Turns out, your brain isn’t just a squishy mass of pinkish-grey. Hidden deep inside is a tiny “blue spot” that plays a major role in our cognition — and a new study shows that it goes through a ...

The locus coeruleus is emerging as a major new area of research interest, with many important functions such as regulating our attention and sleep. Anyone with insomnia knows the impatience and ...

Place a finger on the back of your skull, at a point roughly level with the tops of your ears. Here, deep beneath the hair, skin and bone, near a fluid-filled cavity in the root of your brain, lies a ...

Andrew Luskin conducted research on the brain's peri-locus coeruleus neurons while he was a UW Medicine neuroscience Ph.D. student. A small cluster of cells deep within our brains, called the locus ...

A small cluster of cells deep within our brains, called the locus coeruleus, affects how awake and attentive we are, how we respond to stress, how we cope with anxiety and fear, and how we create ...

We found that the locus coeruleus may provide the critical 'start' signal to the hippocampus, as if saying, 'Hey, we're in a new event now,'" said Davachi. "Prior work had shown that bursts of locus ...

Life may unfold as a continuous stream, but our memories tell a different story. We do not recall the past as one long, unbroken text. Instead, we remember it as a series of meaningful events, like ...

Deep within the brainstem is a structure no bigger than a grain of rice, the locus coeruleus. The LC is often referred to as the “blue spot” because of a distinct blue pigment produced from its inner ...

The locus coeruleus is a nucleus that controls attention, memory and alertness, but a study shows that it seems to weaken in later years. Older adults appear more easily distracted by irrelevant ...