Brain

MIT engineers have designed what may be the Band-Aid of the future: a sticky, stretchy, gel-like material that can incorporate temperature sensors, LED lights, and other electronics, as well as tiny, drug-delivering reservoirs and channels. The "smart wound dressing" releases medicine in response to changes in skin temperature and can be designed to light up if, say, medicine is running low.

When the dressing is applied to a highly flexible area, such as the elbow or knee, it stretches with the body, keeping the embedded electronics functional and intact.

PHILADELPHIA, December 7, 2015 - Uncontrolled epilepsy affects more than 1.2 million Americans, often requiring a series of trials and errors to identify effective drug combinations. Continuous, long-term EEG data could streamline this process by revealing the full picture of a patient's seizure activity, but this would require a costly and inconvenient hospital stay.

Evolutionary conserved brainstem circuits are the first relay for gustatory information in the vertebrate brain. While the brainstem circuits act as our life support system and they mediate vital taste related behaviors, the principles of gustatory computations in these circuits are poorly understood. Researchers at NERF (VIB/KU Leuven/imec) studied how the evolutionary conserved brainstem circuits of zebrafish encode gustatory information.

Many people hold the door open for strangers. But what do people give in return?

Their responses appeared to depend on the door holder's effort, according to scientists at the Brain and Creativity Institute at USC. If the door holder made a high effort by making eye contact, smiling and holding open the door, more recipients would say "thank you," researchers found. If the door holder who made a high effort had dropped some pens while trying to hold open the door, the recipient was more likely to stop and help pick them up.

PHILADELPHIA, December 7, 2015 - Researchers are only beginning to understand the implications of disrupted sleep in people with epilepsy. Recent findings suggest that seizure-interrupted sleep could impede memory formation, impair cognitive performance and influence a myriad of other aspects of daily life. Four studies presented at the American Epilepsy Society's (AES) 69th Annual Meeting unveil previously unappreciated links between sleep disturbances and seizure control, and help clarify the causes and consequences of these issues in people with epilepsy.

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- For decades, the elusive holy grail in Parkinson's disease research has been finding a way to repair faulty dopamine neurons and put them back into patients, where they will start producing dopamine again. Researchers have used fetal material, which is difficult to obtain and of variable quality. Embryonic stem cells represented a tremendous innovation, but making dopamine neurons from stem cells is a long process with a low yield.

It's been well established that men perform better than women when it comes to specific spatial tasks. But how much of that is linked to sex hormones versus cultural conditioning and other factors?

Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) decided to explore this idea by administering testosterone to women and testing how they performed in wayfinding tasks in a virtual environment.

BEER-SHEVA, Israel...December 7, 2015 - In a first-time study, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers revealed a new finding in people with diabetes who suffer from "diabetic foot." Patients with this condition also have significantly impaired cognitive function.

PHILADELPHIA, December 6, 2015 - Three studies presented at the American Epilepsy Society's (AES) 69th Annual Meeting explore the effects of mutations in the SCN8A gene, thought to underlie early infantile epileptic encephalopathy (EIEE) and other neurological conditions.

The SCN8A gene mediates electrical signaling in the brain by controlling the flow of sodium currents. Findings from these studies could inform the development of precision medicine therapeutics and lead to more effective strategies for diagnosing and treating patients with epilepsy.

PHILADELPHIA, December 6, 2015 - A smartphone-induced EEG waveform and an intelligent algorithm for seizure detection are among the emerging technologies to be unveiled at the American Epilepsy Society's (AES) 69th Annual Meeting. Four innovative studies presented at the meeting promise to reshape current paradigms for seizure detection and epilepsy management.

PHILADELPHIA, December 5, 2015 - Four studies presented at the American Epilepsy Society's (AES) 69th Annual Meeting uncover the biological factors that mediate memory decline in people with epilepsy, particularly those with seizures that affect the temporal lobe.

Loss of neurons from the hippocampus, a brain region that processes and stores memories, is a common cause of temporal lobe epilepsy. People with temporal epilepsy caused by hippocampal sclerosis (TLE-HS) have impaired memory and find it particularly challenging to recall details of specific events in everyday life.

PHILADELPHIA, December 5, 2015 - Children with epilepsy face a number of challenges compared with their healthy peers, including an increased risk of cognitive impairment. Three studies presented the American Epilepsy Society's (AES) 69th Annual Meeting parse the complex underpinnings of cognitive development in these children, revealing a need for smarter assessments and targeted interventions.

PHILADELPHIA, December 5, 2015 - Three studies to be presented at the American Epilepsy Society's (AES) 69th Annual Meeting describe novel devices and technologies that could reshape current understanding of the complex mechanisms underpinning seizure development in the brain.

Two of the three studies unveil information about the neural networks that produce and propagate seizure activity, providing information that could help refine and target surgical interventions.

A new, open-source software that can help track the embryonic development and movement of neuronal cells throughout the body of the worm, is now available to scientists.

For the very first time, researchers have been able to show that the causes of congenital face blindness can be traced back to an early stage in the perceptual process. These findings are crucial, not just for our understanding of face recognition, but also because they allow us to understand the processes behind the recognition of any visually presented object.