Cerebrum : the Dana Forum on Brain Science

More than 20 percent of US adults suffer from some form of chronic pain. Our author, a cognitive psychologist and head of Dartmouth College's Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab, examines the relationship among our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about pain and the actual physical pain that we feel, what pain looks like in the brain, and how new research findings are leading to effective new treatments.

Our authors, who direct the Addiction Institute for the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City, address the substance-abuse avalanche brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.

In 2016, Science magazine ranked Randy L. Buckner among the top ten most influential brain scientists of the modern era. He explains the road to discovering the default network, the pattern of brain activity triggered as we think about the past and the future.

Evidence continues to mount that the brains of children living in poverty show tangible alterations. Our authors, all part of a team that studies the issue at Washington University School of Medicine, explain the challenges and the necessary steps needed to build a healthier and more productive society.

Our authors, who study successful aging and mental illnesses at the University of California, San Diego, address the often debated, complicated question that many of us have long wondered about: Does the brain improve with age?

A retired patient visits our author, who is professor of ophthalmology and neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, to find out why he is suddenly struggling with his vision and learn why but a single treatment option exists for macular degeneration, a condition that affects 200-million people worldwide.

What can spaceflight teach us about the brain? Our author, Mark Shelhamer, former chief scientist for the NASA Human Research Program and a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, lays out how spaceflight relates to brain function, cognitive performance, and mental abilities.

Your brain keeps you alive and well by running a metabolic "budget" for your body. Our authors, who co-direct the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory at Northeastern University and Massachusetts General Hospital, explain how these budgetary activities, and the sensations they create inside your body, suggest surprising connections between brain, mind, body, and world .

While the 1990s bestseller Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus addressed behavior, the neurobiological sex differences in the male and female brain remain largely a mystery. Our author-an acclaimed neuroendocrinologist at Northwestern University-tells us what we know and why we don't know more.

Knowledge gleaned from big data and advances in neuroimaging have provided new insights into the workings of the brain. Our author, founding director of the Center for Translational Research in Neuroimaging and Data Science and a Georgia Research Alliance eminent scholar in brain health and image analysis, traces the evolution of these two evolving fields and how it may have a positive impact on mental health in the not-to-distant future .

Our author-Professor of Neuroscience & Society at the University of Oxford and co-director of the Wellcome Trust Center for Ethics and Humanities-reflects on efforts to grow recognition of neuroscience in low- and middle-income countries.

As a practicing otologic surgeon with a Ph.D. in epidemiology and a leader in research that examines hearing loss as a potent risk factor for dementia, our author tells us what we've learned and what we still need to know about the relationship between hearing loss and cognitive decline in older adults.

Research by geneticist Gerard Karsenty of Columbia University has revealed that our bones do much more than provide protection and support. A protein called osteocalcin-released as a hormone by the skeleton-has been linked to sugar levels, exercise, and male fertility. More recently, he has shown that osteocalcin triggers a "fight or flight" response to threat.

Marc Brackett and Christina Cipriano at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence trace the formation of a young field and its growing impact on education and personal development.

Since How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog) appeared in 2017, molecular genetics research connected to the silver fox domestication experiment has been published in Nature and Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Lee Alan Dugatkin writes about his connection to the project, the role of neural crest cells in domesticating foxes, and how dogs, bonobos, and humans fit into the picture.

Our author, the Distinguished Professor of Neuroeconomics at Emory University and co-founder of Dog Star Technologies-a company using neuroscience to enhance the dog-human partnership-has put more than 100 dogs through a brain scanner. His article addresses a dog's perception of the world, social cognition findings, canine mental health, and more.

Our author's Cognitive Neuroscience of Creativity Lab at Penn State uses brain imaging and behavioral experiments to examine how creative thinking works in different contexts and domains, from the arts to the sciences to everyday life. His article examines the part of the brain that directs creative thought and asks the million-dollar question: Can creativity be enhanced?

Our author- the director of the Social Neuroscience and Health Laboratory at the University of North Carolina-examines new research that ties income and other factors to stress and other emotional responses. Does how we perceive our social standing impact our life expectancy and heart health? Are there interventions available to develop emotion regulation strategies?

Solving the mystery of Alzheimer's disease is one of the most important-and elusive-challenges in medicine. New cutting-edge research by our author's lab at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in La Jolla, California points to unique genomic changes within single cells of the brain, called somatic gene recombination, as a potential new factor in finding answers .

Devices in and out of the brain that can stimulate the nervous system through electric current are now being used to treat depression, movement disorders, and chronic pain. Our author, a Stanford School of Medicine clinical associate professor who is senior scientific research director for Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System, provides insight on the many neuromodulation strategies now available to treat brain injury and the potential of further research to accomplish much more ...