Relapse or recovery? Neuroimaging predicts course of substance addiction treatment

An Indiana University study has provided preliminary evidence that by measuring brain activity through the use of neuroimaging, researchers can predict who is likely to have an easier time getting off drugs and alcohol, and who will need extra help.

“We can also see how brain activity changes as people recover from their addictions,” said Joshua Brown, assistant professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington, part of the College of Arts and Sciences.

The chronic occurrence of relapse underscores the need for improved methods of treatment and relapse prevention. One potential cause for relapse is deficient self-regulatory control over behavior and decision-making. Specifically this lack of self-regulatory ability in substance dependent individuals has been associated with dysfunction of a mesolimbic-frontal brain network. Reduced activity within this self-regulatory brain network has previously been implicated in relapse, but the specific relationship between this network, self-regulatory ability and recovery is yet to be determined.

Love it. Go neuroscience! 

quantumaniac:

Earth Will One Day See a Second Sun

Betelgeuse, a red supergiant star located in the Orion constellation, about 640 light-years away from Earth - is preparing to explode via a supernova. When it does, the Earth will have a front-row seat; in fact, the explosion will be so bright that Earth will seem to briefly have two suns in the sky. 

Betelgeuse is one of the brightest and largest stars in our immediate galactic neighborhood - if you dropped it in our Solar System, it would extend all the way out to Jupiter, leaving Earth completely engulfed. In stellar terms, it’s predicted to explode in the very near future. Of course, the conversion from stellar to human terms is pretty extreme, as Betelgeuse is predicted to explode anytime in the next million years.

But still, whether the explosion occurs in 2011 or 1002011 (give or take 640 years for the light to reach Earth), it’s going to make for one of the most unforgettable light shows in our planet’s history. For a few weeks, the supernova will be so bright that there will appear to be two stars in the sky, and night will be indistinguishable from day for much of that time. So don’t count on getting a lot of sleep when Betelgeuse explodes, because the only sensible thing for the world to do will be to throw a weeks-long global supernova party.

Physicist Brad Carter explains what Earth (and hopefully humanity) can look forward to:

“This is the final hurrah for the star. It goes bang, it explodes, it lights up - we’ll have incredible brightness for a brief period of time for a couple of weeks and then over the coming months it begins to fade and then eventually it will be very hard to see at all.”

Although there’ll be no missing the explosion, Carter points out that the vast majority of material shot out from the supernova will pass by Earth completely unnoticed:

“When a star goes bang, the first we will observe of it is a rain of tiny particles called neutrinos. They will flood through the Earth and bizarrely enough, even though the supernova we see visually will light up the night sky, 99 per cent of the energy in the supernova is released in these particles that will come through our bodies and through the Earth with absolutely no harm whatsoever.”

In any event, the Betelgeuse explosion will likely be the most dramatic supernova Earth ever witnesses - well, unless our Sun eventually explodes and destroys our planet, which would probably leave Betelgeuse the runner-up.

npr:

Creatures Of The Sun

Maybe it’s the amazingly warm week we are having here in northern New England, but it’s hard not to think about the sun these days. Even as we soak up its warmth, we also hear of fearsome solar storms flinging billions of tons of plasma into space, some of it toward us.

These coronal mass ejections tend to peak around the so-called solar maximum, a time of increased solar activity with a period of approximately 11 years. We are entering one.

Our typically naïve picture of the sun as a placid ball of fire in the sky has nothing to do with the real thing.

Close-up images reveal an inferno of intense heat (some 11,000 degrees Fahrenheit at the surface), bubbling with incessant activity and intense magnetic fields.

Solar storms are a reminder that we shouldn’t take the sun for granted, assuming it will always be doing its job quietly, even if this has been the case for billions of years. -Marcelo Gleiser (Photo credit NASA)

micro-scopic:

Blood-brain barrier. Confocal light micrograph of a section through a blood vessel in the brain, showing the arrangement of cells that form the blood-brain barrier. The lumen (interior) of the vessel runs horizontally across the upper frame. The endothelial cells that line the blood vessels of the brain are packed more tightly than elsewhere in the body. This barrier protects the brain from many potentially harmful molecules and micro-organisms, but also presents a challenge for the administration of drugs to the brain. Surrounding the blood vessel are glial cells (green), which provide structural support for neurons (nerve cells, red) and supply them with nutrients and oxygen. It is also thought that glial cells help maintain the blood-brain barrier.

THE SOUNDS OF NEURONS TALKING

In 2008, biologist and author Professor Brian Ford localised the sound of neurons communicating with one another.

Cultured brain cells in the lab, when sending an impulse or what’s known as spiking, make a crazy little buzz sound around 40Mhz. Professor Ford took this sound and stretched it out to 20 seconds to hear what is inside the spike. He believes since nerve cells are the most developed,  they do more than just turn on and off, which is what sends or receives signals and where many believe thought to originate from….he believes that the thought is in the nerve cell.  Via. Image.

 
Click here to listen.

fractalmind:

Piezoelectricity

The generation of electricity or of electric polarity in dielectric crystals subjected to mechanical stress, or the generation of stress in such crystals subjected to an applied voltage.

ohscience:

hippocampal neurons