#Research

Recent findings have drawn a direct connection between the use of plastic bottles for drinking and increased health risks, including high blood pressure and heart problems. As plastic use remains widespread in Thailand and across the globe, these revelations are particularly significant, urging a re-evaluation of everyday habits that pose hidden dangers to our health.

The study in focus, conducted by researchers from Danube Private University in Austria and published in the journal Microplastics, reveals that microplastics—tiny particles less than 5 mm in size—might be influencing human blood pressure, a condition closely linked to cardiovascular issues. Microplastics come from the breakdown of larger plastics and are found in abundance in our daily environment, including in the food we eat, air we breathe, and the water we drink.

A groundbreaking study has unveiled how our brains physically associate memories formed close in time, offering intriguing insights that could impact the understanding of memory-related disorders. Conducted at Ohio State University and recently published in Nature Neuroscience, the research highlights that rather than being encoded in the cell bodies of neurons, memories formed within short timeframes are stored in the dendrites, which are intricate extensions of neurons.

This discovery is significant as it elucidates why events occurring on the same day often feel inherently linked, in contrast to those spaced out over weeks. Dendrites, long overshadowed by the neuron cell bodies in memory studies, are now recognized as playing a crucial role in memory linkage. The researchers, led by Megha Sehgal, utilized advanced imaging techniques on mice, which revealed that the same dendritic branches get activated when closely timed experiences are encoded, thereby binding the memories together.