Brain

LA JOLLA, CA—May 15, 2014—Mice crippled by an autoimmune disease similar to multiple sclerosis (MS) regained the ability to walk and run after a team of researchers led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), University of Utah and University of California (UC), Irvine implanted human stem cells into their injured spinal cords.

The Synthetic Biology Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars is releasing the results of a new set of focus groups, which find continued low awareness of synthetic biology among the general public.

The focus groups also sought opinions on the emerging field of neural engineering.

Good news for Dads: Harvard researchers say the key to being a better parent is – literally – all in your head.

In a study in mice, Higgins Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Howard Hughes Investigator Catherine Dulac have pinpointed galanin neurons in the brain's medial preoptic area (MPOA), that appear to regulate parental behavior. If similar neurons are at work in humans, it could offer clues to the treatment of conditions like post-partum depression. The study is described in a May 15 paper published in Nature.

Heavy social drinkers who report greater stimulation and reward from alcohol are more likely to develop alcohol use disorder over time, report researchers from the University of Chicago, May 15 in the journal Biological Psychiatry. The findings run counter to existing hypotheses that innate tolerance to alcohol drives alcoholism.

A biologist and a psychologist at the University of York have joined forces with a drug discovery group at Lundbeck in Denmark to develop a potential route to new therapies for the treatment of Parkinson's Disease (PD).

Dr Chris Elliott, of the Department of Biology, and Dr Alex Wade, of the Department of Psychology, have devised a technique that could both provide an early warning of the disease and result in therapies to mitigate its symptoms.

WASHINGTON - Trusting a stranger may have more to do with feeling morally obligated to show respect for someone else's character than actually believing the person is trustworthy, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

Mindfulness. Zen. Acem. Meditation drumming. Chakra. Buddhist and transcendental meditation. There are countless ways of meditating, but the purpose behind them all remains basically the same: more peace, less stress, better concentration, greater self-awareness and better processing of thoughts and feelings.

But which of these techniques should a poor stressed-out wretch choose? What does the research say? Very little – at least until now.

(TORONTO, Canada – May, 15, 2014) -- The overall quality of death of cancer patients who die in an urban Canadian setting with ready access to palliative care was found to be good to excellent in the large majority of cases, helping to dispel the myth that marked suffering at the end of life is inevitable.

Berkeley — A new study of preschools and day care centers finds that flame retardants are prevalent indoors, potentially exposing young children to chemicals known to be hazardous.

In the first study of its kind, scientists tracked penguins first year away from home and found young king penguins explored new habitat, eventually learning to find food similarly to their parents, according to results published May 14, 2014, in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Klemens Pütz from Antarctic Research Trust and colleagues.

COLLEGE STATION – A team of Texas A&M University System scientists have investigated how "body clock dysregulation" might affect obesity-related metabolic disorders.

The team was led by Dr. Chaodong Wu, associate professor in the department of nutrition and food sciences of Texas A&M's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and Dr. David Earnest, professor in the department of neuroscience and experimental therapeutics, Texas A&M Health Science Center.

Individuals prenatally exposed to tobacco smoke exhibited weaker response in some regions of the brain while processing a task that measures inhibition control (the ability to control inappropriate responses).

Prenatal tobacco smoke exposure is a risk factor for adverse physical and mental outcomes in children. Growing evidence suggests that smoking during pregnancy may increase the risk of psychopathology such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Research on ADHD has suggested that individuals with the disorder may exhibit poor inhibitory control.

Just because you can't see something doesn't mean it's not there.

Brain tumors are an extremely serious example of this and are not only difficult to treat—both adult and pediatric patients have a five-year survival rate of only 30 percent—but also have even been difficult to image, which could provide important information for deciding next steps in the treatment process.

Nearly anyone can start a Twitter account and post 140 characters of information at a time, bogus or not, a fact a new study's participants seemed to grasp. The study is published in Springer's journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review by lead investigator Kimberly Fenn, assistant professor of psychology at Michigan State University. It is the first such study to examine social media and false memory.

Participants were college students, average age 19, from the so-called "Millennial Generation." Twitter, with 230 million users, is most popular among 18- to 29-year-olds.

Our human brains are filled with maps: visual maps of our external environments, and motor maps that define how we interact physically within those environments. Somehow these separate points of reference need to correspond with — and to — one another in order for us to act, whether it's grasping a coffee cup or hitting a tennis ball.

How that happens is the focus of a new study by scientists at UC Santa Barbara. The researchers used neuroimaging to decode how the brain transforms sensory input into action. Their findings are reported in the Journal of Neuroscience.