Brain

GAINESVILLE — A common antibiotic can function as an "off switch" for a gene therapy being developed for Parkinson's disease, according to University of Florida researchers writing online in advance of September's Molecular Therapy.

The discovery in rats answers an important question — how can new, therapeutic genes that have been irrevocably delivered to the human brain to treat Parkinson's be controlled if the genes unexpectedly start causing problems?

Montreal, August 28, 2009 – Almost 15 percent of preschoolers have atypically high levels of depression and anxiety, according to a new study published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. The five-year investigation also found that children with atypically high depression and anxiety levels are more likely to have mothers with a history of depression.

Fish and some amphibians possess a unique sensory capability in the so-called lateral-line system. It allows them, in effect, to "touch" objects in their surroundings without direct physical contact or to "see" in the dark. Professor Leo van Hermmen and his team in the physics department of the Technische Universitaet Muenchen are exploring the fundamental basis for this sensory system. What they discover might one day, through biomimetic engineering, better equip robots to orient themselves in their environments.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a technique widely used in studying the human brain. However, it has long been unclear exactly how fMRI signals are generated at brain cell level. This information is crucially important to interpreting these imaging signals. Scientists from the Academy of Finland's Neuroscience Research Programme (NEURO) have discovered that astrocytes, support cells in brain tissue, play a key role in the generation of fMRI signals.

Scientists in the Academy of Finland's Neuroscience Research Programme have reported promising new results with potential implications for the treatment of Parkinson's disease. They have been studying the impacts of nerve growth factors in the treatment of PD, and their latest results show that a certain growth factor can be used to halt the progress of damage brought on by a nerve poison and possibly even restore the function of damaged cells.

Our vocabulary continues to grow and expand even in adulthood. Just ten years ago, the word 'blog' did not yet exist – and now we no longer 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. 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.

MOUNT CARMEL, HAIFA, ISRAEL—August 26, 2009—For ages experts and laymen have been analyzing and trying to crack the code of handwriting characteristics, in order to detect an individual's personality traits, or in most cases, gauge their innocence in the case of a crime. Although this science has often gone the way of pseudoscience, researchers are now discovering that with the aid of a computerized tool, handwriting characteristics can be measured more effectively.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., August 27, 2009 – Outcomes matter more than intention when choosing to punish or reward individuals who've caused accidents, according to new research from Harvard University.

Published in PLoS One, the study was led by Fiery Cushman, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychology in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, along with Anna Dreber of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard and the Stockholm School of Economics.

People with psoriasis – an often distressing dermatological condition that causes lesions and red scaly patches on the skin – are less likely to react to looks of disgust by others than people without the condition, new research has found.

University of Manchester scientists used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to compare the brains of 26 men, half of whom had chronic psoriasis. The researchers looked at the insular cortex – a part of the brain triggered by both feelings and observations of disgust – to see how participants responded to images of disgusted faces.

The circadian system is not the only pathway involved in determining alertness at night. Research described in the open access journal BMC Neuroscience showed that red light, which does not stimulate the circadian system, is just as effective at increasing night-time alertness as blue light, which does.

Researchers at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have found that rats use a mental instant replay of their actions to help them decide what to do next, shedding new light on how animals and humans learn and remember. The work will appear in the journal Neuron.

A new study with transgenic mice provides the first concrete evidence that a disease-associated prion protein mutation in an otherwise normal mammalian brain can generate a unique self-perpetuating transmissible agent that is infectious to other animals. In addition to revealing critical new insight into prion biology, the research, published by Cell Press in the August 27 issue of the journal Neuron, introduces a valuable mouse model of a type of inherited human prion disease associated with deadly insomnia.

A new study reveals that when it comes to pain control, the "placebo effect" involves evolutionarily old pain control pathways in the human brainstem, the part of the brain that is continuous with the spinal cord. The research, published by Cell Press in the August 27th issue of the journal Neuron, provides fascinating mechanistic insight into how and why simply expecting that a treatment will reduce pain can act as an effective analgesic.

BOSTON, Mass. (August 26, 2009) — For over a century, scientists have been using electrical stimulation to explore and treat the human brain. The technique has helped identify regions responsible for specific neural functions—for instance, the motor cortex and pleasure center—and has been used to treat a variety of conditions from Parkinson's disease to depression. Yet no one has been able to see what actually happens at the cellular level when the brain is electrically prodded.

Whitehead Institute researchers have shown that mutations associated with prion diseases are sufficient to cause a transmissible neurodegenerative disease. The discovery is reported in the journal Neuron.

Until now, two theories about the role mutations play in prion diseases have been at odds. According to one theory, mutations make carriers more susceptible to prions in the environment. Alternatively, mutations themselves might cause the disease and the spontaneous generation of transmissible prions.