Brain

Increasingly, evidence supports the idea that the immune system, which protects our bodies from foreign invaders, plays a part in Alzheimer's disease. But the exact role of immunity in the disease is still a mystery.

A new Duke University study in mice suggests that in Alzheimer's disease, certain immune cells that normally protect the brain begin to abnormally consume an important nutrient: arginine. Blocking this process with a small-molecule drug prevented the characteristic brain plaques and memory loss in a mouse model of the disease.

An international study has identified significant vascular changes in the brains of people with Huntington's disease. This breakthrough, the details of which are published in the most recent issue of Annals of Neurology, will have significant implications for our understanding of the disease and could open the door to new therapeutic targets for treating this fatal neurodegenerative condition.

Many potentially efficient drugs have been created to treat neurological disorders, but they cannot be used in practice. Typically, for a condition such as epilepsy, it is essential to act at exactly the right time and place in the brain.

A drug commonly taken to prevent seizures in epilepsy may surprisingly protect the eyesight of people with multiple sclerosis (MS), according to a study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 67th Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, April 18 to 25, 2015.

Researchers have identified an important cause of why secondary corneal transplants are rejected at triple the rate of first-time corneal transplants.

The cornea - the most frequently transplanted solid tissue - has a first-time transplantation success rate of about 90 percent. But second corneal transplants undergo a rejection rate three times that of first transplants.

How does our auditory system represent time within a sound? A new study investigates how temporal acoustic patterns can be represented by neural activity within auditory cortex, a major hub within the brain for the perception of sound.

Dr. Daniel Bendor, from University College London, describes a novel way that neurons in auditory cortex can encode temporal information, based on how their excitatory and inhibitory inputs get mixed together.

The ability to make a Lower Paleolithic hand axe depends on complex cognitive control by the prefrontal cortex, including the "central executive" function of working memory, a new study finds.

PLOS ONE published the results, which knock another chip off theories that Stone Age hand axes are simple tools that don't involve higher-order executive function of the brain.

Neuroscientists at NYU Langone Medical Center have discovered how the powerful brain hormone oxytocin acts on individual brain cells to prompt specific social behaviors - findings that could lead to a better understanding of how oxytocin and other hormones could be used to treat behavioral problems resulting from disease or trauma to the brain. The findings are to be published in the journal Nature online April 15.

Depression and type 2 diabetes mellitus were each associated with an increased risk for dementia and that risk was even greater among individuals diagnosed with both depression and diabetes compared with people who had neither condition, according to an article published online by JAMA Psychiatry.

Diabetes and major depression are common in Western populations and as many as 20 percent of people with type 2 diabetes mellitus also have depression.

Researchers studying the commonly used pain reliever acetaminophen found it has a previously unknown side effect: It blunts positive emotions.

In the study, participants who took acetaminophen reported less strong emotions when they saw both very pleasant and very disturbing photos, when compared to those who took placebos.

Acetaminophen, the main ingredient in the over-the-counter pain reliever Tylenol, has been in use for more than 70 years in the United States, but this is the first time that this side effect has been documented.

Scientists from Kyoto University's Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) in Japan have have discovered how nerve cells adjust to low energy environments during the brain's growth process. Their study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, may one day help find treatments for nerve cell damage and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.

People who participate in arts and craft activities and who socialize in middle and old age may delay the development in very old age of the thinking and memory problems that often lead to dementia, according to a new study published in the April 8, 2015, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

People age 85 and older make up the fastest growing age group in the United States and worldwide.

Low-frequency alternating magnetic fields such as those generated by overhead power lines are considered a potential health risk because epidemiological studies indicate that they may aggravate, among other things, neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). However, a recent study by researchers at the Institute of Pathobiochemistry at the Medical Center of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in Germany has produced no evidence that these fields can cause exacerbation or accelerated disease development in relevant mouse models.

It's supposed to help keep our bodies healthy in stressful situations. But the constant stress of our everyday lives means we're getting overexposed to cortisol. Raychelle Burks, Ph.D., explains why too much cortisol is bad for you in the latest episode of the Reactions series Get To Know A Molecule.

Following up on promising results from pilot work, researchers at the VA Boston Healthcare System are testing the effects of light therapy on brain function in veterans with Gulf War Illness.

Veterans in the study wear a helmet lined with light-emitting diodes that apply red and near-infrared light to the scalp. They also have diodes placed in their nostrils, to deliver photons to the deeper parts of the brain.

The light is painless and generates no heat. A treatment takes about 30 minutes.