Brain

Moving in harmony can make people feel more connected to one another and, as a result, lead to positive collective action. Think of those feel-good vibes created in a yoga class as students move in unison through their downward-facing dogs. Yet given that synchronized physical activities are also a cornerstone of military training and are the highlights of military propaganda reels, could the interconnectedness created by coordinated action be mined to make people behave destructively instead?

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- Scientists, health officials, and manufacturers already know that a chemical preservative found in some products, including cosmetics, is harmful to people and animals in high concentrations, but a new Brown University study in tadpoles reports that it can also interrupt neurological development even in very low concentrations.

Will borrowing money to buy a new car make you feel richer? It depends on your net worth, says a new study in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science. "People's perceptions of wealth vary not only as a function of their net worth, but also of the amount of assets and debt they have," says Princeton University psychology graduate student Abigail B. Sussman, who wrote the study with Princeton professor Eldar Shafir.

EAST LANSING, Mich. — The Eastern view of parenting, as defined by best-selling author and self-described "tiger mother" Amy Chua, is that children should be pushed to excel at all costs. Parents needn't worry about their happiness, she argues, only their success.

But now a Michigan State University scholar is refuting that theory.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – New research at Oregon State University provides evidence for the first time that disruption of circadian rhythms – the biological "clocks" found in many animals – can clearly cause accelerated neurodegeneration, loss of motor function and premature death.

The study was published in Neurobiology of Disease and done by researchers at OSU and Oregon Health and Science University. Prior to this, it wasn't clear which came first - whether the disruption of biological clock mechanisms was the cause or the result of neurodegeneration.

Daejeon, Republic of Korea, January 10, 2012—Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) announced today that its research team headed by Professor Howon Lee from the IT Convergence Research Institute has developed a technology that will make reading on smartphones and tablet PCs easier than now.

The technology, called the "Smart E-book System," allows users of smartphones and tablet PCs to effortlessly flip through the pages of an e-book or cross-reference its contents, just as they would with paper-based books and magazines.

Fusion plasma researchers at the University of Warwick have teamed up with Cambridge neuroscientists to apply their expertise developed to study inaccessible fusion plasmas in order to significantly improve the understanding of the data obtained from non-invasive study of the fast dynamics of networks in the human brain.

For immediate release - January 10 - (Toronto) – In a new study from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), people with schizophrenia showed greater brain activity during tests that induce a brief, mild form of delusional thinking. This effect wasn't seen in a comparison group without schizophrenia.

The study appears in the December issue of Biological Psychiatry.

Wearing a nicotine patch may help improve memory loss in older adults with mild cognitive impairment, according to a study published today in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

The study looked at individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), the stage between normal aging and dementia when others begin to notice that an individual is developing mild memory or thinking problems. Many older adults with MCI go on to develop Alzheimer's disease.

Researchers have discovered that children under the age of two control speech using a different strategy than previously thought.

During the study at Queen's University, the researchers changed the vowel sounds that the participants heard over headphones as they talked. They found that while the adults and young children changed their vowel sounds in response to this altered feedback, the toddlers did not.

URBANA – Who knew that male fertility depends on sperm-cell architecture? A University of Illinois study reports that a certain omega-3 fatty acid is necessary to construct the arch that turns a round, immature sperm cell into a pointy-headed super swimmer with an extra long tail.

"Normal sperm cells contain an arc-like structure called the acrosome that is critical in fertilization because it houses, organizes, and concentrates a variety of enzymes that sperm use to penetrate an egg," said Manabu Nakamura, a U of I associate professor of biochemical and molecular nutrition.

Researchers at the University of Iowa have worked out the exact function of an enzyme that is critical for normal muscle structure and is involved in several muscular dystrophies. The findings, which were published Jan. 6 in the journal Science, could be used to develop rapid, large-scale testing of potential muscular dystrophy therapies.

Amsterdam, NL, January 9, 2011 – The pathology of Parkinson's disease is characterized by a loss of dopamine-producing neurons in the pars compacta of the substantia nigra (SN), an area of the brain associated with motor control, along with the development of α-synuclein (αS) protein in the form of Lewy bodies (LB) in the neurons that survive. The spread of LB pathology is thought to progress along with the clinical course of Parkinson's disease, although recent studies suggest that they are not the toxic cause of cell death.

Increased life expectancy implies fundamental changes in the composition of populations, with a significant rise in the number of elderly people. These changes are likely to have a massive influence on the life of individuals and on society in general. Abundant evidence has clearly established an inverse association between age and cognitive performance, but the age at which cognitive decline begins is much debated. Recent studies concluded that there was little evidence of cognitive decline before the age of 60.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Objects that resemble faces are everywhere. Whether it's New Hampshire's erstwhile granite "Old Man of the Mountain," or Jesus' face on a tortilla, our brains are adept at locating images that look like faces. However, the normal human brain is almost never fooled into thinking such objects actually are human faces.

"You can tell that it has some 'faceness' to it, but on the other hand, you're not misled into believing that it is a genuine face," says Pawan Sinha, professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT.