Studies using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques are beginning to reveal differences in brain connectivity—the ways that different parts of the brain are connected to each other and work together—in people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), reports a review in the Harvard Review of Psychiatry. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.
A new study has identified promising compounds that could successfully treat depression in less than 24 hours while minimizing side effects. The compounds could offer significant advantages over current antidepressant medications.
From the smell of flowers to the taste of wine, our perception is strongly influenced by prior knowledge and expectations, a cognitive process known as top-down control. In a University of California, San Diego School of Medicine study, a research team led by Takaki Komiyama, PhD, assistant professor of neurosciences and neurobiology, reports that in mouse models, the brain significantly changed its visual cortex operation modes by implementing top-down processes during learning.
A new study by researchers from Rush University Medical Center suggests that errors on memory and thinking tests may signal Alzheimer’s up to 18 years before the disease can be diagnosed. The research is published in the June 24, 2015, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
A study by researchers at the University of Kentucky and the Ohio State University sheds light on opportunities to modulate macrophage responses after spinal cord injury, potentially reducing – or even reversing – damage and the resulting side-effects.
While it is well-known that nonsmokers can get cancer from inhaling smoke, the amount of risk associated with secondhand smoke and stroke has remained unclear until now.
Virginia Wadley, Ph.D., says until this new JAMA study, whether or not stroke survivors are at-risk over the long term was an unknown.
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego and the School of Medicine have found that the three-dimensional shape of the cerebral cortex – the wrinkled outer layer of the brain controlling many functions of thinking and sensation – strongly correlates with ancestral background. The study opens the door to more precise studies of brain anatomy going forward and could eventually lead to more personalized medicine approaches for diagnosing and treating brain diseases.
Geneticist Haydeh Payami, Ph.D., is exploring the protective power of coffee, nicotine and NSAIDs — and the damage caused by the immune system and microbiome. She also finding predictive power in key genetic variations.
Can reading interventions positively impact reading skills and math skills? If so, can the improvement be observed inside the brains of children with combined reading and math disabilities?
In just two years, people with type 2 diabetes experienced negative changes in their ability to regulate blood flow in the brain, which was associated with lower scores on tests of cognition skills and their ability to perform their daily activities, according to a new study published in the July 8, 2015, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Applying mild electrical stimulation to an area of the brain associated with cognitive control helps people with schizophrenia recognize errors and adjust their behavior to avoid them.
PHOENIX – New diagnostic criteria were introduced this week for neuromyelitis optica, now called neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder, which is an inflammatory disease of the central nervous system that is sometimes mistaken for multiple sclerosis .
In a study that included nearly 24,000 participants, those who experienced a stroke had an acute decline in cognitive function and also accelerated and persistent cognitive decline over 6 years, according to an article in the July 7 issue of JAMA.
A stroke happens in an instant. And many who survive one report that their brain never works like it once did. But new research shows that these problems with memory and thinking ability keep getting worse for years afterward – and happen faster than normal brain aging.
Other topics include repairing injured nerves, busted heart attack treatment, decorative brain molecules, and more...
Structural brain abnormalities in patients with schizophrenia, providing insight into how the condition may develop and respond to treatment, have been identified in an internationally collaborative study led by a Georgia State University scientist.
Researchers at Brown University examined three magnetically programmable shunt valves to see if the magnetic field emissions of headphones can cause unintentional changes in shunt valve settings. Based on their findings, the researchers state that it is highly unlikely that commercially available headphones will interfere with programmable shunt valve settings.
Researchers from Vienna examined elderly patients and adult patients receiving antiplatelet therapy who had presented with mild head injury to see if S100B protein levels could help identify whether intracranial bleeding was present. The researchers found that patients with serum S100B levels < 0.105 µg/L were very unlikely to have intracranial hemorrhage.
Cedars-Sinai researchers have successfully tested two new methods for preserving cognition in laboratory mice that exhibit features of Alzheimer’s disease by using white blood cells from bone marrow and a drug for multiple sclerosis to control immune response in the brain.
An estimated 65 percent of ischemic stroke survivors experience cognitive impairment and decline. However, little is known about the varying roles of cognitive risk and protective factors before, during and after stroke.
Studying brain scans and cerebrospinal fluid of healthy adults, scientists have shown that changes in key biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease during midlife may help identify those who will develop dementia years later, according to new research.
New research suggests that a molecule commonly found “decorating” brain cells in higher animals, including humans, may affect brain structure. The study showed that small changes made in how sialic acid attaches to cell surfaces can cause damaged brain structure, poor motor skills, hyperactivity and learning difficulties in mice.
Other topics include memories and protein, physics and gas mileage, agriculture and food safety, vaccine for Dengue, retinoblastoma proteins in cancer progression, and more.
An international team, led by a University of Adelaide genetics expert, has made a breakthrough discovery which is expected to help thousands of young girls worldwide who are suffering from a rare yet debilitating form of epilepsy.
A new study suggests that genes may not be to blame for the increased risk of heart disease some studies have shown in people with migraine, especially those with migraine with aura. The research is published during Headache/Migraine Awareness Month in the inaugural issue of the journal Neurology® Genetics, an open access, or free to the public, online-only, peer-reviewed journal from the American Academy of Neurology. Aura are sensations that come before the headache, often visual disturbances such as flashing lights.
Research from Eric Kandel’s lab has uncovered further evidence of a system in the brain that persistently maintains memories for long periods of time.
By using intrinsic optical signals (IOS) imaging, researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, demonstrated that, contrary to what was thought, another physiological variation is involved: the activated neurons swell due to the massive entry of water. This discovery provides evidence that a much finer analysis of the functioning of the brain - and of its dysfunctions - is possible.
New devices called stent retrievers are enabling physicians to stop strokes in their tracks. For the first time, new guidelines from the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association recommend the treatment for certain stroke patients.
Other topics include neurology, obesity, statins, and the risks of wearing high heels.
Light switches for neurons have made enormous contributions to brain research by giving investigators access to “on switches” for brain cells. But, finding “off switches” has been much more challenging. Addressing the challenge, biochemists in the Center for Membrane Biology at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) discovered a new family of light-activated proteins that work as “off switches.”
Researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have discovered that histones are steadily replaced in brain cells throughout life
In the first study of its kind, UCLA and United Kingdom researchers found that neurons in a specific brain region play a key role in rapidly forming memories about every day events, a finding that may result in a better understanding of memory loss and new methods to fight it in Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases.
Using clinical data collected over the past decade through a U.S. cancer registry, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine demonstrated that significant strides have been made in improving the survival of adult patients with low-grade gliomas, a slow-growing yet deadly form of primary brain cancer.
The brain region that helps people tell whether an object is near or far may also guide how emotionally close they feel to others and how they rank them socially, according to a study conducted at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published today in the journal Neuron. The findings promise to yield new insights into the social deficits that accompany psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia and depression.
Researchers find that nerve stimulation can improve the function of peripheral nerves damaged by spinal cord injury (SCI). This technique may be a new approach to preventing long-term changes in nerve and muscle function after SCI and improving SCI rehabilitation outcomes.This research is highlighted as one of this month’s “best of the best” as part of the American Physiological Society’s APSselect program.
Researchers at NYU have developed ways to measure both the objective probability density functions (pdfs) for a simple motor task and the corresponding subjective pdfs.
Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have found that a type of genetic material called “microRNA” plays surprisingly different roles in the formation of memory in animal models. In some cases, these RNAs increase memory, while others decrease it.
Clinicians testing the drug dasatinib, approved for several blood cancers, had hoped it would slow the aggressive growth of the deadly brain cancer glioblastoma; however, clinical trials to date have not found any benefit. Researchers at Mayo Clinic, who conducted one of those clinical trials, believe they know why dasatinib failed — and what to do about it.
Male and female mice use different immune cells to process chronic pain, indicating that different therapies for different genders could better target the problem.
New research reveals for the first time that pain is processed in male and female mice using different cells. These findings have far-reaching implications for our basic understanding of pain, how we develop the next generation of medications for chronic pain, and the way we execute basic biomedical research using mice.
An analysis of the results of more than 16,000 brain and spine surgeries suggests patients have nothing to fear from having residents — physicians-in-training — assist in those operations. The contributions of residents, who work under the supervision and alongside senior physicians, do nothing to increase patients’ risks of postoperative complications or of dying within 30 days of the surgery, the analysis showed.
Physicists have found that intense visual input forces the brain into a brief moment of chaos, but the visual cortex spontaneously returns the brain to its optimal function.
Researchers have discovered a thick band of microtubules in certain neurons in the retina that they believe acts as a transport road for mitochondria that help provide energy required for visual processing.
A new map of emergency stroke care in America shows just how much of a patchwork system we still have for delivering the most effective stroke treatment. And thousands of people a year may end up unnecessarily disabled as a result.
Researchers at the University of Kentucky's Sanders-Brown Center on Aging have completed a study that revealed differences in the way brain inflammation -- considered a key component of AD-- is expressed in different subsets of patients, in particular people with Down syndrome (DS) and AD.
UC San Diego School of Medicine researchers report that the amyloid cascade hypothesis, long believed to describe the pathology of Alzheimer’s disease, is not a fixed and invariable sequence of events. Rather, early indicators or biomarkers of the neurodegenerative condition vary by individual, making preclinical diagnoses more challenging.
A new study suggests that errors on memory and thinking tests may signal Alzheimer’s up to 18 years before the disease can be diagnosed. The research is published in the June 24, 2015, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Think the nest of cables under your desk is bad? Try keeping the trillions of connections crisscrossing your brain organized and free of tangles. A new study by UC San Francisco researchers reveals this seemingly intractable job may be simpler than it appears.
The first test in a mammalian model of a potential new class of drugs to treat Parkinson’s disease shows abatement of neurodegeneration in the brains of test rats and no significant toxicities.
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