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More Than Just Memories: Hippocampus Involved in Conflict Resolution

The hippocampus in the brain’s temporal lobe is responsible for more than just long-term memory. Researchers have for the first time demonstrated that it is also involved in quick and successful conflict resolution.

The research is in Current Biology. (full access paywall)

Research: “Human Hippocampal Dynamics during Response Conflict” by Carina R. Oehrn, Conrad Baumann, Juergen Fell, Hweeling Lee, Henrik Kessler, Ute Habel, Simon Hanslmayr, and Nikolai Axmacher in Current Biology doi:10.1016/j.cub.2015.07.032

Image: The hippocampus is particularly active when a person solves conflicts quickly and successfully. Credit: RUB/Bierstedt.

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Scientists from the Ohio State University managed to grow a fully functional tiny human brain in a lab.

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"Schizophrenia is associated with structural and functional alterations of the visual system, including specific structural changes in the eye. Tracking such changes may provide new measures of risk for, and progression of the disease, according to a literature review."

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"Genes linked to creativity could increase the risk of developing schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, according to new research. Genetic risk scores were examined in a sample of 86,292 individuals from the general population of Iceland. Creative individuals were defined as those belonging to the national artistic societies of actors, dancers, musicians, visual artists and writers."

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Nice little video about how depression affects the lifes of patience and their relatives.

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National Study of Deep Brain Stimulation for Depression Fails to Demonstrate Efficacy

Depression is a leading cause of disability worldwide, and treatment-resistant symptoms of depression have a terrible personal and societal cost. They can devastate lives, careers, and families. Some severely ill patients may be unable to attend to even the basic elements of self-care, while others attempt or complete suicide.

Because of the clinical urgency, deep brain stimulation (DBS) treatments for depression have been developed over the past 15 years. These treatments require surgery to make a small hole in the skull through which an electrode is passed into a specific brain region. Once positioned, a standard electrical stimulation procedure is initiated, which is modeled after highly effective DBS treatments that are used for Parkinson’s disease, essential tremor, and other neurologic conditions.

DBS does not damage healthy brain tissue. It works by using electrical pulses to ‘block’ neural signals from the targeted brain area that is the known or suspected source of the symptoms.

A large number of relatively small open-label studies have supported the effectiveness of various forms of DBS for both depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

In the current issue of Biological Psychiatry, Dr. Darin Dougherty and his colleagues report the results of the first large-scale, randomized, sham-controlled trial of deep brain stimulation treatment for treatment-resistant symptoms of depression. Thirty patients received active DBS or sham ‘placebo’ stimulation for 16 weeks, targeted at the ventral capsule and ventral striatum, brain regions implicated in reward and motivation. A two-year open-label continuation phase followed.

This study, conducted at five medical centers across the U.S. that collaborated on the project, failed to find that DBS reduced depression symptoms better than sham stimulation.

“While initial open-label trials of DBS at the ventral capsule/ventral striatum target were promising, the results of this first controlled trial were negative,” explained Dougherty, Director of Neurotherapeutics at Massachusetts General Hospital and Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Thomas Schlaepfer, an expert on DBS treatment unaffiliated with this study, from Johns Hopkins University and University Hospital Bonn in Germany, wrote a companion piece to this article and commented, “On first sight, this might be seen as a crisis for the whole field of neurostimulation therapies for depression… [but we] believe that these are examples of failed studies and not failed treatments.”

“This study raises serious questions about the advisability of continuing to stimulate these reward regions in the manner employed in this study,” said Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry. “It is critical to understand that this study is not a universal indictment of DBS as a strategy for depression. It may turn out that stimulating other brain regions or stimulating these regions in different ways could provide important benefit.”

“Given the degree of response that we have seen in some of the most treatment refractory patients, we agree with Dr. Schlaepfer and Dr. Krystal. Alternative study designs will have to be considered as we conduct future clinical trials in this critical area,” concluded Dougherty.

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very interesting article

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We believe in the importance of literacy, but somehow it is seen as acceptable to be bad at mathematics. We need to push people beyond numeracy to the really exciting bits

Sadly it’s true, you’ll always need math!

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This is currently one of my favorite pages. It shows an interactive 3D Model of our Brain. Unfortunately it’s in German, but you can still have a look at it and discover the diffetent regions of the Brain. I really love the site and I think they’re doing a great job in educating people :)

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Welcome...

Ok, this is my 1st Blogpost (ever). The aim of this blog is to collect everything Brain related (Neuroscientific, Psychological, Philosophical). I will share a lot from other sites, but I will also write down my own opinions sometime. Please note that I’m trying to be 100% scientific, but this also depends on the content of the shared sites. Since I’m not a fully Scientist yet, I probably won’t get everything completely right, but I’m learning ;)! I hope you enjoy your stay and maybe I can light the enthusiasm for Neurosciences in some more people.

I started this blog, because during my studies I always find some really interesting stuff and wanted to share it with the world. I’m trying to make Science easier to understand for everyone, not only for persons from the field. In my opinion there’s nothing more interesting then to understand how our brain and mind works. Since the researches haven’t found a clue for everything yet, I’m having really high expectations of what the future will tell us about our Brains.

Thank you in advance for reading and if you have any questions and/or critics, feel free to ask!

PS: maybe you already noticed, that my mother tongue is not English, so don’t be too harsh about that ;)