The brain does not follow the head

The human brain is about three times the size of the brains of great apes. This has to do, among other things, with the evolution of novel brain structures that enabled complex behaviors such as language and tool production. A study by anthropologists now shows that changes in the brain occurred independent of evolutionary rearrangements of the braincase.

Read more

Widely available drug reduces head injury deaths

A low cost and widely available drug could reduce deaths in traumatic brain injury patients by as much as 20%, depending on the severity of injury, according to a major study. The researchers say that tranexamic acid (TXA), a drug that prevents bleeding into the brain by inhibiting blood clot breakdown, has the potential to save hundreds of thousands of lives.

Read more

Happy, angry or neutral expressions? Eyes react just as fast

Scientists have investigated how our eyes and brain react when we see emotionally charged or neutral faces. She combined eye-tracking and electroencephalography (EEG). The result: reflex-like eye movements are independent of the expression a face shows; our attention is drawn to them just as fast.

Read more

Dementia spreads via connected brain networks

Scientists used maps of brain connections to predict how brain atrophy would spread in individual patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD), adding to growing evidence that the loss of brain cells associated with dementia spreads via the synaptic connections between established brain networks.

Read more