Brain

For Immediate Release – November 29, 2010 (Toronto) – Neuroscientists at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) have developed a protein peptide that may be a novel type of highly targeted treatment for depression with a low side-effect profile. Depression affects one in ten Canadians at some time in their lives and is a leading cause of disability worldwide.

Bonn, 26th November 2010. Learning and memory formation are based on the creation of new connections between neurons in the brain. Also, behaviors such as nicotine addiction manifest themselves in long-term changes of neuronal connectivity and can – at least in this respect – be viewed as a form of learning.

Women who publicly confront instances of sexism in the workplace tend to feel more capable and competent in their jobs and about themselves in general, a new study shows.

The research from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln examined how both men and women perceive, react to and relate to everyday episodes of workplace prejudice, and found that women who challenge sexist behavior experience psychological benefits such as self-esteem, empowerment and competence.

A hormone responsible for the onset of puberty can end up stuck in the wrong part of the body if the nerve pathways responsible for its transport to the brain fail to develop properly, according to research funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

The secret behind the fast development is collaboration between a research scientist, an enterprise and a full-time student using this case for her bachelor project.

They are too large and impractical and do not always work as intended; This is common knowledge to physicians as well as physiotherapists at Holbæk hospital in Western Zealand who, via an enquiry to the Zealand Knowledge Forum in Næstved, contacted research scientists at Risø DTU, who were immediately hooked on the idea of developing an improved model.

CHICAGO – Walking may slow cognitive decline in adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease, as well as in healthy adults, according to a study presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—November 21, 2010—Scientists at the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease (GIND) in San Francisco have discovered a new strategy to prevent memory deficits in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Humans with AD and mice genetically engineered to simulate the disease have abnormally low levels of an enzyme called EphB2 in memory centers of the brain. Improving EphB2 levels in such mice by gene therapy completely fixed their memory problems. The findings will be published in the November 28 issue of the journal Nature.

Chronic jet lag alters the brain in ways that cause memory and learning problems long after one's return to a regular 24-hour schedule, according to research by University of California, Berkeley, psychologists.

Twice a week for four weeks, the researchers subjected female Syrian hamsters to six-hour time shifts – the equivalent of a New York-to-Paris airplane flight. During the last two weeks of jet lag and a month after recovery from it, the hamsters' performance on learning and memory tasks was measured.

Children living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods are more likely to succeed if they participate in a community-based prevention program, according to findings released recently from a multi-year research study based at Queen's University.

Children participating in the Better Beginnings, Better Futures (BBBF) project showed improved social and academic functioning. The project also impacted positively on families and on neighbourhoods.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Neuroscientists at MIT and Harvard have made the surprising discovery that the brain sees some faces as male when they appear in one area of a person's field of view, but female when they appear in a different location.

The findings challenge a longstanding tenet of neuroscience — that how the brain sees an object should not depend on where the object is located relative to the observer, says Arash Afraz, a postdoctoral associate at MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research and lead author of a new paper on the work.

Toronto, ON – November 24 – It's never fun riding the bench – but could it also make you less likely to be physically active in the future?

That's one of the questions being explored by Mark Eys, an associate professor of kinesiology and physical education at Wilfrid Laurier University and the Canada Research Chair in Group Dynamics and Physical Activity. Eys is presenting his work as part of this week's Canada Research Chairs conference in Toronto.

London, UK, 24 November 2010 – Research from the Laboratory of Psychiatry and Experimental Alzheimers Research (http://www2.i-med.ac.at/psychlab/) at the Medical University Innsbruck (Austria) demonstrated that chronic high fat cholesterol diet in rats exhibited pathologies similar to Alzheimer's disease. The results were published in Molecular Cellular Neuroscience (45(4):408-417, 2010) with lead author Dr. Christian Humpel.

You may think of your love for your mate as the noble emotion of a pure heart, but some primitive parts of your brain are taking a decidedly more pragmatic approach to the subject, according to Stanford biologists.

BOSTON, Mass. (Nov. 23, 2010) — Pity the female fruit fly. Being a looker is simply not enough. To get a date, much less a proposal, you have to act like a girl, even smell like one. Otherwise, you might just have a fight on your hands.

Like most animals, fruit flies must distinguish between a potential mate and a potential competitor. When a male fruit fly suspects he's encountered a female, he'll court; when he senses the other is a male, he'll fight. What triggers these sex-specific responses?