Functional MRI News and Research

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Repeated listening to favorite music induces beneficial brain plasticity in Alzheimer’s patients

Researchers at the University of Toronto and Unity Health Toronto have demonstrated that repeated listening to personally meaningful music induces beneficial brain plasticity in patients with mild cognitive impairment or early Alzheimer's disease.

9 Nov 2021

Experts address the limitations of studying individual brains in cognitive neuroscience

In a new paper, scientists suggest that efforts to understand human cognition should expand beyond the study of individual brains. They call on neuroscientists to incorporate evidence from social science disciplines to better understand how people think.

22 Oct 2021

Researchers unravel basic mechanisms of learning new words in sleeping toddlers

Very young children learn words at a tremendous rate. Now researchers at the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis, have for the first time seen how specific brain regions activate as two-year-olds remember newly learned words -; while the children were sleeping.

19 Oct 2021

Post-trauma brain activity profiles may help predict long-term mental health outcomes

The way a person's brain responds to stress following a traumatic event, such as a car accident, may help to predict their long-term mental health outcomes, according to research supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, part of the National Institutes of Health.

14 Oct 2021

Hippocampus connects separate, distant events to form narrative memories, study shows

People love stories. We find it easier to remember events when they are part of an overarching narrative. But in real life, the chapters of a story don't follow smoothly one from another. Other things happen in between.

30 Sep 2021

New research project aims to better understand the brain basis of cognitive control

Are you able to start a task and stick with it, all the way through, ignoring the temptations of the internet or the sudden realization that you should probably do the laundry?

10 Sep 2021

Researchers develop deep-learning based method to predict onset of Alzheimer’s disease

According to World Health Organisation, Alzheimer's disease is the most frequent cause of dementia, contributing to up to 70 percent of dementia cases. Worldwide, approximately 24 million people are affected, and this number is expected to double every 20 years. Owing to societal aging, the disease will become a costly public health burden in the years to come.

3 Sep 2021

Post-traumatic stress symptoms in COVID-19 survivors linked with changes to the brain's connectivity

COVID-19 survivors report significantly higher symptoms of post-traumatic stress, and these symptoms are associated with changes to the brain's connectivity, according to a study coauthored by Vince Calhoun, Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Georgia State University and director of the Center for Translational Research in Neuroimaging and Data Science (TReNDS).

27 Aug 2021

Brain’s structural and functional alignment can vary with sex, age and may be genetic, study suggests

The degree to which the brain's wiring aligns with its patterns of activity can vary with sex and age, and may be genetic, suggests a study published by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators. The study finds that this alignment may also have implications on cognition.

16 Aug 2021

Improvements in neural learning processes linked to reduced symptoms of depression

Virginia Tech scientists with the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC have identified neural learning processes to be associated with symptoms of depression and linked improvements in these processes to improved symptoms in research participants being treated for depression.

28 Jul 2021

Scientists decipher the activity of the brain in deep sleep

Thanks to a unique system that decodes brain activity during sleep, a UNIGE team is deciphering the neuronal mechanisms of memory consolidation.

16 Jul 2021

Study: Gene editing therapy for early-stage Huntington’s disease may have long-lasting benefits

In a new study on mice, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers report that using MRI scans to measure blood volume in the brain can serve as a noninvasive way to potentially track the progress of gene editing therapies for early-stage Huntington's disease, a neurodegenerative disorder that attacks brain cells.

7 Jul 2021

Alarming COVID study indicates long-term loss of gray matter and other brain tissue

In a research paper recently uploaded to the preprint server medRxiv* by Prof. Gwenaëlle Douaud et al. (June 15th, 2021), participants that had taken part in a brain study prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic were invited back for a series of follow-up tests, revealing significant losses of grey matter surrounding the olfactory and gustatory system in those that had been infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

18 Jun 2021

Childhood stress associated with early emergence of permanent molars

Early in her career neuroscientist Allyson Mackey began thinking about molars. As a researcher who studies brain development, she wanted to know whether when these teeth arrived might indicate early maturation in children.

9 Jun 2021

REAER is a promising therapy for improving the lives of people with multiple sclerosis

A team of multiple sclerosis (MS) experts at Kessler Foundation led the first pilot randomized controlled trial of robotic-exoskeleton assisted exercise rehabilitation (REAER) effects on mobility, cognition, and brain connectivity in people with substantial MS-related disability.

29 May 2021

White lies may not be so innocent after all – study reveals selfish motives behind white lies using functional MRI brain scans

A recent study published in The Journal of Neuroscience found that people who told a white lie had selfish motives for telling that lie.

28 May 2021

Cancer researchers receive $3 million NCI grant to study cognitive dysfunction after chemotherapy

Cancer researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Indiana University received a five-year, $3 million grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to study cognitive dysfunction after chemotherapy.

4 May 2021

Study provides preliminary evidence for a neurocognitive subtype of PTSD

A major obstacle in understanding and treating posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is its clinical and neurobiological heterogeneity.

21 Apr 2021

Study links chronic sinus inflammation with alterations in brain activity

The millions of people who have chronic sinusitis deal not only with stuffy noses and headaches, they also commonly struggle to focus, and experience depression and other symptoms that implicate the brain's involvement in their illness.

8 Apr 2021

Size is the only difference between male and female brains, shows study

How different are men and women's brains? The question has been explored for decades, but a new study led by Rosalind Franklin University neuroscientist Lise Eliot is the first to coalesce this wide-ranging research into a single mega-synthesis. And the answer is: hardly at all.

26 Mar 2021