Word: hippocampus
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...their preferences for the two brands. But when Montague repeated the test and told them what they were drinking, three out of four people said they preferred Coke, and their brains showed why: not only were the reward systems active, but memory regions in the medial prefrontal cortex and hippocampus also lit up. "This showed that the brand alone has value in the brain system above and beyond the desire for the content of the can," says Montague. In other words, all those happy, energetic and glamorous people drinking Coke in commercials did exactly what they were supposed...
More recently, researchers have found that subjects with low self-esteem are more vulnerable to stress. Jens Pruessner at McGill University in Montreal believes that the hippocampus, a finger-size structure located deep in the brain, is at least partially responsible. It turns out that the hippocampus, which helps you form new memories and retrieve old ones, is particularly sensitive to the amount of cortisol flooding your cerebrum. So when cortisol levels begin to rise, the hippocampus sends a set of signals that help shut down the cortisol cascade...
...average hippocampi. The differences become clear only when you compare groups of people, Pruessner notes, so you can't look at any single person's brain scan and determine whether he or she has low self-esteem. But when you look at overall results, they suggest that a smaller hippocampus simply has more trouble persuading the rest of the brain to turn off the stress response...
...city center and be able to recite a set litany of 320 routes or "runs" - in both directions. This feat of memory is so daunting that it is capitalized as "the Knowledge," and scientists have found that in order to accommodate such a vast mental map, the posterior hippocampus of a London cabbie's brain, the bit responsible for spatial memory and navigation, actually grows bigger than those of mere humans. And yet, as demonstrated in The Book of Dave, the latest novel by British author Will Self, the Knowledge alone will not save your life. It fails to warn...
...depressed brain is different - physically - to a healthy one, but not as a result of some spontaneous chemical abnormality. Rather, they back the theory that emotional stress in the early years inhibits proper development of certain areas of the brain - specifically, it causes malfunctions within the amygdala and the hippocampus that make the child less able to cope with stress. Eventually (perhaps in childhood, perhaps not till adulthood) anxiety and hopelessness overwhelm...