Brain

A research study carried out by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona describes the brain region connected to our declarative memory functions.

According to this experiment, part of the prefrontal cortex plays a key role in the social transmission of food preference. This research has helped learn more about how this type of memory functions. In the future, this information could be useful to find new treatment for diseases that affect the memory, such as Alzheimer's disease.

An article published today, July 16, 2007, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides strong evidence for a novel type of communication between nerve cells in the brain. The findings may have relevance for the prevention and treatment of epilepsy, and possibly in the exploration of other aspects of brain functions, from creative thought processes to mental illnesses such as schizophrenia.

A torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is among an athlete's most-dreaded injuries, often requiring surgery and months of rehab, as has been the case with Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb.

While being tackled in football or hurtling into an embankment on an icy ski course can tear this major knee ligament, most athletes actually “do themselves in”--they don't collide with a person or object, they end up injuring themselves when they land off-balance during a jump or run.

But why?

Your ability to listen to a phone message in one ear while a friend is talking into your other ear—and comprehend what both are saying—is an important communication skill that’s heavily influenced by your genes, say researchers of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), one of the National Institutes of Health.

Older women experiencing memory loss are more likely than women without cognitive decline to have problems falling asleep and staying asleep, according to a study published in the July 17, 2007, issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

For the study, 2,474 women with an average age of 69 and no signs of memory problems underwent cognitive tests over 15 years. Sleep problems were measured at the end of the study.

It may seem odd to think about using metallic structures for transmitting light because light quickly attenuates on passing through a metal, but light waves travelling only a few centimeters don't lose their energy and that discover could change the face of nanotechnology.

The discovery, known as acoustic plasmon, are surface plasmons formed by the group excitation of electrons but it is produced by the interaction between light and metal surfaces.

Researchers across the world have been trying to answer the question of how RNAi works for many years. A research group headed by Prof. Renée Schroeder (MFPL) and Dr. Javier Martinez (IMBA) based at the Campus Vienna Biocenter says they have come closer to finding an answer.

Our bodies, and the biological brilliance built in, are able to move with elegance and efficiency using a combination of appropriate biomechanics, neuronal control, and adaptivity.

Simulating that with technology has so far eluded technological advances because of the motor coordination of complex multi-joint movements and the complicated nature of their dynamics.

Yet now scientists at the University of Göttingen have simulated the neuronal principles that form the dynamics of human walking in a robot.

Just in time for the weekend, this study from Dutch researcher Ingmar Franken says that while alcohol does not make good things any better it can make bad things a lot less worse. Previously researchers thought that alcohol primarily affected the 'reward' system in the brain. Franken found that was not so.

In the case of pleasant experiences alcohol was found to have hardly any influence. The ‘rosy glasses’ that alcohol is said to cause is therefore just a temporary filter for the more 'sober' issues in life.

It turns out they do.* And it can tell us a lot about learning.

In fact, "competitive fandom" is such a growing field that University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professors Erica and Rich Halverson are spending their summer studying something they love - fantasy baseball, and why people play such games.

A new University of Colorado at Boulder study shows people have the ability to suppress emotional memories with practice, which has implications for those suffering from conditions ranging from post-traumatic stress disorder to depression.

A Cornell study of genome sequences in African-Americans, European-Americans and Chinese suggests that natural selection has caused as much as 10 percent of the human genome to change in some populations in the last 15,000 to 100,000 years, when people began migrating from Africa.

That title alone should get this article on the front page of technology papers everywhere, but the comparisons are valid.

Though people feel they have rich visual experiences, researchers have found that the average person is only aware of about four things at a time. This short term capability varies from person to person but an individual’s capacity for short-term memory is a strong predictor of IQ and scholastic achievement. People with high IQs can think about more things at once.

Scientists have made significant advances towards the development of a technique that could be used to confirm whether someone is infected with variant CJD.

Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine report a significant new advance in the search for an effective treatment for human liver cancer in the July issue of Molecular Cancer Therapeutics.

Using a newly available monoclonal antibody, they demonstrated significant reductions in tumor cell proliferation and survival in human and mouse hepatocellular cancer (HCC) cell lines. According to the researchers, this finding has significant implications not only for the treatment of liver cancer but for a number of different types of cancer.