Neuroscience - the science of the brain and how it works - is taking the stand and beginning to challenge society’s notions of crime and punishment.

Experts say it’s almost inevitable that neuroscience and law will become yet more intertwined. After all, while neuroscience seeks to find out how the brain functions and affects behavior, the law’s main concern is with regulating behavior. Yet many are uneasy about the use in courts of law - and in matters of life and death - of basic science that is only just creeping out of the lab.

"All sorts of types of neuroscience evidence are being used for all sorts of types of claims," says Teneille Brown, a professor of law at the University of Utah. "The question is, is this technology really ready for prime time, or is it being abused? … Neuroscience is being used by serious scientists in real labs, but the people trying to apply it in courts are not those same people … So they’re taking something that looks very objective, that looks like gold standard science, but then morphing it into a forensic use it wasn’t developed for."

For 25 years, the rhesus monkeys were kept semi-starved, lean and hungry. The males’ weights were so low they were the equivalent of a 6-foot-tall man who tipped the scales at just 120 to 133 pounds. The hope was that if the monkeys lived longer, healthier lives by eating a lot less, then maybe people, their evolutionary cousins, would, too. Some scientists, anticipating such benefits, began severely restricting their own diets.

The results of this major, long-awaited study, which began in 1987, are finally in. But it did not bring the vindication calorie restriction enthusiasts had anticipated. It turns out the skinny monkeys did not live any longer than those kept at more normal weights. Some lab test results improved, but only in monkeys put on the diet when they were old. The causes of death — cancer, heart disease — were the same in both the underfed and the normally fed monkeys.

Daily or “circadian” rhythms including the sleep wake cycle, and rhythms in hormone release are controlled by a molecular clock that is present in every cell of the human body. This human clock has its own inbuilt, default rhythm of almost exactly 24 hours that allows it to stay finely tuned to the daily cycle generated by the rotation of Earth. This beautiful symmetry between the human clock and the daily cycle of Earth’s rotation is disrupted by exposure to artificial light cycles, and by irregular meal, work and sleep times. This mismatch between the natural circadian rhythms of our bodies and the environment is called “circadian desynchrony.”

“Electric light allowed humans to override an ancient synchronization between the rhythm of the human clock and the environment, and over the last century, daily rhythms in meal, sleep and working times have gradually disappeared from our lives … The human clock struggles to remain tuned to our highly irregular lifestyles, and I believe that this causes metabolic and other health problems, and makes us more likely to become obese." - Dr. Cathy Wyse (Chronobiology research group, University of Aberdeen)

A new study by researchers at UT Dallas and the University of Michigan has found that the strength of communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain predicts performance on basic arithmetic problems.  The findings shed light on the neural basis of human math abilities and suggest a possible route to aiding those who suffer from dyscalculia— an inability to understand and manipulate numbers.

It has been known for some time that the parietal cortex, the top/middle region of the brain, plays a central role in so-called numerical cognition—our ability to process numerical information. Previous brain imaging studies have shown that the right parietal region is primarily involved in basic quantity processing (like gauging relative amounts of fruit in baskets), while the left parietal region is involved in more precise numerical operations like addition and subtraction. What has not been known is whether the two hemispheres can work together to improve math performance. The new study demonstrates that they can. The findings were recently published online in Cerebral Cortex.

Tuning a piano also tunes the brain, say researchers who have seen structural changes within the brains of professional piano tuners.

Researchers at University College London and Newcastle University found listening to two notes played simultaneously makes the brain adapt. Brain scans revealed highly specific changes in the hippocampus, which governs memory and navigation. These correlated with the number of years tuners had been doing this job.

The Wellcome Trust researchers used magnetic resonance imaging to compare the brains of 19 professional piano tuners - who play two notes simultaneously to make them pitch-perfect - and 19 other people. What they saw was highly specific changes in both the grey matter - the nerve cells where information processing takes place - and the white matter - the nerve connections - within the brains of the piano tuners.

Investigator Sundeep Teki said: “We already know that musical training can correlate with structural changes, but our group of professionals offered a rare opportunity to examine the ability of the brain to adapt over time to a very specialised form of listening.”

Other researchers have noted similar hippocampal changes in taxi drivers as they build up detailed information needed to find their way around London’s labyrinth of streets. Prof Tim Griffiths, who led the latest study, published in Neuroscience, said: “There has been little work on the role of the hippocampus in auditory analysis. “Our study is consistent with a form of navigation in pitch space as opposed to the more accepted role in spatial navigation.”

Earphones ‘potentially as dangerous as noise from jet engines,’ according to new University of Leicester study: New research identifies for the first time how high volumes of sound damage nerve cell coating leading to temporary deafness.

University of Leicester researcher Dr Martine Hamann of the Department of Cell Physiology and Pharmacology, who led the study, said:

"The research allows us to understand the pathway from exposure to loud noises to hearing loss. Dissecting the cellular mechanisms underlying this condition is likely to bring a very significant healthcare benefit to a wide population. The work will help prevention as well as progression into finding appropriate cures for hearing loss.”

One biotech startup wants to restore vision in blind patients with a gene therapy that gives light sensitivity to neurons that don’t normally possess it.

The attempt, by Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Retrosense Therapeutics, will use so-called optogenetics. Scientists have used the technique over the last few years as a research tool to study brain circuits and the neural control of behavior by directing neuron activity with flashes of light. But Retrosense and others groups are pushing to bring the technique to patients in clinical trials.

The idea behind Retrosense’s experimental therapy is to use optogenetics to treat patients who have lost their vision due to retinal degenerative diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa. Patients with retinitis pigmentosa experience progressive and irreversible vision loss because the rods and cones of their eyes die due to an inherited condition. If the company is successful, the treatment could also help patients with the most common form of macular degeneration, which affects nearly a million people in the United States. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration hasn’t approved any therapies for either condition.

A bionic eye has given an Australian woman partial sight and researchers say it is an important step towards eventually helping visually impaired people get around independently.

Dianne Ashworth, who has severe vision loss due to the inherited condition retinitis pigmentosa, was fitted with a prototype bionic eye in May at the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital.

"It was really funny when it switched on I was waiting, waiting … I had these goggles on and I didn’t know what to expect, and I don’t know if anyone did know what I was going to see … Then all of a sudden I went ‘yep’ I could see a little flash and it was like a little, I suppose, a splinter … There were different shapes and dark black, lines of dark black and white lines together … Then that turned into splotches of black with white around them and cloud-like images … I can remember when the first bigger image came I just went ‘Wow,’ because I just didn’t expect it at all but it was amazing," she said.

The bionic eye, designed, built and tested by the Bionic Vision Australia, a consortium of researchers partially funded by the Australian government, is equipped with 24 electrodes with a small wire that extends from the back of the eye to a receptor attached behind the ear.

Pretend play can be fun for preschool children, but a new University of Virginia study, published in the current online edition of the journal Psychological Bulletin, finds that it is not as crucial to a child’s development as currently believed. Pretend play is any play a child engages in, alone, with playmates, or with adults, that involves uses of the imagination to create a fantasy world or situation, such as making toy cars go “vrrooooom” or making dolls talk.

Much of the previously presented “evidence” for the vitality of pretend play to development is derived from flawed methodology, according to Angeline Lillard, the new study’s lead author and a U.Va. professor of psychology in the College of Arts & Sciences. She said testers might have been biased by knowledge that they were testing children who had engaged in adult-directed pretend play prior to testing.

"We found no good evidence that pretend play contributes to creativity, intelligence or problem-solving," Lillard said. "However, we did find evidence that it just might be a factor contributing to language, storytelling, social development and self-regulation."

If you start exercising, your brain recognizes this as a moment of stress. As your heart pressure increases, the brain thinks you are either fighting the enemy or fleeing from it. To protect yourself and your brain from stress, you release a protein called BDNF (Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor). This BDNF has a protective and also reparative element to your memory neurons and acts as a reset switch. That’s why we often feel so at ease and like things are clear after exercising.

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