Brain

Philadelphia, Pa. – A research team in Israel has devised a novel approach to identifying the molecular basis for designing a drug that might one day decrease the risk diabetes patients face of developing Alzheimer's disease. The team will present its work at the 57th Annual Meeting of the Biophysical Society (BPS), held Feb. 2-6, 2013, in Philadelphia, Pa.

There is something sinister about epilepsy: the disease affects the very core of our being, our brain. Epileptic attacks can lead to seizures throughout the body or in parts of it. Clouding of consciousness or memory lapses are also possible. The causes are still only partially understood but in some cases brain tumours, infections, inflammations of the brain or metabolic diseases have been implicated.

Montreal, February 1, 2012 – Craig Kielburger was only 12 years old when he travelled to India to see the plight of child laborers first hand. 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai took a stand against the Taliban with her campaign for women's education rights. Alongside these individuals, organizations like Teenactivist.org and Dosomething.org rally teens to make a difference in their communities and beyond.

Proper function of the digestive system requires coordinated contraction of the muscle in the wall of the intestinal tract, regulated by the enteric nervous system.

Belmont, MA—In a study examining the impact of a parity policy for mental health insurance benefits, researchers have concluded that parity had a different impact on spending and service utilization for enrollees with illnesses that are more severe and chronic. As a result of the parity policy, individuals seeking treatment for major depression or bipolar disorder had lower out-of-pocket spending, despite no significant difference in the amount of behavioral health services they used.

DARIEN, IL – A new study found a high prevalence of sleep disorders and a startlingly high rate of short sleep duration among active duty military personnel. The study suggests the need for a cultural change toward appropriate sleep practices throughout the military.

Future research into the underlying causes of neurological disorders such as autism, epilepsy and schizophrenia, should greatly benefit from a first-of-its-kind atlas of gene-enhancers in the cerebrum (telencephalon). This new atlas, developed by a team led by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is a publicly accessible Web-based collection of data that identifies and locates thousands of gene-regulating elements in a region of the brain that is of critical importance for cognition, motor functions and emotion.

Medical illustrators and neurological imaging experts at Johns Hopkins have figured out how night-hunting owls can almost fully rotate their heads - by as much as 270 degrees in either direction - without damaging the delicate blood vessels in their necks and heads, and without cutting off blood supply to their brains.

NEW YORK, NY — A New York-based physician-researcher from Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine, best known for his research into fertility and twinning, has uncovered a potential connection between autism and a specific growth protein that could eventually be used as a way to predict an infant's propensity to later develop the disease. The protein, called insulin-like growth factor (IGF), is especially involved in the normal growth and development of babies' brain cells.

Students who work together and interact online are more likely to be successful in their college classes, according to a study published Jan. 30 in the journal Nature Scientific Reports and co-authored by Manuel Cebrian, a computer scientist at the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California San Diego.

"In the future, we can interpret an animal's behavior, including learning and memory, fear, joy, or anger, based on the activity of particular combinations of neurons," Kawakami said.

By monitoring neuronal activity in the zebrafish brain, Kawakami thinks that researchers may also be able to screen chemicals that affect neuronal activity in the brain. "This has the potential to shorten the long processes for the development of new psychiatric medications," he said.

Philadelphia, PA, January 31, 2013 – Disulfiram was the first medication approved for the treatment of alcoholism over 50 years ago. It works, at least in part, by preventing the metabolism of an alcohol by-product, acetaldehyde. High levels of acetaldehyde in the body quickly cause unpleasant symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, headache, and accelerated heart rate. Thus, disulfiram provides a very strong incentive to avoid drinking.

KANSAS CITY, MO—Mutations in single genes can cause catastrophic diseases, such as Huntington's Disease or sickle cell anemia. However, many conditions, including cancer, diabetes and birth defects are multigenic, arising from the collective failure of the function of more than one gene.

Bethesda, MD—A team of scientists from Canada, Thailand and Morocco have found that DHEA-S may prevent neurocognitive impairment that affects a significant percentage of AIDS patients. In a report appearing in the February 2013 issue of The FASEB Journal, they describe how a network of steroid molecules found in the brain, termed "neurosteroids," is disrupted during HIV infection leading to brain damage.