Issue 29 Sleep and the Glymphatic System We have all experienced sleepless nights and know what it is like to suffer the consequences: inability to focus, decreased productivity, and feeling lethargic. Sleep is a process that is
Issue 29 Clinician Burnout: Effects on the Brain and the Healthcare Industry Dr. Tammie Chang has just gotten off a busy day of work as a pediatric oncologist. As she drives on the road that leads to home, she feels her exhaustion
Issue 29 Beyond the Pill: Utility of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation for Treatment-Resistant Depression Imagine a world where depression's relentless grip is broken, where hope can finally shine through the clouds of despair. That was, unfortunately, not something Ms. T could afford to imagine.
Issue 29 From Genes to Behavior: Unraveling Psychopathy with Neuroscience Psychopathy is a neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by the absence of emotional responses, lack of empathy, and poor behavior control, resulting in antisocial behavior and participation in criminal acts. Researchers suggest
Issue 29 The Brain is Alive with the Sound of Music While everyone has their own music preferences, there are some songs that almost everyone knows the words to. Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the USA” is basically the Fourth of July national anthem, and we only need to hear the first few bell chimes to identify Mariah Carey
Issue 29 Mirror, Mirror Have you ever flinched when watching a character get hurt on TV? Yawned when someone near you yawned? These reactions may be due to unique brain cells known as mirror neurons.
Issue 29 Microglia: Little Giants in the Brain Imagine the brain as an epic house party with various cell types acting as partygoers, each contributing to the chaotic buzz. Amid the lively crowd, the neurons are the center
Issue 26 Improving Memory through Slow Wave Sleep In the ocean, the form water will take at any given time may seem unpredictable to someone not paying attention, though there are patterns that can be identified and relied upon with some certainty.
Issue 26 Navigating the Cosmos of Whole-Brain Imaging Mapping the (B)rainforest Neurons, with their long axons and countless branching dendrites, are often colloquially spoken of in the language of trees. To extend the metaphor likens the brain
Issue 20 Return of the Retina Vision is a sensory system that we rely on heavily, and yet many people face visual impairments. The National Eye Institute recently reported that there were over 4 million people with visual impairments in the United States, mostly due to disease.
Issue 20 Just Dance, It'll be Okay It starts with the hand lift – the body moves with the melody while the mind thinks about a feeling that has yet to be worked and the lungs breathe as they travel through space. Calmness, happiness, release.
Issue 19 Harnessing the Power of Sleep Many college students discount the importance of sleep; whether it is to stay up cramming for a test, or to play a new game that was just released, students simply
Issue 19 Holy Molly: Treating PTSD with MDMA Our ever-changing socio-political landscape creates many feelings of uneasiness, and individual experiences of war, terrorism, or sexual abuse only corroborate these feelings.
Issue 19 Decoding Neuroblastoma Late stage neuroblastoma is one of the most difficult childhood cancers to handle because of its poorly understood genetic markers, erratic tumor growth, and difficulty to remove. The primary treatment
Issue 19 Getting a Grip on Dystonia Hold out your hand, make a fist, and squeeze as hard as you can. If you squeeze long enough, you’ll experience some pain. This is a pain that individuals
Issue 19 To See or Not to See The year was 1998 and a blind woman had done the seemingly impossible: she had managed to accurately post a letter in a constantly rotating mail slot. By all accounts,
Issue 19 Brain Cartography: How Mammals Memorize Spatial Maps Let’s say someone asked you to memorize a random list of twenty animals. Your first thought, aside from “Why?”, would probably be, “How can I manage to memorize all of these creatures?”
Issue 19 Mental Mechanics: How Humans Reason Through a Physical World Picture yourself sitting in a coffee shop. When the barista sets a drink down on the counter, you probably don’t expect the drink to fall through the counter’s surface or bounce off the counter into the air.
Issue 19 Jogging Your Memory: Exercise and Alzheimer's Disease It can be difficult to fit exercise into busy schedules, especially for college students who always seem to have exams and deadlines approaching. However, exercise provides many neurological benefits, such
Issue 18 Stimulating Developments in Parkinson’s Treatment Imagine you’ve been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. The symptoms start as a small shake in one of your hands, which gradually spreads and worsens [1]. You attribute it
Issue 18 Searching for the Self For centuries, many have wrestled with what the “self” really is. As a species, we have come to the conclusion that a fundamental part of being human is having a
Issue 18 Alice in Wonderland Syndrome: Not Just an Illusion To some people, the world just doesn’t feel right. They may feel their bodies growing unnaturally large till they fill up the room. They sense that their bodies are
Issue 18 Take a Breath: The Effects of Respiration on Brain Activity Imagine a square. Breathe in deeply for four seconds while ascending one side of the square. Hold your breath for four seconds across the top edge, then breathe out for
Issue 18 Cerebellum Models and Disease Treatments Look at a fixed point. Now turn your head left, then right. What do you notice? Well, as your head moves in one direction, your eyes move the same number
Issue 18 Great Minds Built Alike Giftedness. The term itself carries a sense of ambiguity, as the potential of human ability and the depth of biological, social, psychological, and physical effects of what we call “giftedness”