Brain

Irvine, Calif., Feb. 29, 2016 -- Using a drug compound created to treat cancer, University of California, Irvine neurobiologists have disarmed the brain's response to the distinctive beta-amyloid plaques that are the hallmark of Alzheimer's disease.

In a breakthrough study that could improve how people learn and retain information, researchers at the Catholic University Medical School in Rome significantly boosted the memory and mental performance of laboratory mice through electrical stimulation.

The study, sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Global, involved the use of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation, or tDCS, on the mice. A noninvasive technique for brain stimulation, tDCS is applied using two small electrodes placed on the scalp, delivering short bursts of extremely low-intensity electrical currents.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, is a devastating progressive neurodegenerative disease that results in the death of motor neurons, the nerve cells that control muscles. Eventually, individuals with ALS will lose their ability to walk, move, swallow and breathe.

Different groups of neurons program biological clocks to orchestrate our behaviors by sending messages in a unidirectional manner downstream, a team of biologists has found.

The study, which appears in the journal Nature Neuroscience, focused on clock neurons in the fruit fly Drosophila and sought to understand the larger role of biological clocks--also known as circadian rhythms.

The legendary work ethic of East Asian students may have driven them to the top of the standardised test leaderboard but researchers at Duke-NUS Medical School (Duke-NUS) found that adolescents who sleep five hours a night for a week experience significant cognitive degradation. These findings caution against the levels of sleep curtailment practiced by as many as half of East Asian students in their headlong pursuit of higher grades.

Children commonly snore from time to time and that is often harmless. But children with frequent snoring and breathing problems during sleep have an increased risk of having trouble concentrating and learning difficulties. A newly published study from Sahlgrenska Academy shows that many parents of children that snore are not aware of the possible risks associated with frequent snoring in children.

Perceptions about ageism makes people think of older people and is a form of discrimination. This according to Fredrik Snellman at Umeå University who believes that the concept needs to be redefined to mirror all people's practical experiences of ageing. The results have been published in the journal Nordic Psychology.

People who feel treated unfairly usually do not direct their anger only towards the perpetrator. They frequently unload their aggressions onto uninvolved outsiders who then in turn behave similarly. How can this chain of unfair behavior be disrupted? A team of researchers under the direction of the University of Bonn discovered that writing a message to the perpetrator is one way to regulate emotions and thereby reassess the situation. The results of the study are now published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Why do we get fat and why is it so difficult for so many people to keep off excess weight? Researchers in the Reseach Unit Neurobiology of Diabetes led by Dr. Paul Pfluger and at the Institute for Diabetes and Obesity led by Prof. Dr. Matthias Tschöp have now identified a new component in the complex fine-tuning of body weight and food intake. They found that the enzyme histone deacetylase 5 (HDAC5) has a significant influence on the effect of the hormone leptin*. This hormone plays a crucial role in triggering satiety and thus on how the body adapts to a changing food environment.

When children decide to share, the giver's relationships with the pool of recipients determine who gets how much. They will give more to a wealthy friend than to a needy stranger - at least in cases where wealth is measured in stickers.

A specific molecule involved in maintaining pain after a nerve injury has been identified and blocked in mice by Hiroshima University researchers. These results reveal a promising therapeutic strategy for treating neuropathic pain.

WASHINGTON, D.C., February 28, 2016 -- When venom from animals such as spiders, snakes or cone snails is injected via a bite or harpoon, the cocktail of toxins delivered to its victim tends to cause serious reactions that, if untreated, can be lethal. But even venom has a therapeutic upside: Individual peptide toxins are being tapped to target receptors in the brain to potentially serve as painkillers.

Why do opponents of same-sex marriage really oppose it?

A UCLA psychology study published online today in the journal Psychological Science concludes that many people believe gay men and women are more sexually promiscuous than heterosexuals, which they may fear could threaten their own marriages and their way of life.

"Many people who oppose same-sex marriage are uncomfortable with casual sex and feel threatened by sexual promiscuity," said David Pinsof, a UCLA graduate student of psychology and lead author of the study.

For more info, watch the video: https://youtu.be/oIvdvG_zj6A

Dr. Matthew Phillips and his team of investigators from HRL's Information & System Sciences Laboratory used transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in order to improve learning and skill retention. "We measured the brain activity patterns of six commercial and military pilots, and then transmitted these patterns into novice subjects as they learned to pilot an airplane in a realistic flight simulator," he says.

Daejeon, Republic of Korea, February 26, 2016--K-Glass, smart glasses reinforced with augmented reality (AR) that were first developed by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in 2014, with the second version released in 2015, is back with an even stronger model. The latest version, which KAIST researchers are calling K-Glass 3, allows users to text a message or type in key words for Internet surfing by offering a virtual keyboard for text and even one for a piano.