Tripping into treatment: The psychedelics renaissance
Jasmin Patel discusses how psychedelics work, and how they might solve the current lack of effective treatments for mental health disorders.
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Is the blood-brain barrier a barrier to medical progress?
Sophie Beaumont reviews research into how the blood-brain barrier protects the brain, and poses challenges for delivery of medical treatment.
What stops us from saying tongue twisters fluently?
Sakshi Rajesh explains what linguistics and brain sciences have to tell us about tongue twisters, and why we find them so difficult to say.
Brilliant but Deranged: Cracking Beth’s Secret
By Sandra Saade, Rita Kimijima-Dennemeyer, and Laura-Bianca Pasca Image Credit: Daffodil Dhayaa Humanity will not wait millions of years until Mother Nature will hand it a functionally better brain…[Humankind] will directly, openly and consciously take part in evolution. Corneliu E. Giurgea In Netflix’ groundbreakingly popular mini-series The Queen’s Gambit, we witness the prodigious performance of…
Art on the brain: Can science really explain our taste?
It was 1st week, Michaelmas Term, 2019. Laid out before me was a collection of art from Balliol JCR’s picture fund, I was about to pick one to hang in my room for the following year. I pondered over them briefly before selecting an abstract piece with swirls of red, purple and pink representing nothing…
Yeast on the brain: could fungi be linked to Alzheimer’s Disease?
A fungus that can infect the brain may be the key to understanding Alzheimer’s disease. The blood brain barrier (BBB) is a highly selective barrier that allows very few unwanted substances pass through it. However, there are some bacteria and fungi that have found a way to cross the BBB and cause infections; Candida albicans…
Research finds a high salt diet causes dementia in mice
The current UK population consumes an average of about 8.5g/day of salt, more than 2g/day above the maximum recommended daily amount. This is worrying given its well-known health implications. Salt raises blood pressure, increasing risk of heart disease and stroke. One in three of UK adults have high blood pressure, and as many people are…
Mimicking the Mind
Artificial intelligence has pervaded human imagination since antiquity. The Greeks wrote about statues produced by men who “discovered the true nature of the gods” and mechanical men produced in ancient China that could “walk with rapid strides”. The Renaissance saw an unprecedented explosion of mathematical and scientific ideas fly across Europe in the so-called Age…
Brain inflammation contributes to progression of Alzheimer’s disease
Alzheimer’s disease is a major global health problem, with the number of people with the disease in the UK expected to double by 2050. Efforts to develop an effective treatment have not yet been successful as we don’t properly understand what causes it. What do we already know about Alzheimer’s? One of the key features…
Electrical stimulation of the cerebellum may one day relieve the symptoms of autism
A recent study, published on Nature Neuroscience, lays groundwork for potential development of first neurobiologically-based therapy for patients with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). This research from the O’Donnell Brain Institute in the U.S. explored a specific area within the right cerebellum, called CrusI. Whilst cerebellar abnormalities in ASD patients were known for some time, the…