Brain

Philadelphia, PA, January 13, 2016 - Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a diagnostic label applied to people who have problems regulating emotional mood swings. This emotional instability leaves such individuals vulnerable to emotional upheaval that puts them at risk for problem behaviors, including self-destructive acts and impulsive aggression.

A new study in Biological Psychiatry provides a quantitative summary of the brain abnormalities that may be underlying the emotional upheaval patients with BPD experience daily.

AMES, Iowa - Social justice educational initiatives often focus on giving a voice to students of color and low-income students, but Katy Swalwell, an assistant professor of education at Iowa State University, says such efforts alone may not be enough to bring about real change.

Swalwell is not dismissing the need to empower students from oppressed and marginalized communities. However, she points to the continued lack of political power for certain socioeconomic groups, despite an increase in youth engagement.

The increase in use of prescribed opioids among women during pregnancy has probably contributed to the rise in neonatal abstinence syndrome, argues Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health, in The BMJ today.

New research has revealed how disease-associated changes in two interlinked networks within the brain may play a key role in the development of the symptoms of dementia.

The University of Exeter Medical School led two studies, each of which moves us a step closer to understanding the onset of dementia, and potentially to paving the way for future therapies. Both studies, part-funded by Alzheimer's Research UK, are published in the Journal of Neuroscience and involved collaboration with the University of Bristol.

A new study from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston fills an important gap in understanding the link between traumatic brain injury and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease.

Previously, UTMB researchers found a toxic form of tau protein that increases after a traumatic brain injury that may contribute to development of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a condition experienced by many professional athletes and military personnel. What remained a mystery was if this protein could cause dementia symptoms.

MAYWOOD, Ill. - Every year, thousands of babies worldwide die from untreated hydrocephalus, a condition in which the head swells from a buildup of excess fluid. But no baby need die from this condition, once called "water on the brain." Neurosurgeons now have the skills and tools to deal with the condition very effectively.

January 12, 2016 -- Young children in deep poverty, whose family income is below 50 percent of the federal poverty line, fare even worse on health and development indicators than children in poverty, according to a study released by the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. The study compared the well-being of children in deep poverty to children who are poor, but not in deep poverty, and to non-poor children.

Bioengineers and cognitive scientists have developed the first portable, 64-channel wearable brain activity monitoring system that's comparable to state-of-the-art equipment found in research laboratories.

Our innate ability to track time is important for our everyday lives. We would not be able to speak, or even walk properly if we were not able to get the timing of each action just right. How are we able to track time? Are there a bunch of neural clocks ticking away somewhere deep inside our brain, cuing us on when to perform different actions?

Understanding fractions is a critical mathematical ability, and yet it's one that continues to confound a lot of people well into adulthood. New research finds evidence for an innate ratio processing ability that may play a role in determining our aptitude for understanding fractions and other formal mathematical concepts.

The research is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Montreal, January 12, 2016 -- If your toddler is a Forgetful Jones, you might want to help boost his or her brainpower sooner rather than later. New research shows that preschoolers who score lower on a memory task are likely to score higher on a dropout risk scale at the age of 12.

"Identifying students who are at risk of eventually dropping out of high school is an important step in preventing this social problem," says Caroline Fitzpatrick, first author of a study recently published in Intelligence, and a researcher at Concordia's PERFORM Centre.

A songbirds' vocal muscles work like those of human speakers and singers, finds a study recently published in the Journal of Neuroscience. The research on Bengalese finches showed that each of their vocal muscles can change its function to help produce different parameters of sounds, in a manner similar to that of a trained opera singer.

Different groups of neurons "predict" the body's subsequent looking and reaching movements, suggesting an orchestration among distinct parts of the brain, a team of neuroscientists has found. The study enhances our understanding of the decision-making process, potentially offering insights into different forms of mental illness--afflictions in which this dynamic is typically impaired.

Philadelphia, PA, January 12, 2016 - Neuroimaging studies suggest that frontolimbic regions of the brain, structures that regulate emotions, play an important role in the biology of aggressive behavior.

A new article published in the inaugural issue of the journal Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging reports that individuals with intermittent explosive disorder (IED) have significantly lower gray matter volume in these frontolimbic brain structures. In other words, these people have smaller "emotional brains."

Individuals addicted to cocaine may have difficulty in controlling their addiction because of a previously-unknown 'back door' into the brain, circumventing their self-control, suggests a new study led by the University of Cambridge.

A second study from the team suggests that a drug used to treat paracetamol overdose may be able to help individuals who want to break their addiction and stop their damaging cocaine seeking habits.

Although both studies were carried out in rats, the researchers believe the findings will be relevant to humans.