Brain

STANFORD, Calif. — Among those who suffer from depression, the dual inabilities to experience enjoyment in things once pleasurable and to physically motivate oneself — to meet challenges, or even to get out of bed in the morning — have been documented for decades, though it has been mysterious why these very different kinds of symptoms show up together, and also disappear together when depression is successfully treated. It has been suspected that the brain chemical dopamine could be a key player in the illness.

Honey bees are a highly organized, social species, as demonstrated by their complex colonies and the geometric structure of their hives. For hive building, the honey bee strongly relies on its tactile sense, and a new video-article in JoVE (Journal of Visualized Experiments) illustrates a novel tactile conditioning experiment using honey bees. The technique, presented by the lab of Dr. Volker Dürr of Bielefeld University, trains honey bees to stick out their tongues when their antennae touch an object.

Although this therapy is not curative, it nevertheless reduced the autistic disorders' severity in three-quarters of the children. The researchers have filed a request for authorisation to perform a multi-centre European clinical trial in order to determine more precisely the population concerned by this therapy.

Details of this work have been published in the Translational Psychiatry review dated 11 December 2012.

Contribution made by the fundamental research on neuronal chloride

Even before obesity occurs, eating fatty and sugary foods causes chemical changes in the brain, meaning that going on a diet might feel similar to going through drug withdrawal, according to a study published today by Dr. Stephanie Fulton of the University of Montreal's Faculty of Medicine and its affiliated CRCHUM Hospital Research Centre. "By working with mice, whose brains are in many ways comparable to our own, we discovered that the neurochemistry of the animals who had been fed a high fat, sugary diet were different from those who had been fed a healthy diet," Fulton explained.

The long necked sauropod dinosaurs were the largest land animals ever to walk the Earth – but why were they so large? A decade ago a team of plant ecologists from South Africa suggested that this was due to the nature of the plant food they ate, however these ideas have fallen out of favour with many dinosaur researchers. Now Liverpool John Moores University's (LJMU's) Dr David Wilkinson and Professor Graeme Ruxton of University of St Andrews, Scotland, argue that this idea still has legs.

Washington, DC — Brain changes in children who have sustained a mild traumatic brain injury, or concussion, persist for months following injury — even after the symptoms of the injury are gone, according to a study published in the December 12 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. The findings highlight the potential benefit of using advanced imaging techniques to monitor recovery in children following concussions.

Hot flushes affect millions of people, and not just women. Yet, it is still unclear what causes the episodes of temperature discomfort, often accompanied by profuse sweating.

Now a team of researchers around Dr. Naomi Rance, a professor in the department of pathology at the UA College of Medicine, has come closer to understanding the mechanism of hot flushes, a necessary step for potential treatment options down the road. This research was published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

When you walk into a darkened room, your first instinct is to feel around for a light switch. You slide your hand along the wall, feeling the transition from the doorframe to the painted drywall, and then up and down until you find the metal or plastic plate of the switch. During the process you use your sense of touch to develop an image in your mind of the wall's surface and make a better guess for where the switch is.

A University of British Columbia researcher has helped create a gel – based on the mussel's knack for clinging to rocks, piers and boat hulls – that can be painted onto the walls of blood vessels and stay put, forming a protective barrier with potentially life-saving implications.

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Dec. 10, 2012) — A research team composed of University of Kentucky researchers has published a paper which provides the first direct evidence that activated astrocytes could play a harmful role in Alzheimer's disease. The UK Sanders-Brown Center on Aging has also received significant new National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding to further this line of study.

Medical researchers at the University of Alberta have discovered a drug intended for diabetes appears to restore memory in Alzheimer's brain cells.

Jack Jhamandas, a researcher with the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry at the U of A, is the principal investigator with the team whose research results were recently published in the peer-reviewed publication The Journal of Neuroscience. He works in the Division of Neurology.

Montreal, December 11, 2012 – Nearly 1.5 million Canadian children grow up living double lives: one at home with their parents and another in some form of childcare environment. While parents hope to be informed of what goes on when they're not around, a recent Concordia study suggests that parents ought to be more involved in the daycare experience, a major component of their child's development.

Does the emotion in our voice have a lasting effect? According to Annett Schirmer and colleagues from the National University of Singapore, emotion helps us recognize words quicker and more accurately straight away. In the longer term however, we do not remember emotionally intoned speech as accurately as neutral speech. When we do remember the words, they have acquired an emotional value; for example words spoken in a sad voice are remembered as more negative than words spoken in a neutral voice.

Philadelphia, PA, December 11, 2012 – A new study published in Biological Psychiatry suggests that autism is associated with reductions in the level of cellular adhesion molecules in the blood, where they play a role in immune function.

University of Granada researchers have developed a cell phone that can be downloaded free from App Store and improves basic competences (maths, language, knowledge of the environment, autonomy and social skills) in children with autism-related disorders or Down Syndrome.