Brain

University of Central Florida researchers, for the first time, have used stem cells to grow neuromuscular junctions between human muscle cells and human spinal cord cells, the key connectors used by the brain to communicate and control muscles in the body.

BEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL -- Female students who were more optimistic achieved significantly higher grades than their less optimistic peers, according to a new study by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers. For male students, however, too much optimism led to overconfidence and less studying, resulting in lower grades.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Girls may be sugar and spice, but "everything nice" takes a back seat when friends let them down.

In a Duke University study out Tuesday, researchers found that pre-teen girls may not be any better at friendships than boys, despite previous research suggesting otherwise. The findings suggest that when more serious violations of a friendship occur, girls struggle just as much and, in some ways, even more than boys.

ST. PAUL, Minn. – Studies have shown that people who are overweight in middle age are more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease decades later than people at normal weight, yet researchers have also found that people in the earliest stages of Alzheimer's disease are more likely to have a lower body mass index (BMI). A current study examines this relationship between Alzheimer's disease and BMI.

Researchers at Rochester Institute of Technology have found that use of a technology-rich learning environment in several undergraduate engineering-technology courses has improved learning and decreased withdrawals from, or failing grades in, the courses.

CHICAGO --- Following a major Northwestern Medicine breakthrough that identified a common converging point for all forms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS and Lou Gehrig's disease), a new finding from the same scientists further broadens the understanding of why cells in the brain and spinal cord degenerate in the fatal disease.

MADISON -- Among the many hurdles to be cleared before human embryonic stem cells can achieve their therapeutic potential is determining whether or not transplanted cells can functionally integrate into target organs or tissues.

Writing today (Monday, Nov. 21) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of Wisconsin scientists reports that neurons, forged in the lab from blank slate human embryonic stem cells and implanted into the brains of mice, can successfully fuse with the brain's wiring and both send and receive signals.

Experienced meditators seem to be able switch off areas of the brain associated with daydreaming as well as psychiatric disorders such as autism and schizophrenia, according to a new brain imaging study by Yale researchers.

The study of a cranium of an East Asian human from the late Middle Pleistocene age from Maba, China, brings to the fore evidence that interhuman aggression and human induced trauma occurred 126,000 years ago.

The report, published on Monday, 21 November 2011, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America suggests that a 14mm ridged, healed lesion with bone depressed inward to the brain resulted from localised blunt force trauma due to an accident or, more probably, interhuman aggression.

In 1991, a team led by Washington University in St. Louis paleoanthropologist Glenn Conroy, PhD, discovered the fossils of the first — and still the only — known pre-human ape ever found south of the equator in Africa after only 30 minutes of searching a limestone cave in Namibia.

Traditionally, fossil-hunters often could only make educated guesses as to where fossils lie. The rest lay with chance — finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.

WASHINGTON -- The less people know about important complex issues such as the economy, energy consumption and the environment, the more they want to avoid becoming well-informed, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

And the more urgent the issue, the more people want to remain unaware, according to a paper published online in APA's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Irvine, Calif., Nov. 21, 2011 — UC Irvine and Italian researchers have discovered a new means of enhancing the effects of anandamide – a natural, marijuana-like chemical in the body that provides pain relief.

Led by Daniele Piomelli, UCI's Louise Turner Arnold Chair in the Neurosciences, the team identified an "escort" protein in brain cells that transports anandamide to sites within the cell where enzymes break it down. They found that blocking this protein – called FLAT – increases anandamide's potency.

Rockville, Md. – Whether comparing a man and a woman or a parent and a baby, we can still see when two people of different age or sex are genetically related. How do we know that people are part of a family? Findings from a new study published in the Journal of Vision increases our understanding of the brain's ability to see through these underlying variations in facial structure.

The structure of the corpus callosum, a thick band of nerve fibres that connects the two halves of the brain with each other and in this way enables the rapid exchange of information between the left and right hemispheres, plays an important role in the regaining of motor skills following a stroke. A study currently published in the journal Human Brain Mapping has shown that in stroke patients with particularly severely impaired hand movement, this communication channel between the two brain hemispheres in particular was badly damaged.