Brain imaging can reveal a great deal about who we are and what is going inside our heads. But how far can – and should – this research take us? Julia Gottwald and Barbara Sahakian, authors of Sex, Lies, and Brain Scans: How fMRI Reveals What Really Goes on in our Minds, investigate for The Conversation.
Young adults diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in adolescence show differences in brain structure and perform poorly in memory tests compared to their peers, according to new research from the University of Cambridge, UK, and the University of Oulu, Finland.
Our standard way of measuring brain activity could be giving us a misleading picture of how our brains age, argues Dr Kamen Tsvetanov from the Department of Psychology.
Pornography triggers brain activity in people with compulsive sexual behaviour – known commonly as sex addiction – similar to that triggered by drugs in the brains of drug addicts, according to a University of Cambridge study published in the journal PLOS ONE. However, the researchers caution that this does not necessarily mean that pornography itself is addictive.
Research raises possibility of devices in the future to help some patients in a vegetative state interact with the outside world.
The Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre is a unique venture that brings together scientists and doctors from Cambridge University and Cambridge’s Addenbrookes Hospital for the development of new treatments for patients with brain disorders.
Cambridge researchers have discovered that measuring activity in a region of the brain could help to identify people at risk of developing obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).
For some people, the urge to eat is uncontrollable. Cambridge scientists have taken us a step closer to understanding the causes of obesity by studying a group of patients for whom overeating is an everyday event.
Gambling is a thriving form of entertainment in the UK, but may also become a form of addiction for some individuals. Just why do people gamble when ‘the house always wins’? Advances in brain imaging techniques are helping Cambridge scientists find out.
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