Brain

A team of researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine has developed the first web-based screening tool for Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). This instrument has recently been used by soldiers returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who participated in the Sixth Annual Road to Recovery Conference and Tribute in Orlando to determine if they sustained a TBI.

Sometimes it's almost impossible to talk without using your hands. These gestures seem to be important to how we think. They provide a visual clue to our thoughts and, a new theory suggests, may even change our thoughts by grounding them in action.

Brain scans of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have shown for the first time why people affected by the condition sometimes have such difficulty in concentrating. The study, funded by the Wellcome Trust, may explain why parents often say that their child can maintain concentration when they are doing something that interests them, but struggles with boring tasks.

Fewer children who attend regular formal centre- and family-based child care at 1.5 years and 3 years of age were late talkers compared with children who are looked after at home by a parent, child-carer or in an outdoor nursery. This is shown in a new study by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health of nearly 20,000 children.

The study found no relation between the type of child care at the age of 1 year and subsequent language competence, which may indicate that the positive effect of centre-based child care first occurs between the ages of 1 to 1.5 years.

HOUSTON – (Jan. 5, 2011) – Zinc ions released at the junction between two neurons (called a synapse) are important signals, but when too much zinc accumulates, cells become dysfunctional or die.

In the first-ever quantification of energy expended by humans during sleep, a University of Colorado team has found that the metabolic cost of an adult missing one night of sleep is the equivalent of walking slightly less than two miles.

LA JOLLA, CA – January 4, 2011 — Researchers from The Scripps Research Institute, Weill Cornell Medical College, and Cornell University have produced a long-lasting anti-cocaine immunity in mice by giving them a unique vaccine that combines bits of the common cold virus with a particle that mimics cocaine.

AURORA, Colo. (Jan. 4, 2011) - Researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine have created a new and exciting mouse model to study how lipid sensing and metabolism in the brain relate to the regulation of energy balance and body weight. The research team, led by Hong Wang, PhD, created mice with a deficiency of lipoprotein lipase (LPL) in neurons, and observed two important reactions. First, the mouse models ate less and second, they became sedentary.

Kris Wheaton pushes a key on his computer and the reminder transmits to dozens of intelligence studies students: Game Lab Tonight!

Himself a long-time gamer, Wheaton is a pioneer in game-based learning as it applies to the teaching of intelligence analysis.

Whether wrangling over the next move in "Defiant Russia," a board game based on the 1941 German attack on the Soviet Union, where players control the units that fought in the campaign; or strategizing over the online musical puzzle journey that is "Auditorium," there's lots of learning going on.

NEW YORK (Jan. 4, 2011) — Researchers have produced a lasting anti-cocaine immunity in mice by giving them a safe vaccine that combines bits of the common cold virus with a particle that mimics cocaine.

In their study, published Jan. 4 in the online edition of Molecular Therapy and funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the researchers say this novel strategy might be the first to offer cocaine addicts a fairly simple way to break and reverse their habit, and it might also be useful in treating other addictions, such as to nicotine, heroin and other opiates.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- About one-third of the human population is infected with a parasite called Toxoplasma gondii, but most of them don't know it. Though Toxoplasma causes no symptoms in most people, it can be harmful to individuals with suppressed immune systems, and to fetuses whose mothers become infected during pregnancy. Toxoplasma spores are found in dirt and easily infect farm animals such as cows, sheep, pigs and chickens. Humans can be infected by eating undercooked meat or unwashed vegetables.

Philadelphia, PA, 4 January 2011 - Normally, cortical nerve cells or neurons reside in the brain's gray matter with only a few scattered neurons in the white matter, but some people with schizophrenia have a higher number of neurons in the white matter. Neuronal migration errors may arise in schizophrenia as a consequence of both genetic and environmental factors.

The phenomenon of aberrant cellular localization has now been studied in detail in a paper by Yang and colleagues, published in the current issue of Biological Psychiatry.

EAST LANSING, Mich. — In the first combat-zone study of its kind, a research team led by Michigan State University found that soldiers with a positive outlook in the most traumatic situations were less likely to suffer health problems such as anxiety and depression.

Researchers from Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, WA, have found that clinical decision support systems can help reduce inappropriate medical imaging, including unnecessary computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, according to a study in the January issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology (www.jacr.org).