Brain

Poor Phineas Gage. In 1848, the supervisor for the Rutland and Burlington Railroad in Vermont was using a 13-pound, 3-foot-7-inch rod to pack blasting powder into a rock when he triggered an explosion that drove the rod through his left cheek and out of the top of his head. As reported at the time, the rod was later found, "smeared with blood and brains."

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Navy pilots and other flight specialists soon will have a new "smart machine" installed in training simulators that learns from expert instructors to more efficiently train their students.

Scientists at Queen Mary, University of London have shown that zebrafish could be used to study the underlying causes of psychiatric disorders.

The study, published online in the journal Behavioural Brain Research, found zebrafish can modify their behaviour in response to varying situations.

• The system doctors use to classify patients' malignant brain tumors is outdated.
• Researchers have revised the system to accommodate treatment advances and molecular markers.
• The new system will be validated in future clinical trials for malignant gliomas.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Radiation oncology researchers have revised the system used by doctors since the 1990s to determine the prognosis of people with glioblastoma, which is the most devastating of malignant brain tumors.

In 1848, railroad worker Phineas Gage survived a severe brain injury when a tamping rod shot through his skull, resulting in significant behavioral changes. In a new study, reported May 16 in the open access journal PLoS ONE, researchers have used CT images of his skull in conjunction with MRI and connectomic brain imaging data of living subjects to reconstruct the injury and investigate which regions of the brain were affected to result in the behavioral changes.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), long the master reference work in psychiatry, is seriously flawed and needs radical change from its current "field guide" form, according to an essay by two Johns Hopkins psychiatrists published in the May 17 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

It used to be accepted that athletes who were not all that bright chose sports for that reason; it was a great equalizer for success. The point has merit. The number of millionaire athletes versus millionaire neurologists shows athletes way ahead.

But maybe athletes are not poor students because they went into athletics due to being poor students - maybe the sports made them that way.

A new study suggests that head impacts experienced during contact sports such as football and hockey may worsen some college athletes' ability to acquire new information.

(Boston) – Investigators from Boston University (BU) and the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System have shown evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in brain tissue from blast-exposed military service personnel. Laboratory experiments conducted by the investigators demonstrated that exposure to a single blast equivalent to a typical improvised explosive device (IED) results in CTE and long-term brain impairments that accompany the disease.

A team of investigators have shown evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in brain tissue from blast-exposed military service personnel.

Using gene transfer techniques pioneered by University of Florida faculty, Taiwanese doctors have restored some movement in four children bedridden with a rare, life-threatening neurological disease.

The first-in-humans achievement may also be helpful for more common diseases such as Parkinson's that involve nerve cell damage caused by lack of a crucial molecule in brain tissue. The results are reported today (May 16) in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

WASHINGTON -- More than 4,000 psychological scientists, academics, clinicians, researchers, teachers, and administrators from 85 countries will gather in Chicago for the Association for Psychological Science's 24th annual convention May 23-27, 2012 at the Sheraton Chicago.

Culture and ethnicity drive many human processes – including science. (Section I, below.)

A concert with a former guitarist from the Black Eyed Peas and a five-time Grammy Award winning bassist will share the stage with musically talented scientists to discuss and explore music and the mind. (II)

T2 performed the session in this study on his fourth day of interacting with the arm; the prior three sessions were focused on system development. Using his eyes to indicate each letter, he later described his control of the arm: "I just imagined moving my own arm and the [DEKA] arm moved where I wanted it to go."

In an ongoing clinical trial, a paralyzed woman was able to reach for and sip from a drink on her own – for the first time in nearly 15 years – by using her thoughts to direct a robotic arm. The trial, funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, is evaluating the safety and feasibility of an investigational device called the BrainGate neural interface system. This is a type of brain-computer interface (BCI) intended to put robotics and other assistive technology under the brain's control.

Common variants of the ApoE gene are strongly associated with the risk of developing late-onset Alzheimer's disease, but the gene's role in the disease has been unclear. Now, researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have found that in mice, having the most risky variant of ApoE damages the blood vessels that feed the brain.

DURHAM, N.C. – What can a fish tell us about human brain development? Researchers at Duke University Medical Center transplanted a set of human genes into a zebrafish and then used it to identify genes responsible for head size at birth.

Researchers at Duke University Medical Center transplanted a set of human genes into a zebrafish and then used it to identify genes responsible for head size at birth.