What Happens to the Human Nervous System in Weightlessness

Researchers from the Higher School of Economics have shown that by stimulating the frontal cortex, a person’s financial risk appetite can be increased temporarily. Their article on the cognitive mechanisms of risky decision-making was published in eNeuro, an international peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the Society for Neuroscience.

Cognitive neuroscientists from the Higher School of Economics and Aarhus University experimentally demonstrate how spatial navigation impacts language comprehension. The results of the study have been published in NeuroImage.

According to HSE researchers, men with a high 2D:4D ratio (i.e. those whose index finger is longer than their ring finger) tend to be better educated. These findings are presented in the paper «2D: 4D and lifetime educational outcomes: Evidence from the Russian RLMS survey» in Personality and Individual Differences.

Several studies have indicated that schizophrenic patients are likely to show high levels of nicotine dependence. Scientists from Higher School of Economics (HSE), Institut Pasteur, the CNRS, Inserm and the ENS employed a mouse model to elucidate how nicotine influences cells in the prefrontal cortex. They visualized how nicotine has a direct impact on the restoration of normal activity in nerve cells (neurons) involved in psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia. These findings were published in a paper that appeared in the journal Nature Medicine.

Researchers from the Higher School of Economics, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, Indiana University and the Russian Academy of Sciences Nizhny Novgorod Institute of Applied Physics have identified potential alcoholism mechanisms, associated with altered dopaminergic neuron response to complex dynamics of prefrontal cortex neurones affecting dopamine release.