Brain

Although Lewy Body disease (LBD) is the second-most-common degenerative disease after Alzheimer's disease, it's not exactly a household name. It affects more than 1.3 million Americans, is poorly recognized, and diagnosis is often significantly delayed. Patients with LBD simultaneously experience losses in cognitive function, mobility and behavior. The late Robin Williams had this form of dementia as did legendary NHL coach Alger Joseph "Radar" Arbour, which also can cause visual hallucinations and make depression worse.

HANOVER, N.H. - Oct. 26, 2015 - The potential negative impact of games receives a lot of media coverage, yet research conducted at Dartmouth just published by Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, illustrates how games can have a positive impact in our society. The researchers use a new approach in game design-- 'embedded game design'-- to demonstrate how games can change players' biases, reduce social stereotypes and prejudice, and engender a more complex view of diversity.

Scientists at The University of Manchester have shown for the first time that the numbers of opiate receptors in the brain increases to combat severe pain in arthritis sufferers.

A new 'early warning' system that automatically informs gamblers as soon as their behaviour shows signs of turning into an addiction is helping people engage in the pastime responsibly.

The system pinpoints whether a player's gambling patterns are exhibiting signs of risk and starting to match those of previous players who asked online gambling sites to block them, for a fixed period, to stop them becoming 'hooked' -- an option known as 'self-exclusion'.

How can you tell if someone is depressed? The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) - the 'bible' of psychiatry - diagnoses depression when patients tick off a certain number of symptoms on the DSM checklist. A large-scale quantitative study coordinated at KU Leuven, Belgium, now shows that some symptoms play a much bigger role than others in driving depression, and that the symptoms listed in DSM may not be the most useful ones.

For hundreds of millions of people around the world, chewing betel nut produces a cheap, quick high but also raises the risk of addiction and oral cancer. New findings reveal how the nut's psychoactive chemical works in the brain and suggest that an addiction treatment may already exist.

It is widely recognised that our physical fitness is reflected in our mental fitness, especially as we get older. How does being physically fit affect our aging brains? Neuroimaging studies, in which the activity of different parts of the brain can be visualised, have provided some clues. Until now, however, no study has directly linked brain activation with both mental and physical performance.

Young adults with genetically increased Alzheimer's risk have altered activation patterns in a brain region that is crucial for spatial navigation. This is reported by the team headed by Prof Nikolai Axmacher from the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, together with colleagues from the universities of Bonn, Nijmegen and Ulm in the journal Science, which appears on October 23.

Entorhinal cortex affected by Alzheimer's disease at an early stage

Neuherberg, October 23, 2015. A team of scientists at the Helmholtz Zentrum München together with colleagues of the Ludwig Maximilians University Munich recently developed a new strategy to determine monocyte subsets involved in diseases. The results published in the journal 'Blood' could help facilitating the diagnosis of sarcoidosis and may improve the respective patient management.

WASHINGTON, DC - New research shows that limiting the amount of full-contact tackling during high school football practices can have a big impact on reducing the number of concussions among players.

REM sleep--the phase of night-time mammalian sleep physiology where dreams occur--has long fascinated scientists, clinicians, philosophers, and artists alike, but the identity of the neurons that control REM sleep, and its function in sleep have been controversial due to a lack of precise genetic methods to study the sleeping brain.

While navigating a virtual maze, young adults at high genetic risk of Alzheimer's disease demonstrated reduced functioning of brain cells involved in spatial navigation, causing them to navigate the maze differently than controls, a new study finds. Identifying early biomarkers of the disease, such as abnormal grid cell functioning, could be a valuable step in the field of Alzheimer's research since the best hope for minimizing development of the disease lies in early intervention.

A new study pinpoints the neurons that kick the brain out of REM sleep mode. During sleep, mammals cycle several times between different stages, called rapid eye movement (REM) and non-REM sleep. While there is some knowledge about what induces REM sleep, much less is known about what inhibits it and induces non-REM sleep. Some evidence hints that the "switch" mechanism lies in a part of the brain called the pontine tegmentum (PT).

REM sleep--the phase of mammalian sleep physiology where dreams occur--has long fascinated us, but the identity of the neurons that control REM sleep, and its function in sleep have been mysterious. Now, neuroscientists provide the first answers to both questions, identifying a neural circuit in the brain that regulates REM sleep, and showing that REM sleep controls the physiology of the other major sleep phase, called non-REM sleep.

WASHINGTON - Fear-based appeals appear to be effective at influencing attitudes and behaviors, especially among women, according to a comprehensive review of over 50 years of research on the topic, published by the American Psychological Association.