Brain

Babies, even those too young to talk, can understand many of the words that adults are saying – and their brains process them in a grown-up way.

An unexpected discovery by UCLA life scientists holds promise for the future development of treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder and other anxiety disorders, and potentially for Alzheimer's disease and other memory-impairment diseases.

The researchers, led by UCLA professor of psychology Michael Fanselow, have discovered what may be a completely unexplored drug target for the treatment of anxiety disorders. The research is published Jan. 7 in the journal Science.

Work published today shows that brain cells need to create links early on in their existence, when they are physically close together, to ensure successful connections across the brain throughout life.

In people, these long-distance connections enable the left and right side of the brain to communicate and integrate different kinds of information such as sound and vision. A change in the number of these connections has been found in many developmental brain disorders including autism, epilepsy and schizophrenia.

PITTSBURGH—Microbloggers may think they're interacting in one big Twitterverse, but researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science find that regional slang and dialects are as evident in tweets as they are in everyday conversations.

CHICAGO (January 6, 2011) – According to a report published in the December issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, surgery residents improved their knowledge of health care business concepts and principles with the use of a Web-based curriculum.

Emotional crying is a universal, uniquely human behavior. When we cry, we clearly send all sorts of emotional signals. In a paper published online today in Science Express, scientists at the Weizmann Institute have demonstrated that some of these signals are chemically encoded in the tears themselves. Specifically, they found that merely sniffing a woman's tears – even when the crying woman is not present -- reduces sexual arousal in men.

For years, the majority of research on reactive oxygen species (ROS) – ions or very small molecules that include free radicals – has focused on how they damage cell structure and their potential link to stroke, cardiovascular disease and other illnesses.

However, researchers at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research have shown for the first time that neural stem cells, the cells that give rise to neurons, maintain high levels of ROS to help regulate normal self-renewal and differentiation.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Young people may crave boosts to their self-esteem a little too much, new research suggests.

Researchers found that college students valued boosts to their self-esteem more than any other pleasant activity they were asked about, including sex, favorite foods, drinking alcohol, seeing a best friend or receiving a paycheck.

Spartanburg, S.C., USA, 6 January, 2010 – Researchers at Wofford College discovered that a Border Collie comprehends the names of over 1000 objects, differentiating between names of objects and orders to fetch them. This research deepens the findings of researchers in Germany, who had discovered a dog that knew the names of a couple of hundred objects. Important questions were left open as to how far a dog could go, and whether the dog really understood that the object names were nouns and not commands to retrieve the object.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – New research shows that loss of a gene called NFKBIA promotes the growth of glioblastoma multiforme, the most common and deadly form of brain cancer, and suggests that therapies that stabilize this gene may improve survival for certain glioblastoma patients.

The study was published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Regularly drinking green tea could protect the brain against developing Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia, according to latest research by scientists at Newcastle University.

The study, published in the academic journal Phytomedicine, also suggests this ancient Chinese remedy could play a vital role in protecting the body against cancer.

An international team of physicists and neuroscientists has reported a breakthrough in magnetic resonance imaging that allows brain scans more than seven times faster than currently possible.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Most people like to play it safe when combining colors for an article of clothing or outfit, a new study suggests.

When consumers were asked to choose colors for seven different parts of an athletic shoe, they tended to pick identical or similar colors for nearly every element.

They usually avoided contrasting or even moderately different color combinations.

A red and yellow athletic shoe? Not going to happen. Blue and grey? That's more like it.