Brain

Virtual brains modeling epilepsy and schizophrenia display less complexity among functional connections, and other differences compared to healthy brain models, researchers at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine report.

The researchers worked backward from brain rhythms – the oscillating patterns of electrical activity in the brain recorded on electroencephalograms - from both healthy and ill individuals.

The effects of obesity - both on our bodies and on the health budget - are well known, and now, scientists are getting closer to understanding how the disease progresses, providing clues for future treatments.

In a study, published today in the prestigious journal Cell Metabolism, researchers at Monash University in collaboration with colleagues in the United States, have revealed how resistance to the hormone leptin, a key causal component of obesity, develops.

Scientists have developed a way to evaluate new treatments for some forms of attention deficit disorder.

Working in mice, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis showed that they can use brain scans to quickly test whether drugs increase levels of a brain chemical known as dopamine.

PHILADELPHIA - Recent studies have identified many genes that may put people with schizophrenia at risk for the disease. But, what links genetic differences to changes in altered brain activity in schizophrenia is not clear.

A unique and innovative analysis of how social media can affect the spread of a disease has been designed and implemented by a scientist at Penn State University studying attitudes toward the H1N1 vaccine. Marcel Salathé, an assistant professor of biology, studied how users of Twitter -- a popular microblogging and social-networking service -- expressed their sentiments about a new vaccine. He then tracked how the users' attitudes correlated with vaccination rates and how microbloggers with the same negative or positive feelings seemed to influence others in their social circles.

Bethesda, Md. – Obesity has been associated with cognitive decline, characterized by a deterioration of mental abilities that involve memory, language, and thought-processing speed. But in a study of 300 post-menopausal women included in the Cardiovascular Prevention Program "Corazón Sano," in Argentina, obese participants in the study performed better on three cognitive tests than participants of normal weight, leading researchers to speculate about the role of sex hormones and cognition.

LAWRENCE, Kan. — Grim economic times could cause men to seek more sexual partners, giving them more chances to reproduce, according to research by Omri Gillath, a social psychology professor at the University of Kansas.

Men are likely to pursue short-term mating strategies when faced with a threatening environment, according to sexual selection theory based on evolutionary psychology.

Scientists have improved upon their own previous world-best efforts to pluck out just the right stem cells to address the brain problem at the core of multiple sclerosis and a large number of rare, fatal children's diseases.

It's no secret that long-distance, west-to-east air travel – Seattle to Paris, for example – can raise havoc with a person's sleep and waking patterns, and that the effects are substantially less pronounced when traveling in the opposite direction.

Now researchers, including a University of Washington biologist, have found hints that differing molecular processes in an area of the brain known as the suprachiasmatic nucleus might play a significant role in those jet lag differences.

TORONTO, Ont. -- Researchers at St. Michael's Hospital have found that people who speak more than one language have twice as much brain damage as unilingual people before they exhibit symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. It's the first physical evidence that bilingualism delays the onset of the disease.

"This is unheard of – no medicine comes close to delaying the onset of symptoms and now we have the evidence to prove this at the neuroanatomical level," said Dr. Tom Schweizer, a neuroscientist who headed the research.

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- New research suggests the growth rate of the brain's cerebral cortex in babies born prematurely may predict how well they are able to think, speak, plan and pay attention later in childhood. The research is published in the October 12, 2011, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The cerebral cortex is the outer layer of the brain covering the cerebrum, and is responsible for cognitive functions, such as language, memory, attention and thought.

WASHINGTON, D.C., October 12, 2011—New research findings reported in the October 2011 issue of Educational Researcher highlight differences between LGBTQ- and straight-identified youth in health outcomes and educational equity. The peer-reviewed scholarly journal is one of six published by the American Educational Research Association (AERA).

ROCHESTER, Minn. - Estrogen may prevent strokes in premature or early menopausal women, Mayo Clinic researchers say. Their findings challenge the conventional wisdom that estrogen is a risk factor for stroke at all ages. The study was published in the journal Menopause.

Researchers combined the results from a recent Mayo Clinic study with six other studies from across the world and found that estrogen is protective for stroke before age 50. That is roughly the average age when women go through menopause.

For many poorly understood mental disorders, such as schizophrenia or autism, scientists have wished they could uncover what goes wrong inside the brain before damage ensues.

October 12, 2011-- Research has established that taking folic acid supplements during pregnancy reduces the risk of bearing a child with neural tube defects, but little is known about the relationship between prenatal folic acid and neurodevelopment after birth.