Brain

The nervous system is built to last a lifetime, but diverse diseases or environmental insults can overpower the capacity of neurons to maintain function or to repair after trauma. A team led by Dr. Hernán López-Schier, head of the Research Unit Sensory Biology and Organogenesis at Helmholtz Zentrum München, now succeeded in promoting the repair of an injured neural circuit in zebrafish.

In a novel animal study design that mimicked human clinical trials, researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report that long-term treatment using a small molecule drug that reduces activity of the brain's stress circuitry significantly reduces Alzheimer's disease (AD) neuropathology and prevents onset of cognitive impairment in a mouse model of the neurodegenerative condition.

The findings are described in the current online issue of the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association.

(Edmonton) A new study from the University of Alberta's Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry is giving important new insight into how officer interactions with the homeless can shape their long-term attitudes toward police.

A study led by the University of Utah School of Medicine provides new insights into how the subtle changes within cells, caused by disruptions in a gene called Kirrel3, could underlie some types of intellectual disability and autism.

A second paper to be published on the same day in the journal eLife, led by Harvard Medical School, shows how three proteins regulate chemical messengers that are key to autism spectrum disorders and syndromes such as Down's and Rett syndrome.

Los Angeles, CA (November 17, 2015) When states move to legalize marijuana, local governments are faced with enacting -- or in some cases restricting -- the policy change in their jurisdictions. Using Colorado as a case study, a new study finds that public opinion, tax revenues and existing medical marijuana policies affect local governments' decisions to allow the sale of recreational marijuana. This study is published today in State and Local Government Review (A SAGE Journal).

People diagnosed with schizophrenia who are prone to hallucinations are likely to have structural differences in a key region of the brain compared to both healthy individuals and people diagnosed with schizophrenia who do not hallucinate, according to research published today.

A team led at Newcastle University, UK, has shed light on the evolutionary roots of language in the brain.

Publishing in Nature Communications, the team led by Dr Ben Wilson and Professor Chris Petkov explain how using an imaging technique to explore the brain activity in humans and monkeys has identified the evolutionary origins of cognitive functions in the brain that underpin language and allow us to evaluate orderliness in sequences of sounds.

A National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) funded study by public health experts from the University of Liverpool has found that the programme of reassessing people on disability benefits may have had an adverse effect on the mental health of claimants.

In England between 2010 and 2013, just over one million recipients of the main out-of-work disability benefit had their eligibility reassessed using a new functional checklist--the Work Capability Assessment.

In a novel animal study design that mimicked human clinical trials, researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report that long-term treatment using a small molecule drug that reduces activity of the brain's stress circuitry significantly reduces Alzheimer's disease (AD) neuropathology and prevents onset of cognitive impairment in a mouse model of the neurodegenerative condition.

The findings are described in the current online issue of the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association.

ATLANTA--Human brains exhibit more plasticity, the tendency to be modeled by the environment, than chimpanzee brains, which may account for part of human evolution, according to researchers at Georgia State University, the George Washington University and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

WASHINGTON (Nov. 16, 2015)--Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, but what is it about the human brain that makes us so different? Researchers at the George Washington University may have unearthed another piece of the puzzle. In a study published on Nov. 16, scientists discovered that human brains exhibit more plasticity, propensity to be modeled by the environment, than chimpanzee brains and that this may have accounted for part of human evolution.

Men who are overweight are just as likely as overweight women to experience interpersonal discrimination when applying for a job or shopping at retail stores, according to new research from Rice University and the University of North Carolina, Charlotte (UNCC).

If a tumor is like a seed, the soil around it plays a significant role in its growth, a new study finds.

According to the study's results, the microenvironment of a tumor cell has significant impact on cancer metastasis. This discovery by Siyuan Zhang at the University of Notre Dame and a team at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has focused attention on fighting cancer in the tumor cell's microenvironment.

Researchers of Tomsk State University and New Bulgarian University claim that human thoughts are able to materialize an object. They published results of their experiments in the article &laquoRemember down, look down, read up: Does a word modulate eye trajectory away from remembered location?» (Journal Cognitive Processing). Authors of this article are researchers from NBU Armina Janyan and Ivan Vankov, and TSU researchers Oksana Tsaregorodtseva and Alex Miklashevsky.

Noisy gymnasiums, restaurants where conversations are nearly impossible and concert halls less than perfect for the music are all acoustical problems. Now Penn State acoustical engineers are using functional MRI to better understand room acoustics and the emotions they can cause.

"Traditional methods of evaluating room acoustics use subjective rating methods and part of our study uses this method," said Michelle Vigeant, assistant professor of acoustics and architectural engineering. "The other part uses fMRI to see how changes in acoustics appear in the brain."