Brain

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Activity lingers longer in certain areas of the brain in those with Alzheimer's than it does in healthy people, Mayo Clinic researchers who created a map of the brain found. The results suggest varying brain activity may reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease. The study, "Non-stationarity in the "Resting Brain's" Modular Architecture," was presented at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference and recently published in the journal PLoS One.

Can you teach an old dog (or human) new tricks? Yes, but it might take time, practice, and hard work before he or she gets it right, according to Hans Schroder and colleagues from Michigan State University in the US. Their work shows that when rules change, our attempts to control our actions are accompanied by a loss of attention to detail. Their work is published online in the Springer journal Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience.

New Orleans, LA – Research conducted by Jesus Lovera, MD, Assistant Professor of Neurology at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans, and colleagues has shown that stress management treatment significantly reduced the formation of new brain lesions in people with multiple sclerosis (MS) over the course of treatment. These lesions are markers of disease activity used to objectively measure disease status. The work is published ahead of print and is now available online in Neurology.

Far from processing every word we read or hear, our brains often do not even notice key words that can change the whole meaning of a sentence, according to new research from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

After a plane crash, where should the survivors be buried?

If you are considering where the most appropriate burial place should be, you are not alone. Scientists have found that around half the people asked this question, answer it as if they were being asked about the victims not the survivors.

In the largest study to examine the impact of the recession on child abuse, researchers at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's (CHOP) PolicyLab detected a significant increase in children admitted to the nation's largest children's hospitals due to serious physical abuse over the last decade. The study, published today in the journal Pediatrics, found a strong relationship between the rate of child physical abuse and local mortgage foreclosures, which have been a hallmark of the recent recession.

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Mayo Clinic researchers have found a novel way to monitor real-time chemical changes in the brains of patients undergoing deep brain stimulation (DBS). The groundbreaking insight will help physicians more effectively use DBS to treat brain disorders such as Parkinson's disease, depression and Tourette syndrome. The findings are published in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

Journalists: For multimedia resources including video of a tremor patient undergoing DBS, visit the Mayo Clinic News Network.

(Edmonton) A new study from the University of Alberta is challenging the notion that teaching the next generation of Sidney Crosbys how to take a bodycheck at an earlier age will help them avoid injury over the long term.

AMES, Iowa -- The April suicide of 14-year-old Kenneth Weishuhn Jr. -- a South O'Brien High School (Paulina, Iowa) student who was reportedly teased and bullied by classmates -- had Iowa lawmakers questioning the effectiveness of the state's five-year-old anti-bullying law. School officials can't always identify the bullies until it's too late.

New Rochelle, NY, July 12, 2012—The profound sense of loss and public mourning that followed the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was a reflection of how great an impact he had on society and on the lives of individuals through the technology he helped to create.

For the first time, scientists in Germany's multiple sclerosis competence network have been able to identify an antibody that bonds with the potassium channel KIR4.1. "We found this autoantibody in almost half of the MS patients in our study," explains Bernhard Hemmer, Professor of Neurology at the Klinikum rechts der Isar hospital at Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM). The biomarker was not present in healthy patients. The findings could therefore indicate that KIR4.1 is one of the targets of the autoimmune response in MS.

Scientists have assembled the most detailed chronology to date of the human brain's long, slow slide into full-blown Alzheimer's disease.

The timeline, developed through research led by scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, appears July 11 in The New England Journal of Medicine.

CHICAGO --- A weekly stress management program for patients with multiple sclerosis (M.S.) prevented the development of new brain lesions, a marker of the disease's activity in the brain, according to new Northwestern Medicine research. Brain lesions in M.S. often precede flare-ups of symptoms such as loss of vision or use of limbs or pain.

MINNEAPOLIS – A new study shows that taking part in a stress management program may help people with multiple sclerosis (MS) prevent new disease activity. The study is published in the July 11, 2012, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

DURHAM, N.C. – Among patients with mild or no cognitive impairment, brain scans using a new radioactive dye can detect early evidence of Alzheimer's disease that may predict future decline, according to a multi-center study led by researchers at Duke University Medical Center.