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Category: neuroscience – Page 3

How hair and skin characteristics affect brain imaging: Making fNIRS research more inclusive

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a promising non-invasive neuroimaging technique that works by detecting changes in blood oxygenation linked to neural activity using near-infrared light. Compared to fMRI and various other methods commonly used to study the brain, fNIRS is easier to apply outside of laboratory settings.

This technique requires study participants to wear a special cap fitted with optodes, which consist of light sources that emit near-infrared light into the scalp and detectors that measure the light that is reflected back. These measurements can be used to estimate blood oxygenation in the brain’s outer layers. Despite its potential for conducting research in everyday settings, the quality of signals collected using fNIRS is known to be influenced by biophysical factors.

A team of researchers at Boston University recently set out to better delineate the extent to which people’s and skin color, age and sex impact the quality of fNIRS signals picked up from their scalp.

Sleep patterns linked to variation in health, cognition, lifestyle and brain organization

Researchers led by Aurore Perrault at Concordia University, Canada and Valeria Kebets at McGill University, Canada, have used a complex data-driven analysis to uncover relationships among multiple aspects of sleep and individual variation in health, cognition, and lifestyle.

Published in PLOS Biology, the study reveals five –biopsychosocial profiles and their associated patterns of functional connectivity among brain regions.

Most studies of sleep focus on a single aspect, such as duration, and examine how it relates to a single outcome, like poor mental health. However, trying to understand and predict outcomes by combining the results of many different single-association studies invariably fails. The new study by Perrault and team takes a different approach. Using a sample of 770 people from the Human Connectome Project dataset, they conducted a multivariate, data-driven analysis.

Depression genetics differ by sex: Study find females carry higher risk than males do

Important genetic differences in how females and males experience depression have been revealed for the first time in findings that could pave the way for more targeted intervention and treatments.

In the study, published in Nature Communications, scientists found that contribute more to risk in than in males. The team discovered about twice as many genetic “flags” for depression in the DNA of females as they did in that of males.

“We already know that females are twice as likely to suffer from depression in their lifetime than males,” said Dr. Brittany Mitchell, Senior Researcher at QIMR Berghofer’s Genetic Epidemiology Lab. “And we also know that depression looks very different from one person to another. Until now, there hasn’t been much consistent research to explain why depression affects females and males differently, including the possible role of genetics.”

Several Psychiatric Disorders Share The Same Root Cause, Study Shows

Researchers recently discovered that eight different psychiatric conditions share a common genetic basis.

A study published this year pinpointed specific variants among those shared genes and shows how they behave during brain development.

The US team found many of these variants remain active for extended periods, potentially influencing multiple developmental stages – and offering new targets for treatments that could address several disorders at once.

The loser’s brain: How neuroscience controls social behavior

Social hierarchies are everywhere—think of high school dramas, where the athletes are portrayed as the most popular, or large companies, where the CEO makes the important decisions. Such hierarchies aren’t just limited to humans, but span the animal kingdom, with dominant individuals getting faster food access, higher mating priority, and bigger or better territories. While it’s long been thought that winning or losing can influence the position of an individual within a social hierarchy, the brain mechanisms behind these social dynamics have remained a mystery.

In iScience, researchers from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) investigate the neurological basis of social hierarchy in male mice, pinpointing the neurons they believe crucial in determining these social hierarchy dynamics.

“You may think that being dominant in the is all about , like size. But interestingly, we’ve found that it seems to be a choice, based on ,” said Professor Jeffery Wickens, head of the Neurobiology Research Unit at OIST and co-author on this study. “The involved in these decisions is well conserved between mice and humans, so there are likely useful parallels to be drawn.”

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