Electric simulation helps a paralysed man to stand and walk

Rob Summers is able to stand while his spinal cord is stimulated

A US man named Rob Summers who was a Baseball player and a team winner who was paralyzed from the chest down after being hit by a car was very happy and speechless and was in disbelief after he was able to voluntarily move his toes, hips, knees and ankles and also walk on a treadmill with the help of electrical stimulation of his spinal cord.

After being injured in car accident his spinal cord was damaged, due to which messages from the brain, which used to travel down the spinal cord, were blocked and he was paralysed.

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A cup of Tea can boost your memory: Study

According to research carried out by Dutch scientists, tea has the power to zap brain power, keeps fatigue away and helps thinking capability.

Researchers looked at the effect of key chemicals found in tea on the mental performance of 44 young volunteers.

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Beware, Magnets can confuse your brain.

Scientists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have found a way to switch off your sense of right and wrong, by using magnets.

Scientist first asked a group of volunteers to rate actions on a scale from one (morally forbidden) to seven (permissible), the journal Proceedings of the US National Science Academy reports.

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Hormones of Trust has its own limits: Researchers

A hormone, named Oxytocin, produced by the hypothalamus in the brain, which helps and has been shown to make people trust each other more and promote feelings of love.

But according to researchers, this hormone has now been found to have limits, since it promotes love and trust only towards know(in-group) people and not towards people who are seen as different.

Psychologists have therefore concluded it is involved in ethnocentrism.

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Genes which discourages you from drinking found by scientists

Do u Feel discouraged by yourself when it comes to drinking ?? Then it may be in our genes.

A gene that plays an indirect role in preventing some people from becoming alcoholics has been identified for the first time.

Researchers from University of North Carolina have found out the gene, called CYP2E1, which is indirectly responsible for the protective effect for 10 to 20 per cent of the population.

The gene, they said, codes for an enzyme that breaks down ethanol-- the intoxicating agent in alcoholic beverages -- and other toxins in the brain, LiveScience reported.

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Waking may help you to prevent memory loss and Alzheimer's disease from coming.

Many know that Regular walking keep and fit and healthy but Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh found that men and women who walk at least six miles (about 9.5km) a week are mentally sharper in later life than those who don't walk much.

Our brains, according to the researchers, decrease in size as we age, but regular exercise may protect it in later life and could cut the risks of memory problems by half, the Telegraph reported.

For their study, the team studied 299 dementia free elderly individuals and recorded the distance they walked each week.

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Vaccine found to fight against Brain tumor.

Researcher found out a new experimental vaccine that drastically helps in extending the life of patients with the most deadly type of brain tumor, glioblastoma (GBM), according to a small-scale US study published on Monday.

This vaccine is designed to targets a aggressive cancer gene called EGFRvIII that fuels glioblastomas, researchers said.

In their study of 18 patients, survival rate was extended from an expected 15 months to 26 months.

The study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology also said the vaccinated patients benefited from a longer “progression-free survival period, 14.2 months, compared to 6.3 months for those who did not receive the vaccine.”

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Magnet may influence your brain to turn a left-hander to a right-hander

(PTI) A powerful magnetic field can temporarily confuse the brain and alter our hand preference, a new study has found.

In an extraordinary experiment by researchers at the University of California found that volunteers' hand choices were changed when they were subjected to a powerful magnetic field.

Although the effects lasted till the magnet was switched on, the study threw light on the origin of hand choice in the brain, the researchers said.

It also highlighted that how it is easy to change people's behaviour with magnets, they added.

Dr Flavio Oliveira, who led the study, said: "We are not really looking at handedness, but at hand choice. We found that in situations where people are almost equally likely to use their left or right hand we can make them use their left hand more by stimulating this part of the brain."

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Obesity is 'determined by brain'

(PTI)An international study claims to have finally found the reason as to why some people who eat a high-fat diet remain slim, while others pile on the weight — obesity is determined by brain.

The study, led by Monash University in Australia, found that a high-fat diet causes brain cells to become insulated from the body preventing vital signals, which tell the body to stop eating and burn energy, from reaching the brain efficiently.

Prof. Michael Cowley, who led the research, said there were two clear outcomes from the findings.

"We discovered that a high-fat diet caused brain cells to become insulated from the body, rendering the cells unable to detect signals of fullness to stop eating. Secondly, the insulation also created a further complication in that the body was unable to detect signals to increase energy use and burn off calories," he said.

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11 hrs of meditation may boost brain function

(ANI)Just 11 hours of learning a meditation technique provokes positive structural changes in brain connectivity by boosting efficiency in a part that helps a person regulate behaviour in accordance with their goals, according to a study.

The technique, called integrative body-mind training (IBMT), has been the focus of intense scrutiny by a team of Chinese researchers led by Yi-Yuan Tang of Dalian University of Technology in collaboration with University of Oregon psychologist Michael I. Posner.

IBMT was adapted from traditional Chinese medicine in the 1990s in China, where it is practiced by thousands of people.

It is now being taught to undergraduates involved in research on the method at the University of Oregon.

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Praying to God helps to de-stress but only for those who belive in it.

"Eighty-five percent of the world has some sort of religious beliefs," says Michael Inzlicht, who cowrote the study with Alexa Tullett, both at the University of Toronto Scarborough. "I think it behooves us as psychologists to study why people have these beliefs; exploring what functions, if any, they may serve."

With two experiments, the researchers showed that when people think about religion and God, their brains respond differently—in a way that lets them take setbacks in stride and react with less distress to anxiety-provoking mistakes. Participants either wrote about religion or did a scrambled word task that included religion and God-related words. Then the researchers recorded their brain activity as they completed a computerized task—one that was chosen because it has a high rate of errors. The results showed that when people were primed to think about religion and God, either consciously or unconsciously, brain activity decreases in areas consistent with the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), an area associated with a number of things, including regulating bodily states of arousal and serving an alerting function when things are going wrong, including when we make mistakes.

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Nerve connections regenerated after spinal cord injury.

(IANS) In a breakthrough study, scientists have successfully achieved regeneration of nerve connections after a spinal cord injury.

UC Irvine, UC San Diego and Harvard University team conducted the study on rodents.
They did this by deleting an enzyme called PTEN (a phosphatase and tensin homolog). PTEN activity is low early during development, allowing cell proliferation.

It then turns on when growth is completed, inhibiting mTOR and precluding any ability to regenerate.

Even a small spinal cord injury can cause paralysis of arms and legs, loss of ability to feel below the shoulders, inability to control the bladder and bowel, loss of sexual function, and secondary health risks including susceptibility to urinary tract infections, pressure sores and blood clots due to an inability to move the legs.

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Trick the Brain to shed weight.

Being a little smart may help you lose weight! The brain can be tricked into shedding weight by eating high satiety, low-calorie foods like apples, bananas and grapes.

For instance, eating an apple before your meal can make you feel more satisfied from your food, says a Daily Mail report.

Apples are about 25 per cent air and, as they're digested, they produce the hormone GLP-1, which sends satiety signals to the brain.

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