Jun/090
Viva la nap consolidates long-term memory
Want to submit your memory to a restorative care? The winning recipe does not contain phosphorus or supplements, but surely a more healthy and pleasant nap. Ninety minutes of sleep during the day, shows a study published in Nature Neuroscience, promote the consolidation of long-term memory, or to that form of permanent memory destined to disappear never to fade or only after many years.
So far the good news of the clearance of the afternoon naps. But the Israeli researchers in the Center for Brain and Behavior Research at the University of Haifa have also prepared a cold shower. In practice with their research are trying to unravel the mechanisms underlying memory consolidation induced by sleep, and play them back artificially.
The learning of a task may be considered as two distinct phases, the performance improvement that occurs during the execution of the task is to refine the next linked to processes of memory consolidation, i.e. the transformation of the memory of a given experience into something more solid and durable.
One can distinguish two different forms of this type of memory: the memory of the “what” (e.g. what happened today) and the memory of “how” (e.g. how to do something, like driving etc…) In the early stages post-learning processes underlying the consolidation of experience, can be disturbed in various ways, from interfering chemical, physical or electrical (interference behavioral retrograde), which may act but only within a time window limited to 5 -6 hours after the training phase.
The processes of memory consolidation, for their part involving the expression of genes and the synthesis of proteins that lead to alterations in synapses (synaptic consolidation). Study participants were initially instructed to learning a motor sequence, to be carried out with the thumb and forefinger of the non dominant hand (finger sequence task). One group was made to sleep for 90 minutes after the session of learning, but others remained awake.
The group that had lunch break, the evening ran perfectly the motor performance learned in the morning, unlike the other group. After a night of sleep, however, both groups showed the same level of performance of the motor task. This experiment therefore shows that the afternoon sleep memory consolidation produces a much more rapid and effective.
In a second experiment was evaluated instead’s influence on the mechanisms of sleep interference. Participants in the experiment were subjected to the usual seat of learning of a motor task, half of them followed by 90 minutes of sleep, the other by a period of wakefulness.
This second experiment demonstrates for the first time that the afternoon sleep protects the memory of “how” of the interference and facilitates consolidation. Are not yet known, however, the mechanisms by which sleep can produce these effects. Until then we will be able to reproduce artificially continue to enjoy the benefits of an afternoon nap. With’s excellent excuse to strengthen our memory of how.
Jun/090
Cookies come from Japan to increase breast
It seems that we women no longer have need of the Breast additives to make more generous our forms. From now on it will be enough to earn some gobbling of biscuits plus size bra! Comes from Japan where they market the miraculous Fcup biscotti cookies that promises to increase the size of the breast. The wonder would be possible due to their content of Pueraria Mirifica a grass of Thai origin, which contains phytoestrogens, plant substances similar to human hormones.
Manufacturer dares even Dosage: daily dose of biscuits to take to achieve the desired effect would be equal to two cookies a day. But you do not specify how long the treatment should last and how long the effect. Each pack contains four biscuits from 68.7 calories each cost the modest sum of 290 yen (less than 2 Euros). But this is not all: it would indeed already available on the Japanese market also Fcup tea making breast enlargement, produced by the same parent company. Suffice then a snack of tea and cookies a day to see their breasts increase in size. No word yet but if the daily intake of phytoestrogens may have adverse effects on health.
However the usual malignant argue that the effect would be attributable simply to miraculous’ weight gain, which will inevitably affect the size of the breast, and that the results will certainly be visible on the buttocks and thighs. But really harmless two biscuits a day (sounds are also good) can fatten up to this point? It remains then to understand if the men casually, maybe fishing at random inside the pantry looking for something to munch on, they had to eat the miraculous FCup cookie will meet also with a generous, as unwelcome, at least one hopes for their partners, take off.
Jun/090
Brain? A deposit of spare parts
They are still stem cells to keep alive hopes for rapid progress of research medicine.
This time are the cells of the brain the subject of the discovery of a group of researchers of the University of Monaco.
Scholars have analyzed the consequences of a lesion in the brains of mice.
The trauma would cause the proliferation of astrocytes, cells that support neurons. Multiplying them will reverse their development, becoming similar to stem cells.
Culture in the laboratory, can give rise to cells of different types, like neurons.
The study was published in the journal’s Academy of American science and opens new frontiers for research into stem cells. In particular, the researchers hope to use these cells to repair brain damage from trauma or injury.
Before jumping to conclusions too optimistic, however, the discovery must be confirmed in humans.
In the case of a positive finding even the human brain, it could be argued that the brain is a veritable warehouse of spare parts.
In the case of brain injury in astrocytes, which nourish the neurons multiply, but only to produce other astrocytes and form a sort of scar. What was discovered is a warehouse with three doors, but the ultimate objective, as stated by one of the researchers who participated in the study, is to open the other two doors of the warehouse.