Brain

Scampering across the salt pans of Tunisia on their spindly legs, desert ants (Cataglyphis fortis) have a single-minded mission: locate food and get it back to the nest. Normally, individual raiders bear a tasty morsel in their mandibles and navigate home along the most direct return route, regardless of how tortuous the outbound journey was. However, their determination is often tested to the extreme when the robust animals stumble upon a particularly large piece of food - such as a dead spider or locust.

New Haven, Conn.-- A Yale-led team of researchers developed a new approach to scanning the brain for changes in synapses that are associated with common brain disorders. The technique may provide insights into the diagnosis and treatment of a broad range of disorders, including epilepsy and Alzheimer's disease.

The study was published July 20 in Science Translational Medicine.

The age of exploration has long passed, but there is at least one area still largely uncharted: the human brain. Now, a detailed new map by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis lays out the landscape of the cerebral cortex -- the outermost layer of the brain and the dominant structure involved in sensory perception and attention, as well as distinctly human functions such as language, tool use and abstract thinking.

Researchers have mapped 180 distinct areas in our brain's outer mantle, or cortex -- more than twice the number previously known. They have also developed software that automatically detects the "fingerprint" of each of these areas in an individual's brain scans. Funded by the National Institutes of Health through its Human Connectome Project (HCP), this software correctly mapped the areas by incorporating data from multiple non-invasive brain imaging measures that corroborated each other.

The world around is complex and changing constantly. To put it in order, we devise categories into which we sort new concepts. To do this we apply different strategies. A team of researchers at the Ruhr University Bochum (RUB) led by Prof. Dr. Boris Suchan, department of neuropsychology, and Prof. Dr. Onur Güntürkün, department of biopsychology, wanted to find our which areas of the brain regulate these strategies.

In the current issue of NeuroRehabilitation leading researchers explore the effectiveness of several neurorehabilitation treatments for individuals with brain injury or stroke. A number of published articles have covered the issue of efficacy of neurorehabilitation, but only a few have discussed the issue of effectiveness.

CINCINNATI -- Anxiety disorders are among the most common psychiatric conditions affecting children and adolescents. While antidepressants are frequently used to treat youth with anxiety disorders, sometimes, antidepressants may be poorly tolerated in children who are at high risk of developing bipolar disorder.

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati (UC) are studying how cognitive therapy that uses mindfulness techniques, such as meditation, quiet reflection and facilitator-led discussion, may serve as an adjunct to pharmacological treatments.

The cerebral cortex resembles a vast switchboard. Countless lines carrying information about the environment, for example from the sensory organs, converge in the cerebral cortex. In order to direct the flow of data into meaningful pathways, the individual pyramidal cells of the cerebral cortex act like miniature switchboard operators. Each cell receives information from several thousand lines. If the signals make sense, the line is opened, and the information is relayed onward.

TORONTO, ON - University of Toronto and MIT researchers have discovered important differences between lower and higher-income children in their ability to use "working memory," a key brain function responsible for everything from remembering a phone number to doing math in your head.

Reading is a relatively modern and uniquely human skill. For this reason, visual word recognition has been a puzzle for neuroscientists because the neural systems responsible for reading could not have evolved for this purpose. "The existence of brain regions dedicated to reading has been fiercely debated for almost 200 years," said Avniel Ghuman, an assistant professor in the University of Pittsburgh Department of Neurological Surgery.

Meeting new people can be both stressful and rewarding. Research at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, reported today in Nature Neuroscience, suggests that a molecule involved in regulating stress in the brain may also help determine how willing we are to leave the safety of our social group and strike up new relationships.

WASHINGTON -- The brain is the most temperature-sensitive organ in the body. Even small deviations in brain temperature are capable of producing profound effects--including behavioral changes, cell toxicity, and neuronal cell death. The problem faced by researchers and clinicians is how to measure and understand these changes in the brain and how they are influenced by complex biochemical and physiological pathways that may be altered by disease, brain injury or drug abuse.

A multidisciplinary research team led by University of Houston scientist Jarek Wosik has developed a high-temperature superconducting coil that allows magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners to produce higher resolution images or acquire images in a shorter time than when using conventional coils.

Many couples find that their sexual desire has dwindled over time. It's not unusual for partners who could not keep their hands off each to gradually lose interest. But new research indicates that there are ways that couples can sustain--or relight--their passion.

(NEW YORK -- July 19, 2016) While buprenorphine has long been used to treat adults with opioid dependence, its efficacy can be hindered by lack of adherence to daily, sublingual (beneath the tongue) doses of the medication. New research led by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai published online today in The Journal of the American Medicine Association (JAMA) showed that a higher percentage of stable, opioid-dependent patients given six-month buprenorphine implants remained abstinent compared to patients given the medication sublingually.