Popular Mechanics writes: In a new study, researchers found the traditional psychoactive drug ayahuasca stimulates the growth of new brain cells in the hippocampi of research mice. The hippocampus is responsible for many memory functions, and the mice dosed with ayahuasca also performed better in a battery of memory tests. While ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic and often purgative tea brewed from leaves…
Tag: neurological disorders
Physicists Overturn a 100-Year-Old Assumption On How Brain Cells Work
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ScienceAlert: A study published in 2017 has overturned a 100-year-old assumption on what exactly makes a neuron “fire,” posing new mechanisms behind certain neurological disorders. To understand why this is important, we need to go back to 1907 when a French neuroscientist named Louis Lapicque proposed a model to describe how the voltage of…
The Real “Sleeping Beauty” – Woman Sleeps For Weeks At A Time
A woman with a rare sleeping disorder called Kleine-Levin or “Sleeping Beauty” Syndrome can spend weeks of her life sleeping up to 22 hours each day. 21-year-old Rhoda Rodriguez-Diaz suffers from episodes where she gets extremely tired, causing her to sleep almost continuously for up to three weeks straight, except for briefly waking up to… Continue reading The Real “Sleeping Beauty” – Woman Sleeps For Weeks At A Time