Brain

One in 25,000 people worldwide is affected by neurofibromatosis type 2 (NF2), a condition where the loss of a tumour suppressor called Merlin results in multiple tumours in the brain and nervous system.

A new study highlights the risk that female teenagers face when they go online – a risk heightened for teen girls who have been victims of abuse or neglect.

The study, published in the eFirst pages of the journal Pediatrics, shows that 30 percent of teenagers reported having offline meetings with people they have met on the Internet and whose identity had not been fully confirmed prior to the meeting.

While a great deal of research on childhood obesity has spotlighted the long-term health problems that emerge in adulthood, a new UCLA study focuses on the condition's immediate consequences and shows that obese youngsters are at far greater risk than had been supposed.

Compared to kids who are not overweight, obese children are at nearly twice the risk of having three or more reported medical, mental or developmental conditions, the UCLA researchers found. Overweight children had a 1.3 times higher risk.

Rockville, MD — A new Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science (IOVS) article reveals that increasingly aggressive therapies that block VEGF could cause damage in treating eye diseases. Scientists discovered inhibiting anti-VEGF might have a harmful effect on the tissue responsible for producing the fluid that bathes the eye, medically termed the ciliary body.

In what they acknowledge as a seismic shift in the ethical foundation of medical research, practice and policy, a prominent group of interdisciplinary healthcare experts, led by bioethicists at Johns Hopkins, rejects an ethical paradigm that has guided the American system since the 1970s and calls for morally obligatory participation in a "learning healthcare system" more in step with the digital age.

The extent to which three-dimensional structure is required for protein recognition and function is an area of vigorous debate with clear implications for protein engineering. Two differing viewpoints have been put forward in two articles published in F1000 Biology Reports today.

Irvine, Calif., Jan. 10, 2013 — A study led by UC Irvine researchers has revealed some of the underlying neural factors that explain why people with Down syndrome are more susceptible to Alzheimer's disease, diabetes and autistic spectrum disorders.

Researchers from the MRC Centre for Virus Research at the University of Glasgow in Scotland have developed methods to synthesize and change the genome of Schmallenberg virus (SBV). SBV is a recently discovered pathogen of livestock such as cattle, sheep and goats. The researchers have laid bare important ways by which this virus causes disease. The full report about the study publishes on January 10 in the Open Access journal, PLOS Pathogens.

JUPITER, FL, January 10, 2013 – Oxidative stress is a primary villain in a host of diseases that range from cancer and heart failure to Alzheimer's disease, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Parkinson's disease. Now, scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found that blocking the interaction of a critical enzyme may counteract the destruction of neurons associated with these neurodegenerative diseases, suggesting a potential new target for drug development.

A new study out today in the journal Science turns two decades of understanding about how brain cells communicate on its head. The study demonstrates that the tripartite synapse – a model long accepted by the scientific community and one in which multiple cells collaborate to move signals in the central nervous system – does not exist in the adult brain.

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. (January 10, 2013) –With millions of adolescent users, social network sites (SNSs) are a rich data source for academic research studies. But ethical guidelines governing how researchers should obtain and use this data is seriously lacking, says Tufts University's R. Benjamin Shapiro, Ph.D., the McDonnell Family Professor in Engineering Education at Tufts University's School of Engineering, in an article published in the January 11 edition of Science.

We rely on our visual system more heavily than previously thought in determining the causality of events. A team of researchers has shown that, in making judgments about causality, we don't always need to use cognitive reasoning. In some cases, our visual brain—the brain areas that process what the eyes sense—can make these judgments rapidly and automatically.

The study appears in the latest issue of the journal Current Biology.

Students everywhere, put down those highlighters and pick up some flashcards! Some of the most popular study strategies — such as highlighting and even rereading — don't show much promise for improving student learning, according to a new report published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

In the report, John Dunlosky of Kent State University and a team of distinguished psychological scientists review the scientific evidence for ten learning techniques commonly used by students.

New Rochelle, NY, January 10, 2013—Repeat traumatic brain injury affects a subgroup of the 3.5 million people who suffer head trauma each year. Even a mild repeat TBI that occurs when the brain is still recovering from an initial injury can result in poorer outcomes, especially in children and young adults. A metabolic marker that could serve as the basis for new mild TBI vulnerability guidelines is described in an article in Journal of Neurotrauma, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A new tool that could allow for faster, more comprehensive testing of brain tissue during surgery successfully identified the cancer type, grade and tumor margins in five brain surgery patients, according to a Purdue University and Brigham and Women's Hospital study.

The tool sprays a microscopic stream of charged solvent onto the tissue surface to gather information about its molecular makeup and produces a color-coded image that reveals the nature and concentration of tumor cells.