Brain

This is the first suggestion of a heritable abnormality in otherwise healthy humans, and this has important implications for our understanding of the genetic basis of cognition.

Dr Josie Briscoe of Bristol's School of Experimental Psychology and colleagues at the Institute of Child Health in London studied eight members of a single family (aged 8 years), who despite all having high levels of intelligence have since childhood, experienced profound difficulties in recalling sentences and prose, and language difficulties in listening comprehension and naming less common objects .

A group of Spanish researchers has discovered a new function of the neurotransmitter dopamine in controlling sleep regulation. Dopamine acts in the pineal gland, which is central to dictating the 'circadian rhythm' in humans—the series of biological processes that enables brain activity to adapt to the time of the day (that is, light and dark cycles).

Researchers at the University of Iowa, together with colleagues from the California Institute of Technology and New York University, have discovered how a part of the brain helps predict future events from past experiences. The work sheds light on the function of the front-most part of the frontal lobe, known as the frontopolar cortex, an area of the cortex uniquely well developed in humans in comparison with apes and other primates.

Pathological rage can be blocked in mice, researchers have found, suggesting potential new treatments for severe aggression, a widespread trait characterized by sudden violence, explosive outbursts and hostile overreactions to stress.

Fish cannot display symptoms of autism, schizophrenia or other human brain disorders. However, a team of MIT biologists has shown that zebrafish can be a useful tool for studying the genes that contribute to such disorders.

Led by developmental biologist Hazel Sive, the researchers set out to explore a group of about two dozen genes known to be either missing or duplicated in about 1 percent of autistic patients. Most of the genes' functions were unknown, but the MIT study revealed that nearly all of them produced brain abnormalities when deleted in zebrafish embryos.

Tampa, FL (June 19, 2012) -- Scientists from the University of South Florida and Fudan University in Shanghai found increases in brain volume and improvements on tests of memory and thinking in Chinese seniors who practiced Tai Chi three times a week, reports an article published today in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.

INDIANAPOLIS -- The first study to examine the actual willingness of older adults to be screened for dementia has found that acceptance of screening is pervasive, although it varies by age. However, willingness to be screened for dementia does not differ by sex, race or income level.

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Human brains process large and small numbers of objects using two different mechanisms, but infants have not yet developed the ability to make those two processes work together, according to new research from the University of Missouri.

PITTSBURGH—Medical institutions have been under pressure to develop and implement policies to avoid conflicts of interest between physicians and pharmaceutical companies. In most cases, medical professionals who have a stake in the issues at hand craft the conflict of interest policies.

Washington D.C., June 19, 2012 – A study published in the June 2012 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry found that young children who have been investigated for maltreatment by child welfare agencies have a higher prevalence of mental health problems and that very few receive treatment for those problems.

Individuals in some species learn information about food, predators, and potential mates indirectly from conspecifics, without taking unnecessary risks by learning directly for themselves ('social learning'). Sarah Zala and Dustin Penn from the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology of the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna investigated whether zebrafish use social learning to assess risk ('boldness/shyness' behaviour). They found that wild zebrafish, which are more timid than their domesticated counterparts, became emboldened after interacting with domesticated zebrafish.

A new study shows that the compound Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ) reduces oxidative damage, a key finding that hints at its potential to slow the progression of Huntington disease. The discovery, which appears in the inaugural issue of the Journal of Huntington's Disease, also points to a new biomarker that could be used to screen experimental treatments for this and other neurological disorders.

Spending money on activities and events, such as concert tickets or exotic vacations, won't make you happier if you're doing it to impress others, according to findings published in the Journal of Happiness Studies.

Research has shown that consumers gain greater happiness from buying life experiences rather than material possessions, but only if they choose experiences for the right reasons says the new study.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- A new study proposes a communication routing strategy for the brain that mimics the American highway system, with the bulk of the traffic leaving the local and feeder neural pathways to spend as much time as possible on the longer, higher-capacity passages through an influential network of hubs, the so-called rich club.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– UC Santa Barbara scientists turned to the simple sponge to find clues about the evolution of the complex nervous system and found that, but for a mechanism that coordinates the expression of genes that lead to the formation of neural synapses, sponges and the rest of the animal world may not be so distant after all. Their findings, titled "Functionalization of a protosynaptic gene expression network," are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.