Brain

AMES, Iowa - Researchers at Iowa State University have found an essential key to possibly cure Parkinson's disease and are looking for others.

Anumantha Kanthasamy, a distinguished professor of biomedical sciences and W. Eugene and Linda R. Lloyd Endowed Chair in Neurotoxicology at the ISU College of Veterinary Medicine, has been working to understand the complex mechanisms of the disease for more than a decade and thinks he has found hope for the cure.

Parkinson's disease sufferers lack a sufficient amount of a brain chemical called dopamine.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---One of the many mysteries of Alzheimer's disease is how protein-like snippets called amyloid-beta peptides, which clump together to form plaques in the brain, may cause cell death, leading to the disease's devastating symptoms of memory loss and other mental difficulties.

In order to answer that key question and develop new approaches to preventing the damage, scientists must first understand how amyloid-beta forms the telltale clumps.

AUGUSTA, Ga. – For estrogen replacement to provide stroke protection, it likely must be given soon after levels drop because of menopause or surgical removal of the ovaries, scientists report in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Those oft-maligned, and highly embellished, graphs and charts in USA Today and other media outlets may actually help people understand data more effectively than traditional graphs, according to new research from North Carolina State University.

The eyes may be the mirror to the soul, but the iris reveals a person's true identity—its intricate structure constitutes a powerful biometric. A new report by computer scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) demonstrates that iris recognition algorithms can maintain their accuracy and interoperability with compact images, affirming their potential for large-scale identity management applications such as the federal Personal Identity Verification program, cyber security and counterterrorism.

Use of cannabinoids (marijuana) could assist in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder patients. This is exposed in a recent study carried out at the Learning and Memory Lab in the University of Haifa's Department of Psychology. The study, carried out by research student Eti Ganon-Elazar under the supervision of Dr. Irit Akirav, was published in the prestigious Journal of Neuroscience.

CHICAGO – Treating a common brain tumor with multiple sessions of radiation appears to result in less brain swelling than treating the tumor once with a high dose of radiation, say researchers from the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University Hospital.

BETHESDA, Md. − Eighteen years ago this month the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that it would sponsor a landmark study to examine women and cardiovascular disease. Known as the Women's Health Initiative (WHI), the study enrolled more than 161,000 women. By 2004 however, the government had ended two arms of the study involving estrogen after researchers found it posed a small but detrimental risk for stroke to postmenopausal women taking the hormone.

AUSTIN, Texas—First impressions do matter when it comes to communicating personality through appearance, according to new research by psychologists Laura Naumann of Sonoma State University and Sam Gosling of The University of Texas at Austin.

Radiation oncologists at Rush University Medical Center are intent on finding ways to avoid damage to the critically important hippocampus and limbic circuit of the brain when cranial radiation is required to treat existing or potential metastatic cancers.

The goal is to spare these areas, which are responsible for short-term memory, as well as emotions, motivation, and a range of executive functions, such as planning and decision-making.

Montreal, November 3, 2009 – Night-shift workers should avoid drinking coffee if they wish to improve their sleep, according to research published in the journal Sleep Medicine. A new study led by Julie Carrier, a Université de Montréal psychology professor and a researcher at the affiliated Hôpital du Sacré-Cœur Sleep Disorders Centre, has found the main byproduct of coffee, caffeine, interferes with sleep and this side-effect worsens as people age.

(PHILADELPHIA) Optic nerve sheath meningiomas are rare tumors that are traditionally treated with surgery, which is typically a blinding procedure. However, researchers from Thomas Jefferson University Hospital have found that a specialized type of radiation therapy offers the same local control, with fewer adverse effects on vision. The investigators presented their data at the 51st ASTRO Annual Meeting (Abstract #2676/B-261).

The majority of our life is spent moving around a static world and we generate our impression of the world using visual and other senses simultaneously. It is the ability to freely explore our environment that is essential for the view we form of our local surroundings. When we walk down the street and enter a shop to buy fruit, the street, shop and fruit are not moving, we are. What our brain is probably doing is constantly updating our position based on the information received from our sensory inputs such as eyes, ears, skin as well as our motor and vestibular systems, all in real time.

AMES, Iowa - Researchers at Iowa State University have found an essential key to possibly cure Parkinson's disease and are looking for others.

Anumantha Kanthasamy, a distinguished professor of biomedical sciences and W. Eugene and Linda R. Lloyd Endowed Chair in Neurotoxicology at the ISU College of Veterinary Medicine, has been working to understand the complex mechanisms of the disease for more than a decade and thinks he has found hope for the cure.

Parkinson's disease sufferers lack a sufficient amount of a brain chemical called dopamine.

Adult survivors of childhood cancer are 20 to 25 percent more likely to never marry compared with siblings and the general population, Yale School of Medicine researchers report in a new study published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.