Brain

Dmitri A. Nusinow, Ph.D., assistant member at the Danforth Plant Science Center and researchers in his lab studying plants' circadian clock have discovered a gene that allows plants to remember daylight during the long nights of winter, helping them tailor their growth appropriately to the seasons. The gene, PCH1 accumulates at dusk and stabilizes light signals in the early hours of the night, keeping the plant from growing too much during extended dark periods.

Outside of humans, the ability to adjust the intensity of acoustic signals with distance has only been identified in songbirds. Research published Feb. 3, 2016 in Neuron now demonstrates that the male fruit fly also displays this complex behavior during courtship, adjusting the amplitude of his song depending on how far away he is from a female. Studying this process in the fruit fly can help shed light on the building blocks for social interactions across the animal kingdom.

Some of the earliest nerve cells to develop in the womb shape brain circuits that process sights and sounds, but then give way to mature networks that convert this sensory information into thoughts. This is the finding of a study led by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center and published in the February 3 edition of Neuron.

BEER-SHEVA, Israel, February 3, 2016 - Researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem have determined that people who win a competition are more likely to cheat or act dishonestly in the future, according to a new study published online yesterday in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In recent years, some of the most exciting advances in artificial intelligence have come courtesy of convolutional neural networks, large virtual networks of simple information-processing units, which are loosely modeled on the anatomy of the human brain.

Neural networks are typically implemented using graphics processing units (GPUs), special-purpose graphics chips found in all computing devices with screens. A mobile GPU, of the type found in a cell phone, might have almost 200 cores, or processing units, making it well suited to simulating a network of distributed processors.

Having parents diagnosed with depression during a child's life was associated with worse school performance at age 16 in a new study of children born in Sweden, according to an article published online by JAMA Psychiatry.

Depression is a leading cause of morbidity and disability worldwide with adverse consequences for those affected by depression and their families. Poor school performance is a powerful predictor of future health outcomes and subsequent occupation and income. Therefore, it is relevant to examine student performance for the effect of parental depression.

Montreal, February 3, 2016 -- It's estimated that half of the world's population speaks two or more languages. But are there hidden benefits to being bilingual? Research from Concordia reveals a new perk visible in the problem-solving skills of toddlers.

The results of a study recently published by the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology show that bilingual children are better than monolinguals at a certain type of mental control, and that those children with more practice switching between languages have even greater skills.

Big data and the growing popularity of online dating sites may be reshaping a fundamental human activity: finding a mate, or at least a date. Yet a new study in Management Science finds that certain longstanding social norms persist, even online.

Think about it - What factors contribute to making informed, responsible, thoughtful decisions? New research out of the University of Cincinnati uses a story about trees to examine how environmental structure plays a key role in making thoughtful decisions. The research also points to implications as to why people living in more chaotic environments, such as poverty, are less prone to use careful deliberation in decision making. The study is published online in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Depression is a serious issue for expecting mothers. Left untreated, depression could have implications for a fetus's health. But treating the disease during pregnancy may carry health risks for the developing fetus, which makes an expecting mother's decision whether to take medication a very difficult one. To better understand how antidepressants affect fetuses during pregnancy, scientists studied exposure in mice. They report their findings in the journal ACS Chemical Neuroscience.

LONDON (3 February, 2016)--Six weeks after negotiators in Paris placed tropical forests at the centre of the global battle against climate change, experts at a London event said government resistance to recognition of local land rights threatens global prospects to stop deforestation and fuels conflict costly enough to repel investors.

Cluttered and chaotic environments can cause stress, which can lead us to grab more of the indulgent snacks-- twice as many cookies according to this new study!

The term "schizophrenia," with its connotation of hopeless chronic brain disease, should be dropped and replaced with something like "psychosis spectrum syndrome," argues a professor of psychiatry in The BMJ today.

Professor Jim van Os at Maastricht University Medical Centre says several others have called for updated psychiatric classifications, particularly regarding the term "schizophrenia." Japan and South Korea have already abandoned this term.

WASHINGTON, DC -- As brain cells age they lose the fibers that receive neural impulses, a change that may underlie cognitive decline. Researchers at the University of California, Irvine recently found a way to reverse this process in rats. The study was published Feb. 3, 2016 in The Journal of Neuroscience. Researchers caution that more studies are needed, but the findings shed light on the mechanisms of cognitive decline and identify potential strategies to stem it.

By studying stroke victims who have lost the ability to spell, researchers have pinpointed the parts of the brain that control how we write words.

In the latest issue of the journal Brain, Johns Hopkins University neuroscientists link basic spelling difficulties for the first time with damage to seemingly unrelated regions of the brain, shedding new light on the mechanics of language and memory.