Brain Scans May Predict Alzheimer's

As long as it's baked or grilled, not fried: study

(NEWSER) - One possible way to protect yourself against Alzheimer's: Eat fish once per week. A new study suggests that elderly people who do just that are three to five times less likely to get the disease or suffer memory loss, the Telegraph reports. But in order for the fish to help, its brain-protecting Omega-3 fatty acids must be preserved—which means you can bake it or grill it, but not fry it. More»

Bran scan video is first to reveal female fireworks

(NEWSER) - Here, finally, is a female orgasm in living, gasping color, delivered in a mesmerizing video of brain scans. The scans show the build up, the big event, and the "recovery" after several areas of the brain light up in a "crescendo" of oxygen-rapacious activity, reports the Guardian . The video shows what happens to the brain of a 54-year-old PhD student and sex therapist masturbating in an MRI machine. "It's my dissertation," the student said. "I'm committed to it." The aim of the research is to "understand how the orgasm builds up from genital stimulation and what parts of the brain become recruited, and finally build up into an orgasm," said Rutgers Professor Barry Komisaruk, who presented the work at a scientific conference in Washington. More»

Process could someday let us look in on dreams

(NEWSER) - Scientists at UC Berkeley have made a major advancement in the field of mind reading, reconstructing YouTube videos based on brain scans from people who’d seen them. Researchers would put subjects into an MRI machine and track their brain activity as they viewed videos. Once they’d build a model of how a subject’s mind processed the video, “we could read brain activity for that subject and run it backward … to try to uncover what the viewer saw,” one study coauthor tells ABC News . More»

Brain scans indicate permanent, positive development

(NEWSER) - This might already be obvious to enlightened souls, but researchers are discovering that meditation may permanently change the physical structure of the brain. Neural circuits linked to focus, happiness and empathy may be strengthened through long-term meditation, effectively rewiring the brain and "lighting up" certain sections with a life-long capability for stronger activity in those regions, scans have indicated. “If you engage in certain kinds of exercise on a regular basis you can strengthen certain muscle groups in predictable ways,” explains researcher Richard Davidson. “Strengthening neural systems is not fundamentally different." More»

(USER SUBMITTED) - Sudoku, crosswords, and even listening to the radio may not be all they're cracked up to be when it comes to staving off mental decline. A study by researchers at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago indicates that once diagnosed with dementia and Alzheimer's, increased brain activity may actually accelerate the rate of decline. For those without dementia, the rate was reduced, in line with previous studies. Read the full article . More»