Brain

Pasadena, Calif.—The brain—awake and sleeping—is awash in electrical activity, and not just from the individual pings of single neurons communicating with each other. In fact, the brain is enveloped in countless overlapping electric fields, generated by the neural circuits of scores of communicating neurons. The fields were once thought to be an "epiphenomenon, a 'bug' of sorts, occurring during neural communication," says neuroscientist Costas Anastassiou, a postdoctoral scholar in biology at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

Older individuals, who constitute a rapidly growing population in the United States, account for a disproportionate share of health care utilization and cost.

Yet more than half of clinical trials exclude people based on their age or age-related conditions, according to a new study by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Clinical Scholars® at the University of Michigan.

SAN ANTONIO (Feb. 2, 2011) — Obesity among women of childbearing age is increasing worldwide. Because babies of obese mothers are themselves predisposed to obesity, society can reasonably expect the epidemic of obese and overweight people to continue through future generations.

DALLAS – Feb. 3, 2011 – UT Southwestern Medical Center psychiatry researchers are leading the Texas arm of a national network that conducts clinical trials aimed at finding effective treatments for drug addiction.

SAN ANTONIO, Texas, U.S.A. (Feb. 4, 2011) — Like two unruly boys who need to be split up in class, a pair of protein molecules work together to speed up the toxic events of Alzheimer's disease. Researchers at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio today announced the discovery of the second molecule and said its identification could lead to drugs that disrupt the interaction, and thereby block or slow Alzheimer's onset or progression.

The human brain works incredibly fast. However, visual impressions are so complex that their processing takes several hundred milliseconds before they enter our consciousness. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt am Main have now shown that this delay may vary in length. When the brain possesses some prior information − that is, when it already knows what it is about to see − conscious recognition occurs faster. Until now, neuroscientists assumed that the processes leading up to conscious perception were rather rigid and that their timing did not vary.

University of Granada scientists have been the first to analyze the relation between drug abuse and recognition of basic emotions (happiness, surprise, wrath, fear, sadness and disgust) by drug-abusers. Thus, the study revealed that drug-abusers have difficulty to identify negative emotions by their facial expression: wrath, disgust, fear and sadness.

Moving to a new country is difficult—learning the cultural rules and meanings of your new home is especially challenging. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that this process is easier for children, but quickly becomes more difficult after about the age of 15.

Mountain biking, also known as off-road biking, is a great way to stay physically active while enjoying nature and exploring the outdoors. The good news is that mountain biking-related injuries have decreased. A new study conducted by researchers at the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital found the number of mountain bike-related injuries decreased 56 percent over the 14-year study period (1994 to 2007) – going from a high of more than 23,000 injuries in 1995 to just over 10,000 injuries in 2007.

Mom's touch and diet – Claire-Dominique Walker, PhD, director, Neuroscience Research Division, Douglas Institute.

When a laboratory rat learns how to reach for and grab a food pellet – a pretty complex and unnatural act for a rodent – the acquired knowledge significantly alters the structure of the specific brain cells involved, which sprout a whopping 22 percent more dendritic spines connecting them to other motor neurons.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- Surgeons of the future might use a system that recognizes hand gestures as commands to control a robotic scrub nurse or tell a computer to display medical images of the patient during an operation.

Both the hand-gesture recognition and robotic nurse innovations might help to reduce the length of surgeries and the potential for infection, said Juan Pablo Wachs, an assistant professor of industrial engineering at Purdue University.

Being successful in school requires a combination of social, emotional, and academic competencies. A new analysis of more than 200 school-based social and emotional learning programs has found that such programs improve students' attitudes and behaviors, and in some cases, even boost academic performance.

The study appears in the January/February issue of the journal, Child Development. It was conducted by researchers at Loyola University Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Decades of research have demonstrated the importance of the resources in children's homes and the benefits of high-quality interactions with parents in supporting healthy development. High-quality child care plays a similar, albeit less powerful, role. Children who come from more difficult home environments and have lower-quality child care have more social and emotional problems, but high-quality child care may help make up for their home environments.