In a flow state you feel even difficult tasks are effortless and an hour can pass in the blink of an eye.
Do any of these myths about the brain catch you out?
High consumption of the drink is linked to a 53 percent increased risk of dementia.
High consumption of the drink is linked to a 53 percent increased risk of dementia.
High coffee consumption is linked to brain shrinkage, a new study finds.
Over six cups of coffee a day is linked to a 53 percent increased risk of dementia, the largest study of its kind reveals.
Similarly, high consumption of coffee also increases the risk of stroke, by 17 percent.
The results come from an analysis including almost 18,000 people who were tracked as part of the UK Biobank study.
Ms Kitty Pham, the study’s first author, said:
“Coffee is among the most popular drinks in the world.
Yet with global consumption being more than nine billion kilograms a year, it’s critical that we understand any potential health implications.
This is the most extensive investigation into the connections between coffee, brain volume measurements, the risks of dementia, and the risks of stroke — it’s also the largest study to consider volumetric brain imaging data and a wide range of confounding factors.
Accounting for all possible permutations, we consistently found that higher coffee consumption was significantly associated with reduced brain volume — essentially, drinking more than six cups of coffee a day may be putting you at risk of brain diseases such as dementia and stroke.”
Dementia is a brain condition that affects memory, behaviour and thinking skills.
Six of the risk factors for dementia are:
Stroke is when the blood supply to the brain is disrupted for a period.
Starving the brain of oxygen can cause brain damage and loss of function.
Balance is the key, said Professor Elina Hyppönen, study co-author:
“This research provides vital insights about heavy coffee consumption and brain health, but as with many things in life, moderation is the key.
Together with other genetic evidence and a randomized controlled trial, these data strongly suggest that high coffee consumption can adversely affect brain health.
While the exact mechanisms are not known, one simple thing we can do is to keep hydrated and remember to drink a bit of water alongside that cup of coffee.
Typical daily coffee consumption is somewhere between one and two standard cups of coffee.
Of course, while unit measures can vary, a couple of cups of coffee a day is generally fine.
However, if you’re finding that your coffee consumption is heading up toward more than six cups a day, it’s about time you rethink your next drink.”
The study was published in the journal Nutritional Neuroscience (Pham et al., 2021).
Even a relatively small amount of time outside may prove beneficial to both psychological health and the brain itself.
Music promotes empathy and communication, lowers stress and helps release feel-good neurotransmitters.
The mind’s eye is particularly powerful for this personality type and they enjoy strong visualisation abilities.
Hate the sound of people chewing, breathing or speaking? You may have misophonia.
Hate the sound of people chewing, breathing or speaking? You may have misophonia.
Misophonia, which literally means hatred of sound, is linked to a super-sensitised brain connection, a new study finds.
People with misophonia find certain trigger noises to be so irritating they can promote avoidance, annoyance, anger or even losing control and lashing out.
Typical examples include the sound of breathing, chewing or even speaking.
The sounds most likely to irritate people with misophonia are repetitive and usually involve the mouth, throat or facial area.
People with misophonia may avoid social situations or use headphones to avoid the triggering sounds.
Misophonia is thought to affect between 6 and 20 percent of people to some degree.
It can cause significant distress and interfere with daily life.
A new study finds that there is a unique connectivity between the brain’s auditory and motor cortices in people with misophonia.
Dr Sukhbinder Kumar, the study’s first author, said:
“Our findings indicate that for people with misophonia there is abnormal communication between the auditory and motor brain regions — you could describe it as a ‘supersensitised connection’.
This is the first time such a connection in the brain has been identified for the condition.”
Other possible causes of misophonia are:
Being a relatively newly recognised condition, misophonia has no established treatments.
However, some approaches may be effective, including:
People typically cope with misophonia in a variety of ways:
The study included 33 people with misophonia whose brains were scanned.
Compared with a control group, those with misophonia showed a stronger response between the brain’s auditory and motor cortices.
There was also increased activation in visual regions, Dr Kumar explained:
“What surprised us was that we also found a similar pattern of communication between the visual and motor regions, which reflects that misophonia can also occur when triggered by something visual.
This lead us to believe that this communication activates something called the ‘mirror system’, which helps us process movements made by other individuals by activating our own brain in a similar way — as if we were making that movement ourselves.
We think that in people with misophonia involuntary overactivation of the mirror system leads to some kind of sense that sounds made by other people are intruding into their bodies, outside of their control.
Interestingly, some people with misophonia can lessen their symptoms by mimicking the action generating the trigger sound, which might indicate restoring a sense of control.
Using this knowledge may help us develop new therapies for people with the condition.”
The study was published in The Journal of Neuroscience (Kumar et al., 2021).
What happens in the brain when we touch ourselves, compared with when someone else touches us.
What happens in the brain when we touch ourselves, compared with when someone else touches us.
We cannot tickle ourselves because the brain automatically reduces sensory inputs from the skin when we touch ourselves, research finds.
The dampening of inputs from self-touch starts as early as the spinal cord — in other words, before the ‘touch’ message even reaches the brain.
This helps explain why we cannot tickle ourselves.
It may also help explain why people grab themselves when injured.
Holding an injured arm, for example, may reduce the sense of pain because of this automatic process.
The conclusions come from a study in which people’s brains were scanned while their arms were stroked by both another person and themselves (but not at the same time!).
Dr Rebecca Böhme, the study’s first author, explained the results:
“We saw a very clear difference between being touched by someone else and self-touch.
In the latter case, activity in several parts of the brain was reduced.
We can see evidence that this difference arises as early as in the spinal cord, before the perceptions are processed in the brain.”
The theory goes that our brains are wired to predict how everything we do will affect our senses.
This means most people cannot tickle themselves.
Interestingly, though, some patients with schizophrenia can tickle themselves, suggesting their brains are wired differently.
Dr Böhme said:
“Our results suggest that there is a difference as early as in the spinal cord in the processing of sensory perceptions from self-touch and those from touch by another person.
This is extremely interesting.
In the case of the visual system, research has shown that processing of visual impressions occurs as early as in the retina, and it would be interesting to look in more detail into how the brain modulates the processing of tactile perceptions at the level of the spinal cord.”
The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Boehme et al., 2019).
Is there such a thing as a ‘male’ and ‘female’ brain?
If you watch a baby’s eyes, they move quickly, processing and integrating information.
If you watch a baby’s eyes, they move quickly, processing and integrating information.
Time seems to pass faster with age because our eyes and brain get slower, a new theory suggests.
This makes older people feel time is passing quicker now than it was in their youth.
If you watch a baby’s eyes, they move quickly, processing and integrating information.
In contrast, adult’s eyes move more slowly and their brains are more complex.
Signals have further to travel through the brain and take longer, because the whole system is slowing down.
This gives older people the subjective experience that things are happening more quickly.
Imagine the difference between watching a movie in slow motion compared with fast forward.
An older person — who is effectively watching in fast forward — sees fewer images in the same amount of time, leading to the perception that the film is passing more quickly.
A young person, who is watching in slow motion, has the perception that it is dragging on and on.
Professor Adrian Bejan, the study’s author, said:
“People are often amazed at how much they remember from days that seemed to last forever in their youth.
It’s not that their experiences were much deeper or more meaningful, it’s just that they were being processed in rapid fire.”
In youth, the mind receives many more images each day, Professor Bejan said:
“The human mind senses time changing when the perceived images change.
The present is different from the past because the mental viewing has changed, not because somebody’s clock rings.
Days seemed to last longer in your youth because the young mind receives more images during one day than the same mind in old age.”
The study was published in the journal European Review (Bejan, 2019).
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