Brain

WASHINGTON – Men like to know when their wife or girlfriend is happy while women really want the man in their life to know when they are upset, according to a new study published by the American Psychological Association.

The study involved a diverse sample of couples and found that men's and women's perceptions of their significant other's empathy, and their abilities to tell when the other is happy or upset, are linked to relationship satisfaction in distinctive ways, according to the article published online in the Journal of Family Psychology.

LMU researchers developed a new strategy for the treatment of stroke, which could help to improve blood flow to ischemic brain. Strokes are due to a localized reduction in the blood supply to the brain, mainly due to the blockage of a vessel by a blood clot. This can lead to the death and irreversible loss of nerve cells. In about 90% of cases, no dedicated treatment is available that can effectively prevent serious damage following an acute stroke.

SALT LAKE CITY – University of Utah engineers designed a new kind of video game controller that not only vibrates like existing devices, but pulls and stretches the thumb tips in different directions to simulate the tug of a fishing line, the recoil of a gun or the feeling of ocean waves.

"I'm hoping we can get this into production when the next game consoles come out in a couple of years," says William Provancher, an associate professor of mechanical engineering who is in Vancouver, British Columbia, demonstrating the new game controller with his students March 5-7.

Berkeley – Opening the door to the development of thought-controlled prosthetic devices to help people with spinal cord injuries, amputations and other impairments, neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Portugal have demonstrated that the brain is more flexible and trainable than previously thought.

The University of Notre Dame's annual Bengal Bouts student boxing tournament's longtime mantra is "Strong Bodies Fight that Weak Bodies May Be Nourished."

The unusual mantra is fitting for an unusual competition whose ticket sales proceeds benefit Holy Cross Missions in Bangladesh, part of the ministry of the Congregation for the Holy Cross, Notre Dame's founding religious community.

However, this year a large number of Bengal Bouts boxers are going even further to do good by volunteering to participate in post-bout concussion testing.

Our senses aren't just delivering a strict view of what's going on in the world; they're affected by what's going on in our heads. A new study finds that hungry people see food-related words more clearly than people who've just eaten. The study, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that this change in vision happens at the earliest, perceptual stages, before higher parts of the brain have a chance to change the messages coming from the eyes.

A University of Alberta research team has discovered that technology commonly used to decontaminate food industry equipment can also rid meat processing plants of lethal microbial material responsible for the human version of the ailment Mad Cow disease.

U of A microbiology professors Mike Belosevic and Norm Neumann and engineering professor Mohamed Gamal El-Din demonstrated that infectious proteins found in the brain matter of cattle can be eradicated from water treated with ozone.

Philadelphia, PA, March 2, 2012 – Impaired social function is a cardinal symptom of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). One of the brain circuits that enable us to relate to other people is the "mirror neuron" system. This brain circuit is activated when we watch other people, and allows our brains to represent the actions of others, influencing our ability to learn new tasks and to understand the intentions and experiences of other people.

Emotion-sensing computer software that models and responds to students' cognitive and emotional states – including frustration and boredom – has been developed by University of Notre Dame Assistant Professor of Psychology Sidney D'Mello and colleagues from the University of Memphis and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. D'Mello also is a concurrent assistant professor of computer science and engineering.

A deterioration of working memory is observed in people who consume drugs containing cannabinoid compounds found in cannabis leaves and buds. A team led by Giovanni Marsicano (Inserm Research Unit 862) in collaboration with a team led by Xia Zhang, has recently identified the mechanism by which these substances affect working memory. These researchers have demonstrated for the first time that the adverse effect of cannabinoids on working memory is exerted via receptors located in the glial cells (brain cells present in large numbers and scarcely studied).

Upon fertilisation, a single cell is formed when egg and sperm fuse. Our entire body, with more than 200 specialised cell types and billions of cells are formed from this single cell. It is a scientific mystery how the early stem cells know what cell type to become, but a precise timing of the process is crucial for correct development and function of our body. Researchers across the world chase knowledge about our stem cells, as this knowledge holds great promises for development of treatment against several major diseases.

PITTSBURGH -- A powerful new imaging technique called High Definition Fiber Tracking (HDFT) will allow doctors to clearly see for the first time neural connections broken by traumatic brain injury (TBI) and other disorders, much like X-rays show a fractured bone, according to researchers from the University of Pittsburgh in a report published online today in the Journal of Neurosurgery.

If someone has trouble remembering where the car keys or the cheese grater are, new research shows that a memory training strategy can help. Memory training can even re-engage the hippocampus, part of the brain critical for memory formation, the results suggest.

The longer you have diabetes, the higher your risk for stroke, according to a study in Stroke, an American Heart Association journal.

In the study, diabetes increased stroke risk 3 percent each year and tripled the risk for people who had diabetes for 10 years or more, compared to people without diabetes.

The association of the inhaled anesthetic isoflurane with Alzheimer's-disease-like changes in mammalian brains may by caused by the drug's effects on mitochondria, the structures in which most cellular energy is produced. In a study that will appear in Annals of Neurology and has received early online release, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers report that administration of isoflurane impaired the performance of mice on a standard test of learning and memory – a result not seen when another anesthetic, desflurane, was administered.