Brain on the OUP blog

Explore recent posts on the OUP blog providing an interesting overview of related Brain articles.

Speech, AI, and the future of neurology
With growing patient-per-clinic ratios and soaring inequities across the globe, how will we detect neurodegenerative diseases early enough for timely intervention? In this blog post, Adolfo M. García explores how artificial intelligence could hold the answers.
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Of language, brain health, and global inequities
Speech and language assessments have emerged as crucial tools in combatting one of the greatest public health challenges of our century, the growth of neurodegenerative disorders. Conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and frontotemporal dementia stand as major contributors to disability and mortality in affluent and under-resourced nations alike. In this blog post, Adolfo M. García explores how a lack of linguistic diversity in assessment methods threatens their potential for more equitable testing worldwide.
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It’s time to use software-as-medicine to help an injured brain
Multiple mild Traumatic Brain Injuries (“mTBIs”) can put military service members at an elevated risk of cognitive impairment. Service members and veterans were enrolled in a trial with a new type of brain training program, based on the science of brain plasticity and the discovery that intensive, adaptive, computerized training—targeting sensory speed and accuracy—can rewire the brain to improve cognitive function. The trial found that the training program significantly improved overall cognitive function.
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How air pollution may lead to Alzheimer’s disease
Air pollution harms billions of people worldwide. Over the past few decades, it has become widely recognized that outdoor air pollution is detrimental to respiratory and cardiovascular health, but recently scientists have come to acknowledge the damage it may cause on the brain as well.
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When narcolepsy makes you more creative
Patients with narcolepsy are often lucid dreamers, and experience direct transitions from wakefulness into REM sleep. Lacaux et al. report that these patients perform better than healthy controls on creativity tests, supporting a role for REM sleep in creativity.
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Better detection of concussions using vital signs
We have vital signs for our body like heart rate, body temperature, respiratory rate, and blood pressure. Why not for our brain? You can’t treat what you can’t measure, bottom line. Therefore, we must first know if brain injuries, like concussions, have significantly affected brain function.
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Schizophrenia and ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky
Schizophrenia is the most iconic of all mental illnesses but both its conceptualization and causes remain elusive. The popular image portrays patients convinced of being persecuted and hearing voices that nobody else can hear. In reality this complex brain disorder presents an endless variety of psychotic and non-psychotic symptoms.
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Can electrical stimulation of the brain enhance mind?
Stimulating networks of brain cells at a set of parameters, which match their physiological activity when memories are encoded, can reverberate a memory trace and result in its conscious experience.
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What can brain research offer people who stutter?
Brain imaging studies of adults who stutter do reveal differences in both the structure and the function of the circuits involved in speech production. For example, a number of studies show that the bundle of nerve fibers connecting the sensory and motor brain areas involved in speech production is less organized in people who stutter.
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What are the critical brain networks for creativity?
The concept of creativity is imbued with two contradictory notions. The first notion usually considers that a creative production is the result of high-level control functions such as inhibition, mental manipulation, or planning. These functions are known to depend on the anterior part of the brain: the prefrontal cortex.
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A neurocognitive view on the dimensions of Schadenfreude and envy
Shadenfreude and envy have varying demensions according to the situations that elicit them. Agustín Ibáñez and colleagues explore variations in brain activity, as the emotions differ depending on their governing dimension.
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Can narcolepsy research help solve one of the greatest medical mysteries of the 20th century?
Over one hundred years after recorded cases, the cause of encephalitis remains unknown.A recent article by Hoffman and Vilensky reviewed the previous and current hypotheses regarding the aetiology of encephalitis lethargica and considers the relationship between encephalitis and narcolepsy.
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What causes psychogenic amnesia?
The media consistently misrepresent psychogenic amnesia and somewhat neglect the variations and complexities. Kopelman and colleagues explore four varied sub-groups of patients, showing that the reality of amnesia is far from the media construction.
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What hearing voices can tell us about hallucination and speech perception
Auditory hallucination is not confined to individuals with psychiatric disorders. The differing speech perception of these ‘non-clinical’ voice hearers was reflected in brain activity, allowing for the deciphering of hidden messages in sine-wave speech.
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How does acupuncture work? The role of S1 remapping
Vitali Napadow demonstrated that both real and sham acupuncture improved CTS symptoms. However, objective/physiological outcomes showed specific improvement for acupuncture, compared to sham acupunctures.
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Can hypnosis improve the functioning of injured brains?
Patients with brain injuries scored much lower than the healthy population at baseline on two measures of working memory. However, after four sessions of hypnosis, they improved on both outcome measures to slightly above the population mean.
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Conscious unity, split perception
Pinto and colleagues re-investigated the fundamental question of conscious unity in split-brain patients.
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Finding the imposter: understanding a rare delusional disorder using brain connectivity
Using lesion network mapping to “find the imposter” hiding in the brain, showing how a single brain injury might alter the relationship between two interacting sets of brain regions.
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2016: the year of Zika
Looking at the neurological complications of the Zika Virus and how we can manage outbreaks moving forward.
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Today's Forecast: Cloudy with a chance of seizures
Explores how an online, open-access seizure-forecasting competition could help patients with epilepsy.
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Early detection of intentional harm in the human amygdala
Exploring how the brain responds so quickly to intentional harm.
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The music next door
Exploring how the brain responds so quickly to intentional harm.
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Scrutinizing the script of the medieval ‘Tremulous Hand of Worcester’?
Deborah Thorpe and Jane Alty discuss the potential neurological disorders that could have affected the medieval writer known as the 'Tremulous Hand of Worcester'.
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Is phantom limb pain all in one’s head?
Tamar Makin explains how the brain reacts to losing a limb, the cause of the pain, and potential ways of treating it.
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What stays when everything goes
Robert Turner and Jörn-Henrik Jacobsen discuss the relationship between Alzheimer's Disease and music.
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Cured with sparks: a history of electrotherapy for functional neurological symptoms
Laura McWhirter and Jon Stone talk about the impact of electrotherapy on neurological symptoms.
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Brain function and brain surgery in children with epilepsy
Caroline Skirrow and Torsten Baldeweg discuss the effect of brain surgery on children with epilepsy.
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