Brain

LOS ANGELES (March 17, 2016) - Cedars-Sinai research scientists have found that immune cells in the brain play a direct role in the development of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, offering hope for new therapies to target the neurodegenerative disease that gradually leads to paralysis and death.

The findings will appear in the journal Science on March 18, 2016.

While researching the brain's learning and memory system, scientists at Johns Hopkins say they stumbled upon a new type of nerve cell that seems to control feeding behaviors in mice. The finding, they report, adds significant detail to the way brains tell animals when to stop eating and, if confirmed in humans, could lead to new tools for fighting obesity. Details of the study will be published by the journal Science on March 18, 2016.

Researchers have identified an enzyme in the brain that plays a key role in regulating how much food mice eat in one sitting, finding that deletion of this enzyme caused the mice to increase their food intake to the point of becoming obese. The results may hint at a new therapeutic target for human obesity. Obesity is associated with numerous diseases, yet available treatments for severe forms are lacking.

University of Tokyo and RIKEN researchers have identified seven genes responsible for causing mice to stay awake or fall asleep based on a theoretical model of sleep and on experiments using 21 different genetically-modified mice, some of which showed different sleep durations. Researchers hope that their research will contribute to the understanding and treatment of sleep disorders and associated neurodegenerative diseases.

We know calcium is good for our bones, but it might also be the key to a good night sleep. Researchers at the RIKEN Quantitative Biology Center (QBiC) and the University of Tokyo in Japan have unveiled a new theory for how sleep works. Published in the journal Neuron, the work shows how slow-wave sleep depends on the activity of calcium inside neurons.

"Although sleep is a fundamental physiologic function, its mechanism is still a mystery," according to group director and corresponding author Hiroki Ueda.

CHAPEL HILL, NC - University of North Carolina researchers uncovered a cellular mechanism by which kappa opioid receptors (KOR) drive anxiety. These proteins inhibit the release of the neurotransmitter glutamate in a part of the brain that regulates emotion. KORs have been of great interest as a drug target for the treatment of addiction and anxiety disorders.

Thomas L. Kash, PhD, associate professor of pharmacology and the lead author of the study published today in the journal Cell Reports, used mice to show the effects of KORs on behavior.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- When you hold in mind a sentence you have just read or a phone number you're about to dial, you're engaging a critical brain system known as working memory.

For the past several decades, neuroscientists have believed that as information is held in working memory, brain cells associated with that information fire continuously. However, a new study from MIT has upended that theory, instead finding that as information is held in working memory, neurons fire in sporadic, coordinated bursts.

Mentoring programs for school-aged children have grown in the past two decades, but their effectiveness has not kept pace with their popularity. A study from the University of Houston College of Education finds school-based mentoring programs fail because they lack sufficient time, mentor training and a research foundation.

Will we ever be able to understand the cacophonous chatter taking place between the 80 million neurons in our brains? Dr. Ofer Yizhar and his group in the Weizmann Institute of Science's Neurobiology Department have taken a large step in this direction with a new research method that can provide scientists with targeted control over vital parts of the brain's communications.

In the traditional college learning structure, students enter the classroom and place their focus on the classroom instructor. But researchers in Syracuse University's College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) biology department are finding that higher levels of academic success may be achieved by adopting an alternative pedagogical model.

Their findings are the subject of a newly published article in the widely-read journal PLOS Biology (Public Library of Science) titled "Peer-Led Team Learning Helps Minority Students Succeed."

The smell of alcohol may make it harder for people to control their behaviour according to a team of Edge Hill University researchers whose findings were published today in the Psychopharmacology journal.

During the computer-based study carried out at Edge Hill University, participants were asked to wear a face mask that was either laced with alcohol, or a non-alcoholic citrus solution. Participants were then instructed to press a button when either the letter K or a picture of a beer bottle appeared on their screen.

In a cutting-edge treatment for Alzheimer's disease, EPFL scientists have developed an implantable capsule that can turn the patient's immune system against the disease.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center have shown that patients who have chronic pain can reduce their emotional response to the pain through spinal cord stimulation.

The study results are published as the cover article and Editor's Choice in the latest issue of the journal Neuromodulation: Technology at the Neural Interface, published by the International Neuromodulation Society.

In the 1970s, Israeli medical psychologist Aron Antonovsky provided evidence of a mental - or cognitive - ability: Although many Holocaust survivors still suffered mentally and physically from their ordeal decades later, others remained healthy or recovered. Certain people evidently succeed in pigeonholing and processing traumatic experiences mentally, even if they still have such a horrific impact on their own lives. Antonovsky singled out this sense of coherence as a central trait for what is usually referred to as "resilience" - psychological resistance.

March 17, 2016 - New research shows a person's belief in God is strengthened when thinking of "what might have been" especially in reflecting on a major life event that could have turned out poorly. Importantly, the study shows how believers can come to perceive evidence for their religious conviction via deliberate and rational cognitive processes. The study, "But for the Grace of God: Counterfactuals Influence Religious Belief and Images of the Divine," is published in the April issue of Social Psychological and Personality Science.