A new study published this week in Neurology divided subjects into three groups, based on their levels of vitamin B12, and followed them for five years with annual scans and physical and mental examinations.The group with the lowest levels of vitamin B12 lost twice as much brain volume as those with the highest levels. Here’s the bottom line: Make sure you have an adequate intake of vitamin B12. You can find it in meat and eggs or with a daily supplement. 

Spanish researchers claim that a region of the brain that plays a key role in visual processing and in storing language and personal memories appears to differ between the sexes at the microscopic level. Brains of men and women are more different than originally thought, according to researchers in Spain this week who found that the smaller number of synapses in the female brain might actually make those neurons more effective. “I didn’t think there would be such a striking difference,” said the lead researcher in the study. It’s interesting to note that we do know that the temporal cortex is involved in language processing, and that women and girls have somewhat of an advantage in this area.

Scientists at the University of California, Irvine, discovered the brain mechanism that shuts off traumatic responses to bad memories, according to HealthDay News. (Unfortunately, I don’t think this applies to seventh grade picture day when you had mall bangs and braces.) Read the story on Yahoo! news here.

You are as brave as your basal amygdala, according to a new study out of the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Switzerland. The scientists learned that the brain does not unlearn fear, but instead can learn not to fear a threatening thing in particular contexts. Read the study in Nature magazine here.

The reward system in the brain is highly focused on getting what we want, so it may come as a surprise that the most pleasurable brain-state is the longing and the craving for something we want - just as we almost are going to get it — but not after we actually get it. Check out the details of what these Rutgers and NYU brain researchers found in this new brain study.