Brain

Women 65 or older who have even mild retinopathy, a disease of blood vessels in the retina, are more likely to have cognitive decline and related vascular changes in the brain, according to a multi-institutional study led by scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

The findings suggest that a relatively simple eye screening could serve as a marker for cognitive changes related to vascular disease, allowing for early diagnosis and treatment, potentially reducing the progression of cognitive impairment to dementia.

MADISON -- Huntington's disease, the debilitating congenital neurological disorder that progressively robs patients of muscle coordination and cognitive ability, is a condition without effective treatment, a slow death sentence.

But if researchers can build on new research reported this week (March 15, 2012) in the journal Cell Stem Cell, a special type of brain cell forged from stem cells could help restore the muscle coordination deficits that cause the uncontrollable spasms characteristic of the disease.

Bilingual immigrants are healthier than immigrants who speak only one language, according to new research from sociologists at Rice University.

The study, which appears in the March issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, found that people with strong English and native language proficiencies report better physical and mental health than unilingual immigrants.

Light-to-moderate alcohol consumption has been consistently associated with lower risk of heart disease, but data for stroke are less certain, especially among women.

New Haven, Conn. — Exposure to radiation from cell phones during pregnancy affects the brain development of offspring, potentially leading to hyperactivity, Yale School of Medicine researchers have determined.

The results, based on studies in mice, are published in the March 15 issue of Scientific Reports, a Nature publication.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- To help promote peace in the Middle East, many organizations have established "peace camps" or similar conflict-resolution programs that bring Israelis and Palestinians together to foster greater understanding of the opposing group.

Psychiatry is employing smartphone technology as an innovative tool in the assessment and treatment of schizophrenia and other serious mental illness. Prominent in this endeavor is Dror Ben-Zeev, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Dartmouth Medical School and director of the Thresholds-Dartmouth Research Center in Chicago.

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. (March 15, 2012) -- The genetic pathway that regulates the way cells align themselves relative to each other has been found to act as a "stop sign" that signals organisms when to halt cell growth, according to new research published by biologists at the Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology in Tufts University's School of Arts and Sciences.

Researchers have taken another crack at a promising approach to stopping Alzheimer's disease that encountered a major hurdle last year. In research published this week in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, scientists have developed a compound that targets a molecular actor known as RAGE, which plays a central role in mucking up the brain tissue of people with the disease.

Just looking at images of food can change our taste experience, according to research published Mar. 14 in the open access journal PLoS ONE.

The authors of the study, led by Johannes le Coutre of the Nestlé Research Center in Switzerland, found that participants reported tastes to be more pleasant when preceded by images of high-calorie foods, such as pizza or pastry, as compared to low-calorie foods like watermelon or green beans.

In response to a 2011 study suggesting the existence of precognition, or the ability to predict future events using psychic powers, a new group of researchers report that attempts to replicate the previous results were unsuccessful.

These results therefore do not support the previous claims for the existence of psychic ability. The full report is published Mar. 14 in the open access journal PLoS ONE.

Japanese honeybees face a formidable foe in the Asian giant hornet, a fierce predator that can reach 40mm long or larger, but the bees have developed a novel defense mechanism: they create a "hot defensive bee ball," swarming around the hornet and literally cooking it.

Now, a new study published Mar. 14 in the open access journal PLoS ONE uncovers some of the neural activity that underlies this unusual behavior, which is not practiced by the Japanese honeybee's European relative.

A study by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and The University of Minnesota indicates that a parent's weight change is a key contributor to the success of a child's weight loss in family-based treatment of childhood obesity. The results were published today in the advanced online edition of the journal Obesity.

ST. PAUL, Minn. – People with mild vascular disease that causes damage to the retina in the eye are more likely to have problems with thinking and memory skills because they may also have vascular disease in the brain, according to a study published in the March 14, 2012, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Damage to the retina is called retinopathy. In the study, the damage was mild enough to not cause significant symptoms.

Princeton University researchers have used a novel virtual reality and brain imaging system to detect a form of neural activity underlying how the brain forms short-term memories that are used in making decisions.

By following the brain activity of mice as they navigated a virtual reality maze, the researchers found that populations of neurons fire in distinctive sequences when the brain is holding a memory. Previous research centered on the idea that populations of neurons fire together with similar patterns to each other during the memory period.