Brain

In a game of give and get, the brains of people with borderline personality disorder often don't get it.

In fact, an interactive economic game played between two people in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) devices revealed a brain malfunction associated with the disorder, a serious but common mental illness that affects a person's perceptions of the world and other people, said researchers from Baylor College of Medicine in a report that appears in the current issue of the journal Science.

Researchers have long sought a factor that can trigger the brain's ability to learn – and perhaps recapture the "sponge-like" quality of childhood. In the August 8 issue of the journal Cell, neuroscientists at Children's Hospital Boston report that they've identified such a factor, a protein called Otx 2.

Otx2 helps a key type of cell in the cortex to mature, initiating a critical period -- a window of heightened brain plasticity, when the brain can readily make new connections.

A new discovery may lead to more effective screening and treatment for patients with a difficult to recognize syndrome characterized by tumor-like growths and a high risk of developing specific cancers. The research, published by Cell Press in the August 7 issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics, is the first in over thirteen years to identify an alternate susceptibility gene for Cowden syndrome (CS) and related disorders.

A set of new stem cell lines will make it possible for researchers to explore ten different genetic disorders—including muscular dystrophy, juvenile diabetes, and Parkinson's disease—in a variety of cell and tissue types as they develop in laboratory cultures.

Robots may be the solution for people with disabilities who are struggling to regain the use of their limbs, thanks to a research team that includes engineers and students from Rochester Institute of Technology.

The study utilizes physiological information, or bio-signals, produced by the human body, to improve the performance of external assistive devices, called orthoses, which aid individuals with physical disabilities, such as strokes or major spinal cord injuries, regain the use of there arms and legs.

Unique biochemical crosstalk that enables a fetus to get nutrition and oxygen from its mother's blood just may cause common postpartum blues, researchers say.

That crosstalk allows the mother's blood to flow out of the uterine artery and get just a single cell layer away from the fetus' blood, says Dr. Puttur D. Prasad, biochemist in the Medical College of Georgia School of Medicine.

Atlanta, GA – August 6, 2008 – With more employees working in teams, it is critical to find ways to enable teams to be more creative in their work. A new article in Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal explores how imagination, insight, and creative ideas develop, evolve, and spread from one team member to another, ultimately increasing the team's ability to think creatively about a range of problems.

In a retrospective study of 174 tuberculosis patients treated at National Jewish Health (formerly National Jewish Medical and Research Center), patients with extensively-drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) were almost eight times as likely to die as patients with multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). National Jewish Health is a national referral center for the treatment of drug-resistant tuberculosis, and its physicians are recognized worldwide for their expertise in the treatment of drug-resistant tuberculosis.

ST. PAUL, Minn. – People who have gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding after a stroke are more likely to die or become severely disabled than stroke sufferers with no GI bleeding, according to a study published in the August 6, 2008, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Montréal, August 6, 2008 – In 1990, Theresa Schiavo, an American citizen, had a cardiac arrest that caused irreversible brain damage which led to a persistent vegetative state diagnosis. A few years later, this diagnosis became a source of conflict over the interruption of artificial nutrition. The "Schiavo Case" was widely discussed from a medical, ethical and social standpoint in the United States and elsewhere.

A team of researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has used brain imaging, genetics and experimental psychology techniques to identify a connection between brain reward circuitry, a behavioral measurement of preference and a gene variant that appears to influence both. The report in the August 4 issue of Archives of General Psychiatry describes how variations in a gene involved with the brain's reward function are associated with the activity of a key brain structure and, in parallel, with the effort study participants 'invest' in viewing emotion-laden facial images.

Screening the entire human genome, a team headed by Yale University scientists have identified several hundred genes that impact West Nile virus infection. The findings reported Wednesday online in the journal Nature may give scientists valuable new clues about ways to intervene in a host of deadly viral infections.

Instead of using a flat microchip as the light sensor for their new camera, a team of engineers has developed a sensor that is a flexible mesh of wire-connected pixels.

The mesh is made from many of the same materials as a standard digital-camera sensor, but has the unique ability to conform to convoluted, irregular surfaces.

PASADENA, Calif.-- Individuals with synesthesia perceive the world ina different way from the rest of us. Because their senses arecross-activated, some synesthetes perceive numbers or letters ashaving colors or days of the week as possessing personalities, evenas they function normally in the world.

New research suggests that traits such as obesity during adolescence that may increase the risk of attacks from peers can result in health and psychological struggles that remain through young adulthood. The researchers say that this is one of the first studies to explore a possible link between victimization and weight changes for obese adolescents.