CAMBRIDGE, MA -- A clinical trial of an Alzheimer's disease treatment developed at MIT has found that the nutrient cocktail can improve memory in patients with early Alzheimer's. The results confirm and expand the findings of an earlier trial of the nutritional supplement, which is designed to promote new connections between brain cells.
Brain
Toronto – Not all brand–consumer relationships are created equal.
Marketers who realize this will be in a better position to retain customers and improve the perceptions of consumers who are unhappy with a brand's service or product, says a new paper from the University of Toronto.
Consumers form connections with brands in ways that mirror social relationships.How consumers evaluate a brand depends heavily on whether the brand adheres to—or violates—the implicit relationship agreement.
7/10/12, Zurich, Switzerland. Research to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the foremost society for research into all aspects of eating and drinking behavior, finds that prolonged exposure to a high-fat diet reduces the quality of sleep in rats.
Alzheimer's disease is one of the most dreaded and debilitating illnesses one can develop. Currently, the disease afflicts 6.5 million Americans and the Alzheimer's Association projects it to increase to between 11 and 16 million, or 1 in 85 people, by 2050.
Cell death in the brain causes one to grow forgetful, confused and, eventually, catatonic. Recently approved drugs provide mild relief for symptoms but there is no consensus on the underlying mechanism of the disease.
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CHICAGO – A study of patients with stroke admitted to English National Health Service public hospitals suggests that patients who were hospitalized on weekends were less likely to receive urgent treatments and had worse outcomes, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Neurology, a JAMA Network publication.
So far it has seemed an irreparable limitation of human perception that we strain to perceive things in the very rapid succession of, say, less than half a second. Psychologists call this deficit "attentional blink." We'll notice that first car spinning out in our path, but maybe not register the one immediately beyond it. It turns out, we can learn to do better after all. In a new study researchers now based at Brown University overcame the blink with just a little bit of training that was never been tried before.
For so many important outcomes in life – applying for jobs, waiting for medical test results – there comes a point when you just have to sit back and hope for the best. But that doesn't mean we always behave that way. New research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that even when an outcome is out of our control we often act as though we can still get on the good side of fate by doing good deeds.
CHAMPAIGN, lll. — A new study of aged female rats found that long-term treatment with estrogen and a synthetic progesterone known as MPA increased levels of a protein marker of synapses in the prefrontal cortex, a brain region known to suffer significant losses in aging.
Nearly a third of adults with the most common type of brain cancer develop recurrent, invasive tumors after being treated with a drug called bevacizumab. The molecular underpinnings behind these detrimental effects have now been published by Cell Press in the July issue of Cancer Cell. The findings reveal a new treatment strategy that could reduce tumor invasiveness and improve survival in these drug-resistant patients.
Stem cells that come from a specific part of the developing brain help fuel the growth of brain tumors caused by an inherited condition, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report.
Scientists showed in mice that disabling a gene linked to a common pediatric tumor disorder, neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1), made stem cells from one part of the brain proliferate rapidly. But the same genetic deficit had no effect on stem cells from another brain region.
AUGUSTA, Ga. – A lipid that helps lotion soften the skin also helps cells find and stay in the right location in the body by ensuring they keep their "antennae" up, scientists report.
Each cell has an antenna, or cilium, that senses the environment then determines where to go and what to do when it arrives, said Dr. Erhard Bieberich, biochemist at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Health Sciences University.
Photographs of faces may not be adequate proof of a person's identity and this could have serious implications for the accuracy of passport photographs in determining identity. Research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) shows that an image of a person may look strikingly different from one image to the next. We are told not to smile in our passport photos as a smile distorts the face; but the opposite may actually be true, and a poker face may be the one which distorts normal facial features.
Amsterdam, NL, July 8, 2012 – In the last ten years, a new understanding of pediatric brain injury and recovery has emerged. Professionals now understand that recovery may be a lifelong process for the child's entire circle of family, friends, and healthcare providers. The latest efforts to advance medical and rehabilitative services to move children from medical care and rehabilitation to community reintegration are discussed by the leading experts in a recently published special issue of NeuroRehabilitation.
Philadelphia, PA, July 9, 2012 – Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or "mad cow disease") is a fatal disease in cattle that causes portions of the brain to turn sponge-like. This transmissible disease is caused by the propagation of a misfolded form of protein known as a prion, rather than by a bacterium or virus. The average time from infection to signs of illness is about 60 months. Little is known about the pathogenesis of BSE in the early incubation period.
Frequently recommended in weight-loss diets, dietary proteins have proven effectiveness thanks to their appetite-suppressing effects. A team led by Gilles Mithieux, Director of Inserm's Unit 855 "Nutrition and the Brain" in Lyon, has managed to explain the biological mechanisms behind these properties. The researchers describe in detail the chain reactions triggered by digesting proteins, sending a 'satiety' message to the brain long after a meal. Their results, published on 5 July in the Cell review, will make it possible envisage improved care for obese or overweight patients.