Brain

PHOENIX -- A new Mayo Clinic study confirms the use of smartphones medical images to evaluate stroke patients in remote locations through telemedicine. The study, the first to test the effectiveness of smartphone teleradiology applications in a real-world telestroke network, was recently published in Stroke, a journal of the American Heart Association.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Taking enough omega-3 fatty acid supplements to change the balance of oils in the diet could slow a key biological process linked to aging, new research suggests.

The study showed that most overweight but healthy middle-aged and older adults who took omega-3 supplements for four months altered a ratio of their fatty acid consumption in a way that helped preserve tiny segments of DNA in their white blood cells.

Humanitarian workers are at significant risk for mental health problems, both in the field and after returning home. The good news is that there are steps that they and their employers can take to mitigate this risk.

These findings, from a new study by scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and collaborators, including Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, are published online in the journal PLOS ONE.

Bethesda, MD—President Obama's national plan to fight Alzheimer's disease just got a lift thanks to a team of international researchers whose recent discovery may lead to enhanced imaging of and improved drug delivery to the brain. A research report appearing in The FASEB Journal, describes an entirely new class of antibody discovered in camelids (camels, dromedaries, llamas, and alpacas) that is able to cross the blood-brain barrier, diffuse into brain tissue, and reach specific targets.

Putnam Valley, NY. (Oct. 1, 2012) – A research team from Germany has found that optimal benefit and functional improvement for ischemic stroke results when human umbilical cord blood mononuclear cells (hUCB MNCs) are transplanted into rat stroke models within 72 hours of the stroke.Their study is published in the current issue of Cell Transplantation (21:6), now freely available on-line at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/.

CORAL GABLES, FL -- Approximately 19 percent of children with a sibling diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) will develop Autism due to shared genetic and environmental vulnerabilities, according to previous studies. For that reason, University of Miami (UM) psychologists are developing ways to predict the occurrence of ASD in high-risk children, early in life, in hopes that early intervention will lead to better outcomes in the future. Their findings are published in the journal Infancy.

A new study from Georgia Tech and the University of Toronto suggests that memory impairments for people diagnosed with early stage Alzheimer's disease may be due, in part, to problems in determining the differences between similar objects. The findings also support growing research indicating that a part of the brain once believed to support memory exclusively – the medial temporal lobe - also plays a role in object perception. The results are published in the October edition of Hippocampus.

Scientists at the Universities of Sheffield and Sussex are embarking on an ambitious project to produce the first accurate computer models of a honey bee brain in a bid to advance our understanding of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and how animals think.

The team will build models of the systems in the brain that govern a honey bee's vision and sense of smell. Using this information, the researchers aim to create the first flying robot able to sense and act as autonomously as a bee, rather than just carry out a pre-programmed set of instructions.

Cheating. Conflict. Competition. It may sound like a soap opera but this is the complex life of the despised ragweed plant.

And in the highly competitive fight for nutrients, researchers have found ragweed will behave altruistically with its siblings, investing precious resources for the benefit of the group.

Trying to keep an image we've just seen in memory can leave us blind to things we are 'looking' at, according to the results of a new study supported by the Wellcome Trust.

Most people are completely unaware of one of stroke's most common, debilitating but invisible impairments, according to the first awareness survey of its kind in Canada released today at the Canadian Stroke Congress.

Just six months of exercise can improve memory, language, thinking and judgment problems by almost 50 per cent, says a study presented today at the Canadian Stroke Congress.

Toronto researchers found that the proportion of stroke patients with at least mild cognitive impairment dropped from 66 per cent to 37 per cent during a research study on the impact of exercise on the brain.

Darien, IL - A new study suggests that increasing the amount of sleep that teenagers get could improve their insulin resistance and prevent the future onset of diabetes.

"High levels of insulin resistance can lead to the development of diabetes," said lead author Karen Matthews, PhD, of the University of Pittsburgh Department of Psychiatry. "We found that if teens that normally get six hours of sleep per night get one extra hour of sleep, they would improve insulin resistance by 9 percent."

This gives new meaning to the complaint "I'm bored" — literally.

Canadian researchers — including a professor from the University of Guelph — have come up with a new, precise definition of boredom based on the mental processes that underlie the condition.

Orange, Calif., Sept. 28, 2012 — Routine screening for psychiatric, cognitive and social problems could enhance the quality of care and quality of life for children and adults with epilepsy, according to a study by UC Irvine neurologist Dr. Jack Lin and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Amedeo Avogadro University in Italy.