Brain

PHILADELPHIA – While scientists and physicians know what happens if you don't get six to eight hours of shut-eye a night, investigators have long been puzzled about what controls the actual need for sleep. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine might have an answer, at least in fruit flies. In a recent study of fruit flies, they identified a gene that controls sleep.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Estrogen treatments may sharpen mental performance in women with certain medical conditions, but University of Florida researchers suggest that recharging a naturally occurring estrogen receptor in the brain may also clear cognitive cobwebs.

The discovery suggests that drugs can be developed to offset "senior moments" related to low estrogen levels, as well as to protect against neurological diseases, all while avoiding the problems associated with adding estrogen to the body.

July 24, 2008 -- HALF OF ALL AMERICANS will be diagnosed at some point in their lives with cancer, the number two killer in the United States. One of the professions at the frontlines in the battle against cancer are medical physicists -- scientists who use the power and innovation of physics to study and solve the most pressing medical problems.

July 24, 2008 -- Next week in Houston, thousands of scientists and health professionals will meet at the 50th meeting of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM), the largest association of medical physicists in the world. There, from July 27 to July 31, they will present the latest technologies for imaging and treating diseases like cancer and discuss the safety, ethical, and regulatory issues facing the field today.

Bladder problems may leave a mark on the brain, by changing patterns of brain activity, possibly contributing to disrupted sleep and problems with attention. For one in six Americans who have overactive bladder, the involuntary bladder contractions that often trigger more frequent urges to urinate, such mind-body connections may be of more than academic interest.

NEW YORK (July 28, 2008) -- In a first, scientists from Weill Cornell Medical College and Columbia University Medical Center have described the specifics of how brain cells process antidepressant drugs, cocaine and amphetamines. These novel findings could prove useful in the development of more targeted medication therapies for a host of psychiatric diseases, most notably in the area of addiction.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have found that cerebral malaria is related to long-term cognitive impairment in one of four child survivors. The research is published in the current issue of the journal Pediatrics.

Malaria is a leading cause of death for children in sub-Saharan Africa. Cerebral malaria, which affects more than 750,000 children a year, is one of the deadliest forms of malaria. It only takes one bite from an infected mosquito to contract the disease that directly affects the brain, causing fever, vomiting, chills, and coma.

BOSTON (July 29, 2008) — The tendency toward obesity is directly related to the brain system that is involved in food reward and addictive behaviors, according to a new study. Researchers at Tufts University School of Medicine (TUSM) and colleagues have demonstrated a link between a predisposition to obesity and defective dopamine signaling in the mesolimbic system in rats. Their report appears in the August 2008 issue of The FASEB Journal.

Philadelphia, PA, July 29, 2008 – Strong cravings for alcohol can be sparked by the mere sight, smell and taste of a person's favorite drink. Responses to such cues that are associated with the positive effects of drinking are a lead cause of relapse in abstinent alcoholics. Using a behavioral animal model, researchers of a new study, scheduled for publication in the August 1st issue of Biological Psychiatry, have found that the physical surroundings where alcohol cues are experienced can greatly influence the ability of those cues to trigger relapse.

The field of robotics could be poised for a breakthrough, leading to a new generation of intelligent machines capable of taking on multiple tasks and moving out of the factory into the home and general workplace. The great success of robots so far has been in automating repetitive tasks in process control and assembly, yielding dramatic cuts in production, but the next step towards cognition and more human-like behaviour has proved elusive.

Medical College of Wisconsin researchers in Milwaukee have reported that children of Alzheimer's patients who are carriers of a genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease have neurological changes that are detectable long before clinical symptoms may appear.

Three decades after an accident at a chemical factory in Seveso, Italy in 1976, which resulted in exposure of a residential population to the most dangerous type of dioxin, newborn babies born to mothers living in the contaminated area at the time of the accident are over six times more likely to have altered thyroid function than those born to mothers in a non-contaminated area. The study finding these results is published in the open access journal PLoS Medicine this week by Andrea Baccarelli (of the University of Milan) and colleagues from the United States and Italy.

Waltham, MA—Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease, is a fatal neurodegenerative disease caused by the death of motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord that control muscle movements from walking and swallowing to breathing. In a groundbreaking study this week in PLoS Biology, Brandeis and Harvard Medical School scientists report key findings about the cause and occurrence of the familial form of ALS.

Penn State researchers have used computed tomography (CT) technology to virtually glue newly-discovered skull fragments of a rare extinct lemur back into its partial skull, which was discovered over a century ago. Alan Walker, Evan Pugh Professor of Anthropology and Biology at Penn State, and Research Associate in Anthropology Timothy Ryan, led the research. The different fragments of this lemur's skull are separated by thousands of miles, with the partial skull in Vienna and the pieces of frontal bone in the United States.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---People at high risk for dementia who took cholesterol-lowering statins are half as likely to develop dementia as those who do not take statins, a new study shows.