Brain

Eyewitnesses remember the faces of black suspects less accurately in drive-by shootings than they do in serial killings.

Their memories are further skewed when the victims are women or white males, psychology researchers at UBC's Okanagan campus have found.

"What this study shows is that the memory of an eyewitness is heavily influenced by the type of crime that was committed," says Prof. Paul Davies. "In crimes such as drive-by shootings, typically associated with black males, eyewitnesses overwhelmingly remembered the black suspect's face incorrectly.

In a joint project between the Universities of Liverpool and Manchester researchers have examined the initial trial of a smartphone application designed to help people manage their problems.

The 'Catch It' app uses some of the key principles of psychological approaches to mental health and well-being, and specifically Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). Helping users better understand their moods through use of an ongoing diary.

SAN ANTONIO, Texas -- Individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) relive past traumas again and again, bound in a virtual prison of their memories.

Researchers in the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio now report a biological mechanism that might explain why these individuals are less able to extinguish the fear of past dangers.

Crowdsourcing has brought us Wikipedia and ways to understand how HIV proteins fold. It also provides an increasingly effective means for teams to write software, perform research or accomplish small repetitive digital tasks.

However, most tasks have proven resistant to distributed labor, at least without a central organizer. As in the case of Wikipedia, their success often relies on the efforts of a small cadre of dedicated volunteers. If these individuals move on, the project becomes difficult to sustain.

HOUSTON, May 12, 2016 - While much has been made about the dangers of texting and driving, less attention has been focused on the age-old distractions of being absent minded or upset while driving. A team of researchers from the University of Houston (UH) and the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) focused on all three of these important factors.

Mouse fetuses injected with the Asian Zika virus strain and carried to term within their pregnant mothers display the characteristic features of microcephaly, researchers in China report May 11 in Cell Stem Cell. As expected, the virus infected the neural progenitor cells, and infected brains reveal expression of genes related to viral entry, altered immune response, and cell death. The authors say this is direct evidence that Zika infection causes microcephaly in a mammalian animal model.

Two mouse models of Zika virus infection in pregnancy have been developed by a team of researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. In them, the virus migrated from the pregnant mouse's bloodstream into the placenta, where it multiplied, then spread into the fetal circulation and infected the brains of the developing pups.

The models provide a basis to develop vaccines and treatments, and to study the biology of Zika virus infection in pregnancy.

The research is published May 11 in Cell.

Taking lithium was associated with reduced rates of self-harm and unintentional injury in patients with bipolar disorder compared with other commonly prescribed maintenance treatments, according to an article published online by JAMA Psychiatry.

Thanks to positron emission tomography (PET) imaging of tau, which has only recently become available, researchers now report that tau tangles provide a good indication of cognitive decline in later stages of the disease. The study, performed in 10 patients, suggests that while ß-amyloid remains a critical marker for early detection of Alzheimer's, tau may be more useful for tracking disease progression and, potentially, patient response to therapies.

Platelet Transfusion in Intracerebral Hemorrhage (PATCH)

Principal Investigators: Prof Yvo Roos, Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands; Prof Charlotte Cordonnier, INSERM, the University of Lille, France; Prof Rustam Al-Shahi, Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences, University of Edinburgh, UK

Banner of the Second European Stroke Conference in Barcelona. Credit: ESO

A new study from IMC researchers Kristian Tylén, Riccardo Fusaroli, and Andreas Roepstorff, published in the scientific journal NeuroImage, used LEGO bricks to investigate the neurocognitive underpinnings of our engagements with symbolic objects. The study suggests that we experience symbolic objects as social entities.

A new discovery could help people suffering with single-sided deafness (SSD) find a treatment quicker - and could potentially lead to a cure.

SSD affects around 9,000 people per year in the UK, and around 60,000 per year in the US. It can be caused by a number of things - from viral infections to brain tumours - and is currently incurable and difficult to treat. Symptoms of SSD include impaired hearing, difficulty filtering out background noise, and difficulty determining sound direction.

The Zika virus strain circulating in Brazil was shown to be able to infect and cause damage to mice fetuses. In stem cell cultures of the human nervous system, the virus infection resulted in the cell death. Compared to the virus circulating in Africa, the Brazilian version appears more lethal to cells that later in development would give rise to the variety that makes up the brain.

Wide variations can be seen in how far citizens from different countries evade tax. While this can be attributed to how well institutions deter tax avoidance through audits and fines, cultural differences may also play a part.

The online world is full of risky situations for teens, but allowing them to gradually build their own coping strategies may be a better parental strategy than forbidding internet use, according to ateam of researchers.