Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neuromuscular disease that attacks motor neurons until muscle weakness, atrophy and paralysis lead inexorably to death. Victims of this monstrous malady could be forgiven for feeling unlucky.
How, then, can we explain the attitude of the disease’s namesake, baseball great Lou Gehrig? He told a sellout crowd at Yankee Stadium: “For the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth.” The Iron Horse then recounted his many …

A Daily Galaxy post last year, The Importance of Being Forgetful, featured the built-in neural process of forgetting, which discussed why the average human brain is equipped with the ability to filter through seemingly irrelevant details. While the average person may not have vast memory resources, it appears to be an evolutionary trade-off that allows the majority of us to focus on the most relevant facts.
However, some of the most incredible minds on Earth lack this ability to filter irrelevant facts, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that …

Functional magnetic resonance imaging of men and women under stress showed neuroscientists how their brains differed in response to stressful situations. In men, increased blood flow to the left orbitofrontal cortex suggested activation of the “fight or flight” response. In women, stress activated the limbic system, which is associated with emotional responses.
There are many books and movies that highlight the psychological differences between men and women – Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus, for example; but now, neurologists say they have brain images that prove male and female …

For the first time, researchers have used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to determine what parts of the brain are active when people consider whether to purchase a product and to predict whether or not they ultimately choose to buy the product. The study appears in the journal Neuron and was co-authored by scientists at Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University and the MIT Sloan School of Management.

This paper is the latest from the emerging field of neuroeconomics, which investigates the mental and neural processes that drive economic decision-making. The results …

Although hypnosis has been shown to reduce pain perception, it is not clear how the technique works. Identifying a sound, scientific explanation for hypnosis’ effect might increase acceptance and use of this safe pain-reduction option in clinical settings.
Researchers at the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine and the Technical University of Aachen, Germany, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to find out if hypnosis alters brain activity in a way that might explain pain reduction. The results are reported in the November-December 2004 issue …

Using Unconscious Learning to promote Health and Well being
By Jaime V. Pitner, MICP, RHC
Your mind is much like a computer, what you experience shows up on the monitor of your consciousness, without a thought of where it came from. But, like your computer, much work happens behind the scenes, processes, programs, electrical pathways of information and direction, and the vast storage of memory.
You may think that you have one mind, but you actually have two, or perhaps better put, you have two parts of one mind: the conscious and …

James Braid first termed the word ‘hypnotism’ from the Greek word hupnos, which means sleep. He soon learned that the term hypnosis was wrong, since it is not really a type of sleep, and tried to change the word, but the scientific community of his day had taken the term to heart and would not change it. We are therefore stuck with the term and its erroneous implication that it is a method of making people sleep. In fact, hypnosis is a form of concentration that is so common that …

It doesn’t matter how brainy you are or how much education you’ve had – you can still improve and expand your mind. Boosting your mental faculties doesn’t have to mean studying hard or becoming a reclusive book worm. There are lots of tricks, techniques and habits, as well as changes to your lifestyle, diet and behaviour that can help you flex your grey matter and get the best out of your brain cells. And here are 11 of them.

Smart drugs
Does getting old have to mean worsening memory, slower reactions and …