, the different learning styles of each side and advice for each side.

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The following brain infographic shows the map of the brain and what area of the brain processes which emotions and functions. Additionally it also shows how you can retrain your brain to be more emotionally flexible, understanding and sensitive.

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Language shapes the way we think and for decades, neuroscientists and psychologists have been researching the effects of neurological diseases and brain lesions on human language processing and production. Through modern technology we are now able to create an image of a normal brain at work processing language. The following infographic shows the areas of the brain which are responsible for language comprehension and speech production, the common brain imaging techniques, and how we learn language.

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Scientific research and development is a controversial subject, but the following infographic details everything you need to know about the current affairs and the future of brain research.

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“Brain and drugs”, and “drugs, brain and behavior” are topics that are always under discussion. So we made sure we included a few infographic on this subject. The first infographic “Your Brain on Drugs” provides an insight into how the brain reacts to addiction and drugs. The second infographic “Your Brain on Beer Vs. Coffee” shows the effect of beer and coffee on our brain.

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There are habits that correlate with brain performance and the following infographic produced by brain training leader Lumosity presenting a 5 simple habits correlated with brain performance.

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Everyone in the modern age wants to boost their memory and intelligence so it only made sense to present an infographic that shows how you can master your brain and raise your IQ.

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So that’s it for today. We hope you have enjoyed the infographic compilation. See you soon.

Biobunch. 

Over and out.

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Greetings everybody! 

Welcome to the first Biology Behind of 2014!! In the post today we will be informing you about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder otherwise known as PSTD, this is the only major mental disorder in which the cause is known. For those of you who watched the Call the Midwife christmas special will be fairly familiar with this. So lets go!!

In 1678 the Swiss diagnosed patients as having nostalgia, the Spanish physicians termed the symptoms as "Estar Roto" meaning "to be broken"until recently this disease was finally defined as its own disease known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  The following characteristics, are associated with PTSD.

Reduced Hippocampus: 

Image: Biological studies of post traumatic stress disorder.

One of the most common brain structures seen in post traumatics stress disorder patients is a reduction in the volume of the hippocampus, this reduction in cortical capacity has shown patients to have an inability to inhibit fear and associated negative responses.

The above picture, was taken from a study were 2 pairs of twins were used to investigate the effects of PTSD. On the left hand side there is a twin pair that has a combat veteran with PTSD and his counterpart who has not suffered from a traumatic event but has a high risk of PTSD and on the right is a control pair of twins of a combat exposed twin and a non combat exposed twin both without PTSD. Contrast A demonstrates smaller hippocampi in the veteran with PTSD than the veteran without PTSD. Contrast B however, compared hippocampal volumes in the pair of twin with the combat exposed PTSD suffereing twin. Finally contrast C compares the hippocampal volumes of no PTSD in high and low risk twins. From this it could be suggested that a reduced hippocampal volume could be a pr-existing vulnerability factor as apposed to a feature that occurs after a traumatic event.  

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There has been a possible link made between the severity of PTSD symptoms and the reduction of the hippocampus, this is seen in some studies that failed to observe the reduction in hippocampal volume that was seen in other PTSD patients because the selected subject in the study had less severe symptoms of PTSD. It is difficult to see this feature is children affected with PTSD and this may suggest that nerumaturational factors may have a role in hippocampal reduction. Magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging, is able to quantify N-acetylaspartate, this is able to mark neuronal density was used in PTSD subjects and found neuronal reduction. However this is still be determined. 

Sympathetic nervous system: 

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Events such as the one seen above are often displayed as a cause of an exaggerated amygdala activation, you may remember the amygdala as the fear handling part of the brain. This activation is linked to noradrenergic hyper-reactivity which causes hyperarousal and re-experiencing symptoms (trauma related nightmares, flashbacks, narratives and odours) and cause the emotional and physiological reaction to traumatic cues.

A chemical protein called neuroprotein Y  is the response to this hyper activity, those with a high gene expression showed a lower anxiety and reduced amygdala reactivity to trauma related stimuli. In subjects, with low or blunted neuroprotein Y a response to  sympathetic activatio triggered PTSD symptoms. 

Shift in brain state:

When we say a shift in brain state it refers to a change in what data the brain processes, in PTSD this shift is from processing multimodal contextual and memory retention to a more  primitive amygdala-mediated, formation of time locked snesory associations and expression of a trauma specific defense response.

PTSD is not only common in soldiers traumatic events can happen to anybody therefore PTSD is not restricted it has been found in animals studies: 
Such as dogs serving in the war:

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So that was Biology behind...
Biobunch,
Over and out

  

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Greetings everyone,

Today marks a marvellous day because it is the second post of the new series 'Biology Behind' every other week we will take a theory, a disease, or a natural phenomenon and look at how biology drives it into being! so without further a dew we give to you today's post...

In the UK there are approximately 700,000 people out of a population of 61 million who are diagnosed with dementia, and it was found that more than 70 diseases/disorders are associated with this condition.

 

Post highlight: Did you know that Dementia is actually not a disease in itself such as Alzheimer's, it is in fact diseases that can eventually lead to dementia!

Like most conditions, dementia is pretty hard to define however we found one that seemed to be widely accepted. Dementia is thought to be a progressive deterioration in cognitive function, more than what is expected to be from normal aging and is due to damage or disease. 

The symptoms that are associated with dementia are split into two different categories

1. Cognitive symptoms: impairments in language, praxis, judgement, visuospatial function and related mental activities.
2.  Non-cognitive symptoms: disturbance in behaviour, mood, belief and experience (hallucinations).

Now that we have outlined the symptoms that come with dementia, it is important to note that although dementia is a development from other diseases there are 'types' of dementia.

So, we know that dementia is not a disease but caused by a disease, we know that when talking about the symptoms of dementia that we can break it down into two separate categories, no we move onto what factors or diseases can lead to dementia. 

Alzheimer's disease: unsurprisingly, this is the most common cause of dementia. The chemistry and structure of the brain in an Alzheimer's patient changes and their brain cells begin to die prematurely.

Stroke (vascular problems): this is as a cause with problems of the blood vessels. All blood vessels leading to the brain are extremely important as the brain needs a rich and continuous supply of oxygen and when interrupted brain cells begin to die causing vascular dementia.

Dementia with Lewy bodies: this is where tiny spherical clusters of protein build up within the nerve cell, thereby affecting chemical signalling between one nerve cell and the next. It affects the patients memory, concentration and ability to speak, it is also often mistaken for Parkinson's Disease.

Frontotemporal dementia: this dementia includes Picks disease (this is considered to be a progressive form of dementia involving localised atrophy of the brain.) In this form the front part of the brain is damaged which in the short term affects behaviour and personality and then later on the memory starts to become affected.

Other diseases that can lead to dementia are: progressive supra nuclear palsy; Korsakoffs syndrome; Binswangers disease; HIV and AID's and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease; common Parkinson's disease; Huntington's disease; Motor Neurone disease and Multiple Sclerosis. People with high blood glucose levels have a higher risk of dementia even without diabetes.

This brings us to the end of our post! we hope that you enjoyed this post and make sure that you visit our blog again on Wednesday for the animal of the week wondering what it is well you are going to have to come back and see! And we will leave you with this fact it has been proven that being by lingual or having the ability to speak  another language other than your own could help in preventing dementia.Well in that case...

@Biobunch.
Cambio y fuera!

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