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Casual marijuana use may damage your brain

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~~~~CNNHealth1
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If you thought smoking a joint occasionally was OK, a new study released Tuesday suggests you might want to reconsider.
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The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, is the first to link casual marijuana use to major changes in the brain. And according to the researchers, the degree of abnormalities is based on the number of joints you smoke in a week.Using different types of neuroimaging, researchers examined the brains of 40 young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 who were enrolled in Boston-area colleges. Twenty of them smoked marijuana at least once a week. The other 20 did not use pot at all.
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The Top 5 Neuroscience Breakthroughs of 2013

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~~~~TheConnectome1
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If 2012 was the year neuroscience exploded into pop culture, 2013 was the year it stepped into the halls of power.
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The Obama administration’s $100-million BRAIN Initiative stirred up furious debate, as proponents cheered to see so much funding and press attention thrown at large-scale efforts to map the human brain, while opponents claimed that the whole thing might be a gigantic waste of valuable resources. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the European Union’s Human Brain Project sparked similar disputes – disputes that continue even as unexpected breakthroughs have begun to surface.
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roflbot
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Click link below for The Top 5 Neuroscience Breakthroughs:
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Sleep ‘boosts brain cell numbers’

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~~~~BBCNewsHealth1
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Scientists believe they have discovered a new reason why we need to sleep – it replenishes a type of brain cell.

Sleep ramps up the production of cells that go on to make an insulating material known as myelin which protects our brain’s circuitry.

The findings, so far in mice, could lead to insights about sleep’s role in brain repair and growth as well as the disease MS, says the Wisconsin team.

The work is in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Dr Chiara Cirelli and colleagues from the University of Wisconsin found that the production rate of the myelin making cells, immature oligodendrocytes, doubled as mice slept.

The increase was most marked during the type of sleep that is associated with dreaming – REM or rapid eye movement sleep – and was driven by genes.

In contrast, the genes involved in cell death and stress responses were turned on when the mice were forced to stay awake.

Precisely why we need to sleep has baffled scientists for centuries. It’s obvious that we need to sleep to feel rested and for our mind to function well – but the biological processes that go on as we slumber have only started to be uncovered relatively recently.

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Brains and Brilliance

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~~~~TheConnectome1

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Where in the brain, exactly, is intelligence? Is a high I.Q. just a result of a flawed test – or do high-I.Q. brains have specific, measurable differences from others? Answers await, Intrepid Reader – but first we have to make sure we’re asking the right questions.

Let’s start with the big news: a study just published in the Journal of Neuroscience reports that when a certain area of the frontal lobe has unusually wide and active connectivity, a higher I.Q. tends to follow. The trouble is, though, that a high I.Q. only reflects certain types of mental abilities – so what this discovery really means is that a certain functional network in the brain plays a major role in certain kinds of smart thinking.

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Chemistry woman

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http://theconnecto.me/2012/08/brains-and-brilliance/

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