Brain

Can a computer game train your brain to resist sweets?

That's the question Drexel University researchers hope to answer with one of two new studies launching this month. They have developed a computer game and smartphone app to help people control unhealthy eating habits and ultimately lose weight.

The game is designed to improve a person's "inhibitory control," the part of the brain that stops you from giving into unhealthy cravings -- even when the smell of French fries is practically begging you to step inside a fast food restaurant.

ARLINGTON, Va.--Ever wonder why some people seem to learn new languages faster? The secret might lie in the brain activity they generate while relaxing.

Two interconnected brain areas - the hippocampus and the entorhinal cortex - help us to know where we are and to remember it later. By studying these brain areas, researchers at Baylor College of Medicine, Rice University, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and the National Cancer Institute have uncovered new information about how dysfunction of this circuit may contribute to memory loss in Alzheimer's disease. Their results appear in Cell Reports.

Computer technology has become integral to the learning process. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, at the end of the last decade, some 97 percent of U.S. teachers had one or more computers located in the classroom every day, and the ratio of students to computers in the classroom every day was a little over 5 to 1. With the advent of tablet and hand-held computing devices, this ratio is fast approaching 1 to 1.

The pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease (AD), viz defective Aβ and tau proteins, have been the center of AD-directed therapeutic studies. Although this approach still remains valid, it has not yet produced clinically meaningful results. This calls for the development of additional approaches and the search for new targets for AD therapy. The allele apoE4 of apolipoprotein E is the most prevalent genetic risk factor of AD. More than half of the AD patients express apoE4, which increases the risk for AD by lowering the age of onset of the disease by 7 to 9 years per allele copy.

While there are a number of studies on alcohol misuse, most of the research has been focused on the adult population. Alcohol is the most widely used drug among young adults between the ages of 18 to 25. Binge drinking -- almost a rite of passage -- peaks during the college years. So this begs the question, "Are there specific characteristics associated with high-level binge drinking habits in college students?"

Telling yourself I can do better, can really make you do better at a given task, a study published in Frontiers in Psychology has found.

WASHINGTON -- You might not want to depend on your smartphone app alone to help you avoid or achieve pregnancy, say the authors of a new study. A review of nearly 100 fertility awareness apps finds that most don't employ evidence-based methodology.

The findings, published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, also found that many apps include a disclaimer discouraging use for avoiding pregnancy.

Researchers from KU Leuven (Belgium) and the Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology (Germany) have managed to erase unpleasant memories in mice using a 'genetic switch'. Their findings were published in Biological Psychiatry.

Dementia, accidents, or traumatic events can make us lose the memories formed before the injury or the onset of the disease. Researchers from KU Leuven and the Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology have now shown that some memories can also be erased when one particular gene is switched off.

Women who attended religious services had a lower risk of suicide compared with women who never attended services, according to an article published online by JAMA Psychiatry.

Suicide is among the 10 leading causes of death in the United States. The major world religions have traditions prohibiting suicide.

Zika virus infection cannot be accurately diagnosed in newborns solely on the basis of microcephaly screening, according to the largest study of its kind to date published in The Lancet. The findings suggest that signs and symptoms of brain abnormalities, regardless of head circumference, should also be included in screening criteria to detect all affected newborns.

June 29, 2016, Magdeburg, Germany - Vision loss due to glaucoma or optic nerve damage is generally considered irreversible. Now a new prospective, randomized, multi-center clinical trial demonstrates significant vision improvement in partially blind patients after 10 days of noninvasive, transorbital alternating current stimulation (ACS). In addition to activation of their residual vision, patients also experienced improvement in vision-related quality of life such as acuity, reading, mobility or orientation. The results are reported in PLOS ONE.

New research, published today in The Lancet, reveals that Zika virus has been detected in the brain tissue of a deceased 2-month-old baby in Brazil who was diagnosed with microcephaly, in the brain tissue of two newborns who died shortly after birth, and in the placenta tissue of two foetuses that were spontaneously aborted.

Individual differences in the motivation to engage in or to avoid aggressive social interaction (bullying) are mediated by the basal forebrain, lateral habenula circuit in the brain, according to a study conducted at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published June 30 in the journal Nature.

The Mount Sinai study focuses on identifying the mechanisms by which specific brain reward regions interact to modulate the motivational or rewarding component of aggressive behavior using a mouse model.

Access through the wrist, or radial access, when inserting stents to restore blood flow in heart disease patients has fewer complications and should be the default approach over access through the groin, or femoral access, according to researchers involved in a study today in JACC: Cardiovascular Interventions.