Tianqiao & Chrissy Chen Institute – Change perception, change your world | Chen Institute

We are conscious beings, yet most of the activity in our brains remains nonconscious. Can we harness this hidden pool of information? The international team used a state-of-the-art method to read nonconscious brain states in real-time. This technique used brain scanning to monitor and detect the occurrence of specific complex patterns of activity, that were […]

How does our brain store information? Seeking an answer, researchers at CHU Sainte-Justine Hospital and Université de Montréal have made a major discovery in understanding the mechanisms underlying learning and memory formation. The results of their study are presented in Nature Communications. Led by Professor Roberto Araya, the team studied the function and morphological transformation […]

Humans are often motivated by self-interest. Participants in one study, for example, learned a game faster when they earned money for themselves as opposed to another person. However, this pattern changes when physical harm enters the equation. As social beings, we need to learn to avoid actions that hurt others and it turns out that […]

Matthew Smith and Byron Yu, along with former Ph.D. student Ben Cowley (Ph.D., SCS ’18), have studied the neural basis through which internal states in the brain affect decision-making over an extended period of time. Through recording the activity of populations of neurons simultaneously in two brain areas, they were able to gain unprecedented insight […]

Researchers at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Northwestern University have identified a subtype of autism arising from a cluster of genes that regulate cholesterol metabolism and brain development. The researchers say their findings, published Aug. 10 in Nature Medicine, can inform both the design of precision-targeted therapies for this specific form of […]

Sleepiness affects cognitive performance, motivation and behaviour. More and more people are suffering from sleep disorders, but the effects of sleepiness on social activity, which plays an important role in one’s overall health and well-being, have remained relatively unknown. In order to increase our understanding in this area, researchers at Stockholm University and Karolinska Institutet […]

Something like a quarter of the world’s population suffers from chronic pain at some point in their lives. As opposed to acute pain – for example, the feeling after hitting your finger with a hammer – chronic pain may not even have a clear cause, and it can linger for years or lifetimes. The burden […]

Disturbed sleep patterns do not cause Alzheimer’s disease but people who are at high genetic risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease may be more likely to be a “morning person,” have shorter sleep duration and other measures of sleep disturbance and are less likely to have insomnia, according to a study published in the August 19, […]

None of the 41 most common high blood pressure medications increased the risk of depression, while nine medications appeared to lower it, according to a study from Denmark, published today in Hypertension, an American Heart Association journal.

Feeling angry these days? New research suggests that a good night of sleep may be just what you need. This program of research comprised an analysis of diaries and lab experiments. The researchers analyzed daily diary entries from 202 college students, who tracked their sleep, daily stressors, and anger over one month. Preliminary results show […]