I read an article in PyschologyToday that talked about the complexity of the human brain. There are about 125 trillion synapses in the cerebral cortex alone. To put that into astronomical terms, there are at least 1,000 times more synapses in a single cerebral cortex than there are stars in the galaxy! Yeah, it's safe to say our brains are complex beasts of awesomeness. |
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Running, cardio activities in young adulthood may preserve thinking skills in middle ageYoung adults who run or participate in other cardio fitness activities may preserve their memory and thinking skills in middle age, according to a new study. Middle age was defined as ages 43 to 55 in this study. "These findings are likely to help us earlier identify and consequently prevent or treat those at high risk of developing dementia," researchers said.
READ MORE A consortium led by scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has conducted the largest survey yet of how information encoded in an animal genome is processed in different organs, stages of development, and environmental conditions. Their findings paint a new picture of how genes function in the nervous system and in response to environmental stress.
They report their research this week in the Advance Online Publication of the journal Nature. The scientists studied the fruit fly, an important model organism in genetics research. Seventy percent of known human disease genes have closely related genes in the fly, yet the fly genome is one-thirtieth the size of ours. Previous fruit fly research has provided insights on cancer, birth defects, addictive behavior, and neurological diseases. It has also advanced our understanding of processes common to all animals such as body patterning and synaptic transmission. In the latest scientific fruit from the fruit fly, the consortium, led by Susan Celniker of Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division, generated the most comprehensive map of gene expression in any animal to date. Scientists from the University of California at Berkeley, Indiana University at Bloomington, the University of Connecticut Health Center, and several other institutions contributed to the research. READ MORE |
Random knowledgehere is where you will find the things that I find absolutely astonishing! Archives
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