Brain

New research at LIFE – Faculty of Life Sciences at University of Copenhagen shows that vitamin C deficiency may impair the mental development of new-born babies.

Brain imaging shows playing Tetris leads to a thicker cortex and may also increase brain efficiency, according to research published in the open access journal BMC Research Notes. A research team based in New Mexico is one of the first to investigate the effects of practice in the brain using two image techniques.

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- New research from a University at Buffalo expert on classroom education has identified six factors that affect whether elementary, middle and high school students will engage in the activities of their schools or feel alienated.

Students who feel "disengaged" from school are at greater risk for dropping out, avoiding challenging courses, scoring low on standardized achievement tests and achieving less as adults, according to researcher Jeremy D. Finn, professor of counseling, school and educational psychology in the UB Graduate School of Education.

KANSAS CITY, MO — September 1, 2009 — New peer-reviewed research on military health issues is being presented this week at the Military Health Research Forum (MHRF), a scientific meeting hosted by the Department of Defense Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP). The studies focus on topics including potential treatments for spinal cord injury, nutrition's impact on cognitive performance in pilots and the effectiveness of a family-based reintegration program.

KANSAS CITY, MO — September 1, 2009 — New research on traumatic brain injury (TBI) is being presented this week at the Military Health Research Forum (MHRF), a scientific meeting hosted by the Department of Defense (DOD) Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP). Service men and women are particularly susceptible to TBI given the nature of combat.

KANSAS CITY, MO — September 1, 2009 — New research on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is being presented this week at the Military Health Research Forum (MHRF), a scientific conference hosted by the Department of Defense (DOD) Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP). Depending on the conflict in which they served, 10 to 30 percent of soldiers who have spent time in war zones experience the debilitating and life-altering symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

PHILADELPHIA – Researchers at the National Cancer Institute have identified a gene that may play a role in breast cancer metastasis to the brain, according to a report in Molecular Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Diane Palmieri, Ph.D., a staff scientist at the NCI, said Hexokinase 2 overexpression was more highly expressed in brain metastasis in patients with breast cancer than in primary breast tumors.

Malignant brain tumors often fail to respond to promising new medication. Researchers in Heidelberg have discovered a mechanism and a tumor marker for the development of this resistance. A "death receptor" can possibly provide information as to how great the chances of success are for chemotherapy. At the same time, it offers a new approach for promising brain tumor therapy.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A new study that looks at data on three generations of Oregon families shows that "positive parenting" – including factors such as warmth, monitoring children's activities, involvement, and consistency of discipline – not only has positive impacts on adolescents, but on the way they parent their own children.

Westchester, Ill. —A study in the Sept.1 issue of the journal Sleep shows that the sleep-wake activity rhythms of breast cancer patients are impaired during the administration of chemotherapy. Results indicate that the first cycle of chemotherapy is associated with a temporary disruption of these rhythms, while repeated administration of chemotherapy results in progressively worse and more enduring impairments.

Researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, have demonstrated that prairie voles may be a useful model in understanding the neurochemistry of social behavior. By influencing early social experience in prairie voles, researchers hope to gain greater insight into what aspects of early social experience drive diversity in adult social behavior. The study is in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience and is focused on the long-term impact of early life experiences.

A psychological intervention for newly diagnosed breast cancer patients with symptoms of depression not only relieves patients' depression but also lowers indicators of inflammation in the blood.

Those are the findings of a new study by researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC-James) and the Ohio State University Department of Psychology involving patients with stage II or III breast cancer.

Pasadena, Calif.—In a finding that sheds new light on the neural mechanisms involved in social behavior, neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have pinpointed the brain structure responsible for our sense of personal space.

The discovery, described in the August 30 issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, could offer insight into autism and other disorders where social distance is an issue.

Obviously our vocabulary continues to grow and expand even in adulthood. Ten years ago, the word ‘blog' did not yet exist but it's difficult to remember when we heard this word for the first time or when we learned its meaning.

At some stage new words become just as familiar to us as words we have learned earlier and one of the areas of interest in the Academy of Finland's Neuroscience Research Programme (NEURO) is how the process of learning new words is reflected in the function of the brain.

Patients infected with a particular subtype of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, are more likely to develop dementia than patients with other subtypes, a study led by Johns Hopkins researchers shows. The finding, reported in the September Clinical Infectious Diseases, is the first to demonstrate that the specific type of HIV has any effect on cognitive impairment, one of the most common complications of uncontrolled HIV infection.