Brain

New Rochelle, NY, September 19, 2012—More than 900 million people worldwide are active users of the social networking site Facebook, and it is estimated that as many as one-third report using Facebook to check on the activities of former romantic partners.

CINCINNATI – Scientists have discovered the first direct evidence that a biological mechanism long suspected in epilepsy is capable of triggering the brain seizures – opening the door for studies to seek improved treatments or even preventative therapies.

Researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center report Sept. 19 in Neuron that molecular disruptions in small neurons called granule cells – located in the dentate gyrus region of the brain – caused brain seizures in mice similar to those seen in human temporal lobe epilepsy.

Diverse symptoms associated with autism could be explained by unreliable activity of neurons in the brain in response to basic, nonsocial sensory information, according to a study published by Cell Press on September 19th in the journal Neuron. The new findings suggest that autism is a disorder of general neural processing and could potentially provide an explanation for the origins of a range of psychiatric and neurological disorders.

In all of the primary cortices, visual, auditory and somatosensory, the within-individual response reliability was significantly lower — by 30-40 percent — in autism; meaning, there was not a typical, predictable response from trial to trial. Thus, in the individuals with autism, there was significant intra-individual variability, with responses varying from strong to weak. Non-autistic adults had replicable and consistent responses from trial to trial.

People are faced with thousands of choices every day, some inane and some risky. Scientists know that the areas of the brain that evaluate risk are the same for each person, but what makes the value assigned to risk different for individuals? To answer this question, a new video article in Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to characterize subjective risk assessment while subjects choose between different lotteries to play.

CHICAGO --- Remember the telephone game where people take turns whispering a message into the ear of the next person in line? By the time the last person speaks it out loud, the message has radically changed. It's been altered with each retelling.

Turns out your memory is a lot like the telephone game, according to a new Northwestern Medicine study.

WASHINGTON — Some athletes may improve their performance under pressure simply by squeezing a ball or clenching their left hand before competition to activate certain parts of the brain, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

Researchers from the Research Group on Ruminants led by Elena Albanell, lecturer in Animal and Food Science at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, have successfully achieved to prevent sheep and goats from chewing on the young leaves of olive trees and grapevines when grazing. By using the natural mechanism of conditioned taste aversion, researchers redirected the food preferences of ruminants, making them more willing to eliminate undesirable plants from these types of pastures, and thereby reducing the use of pesticides and farming equipment.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – One in 88 children has been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A new study by a University of Missouri researcher found that many children with ASD also experience anxiety, chronic gastrointestinal (GI) problems and atypical sensory responses, which are heightened reactions to light, sound or particular textures. These problems appear to be highly related and can have significant effects on children's daily lives, including their functioning at home and in school.

The process of metastasis, by which cancer cells travel from a tumor site and proliferate at other sites in the body, is a serious threat to cancer patients. According to the National Cancer Institute, most recurrences of cancer are metastases rather than "new" cancers.

Virtually all types of cancer can spread to other parts of the body, including the brain. Once metastatic melanoma cells are entrenched in the brain, patients typically have only a few months to live.

Quebec City, September 19, 2012—Kangaroo Mother Care -- a technique in which a breastfed premature infant remains in skin-to-skin contact with the parent's chest rather than being placed in an incubator -- has lasting positive impact on brain development, revealed Université Laval researchers in the October issue of Acta Paediatrica. Very premature infants who benefited from this technique had better brain functioning in adolescence -- comparable to that of adolescents born at term -- than did premature infants placed in incubators.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Research at Sandia National Laboratories has shown that it's possible to predict how well people will remember information by monitoring their brain activity while they study.

A team under Laura Matzen of Sandia's cognitive systems group was the first to demonstrate predictions based on the results of monitoring test volunteers with electroencephalography (EEG) sensors.

HOUSTON – (Sept. 18, 2012) – Contrary to the prevailing theories that music and language are cognitively separate or that music is a byproduct of language, theorists at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music and the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) advocate that music underlies the ability to acquire language.

MADISON — Pacifiers may stunt the emotional development of baby boys by robbing them of the opportunity to try on facial expressions during infancy.

Three experiments by a team of researchers led by psychologists from the University of Wisconsin–Madison tie heavy pacifier use as a young child to poor results on various measures of emotional maturity.

INDIANAPOLIS -- Delirium, a common acute condition with significant short- and long-term effects on cognition and function, should be identified as an indicator of poor long-term prognosis, prompting immediate and effective management strategies, according to the authors of a new systematic evidence review.