Brain

LOS ANGELES — You're minding your own business when a food craving suddenly hits, and if you just saw an image of a cupcake, or consumed a sugary soda, that may be no accident.

Researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) will present preliminary findings June 26 at the Endocrine Society's annual meeting demonstrating that viewing pictures of high-fat foods and drinking sweetened beverages while viewing the pictures stimulate appetite and reward centers in the brain.

Researchers have discovered how a hormone in the gut slows the rate at which the stomach empties and thus suppresses hunger and food intake. Results of the animal study will be presented Monday at The Endocrine Society's 94th Annual Meeting in Houston.

"The gut hormone glucagon-like peptide 2, or GLP-2, functions as a neurotransmitter and fine-tunes gastric emptying through—as suspected—its receptor action in the brain," said the lead investigator, Xinfu Guan, PhD, assistant professor of pediatrics and medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

Philadelphia, Pa. (June 25, 2012) – Researchers participate in the Electronic Data Methods (EDM) Forum to maximize shared experiences and learning for using electronic clinical data to improve medical care and making informed health decisions. A July supplement to Medical Care is a special 'EDM Forum' issue, highlights key issues researchers are facing, and innovative approaches that have been developed to build the infrastructure and conduct research using electronic clinical data.

A study led by Dr Bryony Hoskins at the University of Southampton for the European Commission (EC) has warned of the dangers of concentrating solely on economic policies to create growth in European countries.

The report Participatory Citizenship in the European Union funded by a €274,996 grant from the EC examines how and to what extent, people in Europe actively take part in society, communities and politics, and identifies any barriers to this.

Deep brain stimulation reduces binge eating in mice, suggesting that this surgery, which is approved for treatment of certain neurologic and psychiatric disorders, may also be an effective therapy for obesity. Presentation of the results will take place Sunday at The Endocrine Society's 94th Annual Meeting in Houston.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – A national survey identifies which U.S. military veterans may be at most risk of aggression after deployment and what strategies could potentially help reduce likelihood of violence when service members return home.

Researchers at Yale School of Medicine have zeroed in on a set of neurons in the part of the brain that controls hunger, and found that these neurons are not only associated with overeating, but also linked to non-food associated behaviors, like novelty-seeking and drug addiction.

Published in the June 24 online issue of Nature Neuroscience, the study was led by Marcelo O. Dietrich, postdoctoral associate, and Tamas L. Horvath, the Jean and David W. Wallace Professor of Biomedical Research and chair of comparative medicine at Yale School of Medicine.

Every day the human brain is presented with tasks ranging from the trivial to the complex. How much mental effort and attention are devoted to each task is usually determined in a split second and without conscious awareness. Now a study from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers finds that a structure deep within the brain, believed to play an important role in regulating conscious control of goal-directed behavior, helps to optimize behavioral responses by predicting how difficult upcoming tasks will be. The report is receiving advance online publication in Nature.

MADISON -- The blood-brain barrier -- the filter that governs what can and cannot come into contact with the mammalian brain -- is a marvel of nature. It effectively separates circulating blood from the fluid that bathes the brain, and it keeps out bacteria, viruses and other agents that could damage it.

But the barrier can be disrupted by disease, stroke and multiple sclerosis, for example, and also is a big challenge for medicine, as it can be difficult or impossible to get therapeutic molecules through the barrier to treat neurological disorders.

Hemimegalencephaly is a rare but dramatic condition in which the brain grows asymmetrically, with one hemisphere becoming massively enlarged. Though frequently diagnosed in children with severe epilepsy, the cause of hemimegalencephaly is unknown and current treatment is radical: surgical removal of some or all of the diseased half of the brain.

EVANSTON, Ill. – Want to nail that tune that you've practiced and practiced? Maybe you should take a nap with the same melody playing during your sleep, new provocative Northwestern University research suggests.

The research grows out of exciting existing evidence that suggests that memories can be reactivated during sleep and storage of them can be strengthened in the process.

Scientists at the University of Copenhagen have previously documented that substances from the South African plant species Crinum and Cyrtanthus – akin to snowdrops and daffodils – have an effect on the mechanisms in the brain that are involved in depression. This research has now yielded further results, since a team based at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences has recently shown how several South African daffodils contain plant compounds whose characteristics enable them to negotiate the defensive blood-brain barrier that is a key challenge in all new drug development.

Tampa, FL (June 22, 2012) – Growth factors shown to cure Alzheimer's disease in a mouse model and administered to cancer patients as part of their treatment regimen were linked to significant improvements in the patients' cognitive function following stem cell transplantation, a preliminary clinical study reports.

The findings by researchers at the USF Health Byrd Alzheimer's Institute and Moffitt Cancer Center are reported online in Brain Disorders & Therapy.

Preventing diabetes or delaying its onset has been thought to stave off cognitive decline -- a connection strongly supported by the results of a 9-year study led by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the San Francisco VA Medical Center.

Researchers in the Biometric Technologies Laboratory at the University of Calgary have developed a way for security systems to combine different biometric measurements—such as eye colour, face shape or fingerprints—and create a learning system that simulates the brain in making decisions about information from different sources.