Brain

Up to now Alzheimer's disease has not been recognized as transmissible. Now researchers at the University of Zurich and the Medical University Vienna demonstrated Alzheimer-type pathology in brains of recipients of dura mater grafts who died later from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

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.

Researchers at Chapman University have published work on how Asian American women and white women feel about their faces, their weights, and their overall appearances. The researchers surveyed 303 Asian American women and 367 white women at universities in Hawaii and California.

Neurons communicate with one another by synaptic connections, where information is exchanged from one neuron to its neighbor. These connections are not static, but are continuously modulated in response to the ongoing activity (or experience) of the neuron. This process, known as synaptic plasticity, is a fundamental mechanism for learning and memory in humans as in all animals. In fact, we now know that alterations in synaptic plasticity are responsible for memory impairment in cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer's disease.

Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) and New York State Psychiatric Institute have found that while cigarette smoking rates have declined among younger people in the United States, those who do smoke are more likely to have a psychiatric or substance use disorder compared with those who began smoking in earlier decades.

The findings were published today in Molecular Psychiatry.

PITTSBURGH, Jan. 26, 2015 - Young adults who spend a lot of time on social media during the day or check it frequently throughout the week are more likely to suffer sleep disturbances than their peers who use social media less, according to new research from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

Genes that influence people's health also shape how effectively they think, a study shows.

Scientists found that genes associated with diseases including Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, and autism also have an impact on some cognitive functions.

They say the study will help understanding of some of the links between low levels of cognitive function and poor health.

An international team, led by the University of Edinburgh, analysed data from around 100,000 people held in the UK Biobank.

This news release is available in French.

A wide range of compounds is on the market to ameliorate depressive symptoms, however their efficiency is achieved only after long periods of treatment and not in 100% of patients. Inserm researchers identified early cellular changes in the brain for the emergence of depressive symptoms, and a novel promising drug target.

These results are published in the journal Nature Medicine on Janaury 25th, 2016.

Putting a young child in the recovery position after s/he has lost consciousness may help curb the hospital admission rate for this indication, but this manoeuvre is rarely carried out, indicates research published in Archives of Disease in Childhood.

The evidence suggests that around 15% of children will have lost consciousness before they reach the end of their teen years.

An epilepsy drug could lead to a new treatment that protects nerve damage in MS patients, according to research published in the Lancet Neurology.

Researchers, led by Dr Raj Kapoor from the UCL Institute of Neurology, found the anti-convulsant drug phenytoin protected neural tissue in patients with optic neuritis. Optic neuritis is a symptom of MS which causes the nerves carrying information between the eye to the brain to become inflamed and damaged.

The brains of children who are obese function differently from those of children of healthy weight, and exhibit an "imbalance" between food-seeking and food-avoiding behaviors, researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center have found.

Diet and exercise may not be enough to restore normal weight or prevent overweight children from becoming obese, they conclude. It may be necessary to change their brain function.

Surgeons removing a malignant brain tumor don't want to leave cancerous material behind. But they're also trying to protect healthy brain matter and minimize neurological harm.

Once they open up a patient's skull, there's no time to send tissue samples to a pathology lab -- where they are typically frozen, sliced, stained, mounted on slides and investigated under a bulky microscope -- to definitively distinguish between cancerous and normal brain cells.

DENVER - Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with common epidermal growth factor (EGFR) mutations and brain metastases showed improved progression-free survival (PFS) and response from the EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) afatinib compared to standard platinum doublet chemotherapy.

It's long been known that excess iron is found in the brains of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), an incurable neurodegenerative condition that affects motor function. The mechanism by which the iron wreaks damage on neurons involved in PD has not been clear. Research from the Andersen lab at the Buck Institute suggests that the damage stems from an impairment in the lysosome, the organelle that acts as a cellular recycling center for damaged proteins. Scientists report the impairment allows excess iron to escape into the neurons where it causes toxic oxidative stress.

Acoustic tweezers that can move single cells in three dimensions using surface acoustic waves without touching, deforming or labeling the cells are possible, according to a team of engineers.

"In this application we use surface acoustic waves to create nodes where cells or microparticles are trapped," said Tony Jun Huang, professor and The Huck Distinguished Chair in Bioengineering Science and Mechanics. "We can then move the cell or particle in three dimensions to create structures in two or three dimensions."