Brain

PROVIDENCE – New research from Rhode Island Hospital found that obesity and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) can contribute to mild neurodegeneration with features common with Alzheimer's disease (AD) – the first study to show that obesity can cause neurodegeneration. The study appeared in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease Volume 15:1 (September 2008) .

A series of experiments conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois suggest that society's emphasis on action over inaction may lead to unforeseen consequences.

"Our research highlights how the pressures of society to be active may produce fairly unregulated behavior," said Dolores Albarracín, a professor of psychology who led the work.

The new analysis appears this month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Cancer patients have complained for years about the mental fog known as chemobrain. Now in animal studies at West Virginia University (WVU), researchers have discovered that injections of N-acetyl cysteine (NAC), an antioxidant, can prevent the memory loss that breast cancer chemotherapy drugs sometimes induce. The WVU researchers' study has just been published in the September issue of the Springer journal Metabolic Brain Disease.

Stem cell research is the next great leap in medicine. In the future, new tissue grown in a laboratory could replace a failing heart, or new cells take the place of damaged cells in the brain. Rather than using stem cells from embryonic sources, which opens difficult ethical and complicated scientific issues, scientists have been looking to adult human stem cells, culled from a person's own body. Adult stem cells are now being cultivated from various tissues in the body ― from skin, bones and even wisdom teeth.

As preparations for the launch of GOCE on 10 September continue on schedule, an important milestone has just been achieved as engineers at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia say farewell to the satellite as it is encapsulated in the two half-shells of the launcher's fairing.

Milan, Italy, 4 September 2008 – Ever seen or heard something that wasn't there? For most of us such experiences - termed hallucinations - are a normal, fleeting, brain glitch; yet for a few they are persistent, distressing and associated with a range of psychiatric, neurological and eye conditions.

Electronic fingerprinting, iris scans, and signature recognition software are all becoming commonplace biometrics for user authentication and security. However, they all suffer from one major drawback - they can be spoofed by a sufficiently sophisticated intruder. Writing in the International Journal of Biometrics, Japanese researchers describe a new approach based on a person's reflexes that could never be copied, forged, or spoofed.

Quebec City, September 4, 2008—A Université Laval research team has demonstrated that intellectual work induces a substantial increase in calorie intake. The details of this discovery, which could go some way to explaining the current obesity epidemic, are published in the most recent issue of Psychosomatic Medicine.

The British government has invested more money in Interactive Whiteboards (IWBs) in its schools than any other government in the world. But is this huge investment worth it? Have the new data projection technologies allowed students to learn more effectively? This is the subject of recent research, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

In a collaborative study at the University of California, San Diego, investigators from neurosciences, chemistry and medicine, as well as the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) have investigated how proteins involved in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease interact to form unique complexes. Their findings explain why Alzheimer's patients might develop Parkinson's, and vice versa. The new and unique molecular structures they discovered can now be used to model and develop new drugs for these devastating neurological diseases.

A new study has found that mothers who delivered vaginally compared to caesarean section delivery (CSD) were significantly more responsive to the cry of their own baby, identified through MRI brain scans two to four weeks after delivery.

The results of the study, to be published today in The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, suggest that vaginal delivery (VD) mothers are more sensitive to own baby-cry in the regions of the brain that are believed to regulate emotions, motivation and habitual behaviours.

Hospitalized patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) are at higher risk for adverse consequences of medical care compared with those without the disease, according to a study appearing in the December 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Society Nephrology (JASN). The findings indicate that steps should be taken to reduce potentially preventable complications of medical care for CKD patients, a population that is frequently under-recognized in most health care settings.

MANHATTAN, KAN. — There may be a very good reason why coffee and cigarettes often seem to go hand in hand.

A Kansas State University psychology professor's research suggests that nicotine's power may be in how it enhances other experiences. For a smoker who enjoys drinking coffee, the nicotine may make a cup of joe even better.

And that may explain why smoking is so hard to quit.

When cells in the brain are lost through disease or injury, neighboring cells begin to divide and multiply, but only a few areas in the brain are able to produce new neurons. Patients with Parkinson's disease suffer degeneration of certain neurons that reside in an area of the brain called the substantia nigra and project into the striatum. Many of the newborn cells in these areas have not been well described because of limitations of methods used to characterize them.

In an effort to better understand how chronic stress affects the human body, researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory University, have created an animal model that shows how chronic stress affects behavior, physiology and reproduction.