A recent study conducted at the University of Turku shows that different people have similar brain activity when perceiving social situations. Researchers discovered an extensive neural network in the human brain that effectively processes various social information.
The University of Turku and the Turku University Central Hospital (TYKS) have signed a cooperation agreement on the establishment of the Turku Brain & Mind regional network. The network promotes brain health research and cooperation in Southwest Finland. The regional networks of the Neurocenter Finland have been in operation since late 2021.
Obesity risk factors of family background are associated with changes in the brain function, finds a study conducted at the Finnish Turku PET Centre. The results show that the function of neural networks regulating satiety and appetite is altered already before a person develops obesity.
Brain regulation of feeding behaviour traits has remained incompletely understood. In their latest study, researchers at the Turku PET Centre, Finland, discovered a connection between the function of the opioid system and food craving triggered by appetitive external stimuli.
According to a Finnish study, the structure and function of the brain areas involved in emotions and their regulation are altered in both psychopathic criminal offenders and otherwise well-functioning individuals who have personality traits associated with psychopathy.
A Finnish research group has studied how seasons influence the function of the brain. Researchers at the Turku PET Centre showed that the length of daylight affects the opioid receptors, which in turn regulates the mood we experience.
The FinnBrain research of the University of Turku has demonstrated for the first time that the stress the father has experienced in his childhood is connected to the development of the white matter tracts in the child’s brain. Whether this connection is transmitted through epigenetic inheritance needs further research.
What happens in the brain when our conscious awareness of the surrounding world and of ourselves fades during general anesthesia and normal sleep? This fundamental question was studied with novel experimental designs and functional brain imaging by Finnish scientists. They succeeded in separating the specific changes related to consciousness from the more widespread overall effects, commonly misinterpreted as the neural correlates of consciousness. The effects of anesthesia and sleep on brain activity turned out to be surprisingly similar.
Researchers at the University of Turku have discovered what type of neural mechanisms are the basis for emotional responses to music. Altogether 102 research subjects listened to music that evokes emotions while their brain function was scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The study was carried out in the national PET Centre.
Postdoctoral Researcher, Dr Ángel García de Lucas has received Marie Curie Fellowship for the project GABARPET with the objective to gain deeper insight on the biology of schizophrenia.