Brain

Women, persons with disabilities and three racial and ethnic groups--African Americans, Hispanics and American Indians--continue to be underrepresented in science and engineering (S&E) according to a new report released by the National Science Foundation.

The report, Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering: 2013, highlights the most recent data on S&E education and employment patterns for these groups.

Philadelphia, PA, March 7, 2013 – According to a 2012 World Health Organization report, over 35 million people worldwide currently have dementia, a number that is expected to double by 2030 (66 million) and triple by 2050 (115 million). Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia, has no cure and there are currently only a handful of approved treatments that slow, but do not prevent, the progression of symptoms.

Washington D.C., March 7, 2013 – A study published in the March 2013 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry found that 9 out of 10 young children with moderate to severe attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) continue to experience serious to severe symptoms and impairment long after their original diagnoses, and in many cases, despite treatment.

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Scientists have watched a mild traumatic brain injury play out in the living brain, prompting swelling that reduces blood flow and connections between neurons to die.

"Even with a mild trauma, we found we still have these ischemic blood vessels and, if blood flow is not returned to normal, synapses start to die," said Dr. Sergei Kirov, neuroscientist and Director of the Human Brain Lab at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University.

Just as a global posi­tion­ing sys­tem (GPS) helps find your loca­tion, the brain has an inter­nal sys­tem for help­ing deter­mine the body's loca­tion as it moves through its surroundings.

WASHINGTON – Older adults who haven't been in school for a while are as capable of learning from tests as younger adults and college students, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

No matter their age or if they work or go to college full time, people appear to learn more when tested on material, rather than simply rereading or restudying information, according to research published online in the APA journal Psychology and Aging.

Washington D.C., March 6, 2013 – A study published in the February 2013 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry found that children and adolescents with major depression or subthreshold forms of bipolar disorder – and who had at least one first-degree relative with bipolar disorder – responded better to a 12-session family-focused treatment than to a briefer educational treatment.

Philadelphia, PA, March 6, 2013 – Many lines of evidence indicate that schizophrenia is a disorder of neurodevelopment. For example, genes implicated in the heritable risk for schizophrenia are also implicated in the development of nerve cells and their connections. Numerous findings in brain imaging studies describe the changes in brain structure and function associated with schizophrenia as emerging early in the course of the disorder. Some early brain imaging studies even found little or no evidence of progression of structural deficits.

Scientists at UCLA have discovered a new genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease by screening people's DNA and then using an advanced type of scan to visualize their brains' connections.

Alzheimer's disease, the most common cause of dementia in the elderly, erodes these connections, which we rely on to support thinking, emotion and memory. With no known cure for the disease, the 20 million Alzheimer's sufferers worldwide lack an effective treatment. And we are all at risk: Our chance of developing Alzheimer's doubles every five years after age 65.

A computer recognition system that is 99% accurate can identify different fruits and vegetables, even the particular strain of apples or plums, for instance. Research to be published in the International Journal of Applied Pattern Recognition in March explains how challenging this issue has been until now and shows how it could be used in agricultural science and perhaps to improve efficiency in the growing and food industries as well as at the supermarket.

Philadelphia, PA, March 7, 2013 – Grow it, try it, and you just might like it is a motto many schools are embracing to encourage children to eat more fruits and vegetables. Through community-based kitchen garden programs, particularly those with dedicated cooking components, schools are successfully introducing students to healthier foods. In a new study released in the March/April 2013 issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, researchers found that growing and then cooking the foods that kids grew increased their willingness to try new foods.

The resulting increased blood and oxygen flow to the pre-frontal cortex may explain the effects, suggest the researchers.

They trawled medical research databases for studies looking at the impact of physical exercise on higher brain functions, such as memory, concentration, planning, and decision-making, in three groups: 6 to 12 year olds; 13 to 17 year olds; and 18 to 35 year olds.

While the treatment is still considered experimental, it is believed to work by stimulating a specific area of the brain to reverse abnormalities linked to mood, anxiety, emotional control, obsessions and compulsions all of which are common in anorexia. In some cases after surgery, patients are then able to complete previously unsuccessful treatments for the disease. The research may not only provide an additional therapy option for these patients in the future, but also furthers practitioners' understanding of anorexia and the factors that cause it to be persistent.

The human brain can learn to treat relevant prosthetics as a substitute for a non-working body part, according to research published March 6 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Mariella Pazzaglia and colleagues from Sapienza University and IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia of Rome in Italy, supported by the International Foundation for Research in Paraplegie.

Most scientists are starting to agree that repeat, sub-concussive hits to the head are dangerous and linked to neurological disorders later in life. A new collaborative study, though, attempted to find out why – and discovered that damage to the blood-brain barrier and the resulting autoimmune response might be the culprit.