Brain

Geosmin and the model Drosophila

LA JOLLA, CA – December 6, 2012 – For scientists who study the genetics of hearing and deafness, finding the exact genetic machinery in the inner ear that responds to sound waves and converts them into electrical impulses, the language of the brain, has been something of a holy grail.

Working with mice, Johns Hopkins researchers have shed light on the activity of a protein pair found in cells that form the walls of blood vessels in the brain and retina, experiments that could lead to therapeutic control of the blood-brain barrier and of blood vessel growth in the eye.

Researchers at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute, have discovered a new genetic process that could one day provide a novel target for the treatment of neurodevelopmental disorders, such as intellectual disability and autism.

Disgust – it's an emotion we experience when we encounter things that are dirty, impure, or otherwise contaminated. From an evolutionary standpoint, experiencing the intense, visceral sense of revulsion that comes with disgust presumably helps us to avoid contaminants that can make us sick or even kill us. But new research suggests that disgust not only helps us to avoid impurities, it may also make us better able to see them.

TORONTO, DEC. 6, 2012—Rapid eye movements are significantly delayed in patients with glaucoma, even those in the early stages of the disease, research has found.

The findings, led by Dr. Neeru Gupta, an ophthalmologist at St. Michael's Hospital, may shed new light on why glaucoma patients are at increased risk for falls and car accidents. Glaucoma is the leading cause of irreversible blindness.

Scientists have identified the key molecular pathway leading to depression, revealing potential new targets for drug discovery, according to research led by King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry. The study, published today in Neuropsychopharmacology, reveals for the first time that the 'Hedgehog pathway' regulates how stress hormones, usually elevated during depression, reduce the number of brain cells.

Oxford psychologists in an Anglican country did some surveys and have recommendations for Catholics: People who recall being absolved of their sins are more likely to donate money to the church, they write Religion, Brain and Behavior.

Academics from Royal Holloway and the University of Oxford assigned participants two memory tasks. In the first, they were asked to privately recall a sin that they had committed in the past, while in the second, they recalled attending confession for this sin or imagined doing so, if they had not confessed in reality.

HOLLYWOOD, FL and EVANSTON, IL, December 6, 2012 -- Naurex Inc., a clinical stage company developing innovative treatments to address unmet needs in psychiatry and neurology, today reported positive results from a Phase IIa clinical trial of its lead antidepressant compound, GLYX-13. GLYX-13 is a novel partial agonist of the NMDA receptor. The Phase Ila results are being presented this week at the 51st Annual Meeting of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP).

The memory of having eaten a large meal can make people feel less hungry hours after the meal, according to research published December 5 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Jeffrey Brunstorm and colleagues from the University of Bristol.

The researchers showed volunteers either a small or large portion of soup just before lunch, and then manipulated the amount of soup they actually consumed by means of a covert pump that could refill or empty a soup bowl without the eater noticing.

Hearing a verb related to physical action automatically increases the force with which people grip objects, but has no effect on their physical reaction if the word is presented in the negative form, according to research published December 5 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Pia Aravena and colleagues from the L2C2, Institute of Cognitive Sciences (CNRS/UCBL), France.

Your brain has at least four different senses of location – and perhaps as many as 10. And each is different, according to new research from the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

An international team of researchers looked at the role of personality by studying298 gorillas in North American zoos and sanctuaries for over 18 years.

The gorillas' personalities were assessed by keepers, volunteers, researchers and caretakers who knew the gorillas well. Their personality was scored with measures adapted from techniques for studying people and other primates.

Conventional wisdom in brain research says that you just used your hippocampus to answer that question, but that might not be the whole story. The context of place depends on not just how you got there, but also the things you see around you. A new study in Neuron provides evidence that a different part of the brain is important for understanding where you are based on the spatial layout of the objects in that place. The finding, in rats, has a direct analogy to primate neuroanatomy.

Antibodies against amyloid beta (Aβ) protein deposits that are thought to play a role in Alzheimer's disease have shown some success in preventing the buildup of deposits in animals, but they have not been effective at removing preexisting deposits. Now researchers reporting in the December issue of the Cell Press journal Neuron show that a modified antibody was able to clear preexisting Aβ deposits in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease.