Brain

HOUSTON – Cancer patients who receive stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) and whole brain radiation therapy (WBRT) for the treatment of metastatic brain tumors have more than twice the risk of developing learning and memory problems than those treated with SRS alone, according to researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Chevy Chase, MD—Resveratrol, a molecule found in red grapes, has been shown to improve diabetes when delivered orally to rodents. Until now, however, little has been known about how these beneficial changes are mediated in the body. A new study accepted for publication in Endocrinology, a journal of The Endocrine Society, shows that the brain plays a key role in mediating resveratrol's anti-diabetic actions, potentially paving the way for future orally-delivered diabetes medications that target the brain.

The antibiotic minocycline may revolutionize the treatment of strokes. A new study, published in the open access journal BMC Neuroscience, describes the safety and therapeutic efficacy of the drug in animal models.

A vaccine to treat cocaine dependence appears to reduce use of the drug in a subgroup of individuals who attain high anticocaine antibody levels in response, according to a report in the October issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. However, only 38 percent of vaccinated individuals produced high enough antibody levels and those who did maintained them for only two months.

Women who survived cancer in childhood or adolescence or women whose male partner is a childhood cancer survivor do not appear to have an increased risk of major complications during pregnancy, having babies with birth defects or infant deaths, according to two reports in the October issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

San Diego, CA – Primary care physicians face limitations when evaluating patients for voice problems including hoarseness (dyphonia), according to new research presented at the 2009 American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Foundation (AAO-HNSF) Annual Meeting & OTO EXPO, in San Diego, CA.

INDIANAPOLIS – Which comes first, depression or inflammation?

To help solve this long standing chicken and egg conundrum, researchers led by Jesse Stewart, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis asked two critical questions. Does depression lead to elevated inflammatory proteins in the human body? Or does an increase in these proteins lead to depression? They found that the answer to the first question appears to be "yes," and the answer to the second question may be "no" among healthy adults.

Researchers at the University of Toronto, St. Michael's Hospital and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre have discovered a previously unidentified form of circulation within the human eye which may provide important new insights into glaucoma, a leading cause of blindness.

For over a century, the eye has been considered to lack lymphatics, a circulation responsible for pumping fluid and waste out of tissues. The inability to clear that fluid from the eye is linked to glaucoma, a leading cause of irreversible blindness affecting over 66 million people worldwide.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Sitting up straight in your chair isn't just good for your posture – it also gives you more confidence in your own thoughts, according to a new study.

Researchers found that people who were told to sit up straight were more likely to believe thoughts they wrote down while in that posture concerning whether they were qualified for a job.

On the other hand, those who were slumped over their desks were less likely to accept these written-down feelings about their own qualifications.

When it comes to religion, believers and nonbelievers appear to think very differently. But at the level of the brain, is believing in God different from believing that the sun is a star or that 4 is an even number?

While religious faith remains one of the most significant features of human life, little is known about its relationship to ordinary belief. Nor is it known whether religious believers differ from nonbelievers in how they evaluate statements of fact.

CHAPEL HILL – In populating the growing brain, neural stem cells must strike a delicate balance between two key processes – proliferation, in which the cells multiply to provide plenty of starting materials – and differentiation, in which those materials evolve into functioning neurons.

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y., OCT. 4, 2009 –More than one million infants die each year because they are born too early, according to the just released White Paper, The Global and Regional Toll of Preterm Birth.

The new White Paper shows that in 2005, an estimated 13 million babies worldwide were born preterm -- defined as birth at less than 37 full weeks of gestation. That is almost 10 percent of total births worldwide. About one million deaths in the first month of life (or 28 percent of total newborn deaths) are attributable to preterm birth.

SAN DIEGO - It's a ringing, a buzzing, a hissing or a clicking - and the patient is the only one who can hear it.

Complicating matters, physicians can rarely pinpoint the source of tinnitus, a chronic ringing of the head or ears that can be as quiet as a whisper or as loud as a jackhammer.

Now a Henry Ford Hospital study finds that a non-invasive imaging technique can actually aid in the diagnosis of tinnitus and may detect a reduction in symptoms after different treatments, offering hope to the more than 50 million patients with tinnitus.

The prevalence of mental health disorders in this country has nearly doubled in the past 20 years. Who is treating all of these patients? Clinical psychologists and therapists are charged with the task, but many are falling short by using methods that are out of date and lack scientific rigor. This is in part because many of the training programs—especially some Doctorate of Psychology (PsyD) programs and for-profit training centers—are not grounded in science.

CLEVELAND – October 2, 2009 –Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine assistant professor of pediatrics, neurosciences and otolaryngology, Stephen M. Maricich, M.D., Ph.D., and his team found that Merkel cells originate in the skin, not the neural crest lineage, as previously speculated.

The study, "Mammalian Merkel Cells are Descended from the Epidermal Lineage", was recently published in the online version of Developmental Biology and is slated its future print edition.