Brain

The world's first radar breast imaging system developed at Bristol University that could revolutionise the way women are scanned for breast cancer, is being trialled at North Bristol NHS Trust (NBT).

Professor Alan Preece and Dr Ian Craddock from the University of Bristol have been working for a number of years to develop a breast-imaging device which uses radio waves and therefore has no radiation risk unlike conventional mammograms.

A third-year undergraduate student at The University of Nottingham has had her research into the sex life of the pond snail published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The study by Hayley Frend, who is a student in the School of Biology, was published today in the Royal Society Journal Biology Letters.

With a grant of £1,500 from the Nuffield Foundation Hayley Frend has shown that just like humans the pond snail is genetically programmed to use the left or right handed side of its brain to perform different tasks.

Listening to your favorite music may be good for your cardiovascular system. Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore have shown for the first time that the emotions aroused by joyful music have a healthy effect on blood vessel function.

The neck arteries of obese children and teens look more like those of 45-year-olds, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2008.

Emory University in Atlanta is playing a key role in the largest, most comprehensive study ever funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) of adolescents and young adults at risk for developing a psychotic disorder. The five-year, $25-million study joins the resources of Emory and seven other major research universities, with the goal of identifying more precise predictors for psychosis, and a better understanding of the neural mechanisms involved.

Researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, have discovered dental pulp stem cells can stimulate growth and generation of several types of neural cells. Findings from this study, available in the October issue of the journal Stem Cells, suggest dental pulp stem cells show promise for use in cell therapy and regenerative medicine, particularly therapies associated with the central nervous system.

DALLAS – Nov. 11, 2008 – Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have uncovered new insights into the "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" nature of a protein that stimulates stem-cell maturation in the brain but, paradoxically, can also lead to nerve-cell damage.

In two separate studies in mice scheduled to appear online this week and in an upcoming issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, UT Southwestern research teams studied the protein Cdk5 and discovered both helpful and detrimental mechanisms it elicits in nerve cells.

Researchers at the University of Exeter have found that a walk of just fifteen minutes can reduce chocolate cravings. The benefits of exercise in helping people manage dependencies on nicotine and other drugs have previously been recognised. Now, for the first time, newly-published research shows that the same may be true for food cravings.

BOZEMAN -- The Western Transportation Institute at Montana State University is now home to one of the largest and most sophisticated motion-based driving simulators in the United States.

The $915,000 simulator uses real vehicle bodies mounted on a motion platform and surrounded by a 240-degree arc of projector screens to more accurately simulate the experience of being behind the wheel, said WTI's simulator manager Suzy Lassacher. Funding for the simulator came from a variety of federal and private sources.

LA JOLLA, CA—In a study that could have significant consequences for neural tissue transplantation strategies, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies report that inactivating a specific gene in adult neural stem cells makes nerve cells emerging from those precursors form connections in the wrong part of the adult brain.

CLEVELAND – November 10, 2008 –A multidisciplinary research team at Case Western Reserve University led by Gary Landreth, Ph.D., a professor in the School of Medicine's Department of Neurosciences, has uncovered a common genetic pathway for a number of birth defects that affect the development of the heart and head. Abnormal development of the jaw, palate, brain and heart are relatively common congenital defects and frequently arise due to genetic errors that affect a key developmental pathway.

Children with heart defects may someday receive perfectly-matched new heart valves built using stem cells from their umbilical cord blood, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2008.

Individuals with higher education levels appear to score higher on cognitive tests despite having evidence of brain plaques associated with Alzheimer's disease, according to a report in the November issue of Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.