Word: neural
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...involved in decision-making - are less advanced than those of adults, as you would expect, until now no one had studied teens' white matter, which works along with gray matter to produce decisions. The key part of white matter is called myelin, a fatty substance that coats the individual neural strands, or axons, that make up white matter. Myelination of axons begins during childhood and is completed at the end of adolescence, around the mid-20s. Myelination in the frontal lobe - the brain region responsible for decision-making - happens last, and it was in this region that the brains...
...Public Library of Science - a team led by psychiatrist Gregory Berns of Emory University in Atlanta shows that adolescents who engage in more dangerous activities have white-matter pathways that appear more mature than those of risk-averse youths. White matter is essentially the brain's wiring - the neural strands that connect the various gray-matter regions, where the actual nerve cells reside, that are otherwise independent of one another. Maturation of white matter is important because it increases the brain's processing speed; nerve impulses travel faster in mature white matter. (See pictures of a diverse group of American...
...answers. Those who reported an improbably high number of correct answers were labeled dishonest. Most of the others were classified as honest. Researchers then averaged the fMRI data - which monitors blood flow and, therefore, activity inside the brain in real time - for each group to try to establish a neural signature that represented truth-telling and one that characterized lying. (See the top 10 scientific discoveries...
...There is a great deal of variation between the findings described, and, crucially, there is an absence of replication by investigators of their own findings," wrote Sean Spence, a well-respected deception researcher at the University of Sheffield, in a 2008 critique of 16 peer-reviewed articles describing the neural correlates of lying...
...exactly the brain builds up resistance to Alzheimer's is, of course, the central question driving legions of researchers. Are some people's brains capable of building detours around damaged neural circuits? Is there a gene that may help certain people rebuild and repair damaged brain tissue better than others can? Iacono suggests that's a strong possibility, pointing to the presence of one particular gene, APOE2, in 30% of patients with asymptomatic Alzheimer's. The next step in his research, he says, is to understand how this gene works...