‘Neuroscience’ at Psychology, Philosophy and Real Life, Page 3

Increased chemical activity in a part of the brain involved in reward and reinforcement may help shed light on the question of why anorexia sufferers feel driven to lose weight but don’t get any pleasure from it. New research with anorexia sufferers using brain-imaging technology found overactivity of dopamine receptors in a part of the brain known as the basal ganglia. Around 1 percent of women in the US suffer from anorexia, a disorder that can also affect men.

As a treatment for severe depression, electroconvulsive therapy (electro-shock treatment) has long been considered a last hope — a treatment which works, but which also brings significant side-effects, especially for memory. New research on a less aggressive alternative, transcranial magnetic stimulation, promises similar effectiveness but without memory impairment.

Along with the obvious benefit of chemotherapy — surviving cancer — comes a secondary problem that is often not well understood by friends, family, or even cancer patients themselves. Referred to simply as ‘chemobrain’, its symptoms include memory problems, confusion, and difficulty concentrating. The problem occurs in as many as 99 percent of breast and ovarian cancer patients, and until now, little was known about how to treat it.

New research has apparently disproved the popular theory that deficits in certain visual processes cause the spelling and reading woes commonly suffered by dyslexics; dyslexia affects between 5 and 10 percent of children in the U.S.