Brain

"I have learnt more about this remarkable industry this evening than I did when I was Minister for the Environment," claimed Gyles Brandreth, the celebrity, author and former politician hosting the inaugural Agrow Awards, held on October 16 in Glasgow.

Unprecedented warm temperatures in the High Arctic this past summer were so extreme that researchers with a Queen’s-led climate change project have begun revising their forecasts.

“Everything has changed dramatically in the watershed we observed,” reports Geography professor Scott Lamoureux, the leader of an International Polar Year project announced yesterday in Nunavut by Indian and Northern Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl. “It’s something we’d envisioned for the future – but to see it happening now is quite remarkable.”

Cryptochromes, which fulfill the molecular requirements for sensing the magnetic reference direction, have recently been found in retinal neurons of migratory birds (Mouritsen et al., PNAS, 2004). Furthermore, studies investigating what parts of a migratory bird´s brain are active when the birds use their magnetic compass showed that the cryptochrome-containing neurons in the eye and a forebrain region (“Cluster N”; Mouritsen et al., PNAS, 2005; Liedvogel et al., EJN, 2007) are highly active during processing of magnetic compass information in migratory birds.

A team of researchers, including Herman Pontzer, Ph.D., assistant professor of physical anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, has determined through analysis of the earliest known hominid fossils outside of Africa, recently discovered in Dmanisi, Georgia, the former Soviet republic, that the first human ancestors to inhabit Eurasia were more primitive than previously thought.

Women and men appear to respond differently to the same biochemical manipulation. Major depressive disorder (MDD) is one of the most common mental disorders, and it is also one of the most studied. It is already known that reduced serotonin transmission contributes to the pathophysiology, or functional changes, associated with MDD and most of today’s most popular antidepressants block the serotonin “uptake site”, also known as the transporter, in the brain.

A national poll of 2,235 UK adults commissioned by Virgin Active, the largest health club operator of its kind in the UK, reveals that one in five adults are spending over 30 hours a week on their sofa. The results have sparked fears that the British public is spending too much time on the sofa, which could result in what Virgin Active has identified as 'Sofa Bottom Syndrome'. This condition affects postural muscles and can lead to a host of posture-related health and back problems.

Common physical symptoms such as fatigue, chest pain and lower back pain are related to the perception of everyday smells, University of Nottingham researchers will tell delegates at a health psychology conference on campus.

Professor Eamonn Ferguson and Dr Helen Cassaday, with colleague Dr Jane Ward of the University of Loughborough, described their findings to fellow academics from all over the country at a British Psychological Society (BPS) event running from September 12-14.

Why would prehistoric reptiles have needed to develop modern ears? No one can say for sure but it is certain that a new study by Johannes Müller and Linda Tsuji, paleobiologists at the Natural History Museum of the Humboldt University in Berlin, has pushed back the date of impedance-matching hearing by some 60 million years.

The fossil animals they studied, found in deposits of Permian age near the Mezen River in central Russia, possessed all the anatomical features typical of a vertebrate with a surprisingly modern ear.

Mice containing a mutated human gene implicated in autism exhibit the poor social skills but increased intelligence akin to the title character’s traits in the movie “Rain Man,” researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found.

The researchers’ study also shows how the mutation affects nerve function and provides an animal model that might allow further study of the debilitating condition.

Our ability to hear is made possible by way of a Rube Goldberg-style process in which sound vibrations entering the ear shake and jostle a successive chain of structures until, lo and behold, they are converted into electrical signals that can be interpreted by the brain. Exactly how the electrical signal is generated has been the subject of ongoing research interest.

It is well established that a child's brain has a remarkable capacity for change, but controversy continues about the extent to which such plasticity exists in the adult human primary sensory cortex. Now, neuroscientists from MIT and Johns Hopkins University have used converging evidence from brain imaging and behavioral studies to show that the adult visual cortex does indeed reorganize-and that the change affects visual perception. The study appears online Sept. 5 in an advance publication of the Journal of Neuroscience.

It’s well known that the child’s brain has a remarkable capacity for change, but controversy rages about the extent to which such plasticity exists in the adult human brain -- particularly, in the part responsible for vision. Now, scientists from The Johns Hopkins University and MIT offer evidence -- derived from both brain imaging and behavioral studies -- that the adult visual cortex (the area of the brain that receives images from the eyes) does, indeed, have the ability to reorganize. Moreover, that reorganization affects visual perception.

A nationwide survey of the religious beliefs and practices of American physicians has found that the least religious of all medical specialties is psychiatry. Among psychiatrists who have a religion, more than twice as many are Jewish and far fewer are Protestant or Catholic, the two most common religions among physicians overall.

Research by the University at Albany shows that information conveyed by a kiss can have profound consequences for romantic relationships, and can even be a major factor in ending one.

In a recently published article, Susan M. Hughes, Marissa A. Harrison, and Gordon G. Gallup, Jr. reveal that many college students have found themselves attracted to someone, only to discover after they kissed them for the first time that they were no longer interested.

To orient ourselves, we mainly need two pieces of information: where am I and in which direction am I heading?

Experiments in the rat have shown that these types of information are directly accessible and independently coded in the brain. When the rat explores a new territory, so-called place cells and head direction cells form within only a few minutes.