Brain

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will unleash its Dragon—a NIST invention that bellows showers of glowing embers, or firebrands—at a unique wind tunnel test facility in Japan, where researchers will evaluate the vulnerability of outdoor deck assemblies and materials to ignition during wildfires, a growing peril that accounts for half of the nation's 10 most costly fires.

EVANSTON, Ill. --- The company an adolescent keeps, particularly when it comes to drugs and criminal activity, affects bad behavior. Right?

It all depends, according to a new Northwestern University study "Being in 'Bad' Company: Power Dependence and Status in Adolescent Susceptibility to Peer Influence" which appears in the September issue of Social Psychology Quarterly.

The research, conducted in a primarily Hispanic, low-income neighborhood, looked at diverse groups of friends that included both academically high- and low-achieving kids.

The prescribed use of stimulant medications to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) rose slowly but steadily from 1996 to 2008, according to a study conducted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The study was published online ahead of print September 28, 2011, in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Washington, DC — A protein linked to Alzheimer's disease kills nerve cells that detect odors, according to an animal study in the September 28 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. The findings shed light on why people with Alzheimer's disease often lose their sense of smell early on in the course of the disease.

Six-month-old babies are severely limited in what they can remember about the objects they see in the world; if you hide several objects from an infant, they will only remember one of those objects with any detail. But a new study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that when babies "forget" about an object, not all is lost.

Washington, DC—Researchers at Children's National Medical Center have found that a cholesterol-lowering statin drug appears to be safe in children with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) and may improve learning disabilities, including verbal and nonverbal memory. This is the first time that the drug lovastatin has been studied in children with NF1.

EAST LANSING, Mich. — People may be learning while they're sleeping – an unconscious form of memory that is still not well understood, according to a study by Michigan State University researchers.

The findings are highlighted in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

Adolescents become smarter because they become mentally quicker. That is the conclusion of a new study by a group of psychologists at University of Texas at San Antonio. "Our findings make intuitive sense," says lead author Thomas Coyle, who conducted the study with David Pillow, Anissa Snyder, and Peter Kochunov. But this is the first time psychologists have been able to confirm this important connection. The study appears in the forthcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science.

What type of childcare arrangements do parents choose before their children are 18 months old? Does the choice of childcare affect children's language skills and mental health at the age of five?

These are some of the questions that are explored in a new report prepared by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health as part of a collaborative project with the Ministry of Education and Research. The report indicates that there is no evidence that early centre-based childcare is harmful for most children.

(CHICAGO) – Older people with low blood levels of vitamin B12 markers may be more likely to have lower brain volumes and have problems with their thinking skills, according to researchers at Rush University Medical Center.

The results of the study are published in the Sept. 27 issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Foods that come from animals, including fish, meat, especially liver, milk, eggs and poultry are usual sources of vitamin B12.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new study reveals that distinct networks of genes in the honey bee brain contribute to specific behaviors, such as foraging or aggression, researchers report.

NEW YORK – September 26, 2011 – A study conducted by Columbia Business School Professor Michael Morris, Chavkin-Chang Professor of Leadership, and Emily Amanatullah, now an Assistant Professor of Management at McCombs School of Business of the University of Texas at Austin, finds that while women fare worse economically than men in many distributive negotiations, including salary negotiations, women do not lack the capability or motivation to bargain effectively.

New Rochelle, NY, September 26, 2011—Magnetic resonance tractography (MRT) is a valuable, noninvasive imaging tool for studying human brain anatomy and, as MRT methods and technologies advance, has the potential to yield new and illuminating information on brain activity and connectivity. Critical information about the promise and limitations of this technology is explored in a forward-looking review article in the groundbreaking new neuroscience journal Brain Connectivity, a bimonthly peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.

Medulloblastomas are the most common cancerous (malignant) brain tumors in children. Although survival rates have improved over the years, medulloblastoma remains associated with substantial mortality, and long-term survivors often suffer debilitating effects from the intensive treatments. A team of researchers, led by Cecilia Söderberg-Nauclér and John Inge Johnsen, at the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, has now identified a potential target for a more cancer-specific approach to treating medulloblastoma that they hope could improve patient outcome.

University of Texas at Austin researchers have discovered how to extract and use information in an individual image to determine how far objects are from the focus distance, a feat only accomplished by human and animal visual systems until now.

Like a camera, the human eye has an auto-focusing system, but human auto-focusing rarely makes mistakes. And unlike a camera, humans do not require trial and error to focus an object.