Brain

HANOVER, N.H. - Thinking about drawing to an inside straight or playing another longshot? Just remember that while human decision-making is biased by potential rewards, what we know about individual cues that help us to make those decisions is biased toward failure, a Dartmouth College study finds.

The study appears in the journal Nature Communications. A PDF is available on request.

PHILADELPHIA, PA (April 26, 2016) - Millions of those infected with HIV worldwide are young women, ages 15-24, according to the World Health Organization. Because the HIV epidemic overlaps with an epidemic of intimate partner violence (IPV) against women and girls, researchers have suspected a correlation between inequities in relationship power and the risky sexual behavior that can lead to HIV transmission.

The Allen Institute for Brain Science has announced major updates to its online resources available at "brain-map.org">brain-map.org, including a new resource on Aging, Dementia and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) in collaboration with UW Medicine researchers at the University of Washington, and Group Health. The resource is the first of its kind to collect and share a wide variety of data modalities on a large sample of aged brains, complete with mental health histories and clinical diagnoses.

EAST LANSING, Mich. -- Schools that provide each student with a laptop computer, as well as the appropriate support for both students and teachers, see significant improvement in academic achievement, a new paper indicates.

Michigan State University's Binbin Zheng and colleagues analyzed years of studies on "one-to-one" laptop programs, including Zheng's own research, and found that such programs that take a comprehensive approach were linked to higher test scores in English, math, science and writing, along with other benefits.

A study led by researchers at Lund University in Sweden shows that ravens are as clever as chimpanzees, despite having much smaller brains, indicating that rather than the size of the brain, the neuronal density and the structure of the birds' brains play an important role in terms of their intelligence.

"Absolute brain size is not the whole story. We found that corvid birds performed as well as great apes, despite having much smaller brains", says Can Kabadayi, doctoral student in Cognitive Science.

The discovery of brain pathology through autopsy in former National Football League (NFL) players called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) has raised substantial concern among players, medical professionals, and the general public about the impact of repetitive head trauma. Using sophisticated neuroimaging and analytics, researchers have now identified abnormal areas of low blood flow in living professional football players.

Putnam Valley, NY. (April 26, 2016) - Researchers testing the potential positive effects of "micro-injury" by brief insertion of a small needle into the hippocampal region of mice modeled with Alzheimer's disease (AD) have found that the procedure not only stimulated the hippocampus into regenerative activity, but also reduced β-amyloid plaques, a hallmark of AD.

Philadelphia, PA, April 26, 2016 - A new study in Biological Psychiatry reports structural brain damage from an autoimmune encephalitis that impairs behavior in ways that are somewhat similar to the effects of "angel dust".

An international evidence review has found that certain nutritional supplements can increase the effectiveness of antidepressants for people with clinical depression.

Omega 3 fish oils, S-adenosylmethionine (SAMe)*, methylfolate (bioactive form of folate) and Vitamin D, were all found to boost the effects of medication.

Children whose mothers were nurturing during the preschool years, as opposed to later in childhood, have more robust growth in brain structures associated with learning, memory and stress response than children with less supportive moms, according to research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

"This study suggests there's a sensitive period when the brain responds more to maternal support," said first author Joan L. Luby, MD, a Washington University child psychiatrist at St. Louis Children's Hospital.

Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease are the two most common neurodegenerative disorders worldwide and cause untold suffering to millions of patients and their families. Treatments for these diseases are limited, and no cures exist. Now, a new study describes an innovative strategy that reverses symptoms in these neurodegenerative diseases - at least in fruit flies which had been genetically altered to model the diseases.

NEW YORK, NY (April 25, 2016)--Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) have found evidence in mice that, for some types of autism, gastrointestinal difficulties may originate from the same genetic changes that lead to the behavioral and social characteristics of the condition. The study was published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

This article presents a new theory of animal (metazoan) evolution, suggesting that it was partly mediated through a biochemical oscillator (cycler), named Life's Timekeeper, present in all animal cells. The cycler controls cell maintenance and repair, thereby determining how long cells survive (longevity). It originated in the single-celled ancestor of all animals, which had very short cell longevity. Animal evolution progressed by extending cell longevity, and this was mediated by extended cycle time of the oscillator.

Rock your baby in sync with music and you may wonder how the experience affects her and her developing brain.

A new study by scientists at the University of Washington's Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS) shows that a series of play sessions with music improved 9-month-old babies' brain processing of both music and new speech sounds.

Researchers at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute (BSI) in Japan have demonstrated that astrocytes help control the strength of connections between neurons. Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study used cultured cells and brain slices to show that astrocytes in the hippocampus regulate changes in the brain brought on by neural activity.