Brain

Blacksburg, Va. – Virginia Tech chemistry Professor Harry C. Dorn, Emory and Henry College chemistry Professor James Duchamp, and Panos Fatouros, professor and chair of the Division of Radiation Physics and Biology at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine have co-invented a hands-off process for filling fullerenes with radio-active material.

Severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is associated with lower cognitive function in older adults, according to research from Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Researchers compared cognitive performance in over 4,150 adults with and without COPD and found that individuals with severe COPD had significantly lower cognitive function than those without, even after controlling for confounding factors such as comorbidities.

The results were published in the July 15 issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

Scientists at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet and Linköping University are well on the way to creating the first artificial nerve cell that can communicate specifically with nerve cells in the body using neurotransmitters. The technology has been published in an article in Nature Materials.

A rapid but superior method for computerized face recognition could revolutionize security systems especially if it can see through disguises, according to research published in this month's issue of the International Journal of Intelligent Systems Technologies and Applications.

Every face has special features that define that person, yet faces can also be very similar, explains Lin Huang, of Florida Atlantic University, in Boca Raton. That makes computerized face recognition for security and other applications an interesting but difficult task.

A group of researchers from the Department of Physics at UAB have designed a device, called a dc metamaterial, which makes objects invisible under certain light – very low frequency electromagnetic waves - by making the inside of the magnetic field zero but not altering the exterior field. The device, which up to date has only been studied in theoretical works, thus acts as an invisibility cloak, making the object completely undetectable to these waves.

Fear is a powerful emotion and neuroscientists have for the first time located the neurons responsible for fear conditioning in the mammalian brain. Fear conditioning is a form of Pavlovian, or associative, learning and is considered to be a model system for understanding human phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder and other anxiety disorders.

The use of magnetic pulses to stimulate the dorsal premotor cortex (PMd) region of the brain results in an improved ability to learn a skilled motor task. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Neuroscience show that skilled movements can be stored as memories in the PMd and that magnetic stimulation of this area can facilitate this learning process.

Learning complex skills like playing an instrument requires a sequence of movements that can take years to master. Last year, MIT neuroscientists reported that by studying the chirps of tiny songbirds, they were able to identify how two distinct brain circuits contribute to this type of trial-and-error learning in different stages of life.

MINNEAPOLIS/ ST. PAUL (July 6, 2009) – University of Minnesota Medical School researchers have discovered that a common anti-oxidant, widely available as a health food supplement, may help stop the urges of those with trichotillomania, a disorder characterized by compulsive hair-pulling.

The amino acid N-acetylcysteine appears to reduce symptoms of compulsive hair-pulling in patients with a condition known as trichotillomania, according to a report in the July issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

DURHAM, N.C. -- We've all been asked at routine visits to the doctor to record our family's history with medical problems like cancer, diabetes or heart disease. But when it comes to mental disorders, usually mum's the word.

An online insomnia intervention based on established face-to-face cognitive behavioral therapy techniques appears to improve patients' sleep, according to a report in the July issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Combining antidepressant drugs with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) does a better job of reducing symptoms of severe depression and causes less memory loss than using ECT alone, according to a new study by researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and colleagues.

This finding could alleviate one of the primary concerns about ECT – that it causes memory loss, said W. Vaughn McCall, M.D., M.S, professor and chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine and the principal investigator for the study's Wake Forest Baptist site.

(Boston, Mass)—The way certain patients present in the post-acute hospital setting with delirium, a common, preventable but life-threatening acute confusional state, predicts mortality, according to a study conducted by the Institute for Aging Research of Hebrew SeniorLife.

Patients with severe, hypoactive delirium, characterized by slowing or lack of movement and unresponsiveness, have the worst six-month survival rate of any class of the disease. Those with mild, hypoactive delirium have a significantly higher likelihood of dying than patients with other, milder symptoms.

Researchers at North Carolina State University say that comparing human and canine genomes allowed them to discover that a gene commonly believed to be involved in meningiomas-tumors that affect the meninges (thin covering of the human brain) and account for one out of four adult brain tumors may not be as key for tumor formation as previously thought, and they've narrowed the search for the real culprit.