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Swedish News, A Swedish study, published in PLOS ONE, investigated coffee consumption habits of ~30,000 middle-aged individuals and observed whether there was a correlation with sleep and sleepiness. They found that individuals with higher coffee consumption reported sleep quality similar to low coffee consumers, with differences being minimal and potentially negligible. Factors such as BMI and stress may have higher impact on sleep according to the study. The researchers accounted for confounding factors including smoking, BMI, age, and sex. For example, men, smokers, and individuals with higher BMI report higher coffee consumption. Interestingly, in this middle aged group, over 80%… Read more →
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Interview, Part of The Hypothesis Dump’s Swedish Neuroscience series. “Just imagine that improving sleep could potentially help reduce the risk of disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease or support brain health more broadly. That is a fascinating possibility and one that deserves much more research attention.“, Prof Christian Benedict. A year ago I became a father, and since then, my sleep has been drastically reduced. When I started digging into sleep research I came across a vast number of papers by one professor of sleep studies at Uppsala University. He is also the spokesperson for the Swedish Sleep Research Society. I… Read more →
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Opinion, To discuss this matter, we need to dissect a few philosophical assumptions, some of which we already accept without even deriving their basis. De Anima Religious traditions tend to rest on a dualistic basis with some variations. They posit an agent that is independent of the body but temporarily resides within it. This accounts for the human soul and a God that does not always have a body. While the gods are usually also bestowed with higher powers (however defined). This notion is understandable from the perceptual perspective. If we think of ourselves, we could identify a conscious, wilful,… Read more →
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News, Could our urge to fight actually feel rewarding? A study published in Nature Communications suggests yes, and serotonin may hold the key to stopping it. Most of us know that dopamine is involved in reward because of addiction research, and we know that serotonin can regulate emotions, as evidenced by the effects of antidepressants (SSRIs). However, how do these interact in the brain during aggression? Researchers investigated this by the use of optogenetics, photometry (using light to control or record specific brain cells) and viral tools on mice (to genetically modify the cells and visualise or modify their activity).… Read more →
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Opinion, Western psychiatry insists to a great extent on a reductionist, micro-categorical framework that can still lead to viewing mental and physical health as distinct entities. Although psychiatry is gradually shifting from this view, I argue for a systemic reconfiguration toward a unified, systemic view of human health, hypothesizing that chronic stress sensitivity, neurodivergence, affective disorders, and neurodegenerative conditions share an overlapping genetic vulnerability that is actively “programmed” by the prenatal and early-life neuroimmune milieu. By capitalizing on the hypotheses linking the gut-brain axis, mitochondrial dysfunction, and the antimicrobial properties of amyloid-beta, I seek to illustrate that psychiatric symptoms are… Read more →
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News, A recent study out of Dortmund, Germany has found that transcranial stimulation of a brain region in the prefrontal cortex can change the brain’s view of a perceived danger as safe. In this study, researchers recorded brain activity in healthy individuals with an MRI machine, while they underwent a conditioning task. In the task, individuals would see images of a desk with either a blue or yellow table lamp, during which the researchers conditioned them with a mild electrical shock delivered to their fingers. After the conditioning day, participants were once more exposed to these images; however, a transcranial… Read more →
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Opinion, As I have previously discussed in a recent article, memories are highly dynamic and can be affected by external stimuli (Link).They can adapt to novel contexts and even be modified by others, to the extent that they become false, or inaccurate (Fandakova and Dennis, 2024). Sometimes, memories are formed that are associated to high emotional salience. These can be due to some traumatic event/events or unfortunate circumstances leading to emotional distress. This can lead the nervous system to develop some behavioural strategies to alleviate the distress and to avoid future misfortune. However, some of these strategies are counteractive and… Read more →
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Hypothesis Our memories can be highly unreliable. We easily forget and false memories can form very rapidly or be complete fabrications. The main hypothesis describing the possible evolutionary mechanism, giving rise to this effect is: Memory formation is a highly energy draining function and only memories that increase fitness might be prioritised by the nervous system. This hypothesis is likely, but offers inadequate explanation as to why memories can be so inaccurate and unreliable. Here I propose a hypothesis that offers an explanation for the phenomenon. There is a trade-off in nature between stable/generalised memories and unstable/adaptable memories that increase… Read more →
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News, In a recent study published in Scientific Reports, researchers in Egypt trained a deep learning model to predict brain age. They applied a spatial and temporal analysis on MRI datasets to map anatomical features and how they change over time. This model, they report, outperforms others in error margin, achieving a lower Mean Absolute Error (MAE), a measurement of deviations between the predicted and actual age. Training the model required thousands of MRI scans from individuals across several age groups. They found that the predicted ages accurately matched with actual ages of the individuals. However, accuracy drops among individuals… Read more →
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Opinion, Within neuroscience, I have taken part in the practice of reductionism during my work studying the hippocampus, trying to link circuit mechanisms to behaviour. Now that’s all well and good, but here is the question: How deep can we dig until we get lost in natural variation no longer relating to function? Let’s say you target a receptor in the brain (hypothetical scenario), like the GABA-R, and divide it into subunits, which can be done. Then investigate the effects that one particular subunit has on receptor functionality. For example, let’s say that subunit increases the affinity for the ligand.… Read more →