Brain

ALEXANDRIA, VA (June 23, 2016) - Convinced that better use of data will improve research, innovation and literacy across other disciplines, six leading statisticians recently published "Ten Simple Rules for Effective Statistical Practice" in the journal PLOS Computational Biology. Part of the popular open access "Ten Simple Rules (TSR)" series, this piece surpassed 51,000 views in only two weeks.

In the last few years, several groups have announced that their facial recognition systems have achieved near-perfect accuracy rates, performing better than humans at picking the same face out of the crowd.

But those tests were performed on a dataset with only 13,000 images -- fewer people than attend an average professional U.S. soccer game. What happens to their performance as those crowds grow to the size of a major U.S. city?

BOSTON - (June 22, 2016) - Most pregnant women with well-controlled diabetes give birth to healthy children. But their babies run much higher risks of birth defects than babies born to women without diabetes, because very early in embryonic development, the babies are exposed to higher levels of glucose in maternal blood. In research done in mice, researchers at Joslin Diabetes Center have uncovered new clues about the role that glucosamine, another sugar that circulates in blood, can play in early embryonic development.

A team led by researchers at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital report that mice lacking the protein Alix develop hydrocephalus or "water on the brain." Alix ensures that epithelial cells of the choroid plexus are oriented correctly with respect to one another to prevent compromise of the epithelial barrier. The research appears online today in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

Philadelphia, PA, June 23, 2016 - New wearable technology is helping to provide novel weight loss tools. One way is by providing bite count feedback, which allows users to keep track of the number of bites during a meal. Researchers at Clemson University wanted to analyze how providing bite count feedback might influence eaters in different situations and determine its efficacy in the presence of environmental cues linked to overeating. The study found that people who received bite count feedback ate less and reduced their overall intake during a meal.

Every year as mosquito season arrives, so does West Nile virus, causing fever in thousands of people nationwide and life-threatening brain infections in an unlucky few. About half the people who survive that infection - West Nile encephalitis - are left with permanent neurological deficits such as memory loss.

New research shows that these long-term neurological problems may be due to the patient's own immune system destroying parts of their neurons, which suggests that intervening in the immune response may help prevent brain damage or help patients recover.

An experimental drug prevented learning deficits in young mice exposed repeatedly to anesthesia, according to a study led by researchers from NYU Langone Medical Center and published June 22 in Science Translational Medicine.

The study results may have implications for children who must have several surgeries, and so are exposed repeatedly to general anesthesia. Past studies have linked such exposure to a higher incidence of learning disabilities, attention deficits and hyperactivity.

New research suggests that higher late life cognitive reserve--an ability to offset the losses associated with age- and disease-related changes in the brain--may help prevent delirium.

In a study of 142 older surgical patients, greater participation in cognitive activities was linked with lower incidence and lower severity of delirium; however, higher literacy was not. Among individual leisure activities, reading books, using electronic mail, singing, and playing computer games were associated with lower dementia incidence and severity.

AURORA, Colo. (June 22, 2016) - Researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus have discovered how the most severe forms of West Nile virus cause memory loss and mood disorders, opening the door to potential new treatments for the mosquito-borne illness.

The study, published in the journal Nature, says 50 percent of patients who survive the most damaging kind of West Nile infection often go on to develop memory loss, learning difficulties, a lack of concentration and irritability.

Exactly why this happens has been a mystery until now.

A new study from Western University is helping to explain why the long-term use of common anticholinergic drugs used to treat conditions like allergies and overactive bladder lead to an increased risk of developing dementia later in life. The findings show that long-term suppression of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine - a target for anticholinergic drugs - results in dementia-like changes in the brain.

She no longer recognizes a Van Gogh, but can tell you how to prepare a watercolor palette.

She can't recall a single famous composer, but knows the purpose of a viola's bridge.

She hasn't flown a plane since 2007, when viral encephalitis destroyed her hippocampus, the part of the brain used to form new memories and retrieve old ones. And she couldn't describe a single trip she's ever taken. But in detail, she'll list the steps needed to keep a plane from stalling and where to find the rudder controls.

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry estimates that as many as 1 in 5 children in the United States have behavioral health issues. However, of these children, only 20 percent receive mental health services. Of those 20 percent, approximately half end treatment prematurely because of issues such as lack of access, lack of transportation and financial constraints. In rural states such as Missouri where almost 40 percent of the population lives outside urban areas, children usually have even less access to timely psychiatric care.

Toronto, Canada -- A pair of new studies further strengthen scientific understanding of the links between what a child experiences in the first years of life and later childhood behaviour and abilities.

Funded by the Government of Canada through Grand Challenges Canada, researchers working in South Africa and Pakistan report their findings in papers launched today.

WASHINGTON, DC, June 20, 2016 -- A new study finds that behavioral problems in early childhood have a larger negative effect on high school and college completion rates for boys than girls, which partially explains the substantial gender gap in educational attainment that currently exists in the United States.

Frontotemporal dementia is associated with a wide variety of abnormal eating behaviors such as hyperphagia, fixations on one kind of food, even ingestion of inanimate objects, making an already difficult situation even worse. A review by SISSA researchers gathers together the state of the art of what is known in this field, paying particular attention to the brain mechanisms involved. The information may be used for understanding eating disorders in healthy people. The review was published in the magazine Neurocase.