Feature Channels: Neuro

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A study using intricate fiber dissection techniques provides new insights into the deep anatomy of the human brainstem—and helps to define "safe entry zones" for neurosurgeons performing brainstem surgery, according to a special article published in Operative Neurosurgery, a quarterly supplement to Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. These publications are published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.

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The majority of people with dementia have never seen a doctor about their memory and thinking problems, according to a new study published in the November 26, 2014, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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A Saint Louis University researcher and colleagues have discovered a way to block a pain pathway in animal models of chronic neuropathic pain suggesting a promising new approach to pain relief.

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A new study by Berkeley Lab researchers has shown that proper copper levels are essential to the health of the brain at rest.

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The way people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) gather information – not the judgement process itself – might explain why they gain different perceptions from peoples’ faces, according to a new study from Hôpital Rivière-des-Prairies and the University of Montreal. "

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New Penn Medicine research has found that elevated levels in the blood of the brain-enriched protein calpain-cleaved αII-spectrin N-terminal fragment, known as SNTF, shortly after sports-related concussion can predict the severity of post-concussion symptoms in professional athletes. The complete findings were released today in the Journal of Neurotrauma.

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A team led by scientists from The Scripps Research Institute has found a simple method to convert human skin cells into the specialized neurons that detect pain, itch, touch and other bodily sensations and are affected by spinal cord injury and involved in Friedreich’s ataxia.

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Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have discovered how one gene is essential to hearing, uncovering a cause of deafness and suggesting new avenues for therapies.

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As real as that daydream may seem, its path through your brain runs opposite reality. Aiming to discern discrete neural circuits, researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have tracked electrical activity in the brains of people who alternately imagined scenes or watched videos.

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Blocking molecules involved in ALS-drug resistance may improve how well ALS therapeutics work, suggesting that re-evaluation of drugs that appeared to have failed might be appropriate

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Scientists have created video games that add an important element of fun to the repetitive training needed to improve vision in people – including adults – with a lazy eye and poor depth perception.

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People whose jobs require more complex work with other people, such as social workers and lawyers, or with data, like architects or graphic designers, may end up having longer-lasting memory and thinking abilities compared to people who do less complex work, according to research published in the November 19, 2014, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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1) A Blood Pressure Hormone Implicated in Psychosis 2) Nutrient Deficiency Linked to Brain Wasting in Huntington’s Disease 3) Autistic Mice Become Social with Drug Treatment

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An antidepressant commonly prescribed for women with postpartum depression may restore connections between cells in brain regions that are negatively affected by chronic stress during pregnancy, new research suggests.

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Researchers find a way to improve memory by suppressing a molecule that links aging to Alzheimer’s disease

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Lou Gehrig’s disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, might damage muscle-controlling nerve cells in the brain earlier in the disease process than previously known, according to research from the Cedars-Sinai Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute. The findings, published in the Nov. 12 Journal of Neuroscience, could shift researchers’ attention from the spinal cord to the brain’s motor cortex as the disease’s initial point of dysfunction.

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A new diagnostic technique — resulting from monitoring thousands of courtship calls from songbirds — can be used to safely map the human brain during complex neurosurgery, according to research from Neuroscientists at NYU Langone Medical Center and elsewhere.

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Protein misfolding” diseases such as cystic fibrosis and Alzheimer’s may be seriously exacerbated by the body’s own response against that misfolding, according to a new study led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute.

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A mother’s “TLC” not only can help soothe pain in infants, but it may also impact early brain development by altering gene activity in a part of the brain involved in emotions, according to new study from NYU Langone Medical Center.

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Blocking a key receptor in brain cells that is used by oxygen free radicals could play a major role in neutralizing the biological consequences of Alzheimer’s disease, according to researchers at Temple University.

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A formal protocol for delivering emergency treatment to patients with subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) from ruptured aneurysms within the first few hours after bleeding occurs. Offered day and night, the protocol reduces the incidence of repeated hemorrhage during the hospital stay and improves clinical outcomes in patients with aneurysmal SAH.

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A scientist looking at MRI scans of human brains noticed a large fiber pathway that seemed to be part of the network that processes visual information. He just couldn’t couldn’t find it in any of the modern textbooks.

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Case Western Reserve researchers have developed a procedure that restores function to muscles that control breathing – even when they have been paralyzed for more than a year. The breakthrough offers hope that patients with severe spinal cord injuries will be able to breathe again on their own.

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Neuroscientists at NYU Langone Medical Center have shown that calorie-reduced diets stop the normal rise and fall in activity levels of close to 900 different genes linked to aging and memory formation in the brain.

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Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have found that the brain’s reward and stress systems are actually linked. Their findings show that in the core of the brain’s reward system specific neurons are active both with use of and withdrawal from nicotine.

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The U.S., Europe and Asia have launched big brain research projects. What impact will they have? Scientists integral to three projects share their insights ahead of a special session hosted by the Society for Neuroscience.

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Two or more serious hits to the head within days of each other can interfere with the brain’s ability to use sugar – its primary energy source – to repair cells damaged by the injuries, new research suggests.

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A multi-institutional study has defined and established criteria for a new neurological disease closely resembling Alzheimer’s disease called primary age-related tauopathy (PART). Patients with PART develop cognitive impairment that can be indistinguishable from Alzheimer’s disease, but they lack amyloid plaques. Awareness of this neurological disease will help doctors diagnose and develop more effective treatments for patients with different types of memory impairment.

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When individuals suffer a spinal cord injury, they often lose bladder control, which causes infections that can lead to kidney damage. Scientists used spinal stimulation technology to enable spinal cord- injured rats to empty their bladders more fully and in a timelier manner. The promising results achieved in rats represent a significant step towards deployment of this novel approach in humans with paraplegia.

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Scientists have mostly ignored mRNA, the molecule that ferries information from DNA to the cellular machines that make proteins, because these DNA transcripts are ephemeral and soon destroyed. But mRNA can be just as important as DNA scientists at Washington University in St. Louis say. They found that oxidized messenger RNA jams the cellular machines that make protein. The failure to clear the jams and chew up bad messengers is associated with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

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Mice bred to carry a gene variant found in a third of ALS patients have a faster disease progression and die sooner than mice with the standard genetic model of the disease, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers.

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A study in which more than 43,000 children were evaluated for head trauma offers an unprecedented picture of how children most frequently suffer head injuries, report physicians at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine. The study appears Nov. 13 in The New England Journal of Medicine. The findings also indicate how often such incidents result in significant brain injuries, computerized tomography (CT) scans to assess head injuries, and neurosurgery to treat them.

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Taking vitamin B12 and folic acid supplements may not reduce the risk of memory and thinking problems after all, according to a new study published in the November 12, 2014, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study is one of the largest to date to test long-term use of supplements and thinking and memory skills.

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A key brain region involved in emotion is smaller in older children diagnosed with depression as preschoolers, and predicts risk of later recurrence, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

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Prof. Noam Sobel’s lab at the Weizmann Institute, which discovered that we can learn in our sleep via conditioning with odor, has now shown that smokers used fewer cigarettes after a night of olfactory training. By exposing sleeping smokers to the smell of cigarettes paired with rotten eggs or fish, the team saw a significant reduction in the amount smoked.

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Scientists from The Scripps Research Institute reveal that physically moving forward actually trains the brain to perceive the world normally. The findings also show that, the order in which we see things could help the brain calibrate how we perceive time, as well as the objects around us.

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Discovery of new molecular and behavioural connections may provide a foundation for the development of new treatments to combat some forms of depression

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In a pair of related studies, scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have identified a number of new therapeutic targets for memory disorders and have developed a new screening test to uncover compounds that may one day work against those disorders.

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Imagine being able to recognize your car as your own but never being able to remember where you parked it. Researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have induced this all-too-common human experience – or a close version of it – permanently in rats and from what is observed perhaps derive clues about why strokes and Alzheimer’s disease can destroy a person’s sense of direction.

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New DNA regulatory technique modifies the environment around a single gene to control gene expression and behavioral consequences

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UCLA scientists have discovered that statins, a popular class of cholesterol drugs, reverse the learning deficits caused by a mutation linked to a common genetic cause of learning disabilities. Published in the Nov. 10 advance online edition of Nature Neuroscience, the findings were studied in mice genetically engineered to develop the disease, called Noonan syndrome.

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Researchers at the University of Michigan have shown how a single neuron can perform multiple functions in a model organism, illuminating for the first time this fundamental biological mechanism and shedding light on the human brain.

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Induced neural stem cells (iNSCs) hold promise for therapeutic transplantation, but their potential in this capacity has been limited by failed efforts to maintain such cells in their multi-potent NSC state. Now, Whitehead Institute scientists have created iNSCs that remain in the multi-potent state—without ongoing expression of reprogramming factors. This allows the iNSCs to self-renew repeatedly to generate cells in quantities sufficient for therapy.

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Commonly prescribed, older drugs for arthritis and pain may increase the risk of death from stroke, according to a study published in the November 5, 2014, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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University of Washington researchers have successfully replicated a direct brain-to-brain connection between pairs of people as part of a scientific study following the team's initial demonstration a year ago. In the newly published study, which involved six people, researchers were able to transmit the signals from one person's brain over the Internet and use these signals to control the hand motions of another person within a split second of sending that signal.

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While current epilepsy research may seem like it’s ripped from the pages of a science fiction novel, it’s real—and even pretty cool. Epilepsy provides researchers with unparalleled avenues to discover how the brain is structured and how it functions: a true ‘window on the brain.’ In recognition of Epilepsy Awareness Month the American Epilepsy Society (AES) is highlighting just a few of the groundbreaking scientific developments made within the last 10-50 years.

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Recent research from The Johns Hopkins University suggests that in situations like this, performance depends on two factors: the framing of the incentive in terms of a loss or a gain, and a person’s aversion to loss.

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In a study published online this week by the journal Brain Structure and Function, the identification of neuroanatomical changes related to prematurity helps explain what brain structure and circuitry are affected, and may lead to designing effective prevention strategies and early interventional treatments for cognitive disabilities.

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A new statistical test that looks at the patterns of high-frequency network activity flow from brain signals can help doctors pinpoint the exact location of seizures occurring in the brain and make surgery more effective, according to researchers at Georgia State University and Emory University School of Medicine. The findings are published in the journal Epilepsia.

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In people under age 30, radiation is a risk factor for a type of brain tumor called a meningioma, a Loyola University Medical Center study has found.