Word: cortexes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...recent study found evidence that the daily practice of meditation thickened the parts of the brain's cerebral cortex responsible for decision making, attention and memory. Sara Lazar, a research scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital, presented preliminary results last November that showed that the gray matter of 20 men and women who meditated for just 40 minutes a day was thicker than that of people who did not. Unlike in previous studies focusing on Buddhist monks, the subjects were Boston-area workers practicing a Western-style of meditation called mindfulness or insight meditation. "We showed for the first time that...
...some findings are unexpected, even counterintuitive. Creativity, for instance, rarely strikes in a flash but more typically results from steady cogitation. Multitasking, for all its seeming efficiency, can exact a heavy toll on the quality of our output. Daily meditation physically transforms the cerebral cortex. Physical exercise may be as important as mental gymnastics in keeping Alzheimer's disease at bay. Baby Einstein-type videos make a poor substitute for human interaction in stimulating a tender young mind. And perhaps the most unexpected and comforting, recent research confirms that the human brain retains an astonishing degree of plasticity and capacity...
...learned sports skill begins in the thinking part of the brain, with nerves in the prefrontal cortex. As those neurons get excited, they activate nerve cells connected to the limbic system just under the cerebrum of the brain, the area associated with emotions such as fear, anxiety, elation and satisfaction. That area is tied in turn to the motor cortex, which controls the muscles...
Memory Pharmaceuticals in Montvale, N.J., for instance, is developing drugs that boost the expression of genes essential to shoring up the connections among neurons?the physical process that is thought to turn immediate experiences into long-term memories. Cortex Pharmaceuticals in Irvine, Calif., meanwhile, is testing compounds that accomplish something similar more indirectly. Those molecules amplify the response of brain chemicals called AMPA receptors, among the first players in a long biochemical cascade that takes place in the neuron as it encodes memory. The first of those ampakine molecules has been shown in a recent study to boost the attention...
...provided “some really strong physical evidence that there are some long-term physical affects” of meditation, she said. “Dr. Lazar’s findings are relatively unique; they show that the mind, through practice, can increase the thickness of the prefrontal cortex,” according to fellow corroborator on the study, Dr. Herbert Benson—the Mind/Body Medical Institute Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. This thickening of the cortex is contrary to what should happen as the brain ages so the researchers concluded that the meditation...