– Noor Unnahar, Instagram Account "noor_unnahar"

ScienceAlert

We Just Got More Evidence That Long COVID Is a Brain Injury

The exact nature of long COVID is still coming to light, but we just got some of the best evidence yet that this debilitating condition stem

The exact nature of long COVID is still coming to light, but we just got some of the best evidence yet that this debilitating condition stems from a brain injury. Using high-resolution scanners, researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford have shown microscopic, structural abnormalities in the brainstems of those recovering from COVID-19. Signs of brain inflammation were present up to 18 months after first contracting the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

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people who work/study in quantitative bio-adjacent fields, rise up. computational neuroscience where you get to see someone's thoughts in feelings in graph form??? so cool. biophysics where you can pass blood plasma through an electric field to determine whether a patient has cancer or not?? unbelievable. biomedical engineering where you can literally build a device to pump someone's heart and be the difference between their life and death??? oh my god. disease modelling, being able to predict AND prevent communities being affected by disease on a large scale through your analysis of data??? i love science

Sylvia Plath, from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

ScienceAlert

For The First Time, Scientists Show Structural, Brain-Wide Changes During Menstruation

The constant ebb and flow of hormones that guide the menstrual cycle don't just affect reproductive anatomy.

The constant ebb and flow of hormones that guide the menstrual cycle don't just affect reproductive anatomy. They also reshape the brain, and a new study has given us insight into how this happens. Led by neuroscientists Elizabeth Rizor and Viktoriya Babenko of the University of California Santa Barbara, a team of researchers tracked 30 women who menstruate over their cycles, documenting in detail the structural changes that take place in the brain as hormonal profiles fluctuate. The results, which are yet to be peer-reviewed but can be found on preprint server bioRxiv, suggest that structural changes in the brain during menstruation may not be limited to those regions associated with the menstrual cycle. "These results are the first to report simultaneous brain-wide changes in human white matter microstructure and cortical thickness coinciding with menstrual cycle-driven hormone rhythms," the researchers write.

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Sylvia Plath, from Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices [ID in alt text]

– Audrey Hepburn

Good News Network

Owning Pets Helps Stave Off Dementia for People Over 50 Living on Their Own

Caring for a pet helps stave off cognitive decline for people over 50 who live on their own, according to a new study of almost 8,000 partic

"Caring for a pet helps stave off cognitive decline for people over 50 who live on their own, according to a new study of almost 8,000 participants.

Researchers found that pet ownership was associated with slower rates of decline in verbal memory and verbal fluency among the older adults who were living alone.

The study included 7,945 mostly-white British participants from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing with an average age of 66.

Followed over an eight year period, more than a third of the group (35.1 percent) owned pets; about 30% of the group lived alone.

Previous studies suggested that solitary living is a risk factor for developing dementia and cognitive decline, but among those folks, raising dogs or cats was related to reduced loneliness.

Some research has found that pet ownership is associated with better verbal memory and executive function, but others failed to find any evidence.

The new research published in JAMA Network aimed to further explore the association between aging by oneself—a trend which has been on the rise over the past few decades—and pet ownership. And the results were clear.

“Pet ownership offset the associations between living alone and declining rates in verbal memory and verbal fluency,” said study corresponding author Professor Ciyong Lu, of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China.

It was “a significant modifier” in all 3 associations—composite verbal cognition, verbal memory, and verbal fluency.

“Pet ownership was associated with slower rates of decline among older adults living alone.”

But owning a cat or dog did not make any difference for older people who lived with other people.

“These findings suggest that pet ownership may be associated with slower cognitive decline among older adults living alone.”

Prof. Lu is now calling for clinical trials that could help inform public health measures to address dementia among the elderly."

-via Good News Network, November 30, 2023

Lee Krasner // Franz Kafka