Tag: brain

People who are out of shape in midlife may end up with smaller brain volume as they age compared to peers who exercise regularly, according to a U.S. study.

While past research suggests that brain shrinkage may be an unavoidable part of aging, the new findings add inactivity to a growing list of factors like smoking, obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure that are thought to accelerate the process.

"We found that poor fitness in midlife was linked to more rapid brain aging two decades later," said lead author Nicole Spartano of Boston University School of Medicine.

Pregnancy may trigger changes in the structure and size of regions in a woman’s brain that are involved in responding to social and emotional cues, a recent study suggests.

Many of these changes appeared to last at least two years after giving birth, the study found. Mothers who had the most pronounced alterations in their brains also scored higher on tests of emotional attachment to their babies than women whose brains underwent subtler changes.

"This study provides the first insights into the impact of pregnancy on the gray matter architecture of the human brain," said lead study author Elseline Hoekzema of the University of Leiden in The Netherlands.

A central agent of the erotic act, of eroticism, is the imagination…if that goes away, that’s when the breakdown of desire often occurs.—Esther Perel

I often tell couples that the sexiest part of their body is their brain. Usually, I am trying to get them to understand the connection between their olfactory system and the limbic section where memory, emotion and sexuality are activated. But the more I talk about it, the more I have come to realize that this is also a key entry point to our sexual imagination and our capacity for fantasy. We all have our own personal brand of eroticism—how sexuality is transformed by our imagination—but we don’t all have equal access to it.