Month: July 2016
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Parkinson’s disease may be a key to solving the glioblastoma puzzle: SickKids-led study
As the most common and aggressive cancerous brain tumour in adults, a glioblastoma diagnosis remains a death sentence due to its resistance to all currently-available treatments. Research in this area has been slow and steady to date. Now, with promising new findings, a Canadian team of scientists is ushering brain cancer research into a new…
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Want To Retain Memories? McGill Researchers Suggest More REM Sleep May Do The Trick
Improving memory is a quest that never seems to end. For centuries, humans have attempted to find the right combination of social actions to better retain what we’ve learned. Over the years, some options have shown promise such as fasting and strenuous exercise. While effective, they are not particularly popular. Then there’s the odd concept…
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McGill Researchers Have Found A Critical Component To Learning A Language
Acquiring a language is a difficult process. One of the best ways to learn involves the use of a tutor. This one-on-one interaction allows for direct learning as well as interaction without distraction. Usually, the teacher is an expert in that specific language. But when it comes to learning a first language, the most useful…
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SickKids scientists show how memories are linked in the brain
Some memories just seem to go together. Think about an important experience in your life. You may also closely remember another experience that happened around that time too, like exchanging vows at your wedding, and then your friend’s epic dance moves later that same night. Somehow these two memories seem to be linked in your…
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University of Victoria Researchers Find A “Starburst” In The Space-Time Continuum of Motion Sensing
Most people take motion sensing for granted. Our eyes pick up on something moving and our brains are sent a signal to let us know something has occurred in our space-time continuum. Despite the simplicity of the task, the mechanisms allowing us this ability are incredibly complex. They have been studied for over fifty years…
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How the fingertip is teaching scientists about tissue repair
When a newt loses a limb due to injury, it simply grows back. Mammals are not as fortunate as evolution has left us without this useful regenerative capacity. One exception however, is the fingertip which regenerates from the distal tip (farthest end of finger) to the nailbed in both mice and humans. How this occurs…
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This popular painkiller may hamper your ability to notice errors, University of Toronto researchers say
Dan Randles: “We don’t fully understand how acetaminophen affects the brain” It’s been known for more than a century that acetaminophen is an effective painkiller, but a new University of Toronto study shows it could also be impeding error-detection in the brain.
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Alzheimer’s disease : It takes two (proteins) to tango
For years, neuroscientists have puzzled over how two abnormal proteins, called amyloid and tau, accumulate in the brain and damage it to cause Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Which one is the driving force behind dementia? The answer: both of them, according to a new study by researchers at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute. In the…
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New Western neuroscience study shows how we learn from watching others
A new study from Western University shows that the parts of our brain that provide us with our sense of touch are activated when we watch someone else learn a manual skill. The findings by Heather McGregor and Paul Gribble from Western’s Brain and Mind Institute were published by the prestigious journal Current Biology.
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Canadian Researchers Help To Understand How The Brain Copes With Stress
It’s one of the guarantees of life: stress. At its core, it’s a perception of a physical or psychological threat and is designed to help us survive. But the triggers are varied and as such, there is no single way to deal with the impending sensation of harm. For years, researchers have studied the stress…