Brain

The heaviest drinking and steepest trajectory of increasing alcohol problems are typically observed during the mid-teens to mid-20s. One common and adverse consequence is the alcohol-related blackout (ARB), which is reported by up to 50 percent of drinkers. However, there are few studies of the trajectories of ARBs over time during mid-adolescence.

EVANSTON, Ill. - Music training has well-known benefits for the developing brain, especially for at-risk children. But youngsters who sit passively in a music class may be missing out, according to new Northwestern University research.

In a study designed to test whether the level of engagement matters, researchers found that children who regularly attended music classes and actively participated showed larger improvements in how the brain processes speech and reading scores than their less-involved peers after two years.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- For up to one in five Americans over age 65, getting older brings memory and thinking problems- along with the embarrassment of not being as "sharp" as they once were, and the worry that it will get much worse.

They might just call it "getting older". But officially, when memory or cognitive problems don't interfere significantly with daily living, doctors call them mild cognitive impairment, or MCI.

Neuroscientists from the John B. Pierce Laboratory and Yale School of Medicine have discovered that mice can detect minute differences in the temporal dynamics of the olfactory system, according to research that will be published on December 16 in the open access journal PLOS Biology.

This news release is available in German.

This news release is available in German.

AMHERST, Mass. - In a follow-up to her earlier studies of learning in infancy, developmental psychologist Lisa Scott and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst are reporting that talking to babies in their first year, in particular naming things in their world, can help them make connections between what they see and hear, and these learning benefits can be seen as much as five years later.

BALTIMORE, MD (Dec. 16, 2014)--With a unique, multi-faceted approach, researchers at the Lieber Institute for Brain Development (LIBD) have quantified the effect of previously unidentified anomalies in genetic expression that determine how the human brain develops from its earliest stages. Their work, published online December 15th in Nature Neuroscience, offers a novel technique for identifying biological markers in brain development that associate with risk for neurodevelopmental disorders such as schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

NEW YORK, NY -- Researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center have developed new technology that can assess the location and impact of a brain injury merely by tracking the eye movements of patients as they watch music videos for less than four minutes, according to a study published Friday on-line in the Journal of Neurosurgery.

The study suggests that the use of eye tracking technology may be a potential biological marker for assessing brain function and monitoring recovery for patients with brain injuries.

It's the most basic of ways to find out what something does, whether it's an unmarked circuit breaker or an unidentified gene -- flip its switch and see what happens. New remote-control technology may offer biologists a powerful way to do this with cells and genes.

A team at Rockefeller University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is developing a system that would make it possible to remotely control biological targets in living animals -- rapidly, without wires, implants or drugs.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia and is characterized by the formation of β-amyloid plaques throughout the brain. Proteins known as chemokines regulate inflammation and the immune response. In both patients with AD and mouse AD models, the chemokine CXCL10 is found in high concentrations in the brain and may contribute to AD. A new study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation indicates that activation of the CXCL10 receptor, CXCR3, contributes to AD pathology.

Despite numerous studies, publications, and commentaries on human female sexual arousal and orgasm, there is still so much to study and understand about women's sexual pleasure.

A new review deals critically with many aspects of the genital anatomy of the human female in relation to inducing sexual arousal and its relevance to both procreation and recreation. A number of questions remain, including why there are so many sites for arousal, why multiple orgasms occur, and how sexual stimulation affects the brain.

Research by City College of New York psychology Professor Irvin Schonfeld in the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership suggests a strong connection between burnout and depression.

In a study of more than 5,500 school teachers to estimate the prevalence of depressive disorders in workers with burnout, 90% of the subjects identified as burned out met diagnostic criteria for depression.

"Most researchers have treated the order in which the information is shown as a nuisance that can bias the interpretation of data," said Ting Qian, lead author and a former graduate student in brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester. But as Qian's co-author and thesis advisor, Professor Richard Aslin explained, "We see it as a part of the natural statistics of the real world, and therefore a signal--or cue--that can be the basis of rational decisions."

The researchers then used statistical tools to analyze each subject's cursor movements and, therefore, the choice process. They looked at how fast taste began to drive the mouse's movement--and how soon health did. For example, one subject's cursor trajectory might be driven by the taste of the foods very early in the trial, but soon after might be driven by health also--resulting in the selection of the healthier item, like Brussels sprouts over pizza.

What if you could, for a moment, have the body of someone of a different race, age, or sex? Would that change the way you feel about yourself or the way that you stereotype different social groups? In a paper publishing online December 15 in the Cell Press journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, researchers explain how they have used the brain's ability to bring together information from different senses to make white people feel that they were inhabiting black bodies and adults feel like they had children's bodies.