Brain

HEIDELBERG, 18 September 2012 – The absence of a specific type of neuron in the brain can lead to obesity and diabetes in mice report researchers in The EMBO Journal. The outcome, however, depends on the type of diet that the animals are fed.

A Danish researcher has compared two of the most different welfare systems in the western world. Despite the differences, the research shows surprising similarities in the way in which people in the USA and Denmark perceive the deservingness of welfare recipients.

This is one of the conclusions presented in a research article by the highly recognised American Journal of Political Science.

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have taken one of the first detailed looks into how Alzheimer's disease disrupts coordination among several of the brain's networks. The results, reported in The Journal of Neuroscience, include some of the earliest assessments of Alzheimer's effects on networks that are active when the brain is at rest.

DURHAM, N.C.— By studying how birds master songs used in courtship, scientists at Duke University have found that regions of the brain involved in planning and controlling complex vocal sequences may also be necessary for memorizing sounds that serve as models for vocal imitation.

In a paper appearing in the September 2012 issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, researchers at Duke and Harvard universities observed the imitative vocal learning habits of male zebra finches to pinpoint which circuits in the birds' brains are necessary for learning their songs.

One of the greatest challenges in neuroscience is to identify the map of synaptic connections between neurons. Called the "connectome," it is the holy grail that will explain how information flows in the brain. In a landmark paper, published the week of 17th of September in PNAS, the EPFL's Blue Brain Project (BBP) has identified key principles that determine synapse-scale connectivity by virtually reconstructing a cortical microcircuit and comparing it to a mammalian sample. These principles now make it possible to predict the locations of synapses in the neocortex.

New in our journals:

Your city matters: San Francisco v. Boston

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — An enzyme that could represent a powerful new tool for combating Alzheimer's disease has been discovered by researchers at Mayo Clinic in Florida. The enzyme — known as BACE2 — destroys beta-amyloid, a toxic protein fragment that litters the brains of patients who have the disease. The findings were published online Sept.

Women are better than men at recognizing living things and men are better than women at recognizing vehicles.

That is the unanticipated result of an analysis Vanderbilt psychologists performed on data from a series of visual recognition tasks collected in the process of developing a new standard test for expertise in object recognition.

Hear the word "party" and memories of your 8th birthday sleepover or the big bash you attended last New Year's may come rushing to mind. But it's exactly these kinds of memories, embedded in a specific place and time, that people with depression have difficulty recalling.

Research has shown that people who suffer from, or are at risk of, depression have difficulty tapping into specific memories from their own past, an impairment that affects their ability to solve problems and leads them to focus on feelings of distress.

A new light-based technique for measuring levels of the toxic protein that causes Huntington's disease (HD) has been used to demonstrate that the protein builds up gradually in blood cells. Published today (17th) in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, the findings shed light on how the protein causes damage in the brain, and could be useful for monitoring the progression of HD, or testing new drugs aimed at suppressing production of the harmful protein.

Is it possible to create suitable and amusing educational computer games? Can you use qualities from other types of games? And what do the children really think of these kinds of games? Wolmet Barendregt from The University of Gothenburg, conducts research on children's game playing, how we can support learning with design and include the children in the design process.

For immediate release – September 17, 2012 (Toronto) – Researchers from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) have identified a new role of a chemical involved in controlling the genes underlying memory and learning.

• Habituation refers to the ability of an organism to stop responding to repeated stimulation.
• A new study has examined the impact of maternal drinking on fetal habituation or learning abilities while still residing in the mother's womb.
• Results showed that those fetuses exposed to heavy binge drinking required significantly more trials to habituate, and also exhibited a greater variability in test performance.

Symptoms of alcohol abuse, not dependence, may better reflect family risk for alcohol use disorders