Brain

If you're a male born to a father who's a strong and enduring community leader, you're far more likely than your less fortunate peers to become a leader yourself, due to the wide range of social advantages accruing from your dad's position.

And even if your old man isn't a leader, other men in your community are more likely to take you under their wing than your sisters, lavishing attention on you and showing you the ropes.

Sound like the basic description of an old boys' network?

WASHINGTON — Educational and business leaders want today's students both to master school subjects and to excel in areas such as problem solving, critical thinking, and communication -- abilities often referred to by such labels as "deeper learning" and "21st-century skills." In contrast to the view that these are general skills that can be applied across a range of tasks in academic, workplace, or family settings, a new report from the National Research Council found that 21st-century skills are specific to content knowledge and performance within a particular subject area.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- A clinical trial of an Alzheimer's disease treatment developed at MIT has found that the nutrient cocktail can improve memory in patients with early Alzheimer's. The results confirm and expand the findings of an earlier trial of the nutritional supplement, which is designed to promote new connections between brain cells.

Toronto – Not all brand–consumer relationships are created equal.

Marketers who realize this will be in a better position to retain customers and improve the perceptions of consumers who are unhappy with a brand's service or product, says a new paper from the University of Toronto.

Consumers form connections with brands in ways that mirror social relationships.How consumers evaluate a brand depends heavily on whether the brand adheres to—or violates—the implicit relationship agreement.

7/10/12, Zurich, Switzerland. Research to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the foremost society for research into all aspects of eating and drinking behavior, finds that prolonged exposure to a high-fat diet reduces the quality of sleep in rats.

Alzheimer's disease is one of the most dreaded and debilitating illnesses one can develop. Currently, the disease afflicts 6.5 million Americans and the Alzheimer's Association projects it to increase to between 11 and 16 million, or 1 in 85 people, by 2050.

Cell death in the brain causes one to grow forgetful, confused and, eventually, catatonic. Recently approved drugs provide mild relief for symptoms but there is no consensus on the underlying mechanism of the disease.

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE: 3 P.M. (CT), MONDAY, JULY 9, 2012

CHICAGO – A study of patients with stroke admitted to English National Health Service public hospitals suggests that patients who were hospitalized on weekends were less likely to receive urgent treatments and had worse outcomes, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Neurology, a JAMA Network publication.

So far it has seemed an irreparable limitation of human perception that we strain to perceive things in the very rapid succession of, say, less than half a second. Psychologists call this deficit "attentional blink." We'll notice that first car spinning out in our path, but maybe not register the one immediately beyond it. It turns out, we can learn to do better after all. In a new study researchers now based at Brown University overcame the blink with just a little bit of training that was never been tried before.

For so many important outcomes in life – applying for jobs, waiting for medical test results – there comes a point when you just have to sit back and hope for the best. But that doesn't mean we always behave that way. New research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that even when an outcome is out of our control we often act as though we can still get on the good side of fate by doing good deeds.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. — A new study of aged female rats found that long-term treatment with estrogen and a synthetic progesterone known as MPA increased levels of a protein marker of synapses in the prefrontal cortex, a brain region known to suffer significant losses in aging.

Nearly a third of adults with the most common type of brain cancer develop recurrent, invasive tumors after being treated with a drug called bevacizumab. The molecular underpinnings behind these detrimental effects have now been published by Cell Press in the July issue of Cancer Cell. The findings reveal a new treatment strategy that could reduce tumor invasiveness and improve survival in these drug-resistant patients.

Stem cells that come from a specific part of the developing brain help fuel the growth of brain tumors caused by an inherited condition, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report.

Scientists showed in mice that disabling a gene linked to a common pediatric tumor disorder, neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1), made stem cells from one part of the brain proliferate rapidly. But the same genetic deficit had no effect on stem cells from another brain region.

AUGUSTA, Ga. – A lipid that helps lotion soften the skin also helps cells find and stay in the right location in the body by ensuring they keep their "antennae" up, scientists report.

Each cell has an antenna, or cilium, that senses the environment then determines where to go and what to do when it arrives, said Dr. Erhard Bieberich, biochemist at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Health Sciences University.

Photographs of faces may not be adequate proof of a person's identity and this could have serious implications for the accuracy of passport photographs in determining identity. Research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) shows that an image of a person may look strikingly different from one image to the next. We are told not to smile in our passport photos as a smile distorts the face; but the opposite may actually be true, and a poker face may be the one which distorts normal facial features.

Amsterdam, NL, July 8, 2012 – In the last ten years, a new understanding of pediatric brain injury and recovery has emerged. Professionals now understand that recovery may be a lifelong process for the child's entire circle of family, friends, and healthcare providers. The latest efforts to advance medical and rehabilitative services to move children from medical care and rehabilitation to community reintegration are discussed by the leading experts in a recently published special issue of NeuroRehabilitation.