Brain

The work was reported in the October 16 issue of the journal Cell Host & Microbe.

The study described the suppression of this immune response in mice infected with lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus, pointing to potential new avenues for the development of drug treatments for immunosuppressive diseases in humans.

During this year's baseball playoffs, Chicago White Sox outfielder Ken Griffey Jr., 38, threw a picture-perfect strike from center field to home plate to stop an opposing player from scoring. The White Sox ultimately won the game by a single run and clinched the division title.

Had Griffey been 40, it could be argued, he might not have made the throw in time. That's because in middle age, we begin to lose myelin — the fatty sheath of "insulation" that coats our nerve axons and allows for fast signaling bursts in our brains.

WASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 16, 2008 – Results of a study on an embolic protection system during carotid stenting that uses a novel blood flow reversal system was reported today during the 20th annual Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) scientific symposium, sponsored by the Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF).

College students often spend their free time thinking about beer, but a group of Rice University students are taking it to the next level. They're using genetic engineering to create beer that contains resveratrol, a chemical in wine that's been shown to reduce cancer and heart disease in lab animals.

Neurons in the sound-processing part of the brain's cortex are experts at timing. With remarkable precision, they fire electrochemical pulses or "spikes" in sync with the cues they receive from other neurons, even when these cues are separated by very small time intervals.

In the October 17, 2008 issue of Science, Oregon Research Institute (ORI) senior scientist Eric Stice, Ph.D., and colleagues provide evidence that blunted activation of brain regions when eating is related to current and future weight gain in young females. Results from two studies – the first prospective brain imaging studies on the development of obesity as it relates to decreased dopamine output -- suggest that individuals who experience weaker activation of reward circuitry when eating are more likely to be obese and are more likely to gain weight over time.

New Haven, Conn. - The brains of obese people seem to respond to a tasty treat with less vigor than the brains of their leaner peers, suggesting obese people may overeat to compensate for a reduced reward response, according to a new brain imaging and genetics study conducted by researchers at Yale University, The John B. Pierce Laboratory, the University of Texas and Oregon Research Institute.

Using brain imaging and chocolate milkshakes, scientists have found that women with weakened "reward circuitry" in their brains are at increased risk of weight gain over time and potential obesity. The risk increases even more for women who also have a gene associated with compromised dopamine signaling in the brain.

AUSTIN, Texas—Obese individuals may overeat because they experience less satisfaction from eating food due to a reduced response in their brains' reward circuitry, according to a new study by Eric Stice, psychology researcher at The University of Texas at Austin.

Scientists know that different normal and diseased tissues behave differently. But a method that tells them just how they do so may one day give medical science a new way to fight obesity, hypertension, diabetes and other dangerous disorders of the metabolism.

Until now, scientists had to rely on basic observations at the cellular level, since they lacked information about the metabolic processes of individual organs, such as the liver, heart and brain.

Several genes that play a role in how our body's cells normally auto-destruct may play a role in age-related hearing loss, according to research published online in the journal Apoptosis – a journal devoted to the topic of cell suicide, or programmed cell death.

Recently, the University of Missouri Department of Psychological Sciences introduced an addition to their field of research with the opening of the Brain Imaging Center (BIC). The BIC will allow MU researchers to conduct behavioral research on diseases that can have tremendous impact, including Parkinson's disease, autism, schizophrenia and other neurocognitive disorders using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology.

A study of professional mountain climbers has shown that high-altitude exposure can cause subtle white and grey matter changes to the area of the brain involved in motor activity, according to the October issue of the European Journal of Neurology.

Italian researchers took MRI scans of nine world-class mountain climbers, who had been climbing for at least 10 years, before and after expeditions to Mount Everest (8,848 metres) and K2 (8,611 metres) without an oxygen supply. They compared their MRI brain scans with 19 age and sex matched healthy control subjects.

Paleontologists have long debated the function of the strange, bony crests on the heads of the duck-billed dinosaurs known as lambeosaurs. The structures contain incredibly long, convoluted nasal passages that loop up over the tops of their skulls.

Scientists at the University of Toronto, Ohio University and Montana State University now have used CT-scanning to look inside these mysterious crests and reconstruct the brains and nasal cavities of four different lambeosaur species.

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers have used gene therapy to restore useful vision to mice with degeneration of the light-sensing retinal rods and cones, a common cause of human blindness. Their report, appearing in the Oct. 14 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, describes the effects of broadly expressing a light-sensitive protein in other neuronal cells found throughout the retina.