The 5 Most Addictive Substances on Earth – and What They Do to Your Brain by Science Alert What are the most addictive drugs? This question seems simple, but the answer depends on whom you ask. From the points of view of different researchers, the potential for a drug to be addictive can be judged in terms of the harm it causes, the street value of the drug, the extent to which the drug activates the brain's dopamine system, how pleasurable people report the drug to be, the degree to which the drug causes withdrawal symptoms, and how easily a person trying the drug will become hooked. There are other facets to measuring the addictive potential of a drug, too, and there are even researchers who argue that no drug is always addictive. Given the varied view of researchers, then, one way of ranking addictive drugs is to ask expert panels. In 2007, David Nutt and his colleagues asked addiction experts to do exactly that – with some interesting findings. 1. Heroin Nutt et ...

Reason people with dementia don't all behave the same by Medical Xpress People with dementia experience a range of psychological symptoms and behaviour changes. Credit: shutterstock.com Dementia is the is the leading cause of death among Australian women and the third most common cause of death among men. While dementia is not a normal part of ageing, the biggest risk factor for dementia is advancing age. Given ours is an ageing population, estimates suggest dementia cases are set to almost triple by 2050. Many people associate dementia with memory loss, so it may come as a surprise that dementia is a killer. So, what does it do to the body to make this happen? The brain is our control centre Everything we do is controlled by the brain. It generates the instructions that tell our body parts what to do, as well as facilitating our complex behaviours, such as personality and cognition (our ability to think, understand and do things). When a person has dementia, neuron...

8 Secrets That Help You Memorize Anything By power of positivity The human brain has no issue with storage because it has limitless space. But you lose the capacity to recall things as you get older because the brain is protecting you from information overload. You can, however, continue to train your brain to memorize the important things despite the threats of memory loss. Below are some secrets on how you can do it. Here Are 8 Secrets That Help You Memorize Anything “Knowing a little bit more about how your brain works can really help [you] to be a little more compassionate with yourself when it might take you a little more time than another [person] to learn a topic.” – Barbara Oakley 1. Use repetition to keep the information in your head. The brain processes new information in the short-term memory but it can quickly forget if you don’t use the information repeatedly. According to the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve, you forget half of what you learn in an hour. That ...