While alcohol has a wide range of pharmacological effects on the body, the brain is a primary target. However, the molecular mechanisms by which alcohol alters neuronal activity in the brain are poorly understood. Participants in a symposium at the June 2010 annual meeting of the Research Society on Alcoholism in San Antonio, Texas addressed recent findings concerning the interactions of alcohol with prototype brain proteins thought to underlie alcohol actions in the brain.
Brain
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Results of a small, observational study conducted at the University at Buffalo suggest that liraglutide, an injectable medication used to treat type 2 diabetes, also helps type 1 diabetics on insulin achieve optimal control of their blood glucose levels.
If the findings are confirmed in a larger, prospective, randomized study now being planned by the UB researchers, they could mean the first significant, new treatment for type 1 diabetes since insulin was discovered and made available in the 1920s.
London, 15 June 2011 - Inhibitory control can be boosted with a mild form of brain stimulation, according to a study published in the June 2011 issue of Neuroimage, Elsevier's Journal of Brain Function. The study's findings indicate that non-invasive intervention can greatly improve patients' inhibitory control.
A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research explains why sad people are more likely to want to hug a teddy bear than seek out a visual experience such as looking at art. Hint: It has to do with our mammalian instincts.
INDIANAPOLIS – Researchers have used cutting-edge stem cell technology to correct a genetic defect present in a rare blinding disorder, another step on a promising path that may one day lead to therapies to reverse blindness caused by common retinal diseases such as macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa which affect millions of individuals.
DURHAM, NC -- A person scanning baggage or X-rays stands a better chance of seeing everything they're searching for if they aren't feeling anxious, according to a new laboratory experiment.
Duke psychologists put a dozen students through a test in which they searched for particular shapes on a computer display, simulating the sort of visual searching performed by airport security teams and radiologists.
TORONTO, ON – Researchers at the University of Toronto are the first to indentify a potential cause for a severe sleep disorder that has been closely linked to Parkinson's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases.
Preschool children seem to grasp the true concept of counting only if they are taught to understand the number value of groups of objects greater than three, research at the University of Chicago shows.
"We think that seeing that there are three objects doesn't have to involve counting. It's only when children go beyond three that counting is necessary to determine how many objects there are," said Elizabeth Gunderson, a UChicago graduate student in psychology.
Over half the world's population speaks more than one language. But it's not clear how these languages interact in the brain. A new study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that Chinese people who are fluent in English translate English words into Chinese automatically and quickly, without thinking about it.
COLLEGE PARK, Md. - When Andrea Chronis-Tuscano, associate professor of psychology and director of the University of Maryland ADHD Program, testified before a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) hearing last March, she asserted that no convincing scientific evidence supports the idea that food coloring additives cause Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), nor that strict diets eliminating dyes effectively treat the condition.
But she does have concerns about the lack of research on the overall safety of food dyes for children.
Fear burns memories into our brain, and new research by University of California, Berkeley, neuroscientists explains how.
Scientists have long known that fear and other highly emotional experiences lead to incredibly strong memories. In a study appearing online today (Tuesday, June 14) in advance of publication in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, UC Berkeley's Daniela Kaufer and colleagues report a new way for emotions to affect memory: The brain's emotional center, the amygdala, induces the hippocampus, a relay hub for memory, to generate new neurons.
CHICAGO – Twice a month a jam session takes place on the third floor of Northwestern Memorial's Prentice Women's Hospital. A diverse group of men and women, ranging in age and ethnicity, gather in a circle with instruments in hand and sing together. This is no ordinary jam band; all its members have Parkinson's disease. They are participating in Creative Arts for Parkinson's, a music and drama therapy program offered through Northwestern's Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders Center.
ITHACA, N.Y. — Cornell researchers have identified regions of a fish brain that reveal the basic circuitry for how humans and other vertebrates generate sound used for social communication.
In a study of midshipman fish, published online today (June 14) in Nature Communications, the researchers identified two distinct groups of neurons that independently control the duration and the frequency of sounds used for calling.
The brain is constantly changing as it perceives the outside world, processing and learning about everything it encounters. In a new study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, scientists find a surprising connection between two types of perception: If you're looking at a group of objects and getting a general sense of them, it's difficult for your brain to learn relationships between the objects.