News on how the brain changes over time, how to clear foggy brains, how to multitask (or not), and more

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing time­ly brain & men­tal health news and a fun brain teas­er to test the lim­its of mul­ti-task­ing. #1. Col­lab­o­ra­tive neu­roimag­ing ini­tia­tive Brain­Chart helps chart how brains change across the lifes­pan. Among the many fas­ci­nat­ing find­ings: “The vol­ume of grey mat­ter (brain cells) increas­es rapid­ly from mid-gestation…

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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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What’s normal? When it comes to the brain, it’s hard to say, and that’s why we need to study global neurodiversity

In a small vil­lage in India—a place so remote it has no elec­tric­i­ty, no telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tem, and no cars or buses—a research work­er pre­pares to place an EEG head­set on a female villager’s head. The woman, who earns $3.75 a day labor­ing in a near­by rice pad­dy and who has nev­er ven­tured out­side her vil­lage, eyes…

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10-year study finds that the higher the blood sugar level, the faster the cognitive decline over time — regardless of diabetic status

___ The Star­tling Link Between Sug­ar and Alzheimer’s (The Atlantic): “A lon­gi­tu­di­nal study, pub­lished Thurs­day in the jour­nal Dia­betolo­gia, fol­lowed 5,189 peo­ple over 10 years and found that peo­ple with high blood sug­ar had a faster rate of cog­ni­tive decline than those with nor­mal blood sugar—whether or not their blood-sug­­ar lev­el tech­ni­cal­ly made them diabetic.…

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Q: What do people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and anxiety have in common? A: A brain with similar gray-matter loss

. Dif­fer­ent men­tal dis­or­ders cause same brain-mat­ter loss, study finds (press release): “A meta-ana­ly­­sis of 193 brain-imag­ing stud­ies shows sim­i­lar gray-mat­ter loss in the brains of peo­ple with diag­noses as dif­fer­ent as schiz­o­phre­nia, depres­sion and addiction…The find­ings call into ques­tion a long­stand­ing ten­den­cy to dis­tin­guish psy­chi­atric dis­or­ders chiefly by their symp­toms rather than their underlying…

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