Brain

A new study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, published online October 26 addresses the influence of age-related stereotypes on memory performance and memory errors in older adults.

Ayanna Thomas, assistant professor of psychology and director of the Cognitive Aging and Memory Lab at Tufts University, and co-author Stacey J. Dubois, a former graduate student at Tufts, set out to investigate how implicitly held negative stereotypes about aging could influence memory performance in older adults.

Friday, Nov. 4, 2011, Cleveland: Old-fashioned "leatherhead" football helmets from the early 1900s are often as effective as – and sometimes better than – modern football helmets at protecting against injuries during routine, game-like collisions, according to Cleveland Clinic researchers.

The study – published online Nov. 4 by the Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine – compared head injury risks of two early 20th Century leatherhead helmets with 11 top-of–the-line 21st Century polycarbonate helmets.

Addictions, phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder—such painful and harmful problems are recalcitrant to treatment. In the clinic, a person may suppress the association between the stimulus and the response—say, a bar with ashtrays and smoking—by learning to pair the stimulus with a new memory not involving smoking. But once out in the world, faced with bars and ashtrays aplenty, he relapses into the old behavior. Some treatment aims at helping the patient avoid locations and stimuli that trigger the harmful behavior.

York, November 3, 2011 – Impulsive individuals tend to display aggressive behavior and have challenges ranging from drug and alcohol abuse, to problem gambling and difficult relationships. They are less able to adapt to different social situations. Impulsivity is also a common feature of psychiatric disorders. New research in Biological Psychiatry shows that people may react this way, in part, because they have lower levels of GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid), the most important inhibitory neurotransmitter, in a specific part of their brain involved in regulating self-control.

RENO, Nev. – Although education is the largest share of state and local government budgets, very little comprehensive information has been available on all 50 states related to state financing policies and programs for public elementary and secondary education. A new study provides comprehensive information on public K-12 education finance systems in each state, presented in themes such as funding for special student populations, accountability and equity issues.

The surgeon carefully guides the endoscope through the patient's nasal cavity to the operation zone. It is a delicate procedure for which the surgeon has to prepare in detail before commencing the actual intervention. Where are the blood vessels that need to be avoided, what is the exact location of the cancerous tissue, and to what depth must the surgeon cut through the brain tissue to expose the area of interest? The camera integrated in the slender endoscope tube enables the surgeon to see every detail in sharp 3-D resolution – almost as if he were actually inside the patient's brain.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) affects about 1 in 100 children resulting in a range of problems in language, communication and understanding other people's emotional cues, all of which can lead to difficulties in social situations. Boys are three to four more times as likely to be affected as girls and consequently it has been suggested that the genes involved in this disorder may be linked to the X chromosome.

Researchers at the University of Chicago have found important new relationships between obesity, sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) and cognitive processing among elementary school children.

The brain is built for cooperative activity, whether it be dancing on a television reality show, constructing a skyscraper or working in an office, according to a study led by Johns Hopkins behavioral neuroscientist Eric Fortune in Science.

Bright light arouses us. Bright light makes it easier to stay awake. Very bright light not only arouses us but is known to have antidepressant effects. Conversely, dark rooms can make us sleepy. It's the reason some people use masks to make sure light doesn't wake them while they sleep.

They demonstrate more specifically that when we need to concentrate, this network disrupts the activation of other specialized neurones when it is not deactivated enough. The results have just been published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Richmond, Va. (November 2, 2011) – Researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center and the VCU Institute of Molecular Medicine have discovered a mechanism by which glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the most common form of brain cancer, promotes the loss of function or death of neurons, a process known as neurodegeneration.

The findings could lead to new therapies that suppress neurodegeneration caused by GBM and, potentially, a variety of other neurodegenerative diseases.

A hard probe inserted in the cerebral cortex of a rat model turns nearly as pliable as the surrounding gray matter in minutes, and induces less of the tough scarring that walls off hard probes that do not change, researchers at Case Western Reserve University have found.

In the first test of the nanocomposite probe inspired by the dynamic skin of the sea cucumber, the immune response differed compared to that of a metal probe, and appeared to enable the brain to heal faster.

The cerebellum is far more intensively involved in helping us navigate than previously thought. To move and learn effectively in spatial environments our brain, and particularly our hippocampus, creates a "cognitive" map of the environment. The cerebellum contributes to the creation of this map through altering the chemical communication between its neurones. If this ability is inactivated, the brain is no longer able to to create an effective spatial representation and thus navigation in an environment becomes impaired.