Brain

AURORA, Colo. (Aug. 24, 2011) – A scientist investigating why those with Down syndrome often have poor balance and motor coordination has found that key eye reflexes are substantially altered.

The findings by University of Colorado School of Medicine researcher Alberto Costa, MD, Ph.D., could lead to new tools to assess the effectiveness of new drugs and therapies aimed at improving quality of life for those with this genetic disorder.

It is well established that a mood disorder can increase an individual's risk for substance abuse, but there is also evidence that the converse is true; substance abuse can increase a person's vulnerability to stress-related illnesses. Now, a new study finds that repeated cocaine use increases the severity of depressive-like responses in a mouse model of depression and identifies a mechanism that underlies this cocaine-induced vulnerability.

The hippocampus is a brain structure that plays a major role in the process of memory formation. It is not entirely clear how the hippocampus manages to string together events that are part of the same experience but are separated by "empty" periods of time. Now, new research published by Cell Press in the August 25 issue of the journal Neuron finds that there are neurons in the hippocampus that encode every sequential moment in a series of events that compose a discrete experience.

A new atlas of gene expression in the mouse brain provides insight into how genes work in the outer part of the brain called the cerebral cortex. In humans, the cerebral cortex is the largest part of the brain, and the region responsible for memory, sensory perception and language.

PITTSBURGH—The classic symptoms of schizophrenia – paranoia, hallucinations, the inability to function socially—can be managed with antipsychotic drugs. But exactly how these drugs work has long been a mystery.

Toronto, Canada – Canadian researchers have found the first evidence that older brains get more benefit than younger brains from learning information the hard way – via trial-and-error learning.

The study was led by scientists at Baycrest's world-renowned Rotman Research Institute in Toronto and appears online Aug. 24, 2011 in the journal Psychology and Aging, ahead of the print edition.

DALLAS – Aug. 24, 2011 – Exercise can be as effective as a second medication for as many as half of depressed patients whose condition have not been cured by a single antidepressant medication.

In the second in a series of articles addressing the current challenges and opportunities for the development of Health Policy and Systems Research (HPSR), Lucy Gilson of the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and colleagues argue that insights from the social sciences are vital for advancing the science of HPSR. Such insights include approaches to making generalisations from rich understanding of context, supporting policy learning, and enhancing research rigour and quality.

Men and women differ in the way they anticipate an unpleasant emotional experience, which influences the effectiveness with which that experience is committed to memory, according to new research.

In a new study, women showed heightened neural responses in anticipation of negative experiences, but not positive ones. The neural response during anticipation was related to the success of remembering that event in the future. No neural signature was found during anticipation in either positive or negative experiences in men.

An extreme form of pregnancy-related nausea and vomiting known as hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) takes a heavy toll on thousands of women each year and can lead to hospitalization and pregnancy termination. But new research suggests pregnant women are not the only victims.

A fundamental new discovery about how nerve cells in the brain store and release tiny sacs filled with chemicals may radically alter the way scientists think about neurotransmission – the electrical signaling in the brain that enables everything from the way we move, to how we remember and sense the world.

We make decisions all our lives, so you'd think we'd get better and better at it - research has disagreed and has shown that younger adults are better decision makers than older ones. Some Texas psychologists suspect the experiments were biased toward younger brains.

So, rather than testing the ability to make decisions one at a time without regard to past or future, as earlier research did, these psychologists designed a model requiring participants to evaluate each result in order to determine the next choice, more like decision making in the real world.

Psychologists at the University of Liverpool have found that children as young as two years old have an understanding of complex grammar even before they have learned to speak in full sentences.

Researchers at the University's Child Language Study Centre showed children, aged two, sentences containing made-up verbs, such as 'the rabbit is glorping the duck', and asked them to match the sentence with a cartoon picture. They found that even the youngest two-year-old could identify the correct image with the correct sentence, more often than would be expected by chance.

Seeing and exploring both are necessary for stability in a person's episodic memory when taking in a new experience, say University of Oregon researchers.

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Being able to count helps spotted hyenas decide to fight or flee, according to research at Michigan State University.

When animals fight, the larger group tends to win. In the current issue of Animal Behaviour, Sarah Benson-Amram, an MSU zoology graduate student, showed that hyenas listen to the sound of intruders' voices to determine who has the advantage.

The finding supports the concept that living in complex social groups, as hyenas, lions and chimpanzees do, is one of the keys to the evolution of big brains, Benson-Amram added.