Brain

Twenty-five years after 700,000 U.S. troops fought and won the first Gulf War with remarkably low casualties, research "clearly and consistently" shows that exposure to pesticides and other toxins caused Gulf War Illness, a complex and debilitating disorder that affects as many as 250,000 of those deployed, according to a new report led by a Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) researcher.

Brain tumors can be rapidly and accurately profiled with a next-generation, gene-sequencing test developed at UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

The test, called GlioSeq™, is now being used by UPMC oncologists to help guide treatment planning of brain cancers, said senior investigator Marina Nikiforova, M.D., professor of pathology, Pitt School of Medicine, and director of UPMC's Molecular & Genomic Pathology Laboratory. Her team's findings about the test were recently published in Neuro-Oncology.

Scientists from the Kurchatov Institute, MIPT, the University of Parma (Italy), Moscow State University, and Saint Petersburg State University have created a neural network based on polymeric memristors - devices that can potentially be used to build fundamentally new computers. According to the researchers, these developments will primarily help in creating systems for machine vision, hearing, and other sensory organs, and also intelligent control systems for various devices, including autonomous robots.

PD Dr. Andreas Androutsellis-Theotokis, PhD, Dr. Jimmy Masjkur and Dr. Steven W. Poser are stem cell researchers at the Carl Gustav Carus University Hospital in Dresden. They have shown that pancreatic islet cells and neural stem cells interpret signals in their environment in a similar manner. This may make it possible to manipulate cells in such a way that they repair tissue damage and stimulate regeneration. This could lead to new approaches to the treatment of metabolic disease and diabetes.

Jena (Germany) The human brain works with division of labour. Although our thinking organ excels in displaying amazing flexibility and plasticity, typically different areas of the brain take over different tasks. While words and language are mainly being processed in the left hemisphere, the right hemisphere is responsible for numerical reasoning. According to previous findings, this division of labour originates from the fact that the first steps in the processing of letters and numbers are also located individually in the different hemispheres.

UNSW Australia scientists have shown that complex human brain activity is governed by the same simple universal rule of nature that can explain other phenomena such as the beautiful sound of a finely crafted violin or the spots on a leopard.

The UNSW team has identified a link between the distinctive patterns of brain function that occur at rest and the physical structure of people's brains.

Interventions intended to encourage green choices among individuals, including for recycling or energy use, would be better targeted at moments of major change in people's lives if they are to stick, according to a new study from University of Bath psychology researchers.

Los Angeles, CA (January 27, 2016) A new review of research out today outlines roles and recommendations for peers, parents, schools and new media platforms to stop bullying. This review was published in Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, a Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences (FABBS) journal published in partnership with SAGE Publishing.

A study funded by the National Eye Institute (NEI), part of the National Institutes of Health, has shown that uncorrected farsightedness (hyperopia) in preschool children is associated with significantly worse performance on a test of early literacy.

People bereaved by the sudden death of a friend or family member are 65% more likely to attempt suicide if the deceased died by suicide than if they died by natural causes. This brings the absolute risk up to 1 in 10, reveals new UCL research funded by the Medical Research Council.

The researchers studied 3,432 UK university staff and students aged 18-40 who had been bereaved, to examine the specific impacts associated with bereavement by suicide. The results are published in BMJ Open.

A study of 35 families led by a UC San Francisco psychiatric researcher showed for the first time that the structure of the brain circuitry known as the corticolimbic system is more likely to be passed down from mothers to daughters than from mothers to sons or from fathers to children of either gender. The corticolimbic system governs emotional regulation and processing and plays a role in mood disorders, including depression.

Scientists have long used comparative animal studies to better understand the nuances of human evolution, from making diverse body plans to the emergence of entirely powerful and unique features structures, including the human brain.

A study out today sheds new light on multiple sclerosis (MS), specifically damage in the brain caused by the disease that may explain the slow and continuous cognitive decline that many patients experience. The findings, which appear in the Journal of Neuroscience, show that the brain's immune system is responsible for disrupting communication between nerve cells, even in parts of the brain that are not normally considered to be primary targets of the disease.

Researchers at UC San Francisco have found that boys and girls with sensory processing disorder (SPD) have altered pathways for brain connectivity when compared to typically developing children, and the difference predicts challenges with auditory and tactile processing.

Can't stop texting? If you're a teenager, it may be to blame for falling grades and increased yawning in school, according to a new Rutgers study.

The study, published in the Journal of Child Neurology, is the first of its kind to link nighttime instant messaging habits of American teenagers to sleep health and school performance.