Brain

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Chronic stress has a more powerful effect on the brain during adolescence than in adulthood and now there's proof at the molecular level, according to findings published in Neuron by University at Buffalo researchers.

WASHINGTON – The methods psychologists and other health-care providers are using to treat immigrants to the United States need to be better tailored to deal with their specific cultures and needs, according to a task force report released by the American Psychological Association.

The report of APA's Presidential Task Force Report on Immigration presents a detailed look at America 's immigrant population and outlines how psychologists can address the needs of immigrants across domains of practice, research, education and policy.

Children of recent immigrants are more likely to make sick visits to the doctor if their mothers see themselves as targets of ethnic or language-based discrimination, researchers at New York University report in a new study. Their research, which appears in the journal Health Psychology, provides new evidence that perceptions of discrimination by a mother could have a negative effect on the health of her child within the first 14 months of her child's life.

Stuck solving a problem? Seek the obscure, says Tony McCaffrey, a psychology PhD from the University of Massachusetts. "There's a classic obstacle to innovation called 'functional fixedness,' which is the tendency to fixate on the common use of an object or its parts. It hinders people from solving problems." McCaffrey has developed a systematic way of overcoming that obstacle: the "generic parts technique" (GPT), which he describes in the latest issue of Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science.

Although many current studies focused on catch up growth (CUG) have described its high susceptibility to insulin resistance-related diseases very few have focused on the effect of CUG on bone metabolism, especially in adulthood. As diet is a controllable factor, the influence of re-feeding with different dietary patterns on bone parameters is important to study. Resveratrol has been attributed a number of beneficial effects in mammals including osteotrophic properties.

PITTSBURGH—Researchers in Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science analyzed millions of Chinese microblogs, or "weibos," to uncover a set of politically sensitive terms that draw the attention of Chinese censors. Individual messages containing the terms were often deleted at rates that could vary based on current events or geography.

Those suffering from nagging tinnitus can benefit from internet-based therapy just as much as patients who take part in group therapy sessions. These are the findings of a German-Swedish study in which patients with moderate to severe tinnitus tried out various forms of therapy over a ten-week period.

Can the song of a small bird provide valuable insights into human stuttering and speech-related disorders and conditions, including autism and stroke? New research by UCLA life scientists and colleagues provides reason for optimism.

Stimulating the brain with a weak electrical current is a safe and effective treatment for depression and could have other surprise benefits for the body and mind, a major Australian study of transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) has found.

Medical researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and the Black Dog Institute in Sydney Australia, have carried out the largest and most definitive study of tDCS and found up to half of depressed participants experienced substantial improvements after receiving the treatment.

SAN FRANCISCO – March 6, 2012 – A new paradigm to explain glaucoma is rapidly emerging, and it is generating brain-based treatment advances that may ultimately vanquish the disease known as the "sneak thief of sight." A review now available in Ophthalmology, the journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, reports that some top researchers no longer think of glaucoma solely as an eye disease. Instead, they view it as a neurologic disorder that causes nerve cells in the brain to degenerate and die, similar to what occurs in Parkinson disease and in Alzheimer's.

Interactive learning with the aid of a computer was the hype of recent years. But as users quickly discovered: learning on a computer monitor is almost as tedious as learning from a book. Media scientist Dr. Martina Lucht from the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT in Ilmenau found the solution to this problem on the street, so to speak: "I found my inspiration one day when I saw a hopscotch game drawn on the sidewalk," she recalls.

Thromboembolic stroke, caused by a blood clot in the brain, results in damage to the parts of the brain starved of oxygen. Breaking up the clot with tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) reduces the amount of damage, however, there is a very short time window when the value of the treatment outweighs the side effects.

Antibodies that block the process of synapse disintegration in Alzheimer's disease have been identified, raising hopes for a treatment to combat early cognitive decline in the disease.

Alzheimer's disease is characterized by abnormal deposits in the brain of the protein Amyloid-ß, which induces the loss of connections between neurons, called synapses.

Getting rid of a protein increases the birth of new nerve cells and shortens the time it takes for antidepressants to take effect, according to an animal study in the March 7 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. The protein, neurofibromin 1, normally helps prevent uncontrolled cell growth. The findings suggest therapeutic strategies aimed at stimulating new nerve cell birth may help treat depression better than current antidepressants that commonly take several weeks to reach full efficacy.

A team of academic researchers has identified the intracellular mechanisms regulated by vitamin D3 that may help the body clear the brain of amyloid beta, the main component of plaques associated with Alzheimer's disease.

Published in the March 6 issue of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, the early findings show that vitamin D3 may activate key genes and cellular signaling networks to help stimulate the immune system to clear the amyloid-beta protein.