Brain

Clinicians need to be sensitive and aware of the unique challenges of women's reproductive health needs in times of conflict, suggests a new review published today (4 July) in The Obstetrician & Gynaecologist (TOG).

Approximately 1.5 billion people are currently living in countries affected by conflict, fragility or large-scale violence. Women and children account for approximately 75% of those displaced by conflict and roughly 20% of those displaced are women of reproductive age and one in five will be pregnant.

Taking the street drug Ecstasy could lead to a potentially fatal weakening and rupture of the spinal cord artery, doctors have warned in the Journal of NeuroInterventional Surgery.

Posterior spinal artery aneurysms - a blood-filled swelling of the spinal cord artery, caused by a weakening and distension of the vessel wall - are rare, with only 12 cases reported to date. But all of them caused spinal bleeding which affected the function of the spinal cord.

Doctors discovered one of these aneurysms in a previously healthy teenager who had taken Ecstasy or MDMA.

German doctors highlight the potential dangers surrounding headbanging in a Case Report published in The Lancet. Ariyan Pirayesh Islamian and colleagues from the Hannover Medical School, detail the case of a man who developed a chronic subdural haematoma (bleeding in the brain)* after headbanging at a Motörhead concert.

LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 3, 2014) -- Researchers from the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging at the University of Kentucky have been able to confirm anecdotal information on patients with both Alzheimer's disease (AD) and cerebrovascular disease (CVD) using mouse models in two different studies.

The findings of these two studies, which were recently published in Acta Neuropathologica and Alzheimer's Research & Therapy, have potentially significant implications for patients with both disorders.

In an unexpected discovery, researchers have found that the complex eyes of mantis shrimp are equipped with optics that generate ultraviolet (UV) color vision. Mantis shrimp's six UV photoreceptors pick up on different colors within the UV spectrum based on filters made from an ingredient other animals depend on as built-in biological sunscreen, according to research reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on July 3.

Understanding the basis of psychiatric disorders has been extremely challenging because there are many genetic variants that may increase risk but are insufficient to cause disease. Now investigators reporting in the July 3rd issue of the Cell Press journal Cell Stem Cell describe a strategy that may help reveal how such "subthreshold" genetic risks interact with other risk factors or environmental exposures to affect the development of the nervous system. Their research pinpoints a genetic variant that may predispose individuals to schizophrenia.

Johns Hopkins researchers have begun to connect the dots between a schizophrenia-linked genetic variation and its effect on the developing brain. As they report July 3 in the journal Cell Stem Cell, their experiments show that the loss of a particular gene alters the skeletons of developing brain cells, which in turn disrupts the orderly layers those cells would normally form.

La Jolla, Calif., July 3, 2014 - A new study by researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham) has identified a chemical "switch" that controls both the generation of new neurons from neural stem cells and the survival of existing nerve cells in the brain. The switch that shuts off the signals that promote neuron production and survival is in abundance in the brains of Alzheimer's patients and stroke victims.

Chimpanzees are copycats and, in the process, they form new traditions that are often particular to only one specific group of these primates. Such are the findings of an international group of scientists, who waded through over 700 hours of video footage to understand how it came about that one chimpanzee stuck a piece of grass in her ear and started a new trend, and others soon followed suit. The findings of the study, led by Edwin van Leeuwen of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in The Netherlands, are published in Springer's journal Animal Cognition.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Deep inside the brains of people with dementia and Lou Gehrig's disease, globs of abnormal protein gum up the inner workings of brain cells – dooming them to an early death.

But boosting those cells' natural ability to clean up those clogs might hold the key to better treatment for such conditions.

That's the key finding of new research from a University of Michigan Medical School physician scientist and his colleagues in California and the United Kingdom. They reported their latest findings this week in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.

An international team of researchers identified a pathogenic mechanism that is common to several neurodegenerative diseases. The findings suggest that it may be possible to slow the progression of dementia even after the onset of symptoms.

Various manual tasks in everyday life require the use of the right hand or are optimized for right-handers. Around 90 percent of the general population is right-handed, only about 10 percent is left-handed. The study of Ulrich Tran, Stefan Stieger, and Martin Voracek comprised two large and independent samples of nearly 13000 adults from Austria and Germany. As in modern genetic studies, where a discovery-and-replication-sample design is standard, the use of two samples allowed testing the replicability and robustness of findings within one-and-the-same study.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — A tool to help brain surgeons test and more precisely remove cancerous tissue was successfully used during surgery, according to a Purdue University and Brigham and Women's Hospital study.

The Purdue-designed tool sprays a microscopic stream of charged solvent onto the tissue surface to gather information about its molecular makeup and produces a color-coded image that reveals the location, nature and concentration of tumor cells.

Adults who have dyslexia are much more likely to report they were physically abused before they turned 18 than their peers without dyslexia, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Toronto and the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill.

Thirty-five per cent of adults with dyslexia report they were physically abused before they turned 18. In contrast, seven per cent of those without dyslexia reported that they had experienced childhood physical abuse.

New research shows that our brain displays a similar pattern of activity during dreams as it does during a mind-expanding drug trip.Psychedelic drugs such as LSD and magic mushrooms can profoundly alter the way we experience the world but little is known about what physically happens in the brain. New research, published in Human Brain Mapping, has examined the brain effects of the psychedelic chemical in magic mushrooms, called 'psilocybin,' using data from brain scans of volunteers who had been injected with the drug.