Brain

The JAMA Neurology feature "Images in Neurology" features the case of a 25-year-old right-handed physical education student who was buried by an avalanche during a ski tour and endured 15 minutes of hypoxia (oxygen deficiency). He developed involuntary myoclonic jerking (brief, involuntary twitching of muscles) of the mouth induced by talking and of the legs by walking. Weeks later when he was trying to solve Sudoku puzzles he developed clonic seizures (rapid contractions of muscles) of the left arm. The seizures stopped when the Sudoku puzzle was discontinued.

(PHILADELPHIA) - Our ability to learn, move, and sense our world comes from the neurons in our brain. This information moves through our brain between neurons that are linked together by tens of trillions of tiny structures called synapses. Although tiny, synapses are not simple and must be precisely organized to function properly. Indeed, diseases like autism and Alzheimer's are increasingly linked to defects in the organization and number of these tiny structures.

It's a bit like the difference between preparing a dish following a recipe detailing ingredients and procedure, or trying to do it just by looking at photos of the dish: in many cases good results can also be obtained with the second method but, clearly, knowing the recipe not only guarantees a successful outcome but also allows us to devise variants of the dish, using different and perhaps even tastier ingredients. This also happens in the world of physics, where in some cases the "recipe" is completely lacking and one has to make do with approximate methods ("photos of the dish").

Before installing a new app on a mobile device, people need to be mindful of the security risks. One poor decision can bypass the most secure encryption, and a malicious app can gain access to confidential information or even lock the user's device.

DURHAM, N.C. -- A Duke University-led study has pinpointed how early childhood stress affects the adult brain's response to rewards. Their findings suggest a possible pathway by which childhood stress may increase risk of depression and other mental health problems in adulthood.

Kids who are taught to reason about the mental states of others are more likely to use deception to win a reward, according to new research published in Psychological Science.

The findings indicate that developing "theory of mind" (ToM) -- a cognitive ability critical to many social interactions -- may enable children to engage in the sophisticated thinking necessary for intentionally deceiving another person.

Babies born prematurely face an increased risk of neurological and psychiatric problems that may be due to weakened connections in brain networks linked to attention, communication and the processing of emotions, new research shows.

Studying brain scans from premature and full-term babies, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis zeroed in on differences in the brain that may underlie such problems.

Researchers from the Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine are nearing development of a blood test that can accurately detect the presence of Alzheimer's disease, which would give physicians an opportunity to intervene at the earliest, most treatable stage.

A new study by researchers from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King's College London provides the first clinical evidence on the toll human trafficking has on mental health, including high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, amongst a patient population in South London.

Women, and especially younger women, are much less likely than men to have good relief of chronic, non-cancer pain with long-term opioid use, with only one in five women reporting low levels of pain and high levels of function with chronic opioid therapy in a new study published in Journal of Women's Health.

A few minutes of counseling in a primary care setting could go a long way toward steering people away from risky drug use -- and possibly full-fledged addiction, a UCLA-led study suggests.

According to new research in rat models, nicotine use over time increases the speed that codeine is converted into morphine within the brain, by increasing the amount of a specific enzyme. It appears smokers' brains are being primed for a bigger buzz from this common pain killer - which could put them at a higher risk for addiction, and possibly even overdose.

October 16, 2015 Researchers at Kessler Foundation and Rutgers University correlated neuroimaging data with reading deficits in patients with subacute left hemispheric stroke. Their findings add to our knowledge of the neural mechanisms of reading and may be useful in the development of reading interventions that address specific neurological deficits. The article, "Neurally dissociable cognitive components of reading deficits in subacute stroke" (doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00298) was published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

A new study suggests that receiving rewards as you learn can help cement new facts and skills in your memory, particularly when combined with a daytime nap.

The findings from the University of Geneva, to be published in the journal eLife, reveal that memories associated with a reward are preferentially reinforced by sleep. Even a short nap after a period of learning is beneficial.

"Rewards may act as a kind of tag, sealing information in the brain during learning," says lead researcher Dr Kinga Igloi from the University of Geneva.

Big-data analysis consists of searching for buried patterns that have some kind of predictive power. But choosing which "features" of the data to analyze usually requires some human intuition. In a database containing, say, the beginning and end dates of various sales promotions and weekly profits, the crucial data may not be the dates themselves but the spans between them, or not the total profits but the averages across those spans.