The workings of neural circuits associated with creativity are significantly altered when artists are actively attempting to express emotions, according to a new brain-scanning study of jazz pianists.
Using a new gene-editing technique, a team of scientists from UT Southwestern Medical Center stopped progression of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) in young mice.
Taking a high dose of vitamin D3 is safe for people with multiple sclerosis and may help regulate the body’s hyperactive immune response, according to a pilot study published by Johns Hopkins physicians in the Dec. 30 online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Taking a high dose of vitamin D3 is safe for people with multiple sclerosis (MS) and may correct the body’s hyperactive immune response, according to a study published in the December 30, 2015, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Princeton University researchers have captured among the first recordings of neural activity in nearly the entire brain of a free-moving animal. The three-dimensional recordings could provide scientists with a better understanding of how neurons coordinate action and perception in animals.
New findings by French researchers show that the brain devotes more processing resources to social situations that signal threat than those that are benign.
The human gut harbors a teeming menagerie of over 100 trillion microorganisms, and researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder have discovered that exercising early in life can alter that microbial community for the better, promoting healthier brain and metabolic activity over the course of a lifetime.
James Bond's nemesis in the most recent film likely failed neuroanatomy, said real-life neurosurgeon and scientist Dr. Michael Cusimano of St. Michael's Hospital.
Researchers announced the first-ever evidence-based description of the neuronal protein clumps thought to be important in ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, a fatal neurodegenerative condition. This could be a crucial step toward developing drugs to stem the progression of the disease.
In the first study of its kind, a team of international scientists led by UT Southwestern Medical Center and UCLA researchers have identified a dozen inherited traits related to sleep, wake, and activity cycles that are associated with severe bipolar disorder.
Could hypnosis help to reduce the psychological trauma associated with "awake craniotomy" for brain cancers? A new "hypnosedation" technique offers a new alternative for patients undergoing awake surgery for gliomas, suggests a study in the January issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons, published by Wolters Kluwer.
A liver hormone works via the brain’s reward pathway to reduce cravings for sweets and alcohol in mammals, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have found.
Researchers at the laboratory for research of molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying learning and memory, directed by Prof. Kobi Rosenblum, found that “repairing” the activity led to an improvement in memory. A start-up they established on the basis of the findings will attempt to develop drugs delaying the onset of cognitive symptoms
The hepatitis C virus may be associated with an increased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, according to a study published in the December 23, 2015, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Parkinson’s disease is considered the second most common degenerative brain disorder after Alzheimer’s disease. Hepatitis C is a liver infection caused by a virus.
As the nation expands its conversation about sports concussion this week, the American Academy of Neurology, the world’s most trusted authority on concussion, will host a TweetChat at 1 p.m. ET, Monday, December 28, to help educate parents, coaches and athletes about the AAN’s guideline for diagnosing and treating sports concussion. In addition, new educational tools are available at AAN.com/concussion, including a downloadable infographic.
Tracy Zaslow, MD, is the director of the Sports Concussion Program and medical director of of the Sports Medicine Program at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. She is Board-Certified in pediatrics, and also fellowship-trained, with board certification in sports medicine. Her clinical interests include a spectrum of orthopaedic and medical conditions affecting young athletes, including sports-related concussion, overuse injuries and injury prevention. Dr. Zaslow, a team physician for the L.A. Galaxy soccer team, understands the goals and challenges faced by young athletes because, like her patients, she grew up playing sports and still remains active in tennis, volleyball, running, hiking, yoga and skiing.
Researchers at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have created the first complete model to describe the role that serotonin plays in brain development and structure.
University of Georgia research has found that inorganic mercury, which was previously thought to be a less harmful form of the toxic metal, is very damaging to key cell processes.
Brain scans from nearly 200 adolescent boys provide evidence that the brains of compulsive video game players are wired differently. Chronic video game play is associated with hyperconnectivity between several pairs of brain networks. Some of the changes are predicted to help game players respond to new information. Other changes are associated with distractibility and poor impulse control. The new findings, a collaborative effort between the University of Utah School of Medicine, and Chung-Ang University in South Korea, were published online in Addiction Biology on Dec. 21, 2015.
Patients who have had a stroke in the back of the brain are at greater risk of having another within two years if blood flow to the region is diminished, according to results of a multicenter study led by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
A drug that boosts activity in the brain’s “garbage disposal” system can decrease levels of toxic proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders and improve cognition in mice, a new study by neuroscientists at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) has found.
In a discovery that could offer valuable new insights into understanding, diagnosing and even treating autism, Harvard scientists for the first time have linked a specific neurotransmitter in the brain with autistic behavior.
A network of interacting brain regions known as the default mode network (DMN) was found to have stronger connections in adults and children with a high risk of depression compared to those with a low risk. These findings suggest that increased DMN connectivity is a potential precursor, or biomarker, indicating a risk of developing major depressive disorder (MDD).
Researchers at UAB look for a relationship between eye movement and the brain to find biomarkers to help diagnose and treat concussions.
UCLA researchers have found that space-mapping neurons – the GPS system in the brain - have a strong dependence on what is being looked at when triangulating location, a finding that resolves a neurological mystery that has vexed scientists for more than four decades.
UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have found that halting production of new neurons in the brain following traumatic brain injury can help reduce resulting epileptic seizures, cognitive decline, and impaired memory.
A novel drug candidate can prevent nerve cell damage in a mouse model with Parkinson's disease. The drug protects nerve cells that produce dopamine, the chemical responsible for agility and movement that is lost in Parkinson's.
Mathematical computing techniques developed by Dr Emili Balaguer-Ballester at Bournemouth University, and a team of neuroscientists at Indiana Purdue University in US, the University of Heidelberg in Germany and British Columbia in Canada have been used to map the effects of neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, on neural activities and behaviour. This has enabled the team to prove a long-held assumption in computational neuroscience: that cognitive decisions seem to be represented by temporarily stable states of neural dynamics which are modulated by dopamine. Until the publication of a new study, based on the application of their method, this theory remained insufficiently evidenced.
An MRI contrast agent that can pass through the blood-brain barrier will allow doctors to detect deadly brain tumors called gliomas earlier, say Penn State College of Medicine researchers. This ability opens the door to make this fatal cancer treatable.
Epilepsy is not a public health priority, yet it takes more lives than sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) or fires, according to an article reviewing the topic. Doctors say epilepsy deaths should be a focus of research and education to understand and prevent those deaths, according to the “Views and Reviews” article published in the December 16, 2015, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Recent studies conclude that people with epilepsy have a 27-fold greater risk of sudden death than people without the disorder. However, many of these deaths could be prevented through greater identification of epilepsy as a cause of death, and in educating the public more effectively about the disease’s life-threatening dangers, according to a new opinion article from epilepsy researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center
A scientist from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute has been awarded approximately $2 million from the National Institutes of Health to study the impact of aging and age-related disease on the inner workings of a single type of nerve cell.
In an event that showed the growing breadth and depth of research at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, more than 500 attendees participated in the Third Annual Festival of Science on December 11.
In a report published in the journal Neuron, an international team of researchers defined the makeup of the cellular structures through which nerve cells communicate with each other, revealing new and elegant features of the sites that wire the brain.
The brains of children who suffer clinical depression as preschoolers develop abnormally, compared with the brains of preschoolers unaffected by the disorder, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Their gray matter is lower in volume and thinner in the cortex, a part of the brain important in the processing of emotions.
Evidence of autism may be found in the composition and malfunction of the brain’s blood vessels, a team of scientists has found. Their research sheds new light on the causes of autism, which previously had pointed to neurological make-up rather than to the vascular system, and identifies a new target for potential therapeutic intervention.
A study of rats released today shows that blocking a type of RNA produced by what used to be called "junk DNA" can prevent a significant portion of the neural destruction that follows a stroke.
Su-Chun Zhang, a pioneer in developing neurons from stem cells at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has created a specialized nerve cell that makes serotonin, a signaling chemical with a broad role in the brain.
Diseases such as lupus that cause rashes and other skin problems also can trigger migraine headaches, strokes and other serious neurological conditions, according to an article by Loyola University Medical Center physicians.
Researchers have discovered how immune cells triggered by recurrent Strep A infections enter the brain, causing inflammation that may lead to autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders in children. The study, performed in mice, found that immune cells reach the brain by traveling along odor-sensing neurons that emerge from the nasal cavity, not by breaching the blood-brain barrier directly. The findings could lead to improved methods for diagnosing, monitoring, and treating these disorders.
Early research indicates that the use of tumor-treating fields, a type of electromagnetic field therapy, along with chemotherapy in patients with a brain tumor who had completed standard chemoradiation resulted in prolonged progression-free and overall survival, according to a study in the December 15 issue of JAMA.
A new study by University of Guelph researchers that narrows down where and how estrogens affect the brain may help in understanding how the hormones affect cognition and memory in women. The team found that adding the hormone to female mouse brains helps boost short-term learning, likely through a “use-it-or-lose-it” process.
Regions of the brain function differently among people with post-traumatic stress disorder, causing them to generalize non-threatening events as if they were the original trauma, according to new research from Duke Medicine and the Durham VA Medical Center.
Using data on 30-day postoperative morbidity and mortality from the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program database, the authors examined whether there is a “July Effect” in neurosurgery. Overall the findings show “no clear evidence for an increase in rates of morbidity or mortality during this transition period.”
Northwestern University's Nina Kraus has pioneered a way to measure how the brain makes sense of sound. Her findings have suggest that the brain’s ability to process sound is influenced by everything from playing music and learning a new language to aging, language disorders and hearing loss.
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