Samhani Ismail

• PhD Cognitive Neuroscience (USM) & MSc in Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience (USM), Malaysia
• Senior Lecturer at Sultan Zainal Abidin University

COVID-19 has triggered a global health crisis. Death from severe respiratory failure and symptoms, including fever, dry cough, sore throat, anosmia, and gastrointestinal disturbances, has been attributed to the disease. Development of screening and diagnosis methods prove to be challenging due to shared clinical features between COVID-19 and other...

Background: Listening to Quranic recitation has been claimed to enhance educational performance and cognitive functionality. Unfortunately, scientific evidence for this remains scarce. Aim: Hence, we aimed to investigate the neural mechanism underlined the psychoacoustic and cognitive enhancement effects from listening to Quranic recitation. Occipi...

Depression is a debilitating psychiatric disorder impacting an individual’s quality of life. It is the most prevalent mental illness across all age categories, incurring huge socio-economic impacts. Most depression treatments currently focus on the elevation of neurotransmitters according to the monoamine hypothesis. Conventional treatments include...

A Letter to Editor_The Holy Quran has a complete literary structures. Its rhythmical and melodious sound is believed to be important in memorization process, perhaps improve human cognitive functions. This electroencephalographic neuroimaging exploration emphasizes the psychoacoustic and cognitive effects of the rhythmic acoustical stimulation of t...

Sound rhythm is one of the factors that make the sound of the Holy Quran rhythmic and synchronous that change the rhythm of human brain waves. However, less studies have been found, and previous studies have focused more on the end rhyme system (end faselah) of the verses of the Qur'an. Thus, we conducted an acoustic phonetic study on the rhyming s...

Every year, more than one million people worldwide die from suicide, which is attributed to depression in 6.7% of cases. These incidents often stem from life-related stresses that can progress into more severe mental health challenges, potentially leading to mental disorders. High levels of depression, anxiety, and stress are prevalent mental healt...

Perception and synchronization of rhythms are vital for human health and social functioning, and cognition, which calls for rhythmic acoustic stimulation as a potential therapy. Quranic sound contains high energy and rhythmic structure of sound signal which has a soothing effect, comfort human feeling and evokes the limbic and reward systems. Howev...

Spiritual healing and Quranic sound therapy has long accompanied human tradition since decades. Quranic sound is perceived as rhythmical cues that portrays psychospiritual effects although it was not recited with external melodic intonation (tarannum). Its internal rhythms were believed to activate and synchronize its listeners’ brain rhythms hence...

Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease that exhibits a group of symptoms attributed to significant impairment in memory, thinking skills, and reasoning. Nowadays, conventional pharmaceutical approaches are being used to treat and reduce the progression of dementia symptoms related to AD. Nevertheless, early diagnosis is required fo...

Sound has rhythms that can interact with human brain rhythms. The interaction may improve human cognition through neuronal synchronization. However, research on the synchronization effects of listening to the Holy Quran remains elusive. This study aimed to learn the potential synchronous effects of Quranic listening in beta frequency through electr...

During the initial phase of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, there was a critical need to create a valid and reliable screening and surveillance for university staff and students. Consequently, 11 medical experts participated in this cross-sectional study to judge three risk categories of either low, medium, or high, for all 1536 p...

A persistent 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) exposure may disrupt the human body serotonergic system which subsequently leads to physical and psychiatric chaos. Serotonin, a well-known monoamine neurotransmitter which is the main target of MDMA can be found in cerebrospinal (CSF) fluid. Its variation reflects the severity of neuronal damag...

Background: There is a need to analyze a worldwide database of the coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.This may prove valuable to facilitate better strategies and planning on prevention, screening, surveillance, early diagnosis, containment and treatments. Method: We extracted 14,259 case reports of COVID-19 dated 11th November 2019 to...

Melaleuca cajuputi Powell is a tree species belonging to the family Myrtaceae and is widely used in traditional medicine. This study was conducted to investigate the antibacterial activities of essential oils of M. cajuputi Powell. Antibacterial activity was tested against Gram positive and Gram negative bacteria using the agar disc diffusion metho...

It is a spiritual and religious activity, memorising of the Quran, which has a positive effect on both mental and physical health. There are, however, a dearth of scientific research linking Quran memorising to improved human health. In other words, the study's goal is to find out whether kids in a chosen group of Selangor secondary schools in Mala...

Introduction: Opioid and amphetamine type stimulant (ATS) exert their rewarding effects by stimulating the dopaminergic system in the mesolimbic area. It has been suggested that dopamine system in peripheral blood lymphocytes reflect the central dopamine system's activity and pathology, especially in neuropsychiatric diseases including drug addicti...

Introduction: Listening to Quranic recitation produces deep relaxation effects thus promotes cognitive capabilities. The brainwaves oscillatory responses were applied in psychotherapy and cognitive rehabilitation approaches. Objective: Emphasizing on the alpha brainwave (frequency of 8 to 13Hz), we aimed to learn the neural mechanisms from the brai...

Background: Despite the physiological losses and the psychosocial stresses related to age-related diseases, some elderly still able to manage them successfully which lower their psychological distress. This study aims to describe the pattern of living support characteristics among the mentally healthy elderly in a state in Malaysia East Coast.

Brain oscillations are the prevalent features that may reflect the underlying physiological processes. Quranic sound stimulus which gained high attention in neuroimaging studies shows that the brain oscillations changed during perceiving the stimulus. Its rhythmic structure was assumed to interact with brainwaves rhythms producing neural entrainmen...

The elderly population rising rapidly in Malaysia and contributes to the increasing number of cognitive problems including mild cognitive impairment (MCI). However, due to limited information regarding this problem which may progress towards severe neurologic degeneration, this problem rarely diagnosed and left untreated. Hence, the use of electroe...

The aesthetic experiences of Quranic recitation are receiving attention from scientific community. While the contribution of quantitative electroencephalography (qEEG) towards investigation of cognition especially language processing as well as psychoacoustical effects are abundant. Yet knowledge about the integration for these two domains are scar...

Women are outperformed men in several cognitive performance and were acknowledged for their greater emotion capacity such as more empathic, intuitive and understanding. However, they are prone to get involved in emotional disturbances which maybe due to hormonal influnce and negative cognition. This study was to see the effects of auditory stimulat...

Islamic and Western education stands differently in terms of policy and goals. Islamic education is divine-oriented, to achieve God's creed and to direct the success of the world and the hereafter while Western education is touted the ideology of human thought that puts human intellect as the highest place. The Western references and teaching of Is...

Pendidikan Islam dan Barat dilihat jauh berbeza terutamanya dalam aspek dasar dan matlamat. Pendidikan Islam berorientasikan ketuhanan, untuk mencapai makrifat Allah dan mengarahkan kepada kejayaan di dunia dan akhirat manakala pendidikan Barat beracuankan ideologi pemikiran manusia yang meletakkan akal manusia di tempat tertinggi. Walau bagaimanap...

Mendengar bacaan Surah Al-Fatihah adalah salah satu amalan terapi ruqyah keana barakah surah ini mampu menjadi penawar jiwa serta meningkatkan kebijaksanaan logik dan emosi wania. Penemuan terkini penyelidikan neurosains kognitif menghurai berkenaan mekanisme neurofisiologi tentang hal tersebut.

This review article discusses the practicality of Manzil Verses recitation in managing opiate dependency among drug users. Opiate addiction is an alarming public health issue and leads to a variety of social problems such as communicable diseases, financial burden and defects in cognition and behaviors. Drug treatment and rehabilitation in Malaysia...

Attentional problem associated with negative emotions can prolong irritable episodes, and apparently related to inhibitory incapability and memorial dysfunction. Quantitative Verse, the first chapter with rhymed proses and beauty literary rhythms, found to be endowed with cognitive and psychoacoustical effects that eliminate negative emotions and i...

Neurobiological researches revealed that theta rhythms are most prominently seen over the brain's frontal regions. While abundant studies have identified the robust activity of frontal theta rhythms with respect to the types of stimuli interventions, little have been done to characterize them. This study aims to explore the characteristics of theta...

Stress is one of the main factor that contribute to drug addiction. In this paper, we review the contribution of healing verses (As-Syifa verses) in alleviating stress among drug addict subjects. A systematic documentation was done through qualitative content analysis regarding drug addiction and its relationship to stress, current treatment modali...

Alpha event-related desynchronization (ERD) participates in inhibitory process that involves of cognitive performance and psycho-emotional condition. In addition, this 8 to 13 Hz brainwave frequency also indicates a relaxed mental state where many attempts were done to achieve. Listening to Sura Fatiha, a most memorized sura from the complete liter...

Memperincikan faktor-faktor penyalahgunaan dadah dari konteks spiritual berdasarkan pandangan Imam Al-Ghazali

Puasa memberi pertahanan kepada otak

Holy Quran, a rhymed prosed scripture has a complete literary structure that exemplifies the peak of literary beauty. Memorizing of its verses could enhance one's memory capacity and cognition while those who are listening to its recitation it is also believed that the Holy Quran alter brainwave producing neuronal excitation engaging with cognitive...

Glioblastoma, the most aggressive and malignant form of glioma, appears to be resistant to various chemotherapeutic agents. Hence, approaches have been intensively investigated to targeti specific molecular pathways involved in glioblastoma development and progression. Aloe emodin is believed to modulate the expression of several genes in cancer ce...

Aloe emodin, one of the active compounds found in Aloe vera leaves, plays an important role in the regulation of cell growth and death. It has been reported to promote the anti-cancer effects in various cancer cells by inducing apoptosis. However, the mechanism of inducing apoptosis by this agent is poorly understood in glioma cells. This research...

Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR) is a nuclear receptor that functions as ligand-activated transcription factors that regulate the expression by binding directly to the DNA of the target genes. PPAR binds to a DNA sequence known as a peroxisome proliferator response element (PPRE), which is located in the promoter region of the targ...

Penerangan saintifik tentang koma dan bagaimana cara untuk menghadapi pesakit koma