How ’sleeping on it’ can help the prefrontal cortex regulate emotional responses, making us feel better in the morning

Instead of lying awake wor­ry­ing, we’re often told to “sleep on it” when mak­ing deci­sions both big and small. And there’s actu­al­ly a sci­en­tif­ic basis for this advice. Sleep can influ­ence our response to emo­tion­al sit­u­a­tions, and helps us to man­age our men­tal health. To under­stand why sleep and emo­tions are so con­nect­ed, it’s important…

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Study on the “ABCs of Mental Health” finds that simply believing you can improve mental wellbeing helps actually improve it

The num­ber of peo­ple strug­gling with poor men­tal health and men­tal dis­or­ders has been ris­ing around the world over the past few decades. Those who are strug­gling are increas­ing­ly fac­ing dif­fi­cul­ties access­ing the kind of sup­port they need – leav­ing many wait­ing months for help, if they even qual­i­fy for treat­ment. While it’s clear that…

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Collaborative neuroimaging initiative BrainChart helps chart how brains change across the lifespan

For decades, growth charts have been used by pae­di­a­tri­cians as ref­er­ence tools. The charts allow health pro­fes­sion­als to plot and mea­sure a child’s height and weight from birth to young adult­hood. The per­centile scores they pro­vide, espe­cial­ly across mul­ti­ple vis­its, help doc­tors screen for con­di­tions such as obe­si­ty or inad­e­quate growth, which fall at the…

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Mapping ‘psychedelic trips’ in the brain to better direct their therapeutic effects

For the past sev­er­al decades, psy­che­delics have been wide­ly stig­ma­tized as dan­ger­ous ille­gal drugs. But a recent surge of aca­d­e­m­ic research into their use to treat psy­chi­atric con­di­tions is spurring a recent shift in pub­lic opin­ion. Psy­che­delics are psy­chotrop­ic drugs: sub­stances that affect your men­tal state. Oth­er types of psy­chotrop­ics include anti­de­pres­sants and anti-anx­i­e­ty medications.…

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On brain folding and fitting 86 billion neurons inside our 1400 cc crania

The human brain has been called the most com­plex object in the known uni­verse. And with good rea­son: It has around 86 bil­lion neu­rons and sev­er­al hun­dred thou­sand miles of axon fibers con­nect­ing them. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, the process of brain fold­ing that results in the brain’s char­ac­ter­is­tic bumps and grooves is also high­ly com­plex. Despite decades of…

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Why MDMA-assisted psychotherapy may become an FDA-approved treatment for PTSD within 2 years

For peo­ple with post-trau­­mat­ic stress dis­or­der, recall­ing mem­o­ries of phys­i­cal or sex­u­al assault, com­bat or dis­­as­ter-relat­ed events can induce intense anx­i­ety or pan­ic attacks as well as debil­i­tat­ing flash­backs. In the U.S., about 7% of peo­ple suf­fer from PTSD and lose an aver­age of about four work­ing days each month as a result. Trau­­ma-spe­­cif­ic psychotherapy,…

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