Brain

Only a handful of CPR and basic life support (BLS) videos available on YouTube provide instructions which are consistent with recent health guidelines, according to a new study published in Emergency Medicine Australasia, the journal for the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM).

Early recognition and treatment of sudden cardiac arrest are known to improve survival forvictims.

FK506 possesses a well-studied neuroregenerative effect, stimulating neurite extension in the presence of nerve growth factor in vitro, and enhancing nerve regeneration following nerve crush injury and isografting. However, the use of FK506 to stimulate nerve regeneration is limited because of the risk of renal failure and hypertension, and its considerable cost. With long-term allografts, FK506 alone or combined with other drugs reportedly cause life-threatening infections.

In brief:

The next time you get really mad, take a look in the mirror. See the lowered brow, the thinned lips and the flared nostrils? That's what social scientists call the "anger face," and it appears to be part of our basic biology as humans.

Now, researchers at UC Santa Barbara and at Griffith University in Australia have identified the functional advantages that caused the specific appearance of the anger face to evolve. Their findings appear in the current online edition of the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.

Rabies (and rabies virus, its causative agent) is usually transmitted through the bite of an infected animal into muscle tissue of the new host. From there, the virus travels all the way to the brain where it multiplies and causes the usually fatal disease. An article published on August 28th in PLOS Pathogens sheds light on how the virus hijacks the transport system in nerve cells to reach the brain with maximal speed and efficiency.

CHICAGO --- Stimulating a particular region in the brain via non-invasive delivery of electrical current using magnetic pulses, called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, improves memory, reports a new Northwestern Medicine® study.

The discovery opens a new field of possibilities for treating memory impairments caused by conditions such as stroke, early-stage Alzheimer's disease, traumatic brain injury, cardiac arrest and the memory problems that occur in healthy aging.

Until the last few decades, the frontal lobes of the brain were shrouded in mystery and erroneously thought of as nonessential for normal function—hence the frequent use of lobotomies in the early 20th century to treat psychiatric disorders. Now a review publishing August 28 in the Cell Press journal Neuron highlights groundbreaking studies of patients with brain damage that reveal how distinct areas of the frontal lobes are critical for a person's ability to learn, multitask, control their emotions, socialize, and make real-life decisions.

New York University biologists have identified a mechanism that helps explain how the diversity of neurons that make up the visual system is generated.

"Our research uncovers a process that dictates both timing and cell survival in order to engender the heterogeneity of neurons used for vision," explains NYU Biology Professor Claude Desplan, the study's senior author.

The study's other co-authors were: Claire Bertet, Xin Li, Ted Erclik, Matthieu Cavey, and Brent Wells—all postdoctoral fellows at NYU.

As technology advances, science has become increasingly about data—how to gather it, organize it, and analyze it. The creation of key databases to analyze and share data lies at the heart of bioinformatics, or the collection, classification, storage, and analysis of biochemical and biological information using computers and software. The tools and methods used in bioinformatics have been instrumental in the development of fields such as molecular genetics and genomics.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 28, 2014—A new method for measuring and imaging how quickly blood flows in the brain could help doctors and researchers better understand how drug abuse affects the brain, which may aid in improving brain-cancer surgery and tissue engineering, and lead to better treatment options for recovering drug addicts. The new method, developed by a team of researchers from Stony Brook University in New York, USA and the U.S.

OTTAWA, August 28, 2014 – One in every 200 Ontarians has been diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), with the number of people living with the disease increasing by 64 per cent between 1999 and 2008, according to a study by researchers at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES), the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO), and the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. That puts Ontario in the 90th percentile for IBD prevalence in the world.

Philadelphia, PA, August 28, 2014 – Dyslexia, the most commonly diagnosed learning disability in the United States, is a neurological reading disability that occurs when the regions of the brain that process written language don't function normally.

"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one," sang John Lennon in his 1971 song Imagine.

And thanks to the dreams of a BYU student, we now know more about where and how imagination happens in our brains.

Stefania Ashby and her faculty mentor devised experiments using MRI technology that would help them distinguish pure imagination from related processes like remembering.

In the central nervous system, serotonergic transmission is critically regulated by serotonin reuptake through the serotonin transporter. As a crucial pharmacological target of antidepressants, the role of erotonin transporter in treatment of major depression is well-established. Dr. Chaokun Li and co-workers from Xinxiang Medical University in China cloned the human brain serotonin transporter into Xenopus oocytes, to establish an in vitro expression system. Two-electrode voltage clamp recordings were used to detect serotonin transporter activity.

Epinephrine has been shown to be a first-choice drug for cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Nevertheless, its β-adrenergic effect probably increases myocardial oxygen consumption and leads to severe cardiac and cerebral injuries; moreover, epinephrine does not elevate long-term survival rates. The American Heart Association and the European Resuscitation Council recently recommended that vasopressin can be used for cardiopulmonary resuscitation, instead of epinephrine. However, the guidelines do not discuss the effects of vasopressin during cerebral resuscitation.