Realizations Inc

Study recently presented at Neuroscience 2011, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and the world‘s largest source of emerging news about brain science and health: It appears that music memory may be stored differently (e.g., somewhat independently) from other types of memory. The study suggests that the acquisition, long-term retention, and retrieval of semantic musical information may be possible even in specific types of cases of severe amnesia.

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Individuals who complain of chronic low back pain may also experience some changes to their brain's activity. A recent study at McGill University associated chronic pain with reduced brain gray matter and impaired cognitive ability. This just might lend some credence to comments by pain sufferers (e.g., when my back hurts I just can't think straight). It certainly might provide impetus for those who do struggle with chronic back pain to take another look at strategies that could reduce the pain. The good news, according to the researchers, was that brain activity seemed to normalize after successful treatment.

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Studies by Shelley E. Taylor, et al: Males are more likely to use physical aggression in struggles for power within a hierarchy or to defend territory against external enemies. Females reliably show less physical aggression than males but they display as much or more indirect aggression in the form of gossip, rumor-spreading, and enlisting the cooperation of a third party in undermining an acquaintance. When confronted with acute stress, both males and females may initiate a fight-flight response. Males and females tend to deal with stressful situations differently. Males are more likely to respond to an emergency situation with aggression (fight), while females are more likely to flee (flight), turn to others for help, or attempt to defuse the situation. Behaviorally, females appear to move rather quickly to a tend-befriend pattern. Tending involves nurturing activities designed to protect the self and offspring that promote safety and reduce distress; befriending is the creation and maintenance of social networks that may aid in this process.

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Studies by NIMH grantee Rita Valentino PhD: Women are twice as vulnerable as men to many stress-related disorders, such as depression and PTSD. Corticotropin releasing factor (CRF), which acts as both a hormone and a neurotransmitter, appears to be a key player. Researchers used antibodies and an electron microscope to see how the CRF receptor responds in the brains of male versus female rats—both unstressed and after exposure to a stressful swim. In the male brain under stress, many of the hormone's receptors retreated into the cell, making the brain less stress reactive. Even in the absence of any stress, the researchers found the female stress signaling system to be more sensitive from the start.

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