Brain

A remarkable discovery into how tumour cells invade normal tissue should lead to vital diagnostic tools and help develop strategies to stop the spread of cancer cells. A new study by scientists at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital of McGill University reveals that the surface of aggressive tumour cells lack the strong molecular 'glue' responsible for binding normal cells together. This allows tumour cells to break away, detach from their neighbors, and spread to other regions of the body.

INDIANAPOLIS – Along with integrity and compassion, respect for patients, colleagues and other team members is an essential attribute of medical professionalism. A new study examines how medical students learn respectful or disrespectful professional behavior.

Cultured mesenchymal stem cells can "feel" at least several microns below the surface of an artificial microfilm matrix, gauging the elasticity of the extracellular bedding that is a crucial variable in determining their fate, researchers reported today at the American Society for Cell Biology's 50th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia.

Controlling or predicting how stem cells differentiate into cells of a specific tissue type is a critical issue in the bioengineering of artificial tissue and in stem cell medicine.

Researchers at Emory University School of Medicine and the University of Chicago have developed a method for labeling and mapping a "sixth nucleotide," whose biological role scientists are only beginning to explore.

The method is described online this week in Nature Biotechnology.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 9, 2010 -- The centuries-old "one-drop rule" assigning minority status to mixed-race individuals appears to live on in our modern-day perception and categorization of people like Barack Obama, Tiger Woods, and Halle Berry.

So say Harvard University psychologists, who've found that we still tend to see biracials not as equal members of both parent groups, but as belonging more to their minority parent group. Their research appears in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

DALLAS – Dec. 10, 2010 – It's a medical Catch-22: carotid artery surgery can itself cause stroke, but so can asymptomatic carotid disease if left untreated.

UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have now developed a clinical risk prediction rule using factors such as sex, race and health history to assess the danger the surgery poses, while a modified version will help patients make a more fully informed choice about whether to have the procedure.

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- A study of how medical students evaluate their professors is illustrating the critical importance of making a good first impression.

Students in a physiology course at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine were asked to evaluate 16 professors who lectured during the course. Students had the option of evaluating each professor concurrently during the course, or waiting until the course ended. Students were allowed to change their minds before the evaluations were finalized at the end of the course.

A new study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, published in Science, shows that when you imagine eating a certain food, it reduces your actual consumption of that food. This landmark discovery changes the decades-old assumption that thinking about something desirable increases cravings for it and its consumption.

Neurologists finally have an answer to one of the most important questions about Alzheimer's disease: Do rising brain levels of a plaque-forming substance mean patients are making more of it or that they can no longer clear it from their brains as effectively?

In Alzheimer's disease, a protein fragment called beta-amyloid accumulates at abnormally high levels in the brain. Now researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have found that in the most common, late-onset form of Alzheimer's disease, beta-amyloid is produced in the brain at a normal rate but is not cleared, or removed from the brain, efficiently.

SAN ANTONIO, TEX. (December 9, 2010)––Nearly one-fifth of all metastatic breast cancer patients develop brain metastases and have significantly shorter overall survival than patients who do not have brain involvement. One way to improve the affected patients' survival might be to prevent the brain metastases from arising in the first place. With that in mind, researchers have been working on a predictive model that accurately identifies these high risk patients.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---New molecular tools developed at the University of Michigan show promise for "cleansing" the brain of amyloid plaques, implicated in Alzheimer's disease.

Babies born into the world addicted to drugs because of their mother's dependence on pain medication, or opioids, may be weaned off the substance more comfortably, with a shorter hospital stay and at a reduced cost, if the mother receives a new treatment option during pregnancy.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – An intensive, five-week working memory training program shows promise in relieving some of the symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children, a new study suggests.

Researchers found significant changes for students who completed the program in areas such as attention, ADHD symptoms, planning and organization, initiating tasks, and working memory.

"This program really seemed to make a difference for many of the children with ADHD," said Steven Beck, co-author of the study an associate professor of psychology at Ohio State University.