Brain

Children of immigrants are outperforming children whose family trees have deeper roots in the United States, learning more in school and then making smoother transitions into adulthood, according to sociologists at The Johns Hopkins University.

PHILADELPHIA — A syndrome called "post-operative cognitive decline" has been coined to refer to the commonly reported loss of cognitive abilities, usually in older adults, in the days to weeks after surgery. In fact, some patients time the onset of their Alzheimer's disease symptoms from a surgical procedure. Exactly how the trio of anesthesia, surgery, and dementia interact is clinically inconclusive, yet of great concern to patients, their families and physicians.

September 12, 2012. West Orange, NJ. Nancy Chiaravalloti, PhD, an expert in cognitive rehabilitation research, authored two commentaries on trends in multiple sclerosis (MS) research. Dr. Chiaravalloti is director of Neuropsychology & Neuroscience Research at Kessler Foundation. She was recently appointed director of Traumatic Brain Injury Research at the Foundation and also is principal investigator of the Northern New Jersey TBI System, a NIDRR-funded model system. Dr. Chiaravalloti is also an associate professor at UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School.

A new study shows that newborns that have been exposed to nicotine from both active and passive smoking mothers show poor physiological, sensory, motor and attention responses.

SINC

Smoking during pregnancy has been linked to many different problems in infants like learning difficulties, attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity and even obesity.

However, although the paediatric and obstetric disorders linked to tobacco during this stage are well defined, the effects on neonatal behaviour have not yet been studied in depth.

LA JOLLA, CA – Researchers at The Scripps Research Institute have found new links between a protein that controls our urge to eat and brain cells involved in the development of alcoholism. The discovery points to new possibilities for designing drugs to treat alcoholism and other addictions.

The new study, published online ahead of print by the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, focuses on the peptide ghrelin, which is known to stimulate eating.

People who bear the genetic mutation for Huntington's disease learn faster than healthy people. The more pronounced the mutation was, the more quickly they learned. This is reported by researchers from the Ruhr-Universität Bochum and from Dortmund in the journal Current Biology. The team has thus demonstrated for the first time that neurodegenerative diseases can go hand in hand with increased learning efficiency.

Over the past decade, researchers have made great strides in identifying genes that lead to an increased risk of autism spectrum disorders (ASD), which result in a continuum of social deficits, communication difficulties and cognitive delays. But it's still critical to determine how exactly these genetic risk factors impact the brain's structure and function so that better treatments and interventions can be developed.

Researchers have taken a key step towards recovering specific brain functions in sufferers of brain disease and injuries by successfully restoring the decision-making processes in monkeys.

By placing a neural device onto the front part of the monkeys' brains, the researchers, from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Centre, University of Kentucky and University of Southern California, were able to recover, and even improve, the monkeys' ability to make decisions when their normal cognitive functioning was disrupted.

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Sept. 13, 2012 -- Imagine a prosthetic device capable of restoring decision-making in people who have reduced capacity due to brain disease or injury. While this may sound like science fiction, researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have proven for the first time that it is possible in non-human primates, and believe that one day it will be possible in people.

MADISON -- Stress has long been pegged as the enemy of attention, disrupting focus and doing substantial damage to working memory — the short-term juggling of information that allows us to do all the little things that make us productive.

By watching individual neurons at work, a group of psychologists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison has revealed just how stress can addle the mind, as well as how neurons in the brain's prefrontal cortex help "remember" information in the first place.

A transient ischemic attack, TIA or a "mini stroke," can lead to serious disability, but is frequently deemed by doctors too mild to treat, according to a study in the American Heart Association journal Stroke.

Boston, Sept. 13, 2012-- A growing body of research shows that children who suffer severe neglect and social isolation have cognitive and social impairments as adults. A study from Boston Children's Hospital shows, for the first time, how these functional impairments arise: Social isolation during early life prevents the cells that make up the brain's white matter from maturing and producing the right amount of myelin, the fatty "insulation" on nerve fibers that helps them transmit long-distance messages within the brain.

CINCINNATI – New research reveals that fruit flies and mammals may share a surprising evolutionary link in how they control body temperature through circadian rhythm, unlocking new ways to study the insects as models of human development and disease.

In a study at the University of California, San Diego and VA San Diego Healthcare, researchers were able to regenerate "an astonishing degree" of axonal growth at the site of severe spinal cord injury in rats. Their research revealed that early stage neurons have the ability to survive and extend axons to form new, functional neuronal relays across an injury site in the adult central nervous system (CNS).

Moderate exercise may help people cope with anxiety and stress for an extended period of time post-workout, according to a study by kinesiology researchers in the University of Maryland School of Public Health published in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise.