610440 external_news 1535459574 1535459574 <![CDATA[Researchers use fMRI to study how dehydration affects the brain]]> Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta have used fMRI to examine what happens to a person’s brain when it is dehydrated, sharing their findings in a new study published by Physiological Reports. The team asked volunteers to perform a repetitive task—pushing a specific button when a yellow square appeared on a monitor—for 20 minutes without hydrating. Even when no dehydration is present, the authors noted that “exertion and heat” can have a negative impact on a person’s ability to function—when dehydration does kick in, it just makes that negative impact that much worse. “We wanted to tease out whether exercise and heat stress alone have an impact on your cognitive function and study the effect of dehydration on top of that,” principal investigator Mindy Millard-Stafford, PhD, a professor at Georgia Tech, said in a prepared statement. “We found a two-step decline.” Business Standard also covered the work here.
 

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