Brain

Boston, MA-- A new study by investigators at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) offers an additional reason to get a good night's sleep. In a closely controlled study of fourteen participants, researchers found that they were significantly better at remembering faces and names if they were given an opportunity to sleep for up to eight hours after seeing those faces and names for the first time. The team's findings appear in the journal Neurobiology of Learning and Memory this week.

November 23, 2015 (Boston) - Scientists, engineers and clinicians at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and its collaborating institutions, the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS), have shown in a clinical trial in the BIDMC neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) that their new prevention technology reduces apneic events and improves critical clinical parameters in preterm infants. The findings are reported in the November 23 issue of Pediatrics.

Results of EORTC trial 26101 presented today at The 20th Annual Scientific Meeting and Education Day of the Society for Neuro-Oncology showed that bevacizumab treatment in patients with progressive glioblastoma, despite prolonged progression-free survival, does not confer a survival advantage.

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Wick of the Uniklinik Heidelberg and coordinator of this study says, "The future challenge is to identify those patients deriving benefit from that treatment."

Those promoting a "whole-child" approach to education contend that we need a holistic perspective that aims to nurture the full range of skills and capacities that will help children of today become healthy and competent future adults. But increasing scrutiny of academic achievement gaps among children in the United States, as well as between children in our country and other developed countries, has created an urgency to promotion of academic achievement that has left little time for the development of non-academic skills.

Due to disease-related changes in their brain, pain patients often suffer from an impaired tactile ability in their hands. In a pilot study conducted by scientists at the Ruhr-University Bochum, high frequency repetitive stimulation was investigated as a therapeutic approach for these patients. The results of this study have now been published in the journal Frontiers in Neurology. They show that passive stimulation of this kind is a promising new therapy option.

Passive stimulation: a proven therapy approach

About one third of people with depression have high levels of inflammation markers in their blood. New research indicates that persistent inflammation affects the brain in ways that are connected with stubborn symptoms of depression, such as anhedonia, the inability to experience pleasure.

The results were published online on Nov. 10 in Molecular Psychiatry.

The findings bolster the case that the high-inflammation form of depression is distinct, and are guiding researchers' plans to test treatments tailored for it.

A new technological solution developed by researchers from the University of Notre Dame is aimed at enhancing the physical health, vitality and brain fitness of seniors residing in independent living communities.

Due to disease-related changes in their brain, pain patients often suffer from an impaired tactile ability in their hands. In a pilot study conducted by scientists at the Ruhr-University Bochum, high frequency repetitive stimulation was investigated as a therapeutic approach for these patients. The results of this study have now been published in the journal "Frontiers in Neurology". They show that passive stimulation of this kind is a promising new therapy option.

Passive stimulation: a proven therapy approach

An alliance of brain researchers and funders has announced a common data format to facilitate the free and open exchange of complex information about the brain--information that scientists can then use to accelerate progress in understanding the brain and developing new treatments for brain disorders.

Exercising, meditating, scouring self-help books... we go out of our way to be happy, but do we really know what happiness is?

Wataru Sato and his team at Kyoto University have found an answer from a neurological perspective. Overall happiness, according to their study, is a combination of happy emotions and satisfaction of life coming together in the precuneus, a region in the medial parietal lobe that becomes active when experiencing consciousness.

Philadelphia, PA, November 20, 2015 - Virtual reality (VR) has potential to revolutionize some aspects of medicine and healthcare. Several medical specialties are already using it to train physicians and assist diagnosis and it also has potential for treatment. A group of cardiologists has now successfully used a VR device to guide the opening up (revascularization) of a chronically blocked right coronary artery. Their report is published in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology.

Glioblastoma multiforme, a cancer of the brain also known as "octopus tumors" because of the manner in which the cancer cells extend their tendrils into surrounding tissue, is virtually inoperable, resistant to therapies, and always fatal, usually within 15 months of onset. Each year, glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) kills approximately 15,000 people in the United States. One of the major obstacles to treatment is the blood brain barrier, the network of blood vessels that allows essential nutrients to enter the brain but blocks the passage of other substances.

Children exposed to marijuana in the womb show a significant improvement in their ability to track moving objects at age four, according to new vision research. But researchers are warning that the results do not mean marijuana has a benefical effect on foetal development.

The study from the University of Waterloo, University of Aukland and Brown University appears today in the journal Scientific Reports.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- It's a wonder of nature - and a darned good thing - that amid many billions of similar cells in the brain and spinal cord, neurons can extend their tendrillous axons to exactly the right place to form connections. Otherwise we wouldn't move, sense or think properly, if at all. In a new study in the journal Science, researchers report a discovery that helps to explain how axons manage to find their way across the midline of the spinal cord.

Scientists will have unprecedented insights into the millisecond-by-millisecond actions of neurons thanks to the development of a tool that allows imaging of individual neurons' electrical activity in live animals. Understanding these dynamics holds important implications for brain research. Electrical signals between neurons are critical to cell-to-cell communication. Neuroscientists have been looking for tools that allow optical imaging of this activity (called membrane voltage dynamics) in awake animals, with little progress.