Brain

Scientists trying to understand how the brains of animals evolve have found that evolutionary changes in brain structure reflect the types of social interactions and environmental stimuli different species face.

This release is available in http://chinese..org/zh/emb_releases/2009-06/jaaj-mwa061909.php">Chinese.

Middle-aged women who had migraine headaches with aura (sensory disturbances, such as with vision, balance or speech) had a higher prevalence of brain lesions when they were older, compared to individuals without similar types of headaches, according to a study in the June 24 issue of JAMA.

Are you a "morning person" or a "night owl?"

Scientists at the University of Alberta have found that there are significant differences in the way our brains function depending on whether we're early risers or night owls.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — "What brings you in to see me today?"

"Part of my left breast has been painful for awhile."

"Can you lie down so that I can examine you?"

It sounds like a snippet of conversation between doctor and patient. But the doctor, in this recent exchange at the University of Florida campus, was actually an engineering doctoral student — and the patient a "mixed reality human" composed of a life-sized computer avatar on a flat screen and a mannequin with a prosthetic breast.

PHILADELPHIA – A report in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, highlights a new biomarker that may be useful in identifying patients with recurrent glioblastoma, or brain tumors, who would respond better to anti-vascular endothelial growth factor therapy, specifically cediranib.

NEW YORK (June 23, 2009) -- Depression in older adults too often goes unrecognized and untreated, resulting in untold misery, worsening of medical illness, and early death. A new study has identified one important remedy: Adding a trained depression care manager to primary care practices can increase the number of patients receiving treatment, lead to a higher remission rate of depression, and reduce suicidal thoughts.

Pediatric researchers have identified hundreds of gene variations that occur more frequently in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) than in children without ADHD. Many of those genes were already known to be important for learning, behavior, brain function and neurodevelopment, but had not been previously associated with ADHD.

The pursuit of happiness characterizes the human condition. But for those suffering from stress, money trouble or chronic illness, a positive outlook on life can be difficult to find. Now, a Tel Aviv University researcher says we should look to our genes.

New research from Vanderbilt University indicates the way our brain handles how we move through space—including being able to imagine literally stepping into someone else's shoes—may be related to how and why we experience empathy toward others.

The research was recently published in the online scientific journal PLoS ONE. The full article is available at: http://tinyurl.com/lw6qmv.

We humans prefer to be addressed in our right ear and are more likely to perform a task when we receive the request in our right ear rather than our left. In a series of three studies1, looking at ear preference in communication between humans, Dr. Luca Tommasi and Daniele Marzoli from the University "Gabriele d'Annunzio" in Chieti, Italy, show that a natural side bias, depending on hemispheric asymmetry in the brain, manifests itself in everyday human behavior. Their findings were just published online in Springer's journal Naturwissenschaften.

Eating disorders are frequently seen as psychological or societaldiseases, but do they have an underlying biological cause? A new studyshows that the levels of a brain protein differ between healthy andanorexic women.

A lack of serotonin, commonly known as the "happiness hormone", in the brain slows the growth of mice after birth and is responsible for impaired maternal behavior later in life. This was the result of research conducted by Dr. Natalia Alenina, Dana Kikic, and Professor Michael Bader of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch, Germany. At the same time, the researchers discovered that the presence of serotonin in the brain is not crucial for the survival of the animals.

As global warming whips up more powerful and frequent hurricanes and storms, the world's coral reefs face increased disruption to their ability to breed and recover from damage.

That's one of the findings from a new scientific study of the fate of corals in the wake of large climate-driven bleaching and storm events.

New research which suggests a direct link between smoking and brain damage will be published in the July issue of the Journal of Neurochemistry. Researchers, led by Debapriya Ghosh and Dr Anirban Basu from the Indian National Brain Research Center (NBRC), have found that a compound in tobacco provokes white blood cells in the central nervous system to attack healthy cells, leading to severe neurological damage.

Multiple sclerosis, diabetic neuropathy, and other conditions caused by a loss of myelin insulation around nerves can be debilitating and even deadly, but adequate treatments do not yet exist. That's in large part because of deficiencies in model research systems. In an upcoming issue of the journal Biomaterials, a UCF team addresses this problem with a report on the first lab-grown motor nerves that are insulated and organized the same way they are in the body.