Chance are that if you know "Jacek' you are a SciFi fan!
Here is what I am reading today:
“… I believe it’s important for patients to know what to expect in a typical cognitive behavior therapy session, not only so they can assess the treatment they’re receiving, but also so they’re prepared for therapy and understand and agree with how treatment typically proceeds….”
“Recent research in Oxford and elsewhere has shown that one type of brain stimulation in particular, called transcranial direct current stimulation or TDCS, can be used to improve language and maths abilities, memory, problem solving, attention, even movement.
Critically, this is not just helping to restore function in those with impaired abilities. TDCS can be used to enhance healthy people’s mental capacities. Indeed, most of the research so far has been carried out in healthy adults.”
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“HDCkit is a cost-effective modular system for Direct Current (DC) stimulation, designed specifically for both research and clinical use. It consists of a stimulator (HDCstim), a programmer (HDCprog) and a set of electrodes (HDCel), which also has the option of a headcap).”
“THREE million children in this country take drugs for problems in focusing. Toward the end of last year, many of their parents were deeply alarmed because there was a shortage of drugs like Ritalin and Adderall that they considered absolutely essential to their children’s functioning. “
…”Memories in our brains are maintained by connections between neurons called “synapses”. But how do these synapses stay strong and keep memories alive for decades? Neuroscientists at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have discovered a major clue from a study in fruit flies: Hardy, self-copying clusters or oligomers of a synapse protein are an essential ingredient for the formation of long-term memory.”
“…The pupil is best known for changing size in reaction to light. In a dark room, your pupils open wide to let in more light; as soon as you step outside into the sunlight, the pupils shrink to pinpricks. This keeps the retina at the back of the eye from being overwhelmed by bright light. Something similar happens in response to psychological stimuli, says Bruno Laeng of the University of Oslo, who cowrote the paper with Sylvain Sirois of Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières and Gustaf Gredebäck of Uppsala University in Sweden. When someone sees something they want to pay closer attention to, the pupil enlarges. It’s not clear why this happens, Laeng says. “One idea is that, by essentially enlarging the field of the visual input, it’s beneficial to visual exploration,” he says….”
““Modern life is a welter of assorted desires marked by frequent conflict and resistance, the latter with uneven success,” said Asst. Prof. Wilhelm Hofmann of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Determining how to best resist desires is not as easy as it seems, say personality and social psychologists presenting new research Jan. 27 in San Diego at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.”
“On the surface, it’s simple: when night falls, our bodies get sleepy. But behind the scenes, a series of complex molecular events, controlled by our genes, is hard at work to make us groggy. Now, research suggests that a newly identified gene known as insomniac is an important reason why we don’t stay up all night. By cloning and testing this gene in fruit flies, Rockefeller University researchers say they have discovered an entirely new mechanism by which sleep is regulated.”
