Brain

DURHAM, N.C. -- Citizens who get involved in science become more environmentally aware and willing to participate in advocacy than previously thought, according to a new study by researchers at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment. Citizen science projects can lead to broader public support for conservation efforts.

West Orange, NJ. December 3, 2014. Brain injury researchers in New Jersey have identified retrieval practice as a useful strategy for improving memory among children and adolescents with traumatic brain injury (TBI). "Retrieval Practice as an Effective Memory Strategy in Children and Adolescents with TBI" (DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apmr.2014.09.022) was published online ahead of print on October 10 by the Archives of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation.

Aspects of the culture of research in UK higher education institutions (HEIs) can encourage poor research practices and hinder the production of high quality science, according to scientists who took part in a project exploring the ethical consequences of the culture of research led by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics.

Is your inbox burning you out? Then take heart - research from the University of British Columbia suggests that easing up on email checking can help reduce psychological stress.

Some of the study's 124 adults -- including students, financial analysts medical professionals and others -- were instructed to limit checking email to three times daily for a week. Others were told to check email as often as they could (which turned out to be about the same number of times that they normally checked their email prior to the study).

Birds learn new foraging techniques by observing others in their social network, 'copycat' behaviour that can sustain foraging 'traditions' that last years, according to a study of how innovations spread and persist in wild great tits (Parus major).

The ISP drug did not cause spinal cord axons known to control movements to cross the scar and reconnect with brain neurons above the injury site. Dr. Silver and his colleagues think this means the ISP-induced sprouting helped the rats recover by increasing the signal sent by the few remaining intact axons.

"This is very promising. We now have an agent that may work alone or in combination with other treatments to improve the lives of many," said Dr. Silver. He and his colleagues are seeking to test the ISP drug in preclinical trials.

Case Western Reserve scientists have developed a new chemical compound that shows extraordinary promise in restoring function lost to spinal cord injury. The compound, which the researchers dubbed intracellular sigma peptide (ISP), allowed paralyzed muscles to activate in more than 80 percent of the animals tested. The remarkable study, partly funded by the National Institutes of Health, appears in the December 3 edition of the journal Nature.

Pilots are trained to guard against vertigo: a sudden loss of the sense of vertical direction that renders them unable to tell "up" from "down" and sometimes even leads to crashes. Coming up out of a subway station can produce similar confusion: For a few moments, you are unsure which way to go, until regaining your sense of direction. In both cases, the disorientation is thought to be caused by a temporary malfunction of a brain circuit that operates as a three-dimensional (3D) compass.

When it comes to getting out of a tricky situation, we humans have an evolutionary edge over other primates. Take, as a dramatic example, the Apollo 13 voyage in which engineers, against all odds, improvised a chemical filter on a lunar module to prevent carbon dioxide buildup from killing the crew.

This news release is available in French.

Scientists have developed a new light-sensitive film that could one day form the basis of a prosthetic retina to help people suffering from retinal damage or degeneration. Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers collaborated with colleagues from Tel Aviv University and Newcastle University in the research, which was published in the journal Nano Letters.

Learning from others and innovation have undoubtedly helped advance civilization. But these behaviours can carry costs as well as benefits. And a new study by an international team of evolutionary biologists sheds light on how one particular cost - increased exposure to parasites - may affect cultural evolution in non-human primates.

Their novel findings obtained by measuring "cortical thickness" for the first time in the eating disorder are now published in the renowned journal "Biological Psychiatry". The authors conclude, "The global thinning of cortical gray matter observed in acutely ill adolescent patients can be completely reversed following successful weight rehabilitation therapy". Previous studies of changes in brain structure associated with anorexia nervosa were limited in their ability to clarify important questions regarding the regional specificity and persistence of anomalies following therapy.

PHILADELPHIA--Quitting smoking sets off a series of changes in the brain that Penn Medicine researchers say may better identify smokers who will start smoking again--a prediction that goes above and beyond today's clinical or behavioral tools for assessing relapse risk.

An Australian National University (ANU) mathematician has developed a new way to uncover simple patterns that might underlie apparently complex systems, such as clouds, cracks in materials or the movement of the stockmarket.

The method, named fractal Fourier analysis, is based on new branch of mathematics called fractal geometry.

The method could help scientists better understand the complicated signals that the body gives out, such as nerve impulses or brain waves.