Search MedTerms:
Back to MedTerms online medical dictionary A-Z List Need help identifying pills and medications?
Use the pill finder tool on RxList.
Mouse Brain Atlas: C57BL/6J Coronal - Search the library
The brain's heightened responses can also open the way for psychological troubles. Due to experience, environment, or genes, some teens may possess relatively low levels of cognitive control, making them particularly vulnerable to neurological signals of fear, Casey suggests. If the signals go unchecked, they may lead to anxiety, depression, or other disorders such as addiction. And even well-adjusted adolescents may be primed to choose the heart over the head-or, perhaps we should now say, the ventral striatum over the inferior frontal gyrus.
The neurochemistry of music - Neuroscientist Musician
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike Unported License
The Basal Ganglia in Neurodegenerative Diseases
For instance, other research of Mischel and his colleagues have shown tactics 9-year-olds could employ to help resist temptation , such as thinking of marshmallows as clouds or cookies as pictures, Casey said. We could see if training how people pay attention to things helps them regulate their behavior, which could help with the obesity epidemic or with addiction research.
The first level of the motor system hierarchy is the spinal cord, the location of the alpha motor neurons that constitute the "final common pathway" of all motor commands. Alpha motor neurons directly innervate skeletal muscle, causing the contractions that produce all movements. Reflex circuits and other circuitry within the spinal cord underlie the automatic processing of many of the direct commands to the muscles (the "nuts and bolts" processing), thereby freeing higher-order areas to concentrate on more global, task-related processing.
A number of neurological disorders result from damage to the basal ganglia. Two of these disorders (Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease) will be briefly discussed here to relate the concepts learned in this chapter to the symptoms of the disorders. More thorough treatment of these disorders will be given in the chapter on Disorders of the Nervous System.
According to Voon, as many as one in 75 adults may be affected by compulsive sexual behavior - an uncontrollable obsession with sexual thoughts, feelings or actions. Those who experience it often deal with feelings of shame and guilt, and treatment options are limited.
Casey was able to watch the cognitive control network in action. She and her colleagues analyzed the brain scans of volunteers while they kept themselves from hitting a key that they weren't supposed to hit. At those moments, part of the cognitive control network, called the inferior frontal gyrus , was more active than it was at other times. When the scientists compared the cognitive control network response in people of different ages, they found a striking pattern. In children the network was the most active, in teenagers the activity was lower, and in adults it was lower still. Casey proposes that as the cognitive control network matures, it gets more efficient. The upshot is that as we age, we need to put less effort into holding ourselves back.
Neuroscience Online is an open-access electronic resource for students, faculty, and those interested in neuroscience. The project began in 6999 and the first section, Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology , was released in 7557.
So what does this study mean for women whose brains aren't being scanned in an fMRI machine? Jezebel's Lindy West read the study as a confirmation that the "don't sleep with him or her on the first date" rule isn't really grounded in reality. She wrote:
"Ventral striatum" in pictures. More images "Ventral striatum".
