Brain

WEST ORANGE, N.J. -- Warm weather may hinder cognitive performance in people with multiple sclerosis (MS), according to results of a Kessler Foundation study e-published online ahead of print by Neurology. An accompanying editorial by Meier & Christodoulou, MS and heat: The smoke and the fire, details the study's unique aspects, ie, longitudinal followup in a cohort with apparently quiescent disease.

DETROIT — A team of neuroscientists led by a Wayne State University School of Medicine professor has discovered stark developmental differences in brain network function in children of parents with schizophrenia when compared to those with no family history of mental illness.

For every individual who's a victim of Alzheimer's — some 5.4 million persons in the United States alone — there's a related victim: the caregiver. Spouse, son, daughter, other relative or friend, the loneliness, exhaustion, fear and most of all stress and depression takes a toll

While care for the caregivers is difficult to find, a new study out of UCLA suggests that using yoga to engage in very brief, simple daily meditation can lead to improved cognitive functioning and lower levels of depression for caregivers.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—A University of Michigan cell biologist and his colleagues have identified a potential drug that speeds up trash removal from the cell's recycling center, the lysosome.

The finding suggests a new way to treat rare inherited metabolic disorders such as Niemann-Pick disease and mucolipidosis Type IV, as well as more common neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, said Haoxing Xu, who led a U-M team that reported its findings March 13 in the online, multidisciplinary journal Nature Communications.

One of the trickiest parts of treating brain conditions is the blood brain barrier, a blockade of cells that prevent both harmful toxins and helpful pharmaceuticals from getting to the body's control center. But, a technique published in JoVE, uses an MRI machine to guide the use of microbubbles and focused ultrasound to help drugs enter the brain, which may open new treatment avenues for devastating conditions like Alzheimer's and brain cancers.

People often wonder if computers make children smarter. Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, are asking the reverse question: Can children make computers smarter? And the answer appears to be 'yes.'

UC Berkeley researchers are tapping the cognitive smarts of babies, toddlers and preschoolers to program computers to think more like humans.

If replicated in machines, the computational models based on baby brainpower could give a major boost to artificial intelligence, which historically has had difficulty handling nuances and uncertainty, researchers said.

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the eyes and brains of 27 astronauts who have spent prolonged periods of time in space revealed optical abnormalities similar to those that can occur in intracranial hypertension of unknown cause, a potentially serious condition in which pressure builds within the skull. A retrospective analysis of the MRI data appears online in the journal Radiology.

Philadelphia, PA, March 13, 2012 – A new study suggests that administering FTY720, an oral drug that has shown promise in trials for human multiple sclerosis, significantly improves locomotor recovery in mice with spinal cord injury (SCI). The research suggests a possible new avenue to counteract the degeneration of the spinal cord in human SCI. The study will be published in the April 2012 issue of The American Journal of Pathology.

Recent studies by a UT Dallas researcher aim at finding better ways to diagnose young children with language impairments.

LA JOLLA, Calif., March 12, 2012 – Children with multiple hereditary exostoses (MHE), an inherited genetic disease, suffer from multiple growths on their bones that cause pain and disfigurement. But beyond the physical symptoms of this condition, some parents have long observed that their children with MHE also experience autism-like social problems. Buoyed by the support of these parents, researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham) used a mouse model of MHE to investigate cognitive function.

Montreal -- When it comes to prevention of substance use in our tween population, turning our kids on to thought control may just be the answer to getting them to say no.

KINGSTON, R.I. – March 12, 2012 – University of Rhode Island marine biologist Jacqueline Webb gets an occasional strange look when she brings fish to the Orthopedics Research Lab at Rhode Island Hospital. While the facility's microCT scanner is typically used to study bone density and diseases like osteoporosis, it is also providing new insights into the skull structure and sensory systems of fish.

WASHINGTON — Children may perform better in school and feel more confident about themselves if they are told that failure is a normal part of learning, rather than being pressured to succeed at all costs, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

Chicago, IL – March 10, 2012 -- More than two-thirds of human genes have counterparts in the well-studied fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, so although it may seem that humans don't have much in common with flies, the correspondence of our genetic instructions is astonishing. In fact, there are hundreds of inherited diseases in humans that have Drosophila counterparts.

Amsterdam, NL, 9 March 2012 – The number of people with neurological and psychiatric disorders in Spanish-speaking countries has increased over the past two decades. The February issue of NeuroRehabilitation assesses important factors that should be considered in rehabilitating Spanish-speaking individuals suffering from these disorders.