Brain

At some point, most kids will hear that drinking milk helps make their bones strong or that fish is food for the brain. But do these messages foster the idea that if something is good for us, it must surely taste bad? According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, when children hear about the benefits of healthy food, they're less likely to eat it.

Because the severe autism-like condition Christianson Syndrome was only first reported in 1999 and some symptoms take more than a decade to appear, families and doctors urgently need fundamental information about it. A new study that doubles the number of cases now documented in the scientific literature provides the most definitive characterization of CS to date. The authors therefore propose the first diagnostic criteria for the condition.

Researchers from the University of Murcia have studied the changes in the brain that are associated with impulsiveness, a personality trait that causes difficulties in inhibiting a response in the face of a stimulus and leads to unplanned actions without considering the negative consequences. These patterns can serve as an indicator for predicting the risk of behavioural problems.

A new study headed by researchers from the University of Murcia analyses whether the connectivity of an infant's brain is related to children's impulsiveness.

Philadelphia, PA -- Brain stimulation treatments, like electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), are often effective for the treatment of depression. Like antidepressant medications, however, they typically have a delayed onset. For example, a patient may receive several weeks of regular ECT treatments before a full response is achieved.

Hypoxia-inducible factor 1 (HIF-1) attenuates amyloid-beta protein neurotoxicity and decreases apoptosis induced by oxidative stress or hypoxia in cortical neurons. Prof. Xiqing Chai and co-workers from Hebei Chemical and Pharmaceutical College, China constructed a recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV) vector expressing the human HIF-1α gene (rAAV-HIF-1α) efficiently, and tested the assumption that rAAV-HIF-1α represses hippocampal neuronal apoptosis induced by amyloid-beta protein.

Previous findings have demonstrated that acupuncture at the Taixi (KI3) acupoint in healthy youths can activate neurons in cognitive-related cerebral cortex. In a perspective article released in the Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 9, No. 11, 2014), Dr. Shangjie Chen and co-workers at Baoan Hospital, Southern Medical University, China investigated whether acupuncture at this acupoint in elderly patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) can also activate neurons in these regions.

Cranial radiotherapy is one of the most important therapeutic methods for the treatment of various types of primary and metastatic brain tumors. Although conventional photon irradiation has significantly improved the treatment of cancer, the central nervous system is prone to damage after high-dose irradiation, resulting in severe delayed or progressive nervous tissue injury. The issues regarding brain radiation injury have been widely discussed, and recent investigations have emphasized changes in pathomorphology. However, the underlying mechanism remains in debate.

Chicago – July 22, 2014 – Researchers may be one step closer to better understanding how anesthesia works. A study in the August issue of Anesthesiology, the official medical journal of the American Society of Anesthesiologists® (ASA®), found stimulating a major dopamine-producing region in the brain, the ventral tegmental area (VTA), caused rats to wake from general anesthesia, suggesting that this region plays a key role in restoring consciousness after general anesthesia.

Researchers at the University of Western Australia, led by Associate Professor Melinda Fitzgerald, have discovered that preventing abnormalities in the insulating sheath surrounding nerve cells is associated with better function following neurotrauma.

Led by Dr. Zahoor A. Shah, Dr. Shadia E. Nada and Jatin Tulsulkar (graduate student), researchers at the University of Toledo, Toledo, OH, have discovered that mice treated with Ginkgo biloba 4 hours after inducing experimental stroke and then daily for seven days had improved recovery and less brain damage than the control mice. It was also observed that Ginkgo biloba treated mice had enhanced neurogenesis, partly due to the increased protein expression of hemeoxygenase 1, an antioxidant gene that also has a role in neurogenesis.

July 22, 2014, Cleveland: A type of immune cell widely believed to exacerbate chronic adult brain diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease and multiple sclerosis (MS), can actually protect the brain from traumatic brain injury (TBI) and may slow the progression of neurodegenerative diseases, according to Cleveland Clinic research published today in the online journal Nature Communications.

A rare gene variant discovered by UCL (University College London) scientists is associated with an increased risk of developing schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and alcoholism, confirms new research.

People with the variant are around 2 to 3 times more likely to develop schizophrenia or alcohol dependence, reports a new UCL study. The variant, which is found in approximately one in every 200 people, is also associated with a threefold risk of developing bipolar disorder, as previously shown by the same UCL group.

The largest genomic dragnet of any psychiatric disorder to date has unmasked 108 chromosomal sites harboring inherited variations in the genetic code linked to schizophrenia, 83 of which had not been previously reported. By contrast, the "skyline" of such suspect variants associated with the disorder contained only 5 significant peaks in 2011. By combining data from all available schizophrenia genetic samples, researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health powered the search for clues to the molecular basis of the disorder to a new level.

As part of a multinational, collaborative effort, researchers from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and scores of other institutions from all over the world have helped identify over 100 locations in the human genome associated with the risk of developing schizophrenia, in what is the largest genomic study published on any psychiatric disorder to date.

July 21, 2014 (Toronto) – As part of a multinational, collaborative effort, researchers from Canada's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) have helped identify over 100 locations in the human genome associated with the risk of developing schizophrenia, in what is the largest genomic study published on any psychiatric disorder to date.