A group of Bay Area scientists have unraveled some surprising secrets about post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD which one day could lead to better therapies and treatments. At UC Berkeley, neuroscientist Dr. Daniela Kaufer and now UCSF post-doc Kimberly Long — along with UCSF and San Francisco scientists Radiologist Dr. Linda Chao and Psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Neylan — may have provided a convincing reason why some people are resilient to trauma and others are susceptible. According to statistics, 70 percent of American adults experience at least one traumatic event in a lifetime. Twenty percent of those will develop PTSD, and their symptoms vary dramatically. In their research, the scientists made two important discoveries: that anxiety and traumatic stress are linked to increased myelin in a part of the brain where there is less myelin; and that where the increased myelin is found correlates to the particular symptom. For more on this, see our story at Berkeley News.

More than a thousand species use echolocation, but after billions of years of evolution, bats' brains are especially well optimized for navigation. A new paper released today in Science suggests that as bats fly, special neurons known as place cells—located in their hippocampus, a part of the brain that controls memory—helps them process key navigational information about their position not only in the moment but in the past and future as well. Using a combination of wireless neural data loggers and a motion-tracking system made of 16 cameras, Nicholas Dotson, a project scientist at the Salk Institute and the lead author of the study and his coauthor Michael Yartsev, a professor of neurobiology and engineering at UC Berkeley, observed six Egyptian fruit bats in two experiments meant to record bursts of neural activity. For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News.

Anyone who has tried and failed to meditate knows that our minds are rarely still. But where do they roam? New research led by UC Berkeley has come up with a way to track the flow of our internal thought processes and signal whether our minds are focused, fixated or wandering. Using an electroencephalogram (EEG) to measure brain activity while people performed mundane attention tasks, researchers identified brain signals that reveal when the mind is not focused on the task at hand or aimlessly wandering, especially after concentrating on an assignment. "For the first time, we have neurophysiological evidence that distinguishes different patterns of internal thought, allowing us to understand the varieties of thought central to human cognition and to compare between healthy and disordered thinking," said study senior author Robert Knight, a UC Berkeley professor of psychology and neuroscience. For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News.

The differences between politically left- and right-leaning individuals may have roots in the brain, results from a new imaging study suggest. UC Berkeley investigators found that despite watching the same videos related to immigration policy, neural responses differed between liberals and conservatives. "This divergence was strongest when the videos used language that highlighted threat, morality, and emotions, suggesting that certain words are more likely to drive polarized response," said lead researcher Yuan Chang Leong, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar in cognitive neuroscience. For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News. Stories on this topic have appeared in several sources, including Big Think, The Big Smoke, PsyPost, Medscape, Corriere della Sera (Italy), Faro de Vigo (Spain), and Videnscab (Denmark).

UC Berkeley announced that it will be launching the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics - an institute devoted to expanding and better understanding the effects hallucinogens have on the human brain. "There's never been a better time to start a center like this," said neuroscientist David Presti, one of the founding members of the project. "The renewal of basic and clinical science with psychedelics has catalyzed interest among many people." Buoyed by an anonymous $1.2-million donation, the center will begin its research by looking at psilocybin - the hallucinogenic component of mushrooms that has received increased attention?at other institutions recently for its ability to treat conditions previously thought untreatable. "Some of these studies have produced striking results in cases that are otherwise resistant to more conventional medical treatment," said Michael Silver, a neuroscientist and the director of the new center. "This suggests that psychedelic compounds may offer new hope for people suffering from these disorders." For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News.

Having trouble remembering a new name or doing more than one task at a time? Cognitive decline starts after a person's 20s, resulting in memory loss and other cognitive struggles. The good news is that several activities, including playing games, promote healthy aging and may prevent or delay some diseases. A study at the University of California, Berkeley, found evidence that an area in the brain used in playing bridge stimulates the immune system. Researchers suggest that is because players must use memory and sequencing.

A team of UC Berkeley neuroscience researchers reports that there is a correlation between poor, fragmented sleep and the buildup of toxic plaque in people's brains known to mark the onset of dementia. "We have found that the sleep you're having right now is almost like a crystal ball telling you when and how fast Alzheimer's pathology will develop in your brain," said study senior author Matthew Walker, a University of California, Berkeley professor of psychology and neuroscience. For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News. Stories on this topic have appeared in several sources, including Zee News, The Tribune (India), and Medical News.

A team of scientists at Berkeley's Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute has made a breakthrough in brain imaging with a camera that can image the brain of an alert mouse at a rate of 3,000 frames per second. The strategy will help doctors look for neural transmission problems in brain disorders. "In diseases, many things are happening, even before you can see neurons firing, like all the subthreshold events," says associate physics professor Na Ji, one of the team members. "We've never looked at how a disease will change with subthreshold input. Now, we have a handle to address that." Professor Ji says that one of their goals is to learn how neurons interact over large areas of the brain, so they can eventually locate diseased circuits.