Gene Morphis ' View

While you sleep, your glymphatic system shampoos your brain. It gives it a good cleaning and eliminates any toxins or bad stuff that has managed to slip in. Of course, your brain is performing an endless number of other functions as well. But the cleaning function is different in that it only is performed while you sleep. And if you don’t sleep enough, well, you’re trying to do your waking tasks with a clogged-up, messy, dirty brain. It is possible- although speculative at this point- that there may be a link between inadequate sleep and Alzheimer’s disease. Enough’ s Enough How much sleep do you need? We came across a newsletter from the Cleveland Clinic with some information on appropriate amounts of sleep that referenced guidelines from a variety of sources including National Sleep Foundation, American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Obviously, infants and babies sleep most of the time, furthermore, they need to. Toddlers (ages 1-3) need 12...

When’s the last time you read a novel? When’s the last time you read one and really thought about it? If you answered college, or even high school, you may want to pick up a best seller, and maybe a classic too. Research from Emory University’s Center for Neuropolicy As we follow research on how to not just maintain a healthy brain, but to grow a bigger one, sometimes we find ourselves surprised. This is one of those situations. We found some research on how reading novels may improve our brains, which made us happy because all of us at Big Brain Place love to read. Gregory Berns, MD, PhD led team of researchers at Emory University who studied the effect of reading a novel on the brain. Dr. Berns, as well as other members of the team, are experts in MRI technology. The scientists established baseline MRI observations for the group of test participants. Then the participants read a section of a novel each day. On the following day, they got an MRI. That process continued unti...

She Blinded Me With Science made it to No. 8 on the Billboard Top 100 in 1982. It was written and recorded by Thomas Dolby, whose real name was Thomas Robertson. Robertson had become so skilled with recording equipment and the like that his friends nicknamed him Dolby, for the rather more famous noise reduction and sound reproduction company Dolby Laboratories. Brain Science This post is pretty “sciency”, hence that introduction. Three brain factoids to set the stage: ·          One part of the brain is the hippocampus , which we’ve mentioned in previous blog posts. It is part of the limbic system and plays an essential part in the formation of new memories and is involved in learning. ·          Neuroplasticity is a term that means that the brain can change-or be “plastic” into adulthood. One of the most important things we’ve learned in recent times is that the brain is “plastic” in adulthood...

A good night’s sleep may help you manage fear and risks better. A study just posted in Journal of Neuroscience describes the importance of a good night’s sleep to controlling strong emotions, especially fear. Previous studies in this area attempted to discover what happens in the brain after a frightful experience.  These prior studies, for example, show how Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) affects sleep. A team at the Rutgers University Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience, led by Itamar Lerner, has taken a different approach. They wanted to see if there is a relationship between adequate sleep and prevention or management of the brain’s reaction to subsequent stressful events. Research Team Lerner is a Postdoctoral Fellow in sleep research. Along with fellow researchers Neha Sinha-also doing Postdoctoral research-in her case in brain imaging, Shira Lupkin and Alan Tsai, they used new technology that allows mobile tracking of sleep habits over a per...