The neurological mechanism of linking stress-induced anxiety to motivation for reward Stressful situations activate complex biological mechanisms and neural circuits that detect and respond to threats to homeostasis, resulting in behavioral responses that minimize disruption and increase survival. The cognitive processing of stress involves subjective appraisal to guide appropriate behavioral responses. Maladaptive responses to stress can contribute to the development of anxiety-related disorders and depression. The prefrontal cortex, amygdala, bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, and ventral hippocampus are all brain areas involved in anxiety-like behavior induced by stress.
Promoting Brain State Transformation from Early Mild Cognitive Impairment to Health through Virtual External Stimulation Alzheimer’s disease is an incurable neurodegenerative disease that often starts with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and progresses to AD. Research has focused on early MCI as a potential target for therapeutic interventions to delay disease progression. Neurostimulation techniques like tDCS and rTMS have shown promise in improving cognitive function in patients with AD and EMCI. However, large-scale experimental studies on these techniques are limited due to experimental and ethical constraints.
The human brain is a complex organ with a wide variety of cell types and intricate gene regulation processes. Epigenetic modifications, such as DNA methylation, play a crucial role in gene expression and regulation. Studying DNA methylation patterns at a single-cell resolution can provide insights into the diverse cellular composition and functional diversity of the human brain.
Prof. Joseph R. Ecker from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies has recently reported the discovery concerning DNA methylation in brain maps.
Prof. Francis R. Willett from the Department of Neurobiology, Stanford University School of Medicine, reported their newly developed BCI device/method for speech neuroprosthesis.
They focused on addressing the communication challenges faced by individuals with paralysis, particularly those who can no longer speak due to conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). People with neurological disorders often experience severe speech and motor impairments, including the complete loss of speech (locked-in syndrome). While there have been advancements in brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) that enable individuals to communicate through hand movement activities, speech BCIs have not yet achieved high accuracies for unconstrained communication with large vocabularies.