All articles tagged with #brain wiring
Researchers mapped 124 million neural connections in a male fruit fly and compared them with females, finding about 5% wiring differences that drive aggression, courtship, and love-song circuits. While 95% of cells are shared, the wiring differences illuminate how genes shape brain wiring to influence behavior, with potential implications for human conditions such as autism and schizophrenia and possible inspirations for AI design.
A Cambridge-led study analyzed MRI diffusion scans from 3,802 people—from newborns to age 90—identifying four major turning points that divide life into five brain-wiring eras: birth to about age 9, adolescence to about 32, adulthood, early aging around 66, and late aging around 83. The evolving neural wiring correlates with changes in learning, memory, and intelligence, suggesting the brain’s development and aging follow a staged timeline that could inform education and elder care.
Research and expert insights explain why some people struggle to stop drinking despite negative consequences, highlighting the roles of biology, psychology, environment, and the development of tolerance, and emphasizing the importance of support and behavioral change for those with alcohol use disorder.
A study shows that despite individual differences in neural activity, humans share a common relational structure in brain responses that explains how we perceive the world similarly, which could inform AI development.
A national study by the National Institutes of Health has found that children with ADHD have more wiring in their brains, making it harder for their brains to send clear signals about tasks like following instructions or sitting still. The study used over 10,000 brain scans from six different datasets and found that children with ADHD have hyperconnected wiring in specific brain regions, making it harder for them to control impulsive behaviors and attention. The findings provide insight into the brain circuitry of children with ADHD and may help in understanding and potentially treating the disorder.
A new NIH study has found atypical connections in the brains of children with ADHD, debunking the myth of "bad parenting" causing the condition. The study revealed increased connectivity between deep brain structures and the frontal cortex in young brains with ADHD, suggesting too little synaptic pruning occurring in those pathways. This increased understanding of specific brain areas involved in ADHD symptoms could lead to more effective treatments in the future.
The size of the human brain has long been associated with intelligence, but recent research suggests that brain size alone is not the determining factor. Instead, changes in the brain's wiring diagram, the shapes of neurons, and gene expression play crucial roles in human cognition. Evidence from studies on species with small brains, such as Homo floresiensis and Homo naledi, challenges the notion that larger brains are necessary for complex behaviors. The human brain's unique connectivity patterns and gene expression contribute to its cognitive abilities, but further research is needed to fully understand how these factors interact to shape human behavior.
Researchers at Imperial College London have discovered the brain wiring in mice that instinctively prepares them for sleep by engaging in nesting behavior. This behavior is controlled by dedicated brain cells in the prefrontal cortex, which connect to the hypothalamus and trigger nesting and sleep. The study suggests that this sleep preparation process is likely a survival feature shared among mammals, emphasizing the importance of proper sleep routines, or "sleep hygiene," in humans. The findings may provide insights into why sleep is essential for survival.
The nervous system is cross-wired, so that the left side of the brain controls the right half of the body and vice versa. While this neural cross-wiring is ubiquitous in the animal kingdom, biologists still aren’t certain what its benefit is. An intriguing answer has come from the world of mathematics. The key to that solution lies in exactly how neural circuits are laid out within brain tissue. The simplest way to introduce three-dimensionality into the 2D maps in our brain is to fold in the edges of the “body” plane 90 degrees, representing (for example) the skin of your chest folded around the sides of your rib cage. Folds in the cerebral cortex introduce a third dimension there too. Now, since the fibers must pass through the midline, because that’s where the central nervous system in our body runs, the two fibers become crossed.
A new brain scan study suggests that a person's native language may shape how their brain builds connections between different hubs of information processing. The study found that the observed differences in language network structures were related to linguistic characteristics in the native languages of the study participants: German and Arabic. The researchers used diffusion MRI to obtain brain scans of 94 participants, half of whom spoke only German and the other half spoke only Arabic. The scans revealed that the native German speakers showed increased connectivity in the regions of the left hemisphere involved in language processing, compared with the Arabic speakers.
A new study by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig has found evidence that the language we speak shapes the connectivity in our brains that may underlie the way we think. Using neuroimaging to analyze neural connectivity in native German and native Arabic speakers, researchers found stronger connectivity between the right and left hemispheres in Arabic speakers, and stronger connectivity in the left hemisphere language area in German speakers. The findings suggest that the structural language connectome develops and is modulated by environmental factors such as the characteristic processing demands of the native language.