Brain

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Research has shown that most 18-month-olds learn an average of two to five new words a day; however, little is known about how children process information to learn new words as they move through the preschool years. In a new study, a University of Missouri researcher has found that toddlers learn words differently as they age, and a limit exists as to how many words they can learn each day.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – People with facial paralysis are perceived as being less happy simply because they can't communicate in the universal language of facial expression, a new study from an Oregon State University psychology professor shows.

The findings highlight the important role the face plays in everyday communication and indicates people may hold a prejudice against those with facial paralysis because of their disability, said Kathleen Bogart, an assistant professor of psychology in the College of Liberal Arts at Oregon State University.

September 17, 2014 – People with bipolar disorder who do yoga believe their yoga practice has significant mental health benefits, reports a survey study in the September Journal of Psychiatric Practice. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.

New Rochelle, NY, September 17, 2014—Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI), a specialized magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique that detects microstructural changes in brain tissue, can help physicians better predict the likelihood for poor clinical outcomes following mild traumatic brain injury compared to conventional imaging techniques such as computed tomography (CT), according to a new study published in Journal of Neurotrauma, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.

The car of the future will be safer, smarter and offer greater high-tech gadgets, but be warned without improved security the risk of car hacking is real, according to a QUT road safety expert.

Professor Andry Rakotonirainy will speak at the Occupational Safety in Transport Conference (OSIT) on the Gold Coast on September 18-19 on the security threat facing drivers as vehicles become computers on wheels.

Lamprey—slimy, eel-like parasitic fish with tooth-riddled, jawless sucking mouths—are rather disgusting to look at, but thanks to their important position on the vertebrate family tree, they can offer important insights about the evolutionary history of our own brain development, a recent study suggests.

The work appears in a paper in the September 14 advance online issue of the journal Nature.

"Understanding the social systems of parrots is critical to understanding social processes, such as vocal learning and the spread of behaviors, and can also give us greater insight into how social and cognitive complexity evolved in other species," explained lead author Elizabeth Hobson, a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis.

"Many parrot species are threatened or endangered and increased understanding of how parrots structure their social interactions could also improve our ability to manage these populations," Hobson added.

The World Alzheimer Report 2014 'Dementia and Risk Reduction: An analysis of protective and modifiable factors', released today, calls for dementia to be integrated into both global and national public health programmes alongside other major non communicable diseases (NCDs).

Two Johns Hopkins neuroscientists have discovered the "molecular brakes" that time the generation of important cells in the inner ear cochleas of mice. These "hair cells" translate sound waves into electrical signals that are carried to the brain and are interpreted as sounds. If the arrangement of the cells is disordered, hearing is impaired.

A summary of the research will be published in The Journal of Neuroscience on Sept. 16.

Face recognition software measures various parameters in a mug shot, such as the distance between the person's eyes, the height from lip to top of their nose and various other metrics and then compares it with photos of people in the database that have been tagged with a given name. Now, research published in the International Journal of Computational Vision and Robotics looks to take that one step further in recognizing the emotion portrayed by a face.

West Orange, NJ. September 16, 2014. Kessler Foundation researchers have published a study supporting the role of slowed processing speed in the executive deficits found in individuals with multiple sclerosis (MS). "Does slowed processing speed account for executive deficits in multiple sclerosis?

Philadelphia, PA, September 16, 2014 – Schizophrenia is associated with increased rates and intensity of tobacco smoking. A growing body of research suggests that the relationship between schizophrenia and smoking stems, in part, from an effort by patients to use nicotine to self-medicate symptoms and cognitive impairment associated with the disease.

Not all things are created equally. We don't view a Picasso sculpture in the same way we look at a hammer, for example — no matter how fancy the hammer.

The reason? We see the Picasso more as a person than an object, according to new research from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

And in some cases, we make distinctions between artworks — say, an exact replica of a piece created by the artist, versus one created by a different artist.

This news release is available in French.

Montreal, September 16, 2014 — Impossible deadlines, demanding bosses, abusive colleagues, unpaid overtime — all these factors can lead to a burnout. When it comes to mental health in the workplace, we often forget to consider the influence of home life.

Molecular mechanisms of the Krüppel-like family of transcription factors (KLFs) have been studied more in proliferating cells than in post-mitotic cells such as neurons. Prof. Jeffrey L. Goldberg who comes from University of California San Diego, USA and his team recently found that KLFs regulate intrinsic axon growth ability in central nervous system (CNS) neurons including retinal ganglion cells, and hippocampal and cortical neurons.