Brain

UCLA researchers have uncovered a new way to scan brain tumors and predict which ones will be shrunk by the drug Avastin -- before the patient ever starts treatment. By linking high water movement in tumors to positive drug response, the UCLA team predicted with 70 percent accuracy which patients' tumors were the least likely to grow six months after therapy.

A behavior known as "delay discounting," is a mental filter used to make decisions about current versus future gains and losses, David Hardisty, M.Phil., and Elke Weber, Ph.D., of Columbia University, report in the August Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. And it is mostly commonly applied to financial decisions.

—Around one in five young people in the U.S. have a current mental, emotional, or behavioral disorder. About half of all adults with mental disorders recalled that their disorders began in their mid-teens and three-quarters by their mid-20s. Early onset of mental health problems have been associated with failure to complete high school, increased risk for psychiatric and substance problems, and teen pregnancy.

A meta-analysis of more than 50,000 patients has shown that general practitioners (GPs) have great difficulty separating those with and without depression, with substantial numbers of missed and misidentified.

GPs looking for depression make more misidentifications (false positives of depression) than the number of depressions they correctly spot following an initial consultation but accuracy could improved by re-assessment of people suspected of having depression.

To learn from experience, it is essential to know whether a past action was associated with a desired outcome.

Now, scientists have demonstrated how this information can be coded by a single cell. The research, published in the July 30th issue of the journal Neuron, provides strong support for a neural mechanism that allows reward signals to be combined over time to drive successful learning.

New research has uncovered an early disruption in the process of memory formation in older humans who exhibit some early brain changes associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD) but show little or no memory impairment. The work, published by Cell Press in the July 30th issue of the journal Neuron, sheds light on the role of amyloid protein in memory impairment and may lead to development of strategies for predicting and treating cognitive decline in individuals who are at-risk for AD.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – If you've ever felt doomed to repeat your mistakes, researchers at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory may have explained why: Brain cells may only learn from experience when we do something right and not when we fail.

CINCINNATI – Inhibiting an enzyme in the brains of newborns suffering from oxygen and blood flow deprivation stops a type of brain damage that is a leading cause of cerebral palsy, mental retardation and death, according to researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.

Providence, RI – A year ago, a study by Rhode Island Hospital and Brown University researchers reported that fewer than half the patients previously diagnosed with bipolar disorder received an actual diagnosis of bipolar disorder after using a comprehensive, psychiatric diagnostic interview tool --the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID). In this follow-up study, the researchers have determined the actual diagnoses of those patients. Their study is published in the July 28 ahead of print online edition of The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

By systematically analysing MRI changes occuring in the brains of children with the metabolic disease glutaric aciduria type I researchers at Heidelberg University Hospital have succeeded for the first time in demonstrating reversible and permanent brain damage as well as elucidating its temporal evolution.

The Heidelberg researchers now assume that during the course of the disease, the products of metabolism cause not only acute, but chronic toxic damage as well. Therapy should thus be extended to prevent long-term brain damage.

Maternal exposure to nanoparticles of titanium dioxide (TiO2) affects the expression of genes related to the central nervous system in developing mice. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal Particle and Fibre Toxicology found that mice whose mothers were injected with the nanoparticles while pregnant showed alteration in gene expression related to neurological dysfunction.

Similarities in brain activity during lucid dreaming and psychosis suggest that dream therapy may be useful in psychiatric treatment, a European Science Foundation (ESF) workshop has found.

A new study by psychologists at the University at Buffalo and the F. W. Olin College of Engineering finds that in the aftermath of national trauma, people's reactions give a lot away. The ability to make sense out of what happened has implications for individual well-being and the kinds of stories people tell about the incident predict very different psychological outcomes for them.

The research team tested the squirrels' ability to learn to choose between two pots of food after watching another squirrel remove a nut from one of the pots. One group was rewarded for choosing the same pot as the previous squirrel, the second group was rewarded for targeting the other pot. Those that were rewarded for choosing food from the other pot learned more quickly than those that were rewarded for choosing the same pot. This suggests that grey squirrels learn more quickly to recognise the absence of food.

People who are rewarded for making correct decisions learn quickly. While the "carrot" approach may produce favourable results, little is understood about how rewards facilitate the learning process. Now, in a paper published this week in the online open-access journal PLoS Biology, a team headed by Dr.