Brain Activity Prolongs Life

Brain Activity Prolongs Life.
Many phrases lay bare how emotions sham the body: Loss makes you feel "heartbroken," you suffer from "butterflies" in the stomach when nervous, and nauseating things make you "sick to your stomach". Now, a new study from Finland suggests connections between emotions and body parts may be prevalent across cultures. The researchers coaxed Finnish, Swedish and Taiwanese participants into tender various emotions and then asked them to link their feelings to body parts. They connected infuriate to the head, chest, arms and hands; disgust to the head, hands and lower chest; self-importance to the upper body; and love to the whole body except the legs.

As for anxiety, participants heavily linked it to the mid-chest. "The most surprising element was the consistency of the ratings, both across individuals and across all the tested wording groups and cultures," said study lead author Lauri Nummenmaa, an deputy professor of cognitive neuroscience at Finland's Aalto University School of Science. However, one US expert, Paul Zak, chairman of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University in California, was unimpressed by the findings.

He discounted the study, saying it was weakly designed, failed to agree how emotions guide and "doesn't examine a thing". But for his part, Nummenmaa said the probe is useful because it sheds light on how emotions and the body are interconnected. "We wanted to understand how the body and the bias work together for generating emotions. By mapping the bodily changes associated with emotions, we also aimed to perceive how different emotions such as disgust or sadness actually govern bodily functions".

Scientists Are Exploring The Human Cerebral Cortex

Scientists Are Exploring The Human Cerebral Cortex.
Higher levels of self-professed sacred trust appear to be reflected in increased thickness of a key brain area, a renewed study finds. Researchers at Columbia University in New York City found that the outer layer of the brain, known as the cortex, is thicker in some areas surrounded by people who place a lot of significance on religion. The reflect on involved 103 adults between the ages of 18 and 54 who were the children and grandchildren of both depressed exploration participants and those who were not depressed.

A team led by Lisa Miller analyzed how often the participants went to church and the unalterable of importance they placed on religion. This assessment was made twice over the ambit of five years. Using MRI technology, the cortical thickness of the participants' brains was also even once.

The Number Of Eye Diseases Is High Among Latino Americans

The Number Of Eye Diseases Is High Among Latino Americans.
Latino Americans have higher rates of visual impairment, blindness, diabetic liking blight and cataracts than whites in the United States, researchers have found. The investigation included observations from more than 4,600 participants in the Los Angeles Latino Eye Study (LALES). Most of the muse about participants were of Mexican descent and aged 40 and older.

In the four years after the participants enrolled in the study, the Latinos' rates of visual deterioration and blindness were the highest of any ethnic conglomeration in the country, compared to other US studies of different populations. Nearly 3 percent of the look participants developed visual impairment and 0,3 percent developed blindness in both eyes. Among those superannuated 80 and older, 19,4 percent became visually impaired and 3,8 percent became bamboozle in both eyes.

The study also found that 34 percent of participants with diabetes developed diabetic retinopathy (damage to the eye's retina), with the highest upbraid among those aged 40 to 59. The longer someone had diabetes, the more in all probability they were to develop diabetic retinopathy - 42 percent of those with diabetes for more than 15 years developed the perception disease.

Participants who had visual impairment, blindness or diabetic retinopathy in one discernment at the start of the study had high rates of developing the condition in the other eye, the study authors noted. The researchers also found that Latinos were more promising to develop cataracts in the center of the eye lens than at the limit of the lens (10,2 percent versus 7,5 percent, respectively), with about half of those ancient 70 and older developing cataracts in the center of the lens.

Patients With Alzheimer's Disease Observed Blunting Of Emotional Expression

Patients With Alzheimer's Disease Observed Blunting Of Emotional Expression.
Patients with Alzheimer's plague often can seem reclusive and apathetic, symptoms frequently attributed to memory problems or predicament finding the right words. But patients with the progressive brain disorder may also have a reduced power to experience emotions, a new study suggests. When researchers from the University of Florida and other institutions showed a humble group of Alzheimer's patients 10 positive and 10 negative pictures, and asked them to classify them as pleasant or unpleasant, they reacted with less intensity than did the group of healthy participants.

And "For the most part, they seemed to cotton on the emotion normally evoked from the picture they were looking at ," said Dr Kenneth Heilman, ranking author of the study and a professor of neurology at the University of Florida's McKnight Brain Institute. But their reactions were separate from those of the healthy participants. "Even when they comprehended the scene, their hotheaded reaction was very blunted". The study is published online in the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences.

The swat participants - seven with Alzheimer's and eight without - made a mark dow a write on a piece of paper that had a happy face on one end and a sad one on the other, putting the mark closer to the lucky face the more pleasing they found the picture and closer to the sad face the more distressing. Compared to the in good participants, those with Alzheimer's found the pictures less intense.

They didn't find the pleasant pictures (such as babies and puppies) as charming as did the healthy participants. They found the negative pictures (snakes, spiders) less negative. "If you have a blunted emotion, kinsmen will say you look withdrawn". One important take-home point is for families and physicians not to automatically think a patient with blunted emotions is depressed and beg for or prescribe antidepressants without a thorough evaluation first.