Brain

When our livers become loaded with fat, it isn't because they are slacking. A new study of human patients in the December Cell Metabolism shows that fatty livers actually burn more fat, not less. All that "hard work" may be at the root of the organ damage that comes with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), a condition associated with insulin resistance that affects about one in three in the U.S. population.

Montreal -- Babies love to imitate. Ask any parent and they'll report how infants mimic sounds, facial expressions and actions they observe. Now new research from Concordia University, published in the journal Infant Behavior and Development, has found that infants can even differentiate between credible and un-credible sources. Simply put, most babies won't follow along if they have been previously tricked by an adult.

Quebec City -- Researchers from the CHUQ research center and Université Laval have discovered the likely cause of essential tremor (ET), a neurological disorder that affects more than 10 million North Americans. The team's promising findings were published in a recent edition of the scientific journal Brain.

Frequently confused with Parkinson's disease, ET is the most common involuntary movement disorder. An estimated 4% of the population over 40 is affected by this neurological condition which manifests as muscle tremors, normally in the face, neck, and vocal chords.

Innovative software to help teachers stay at the forefront of the digital revolution in education has been developed by researchers funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Santa Barbara, Calif. –– Thanks to a new study of the retina, scientists at UC Santa Barbara have developed a greater understanding of how the nervous system becomes wired during early development.

The findings reflect the expansion of developmental neurobiology and vision research at UCSB. The work is described in a recent publication of the Journal of Neuroscience.

Philadelphia, PA, December 6, 2011 – Laquinimod is an orally available synthetic compound that has been successfully evaluated in phase II/III clinical studies for the treatment of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS).

News of employee misconduct always creates a whirlwind for the companies involved — think of Enron, Goldman Sachs and UBS, for example. But are these firms responsible for the actions of their employees? Or do individual members have distinct and independent responsibility separate from a group's actions? New research from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and Boston College find that members of a cohesive group are judged to have less responsibility for their own individual actions.

Adolescents who were abused and neglected have less gray matter in some areas of the brain than young people who have not been maltreated, a new Yale School of Medicine study shows.

The brain areas impacted by maltreatment may differ between boys and girls, may depend on whether the youths had been exposed to abuse or neglect, and may be linked to whether the neglect was physical or emotional.

Recreational use of Ecstasy – the illegal "rave" drug that produces feelings of euphoria and emotional warmth – is associated with chronic changes in the human brain, Vanderbilt University investigators have discovered.

The findings, reported online Dec. 5 in the Archives of General Psychiatry, add to the growing evidence that Ecstasy produces long-lasting serotonin neurotoxicity in humans, said Ronald Cowan, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of Psychiatry.

CHICAGO – Over a 10-year period, spending for Medicaid-enrolled patients with depression increased substantially but only minimal improvements in quality of care were observed, according to a report in the December issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Children who experience the stress of separation at birth from biological parents and are brought up in orphanages undergo biological consequences such as changes in their genome functioning, Yale School of Medicine researchers report in a new study.

SEATTLE – December 5, 2011 – More than half a million children in the U.S. sustain a traumatic brain injury (TBI) every year. Adults who suffer TBI often report headaches afterward, but little is known about how often children suffer headaches after similar injuries. In a significant new study, "Headache After Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury: A Cohort Study," researchers analyzed the prevalence of headaches three and 12 months after mild, moderate or severe TBI in children ages 5 to 17, and discovered the risk of headache was higher in adolescents (ages 13 to 17) and in girls.

Researchers have identified the area of the brain that controls our ability to correct our movement after we've been hit or bumped -- a finding that may have implications for understanding why subjects with stroke often have severe difficulties moving.

The fact that humans rapidly correct for any disturbance in motion demonstrates the brain understands the physics of the limb – scientists just didn't know what part of the brain supported this feedback response – until now.

When children have been exposed to family violence, their brains become increasingly "tuned" for processing possible sources of threat, a new study reports. The findings, reported in the December 6th issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, reveal the same pattern of brain activity in these children as seen previously in soldiers exposed to combat.

The study is the first to apply functional brain imaging to explore the impact of physical abuse or domestic violence on the emotional development of children, according to the researchers.

How we perceive motion is a significantly more complex process than previously thought, researchers at New York University's Center for Neural Science, Stanford University and the University of Washington have found. Their results, which appear in the journal Current Biology, show that the relationship between the brain and visual perception varies, depending on the type of motion we are viewing.