Brain

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Psychologists at the University of Missouri have identified the beginning of first grade math skills that teachers and parents should target to effectively improve children's later math learning.

A long-term psychology study indicates that beginning first graders that understand numbers, the quantities those numbers represent, and low-level arithmetic will have better success in learning mathematics through the end of fifth grade, and other studies suggest throughout the rest of their lives.

They may not dress like Justin Bieber or Selena Gomez, but parents are a whole lot like their teenagers when it comes to their behaviour on Facebook. That's the finding of a new study by University of Guelph researchers.

Parents are just as likely as their kids to disclose personal information on the social networking site, according to the research, which will be published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science and is available online now.

And (gasp!) mom and dad are just as susceptible to the need for popularity.

WASHINGTON – Pets can serve as important sources of social and emotional support for "everyday people," not just individuals facing significant health challenges, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

And, the study found, pet owners were just as close to key people in their lives as to their animals, indicating no evidence that relationships with pets came at the expense of relationships with other people, or that people relied more on pets when their human social support was poorer.

Tampa, Fla. (July 11, 2011) – A team of researchers from Spain and Switzerland have developed a new model for studying the development of testicular germ cell tumors by transplanting embryonic stem cells into the seminiferous tubules in mouse models, resulting in the development of testicular germ cell tumors (TGCT) that mimic the early stages of TGCT development. The study, published in Cell Transplantation (20:5), is now freely available on-line at http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/.

Tampa, Fla. (July. 11, 2011) – A study published in the current issue of Cell Transplantation (20:5) investigating optimal routes for transplanting neural stem/progenitor cells (NS/PCs) in animal models of spinal cord injury (SCI) has demonstrated that intralesional (IL) injection conferred benefits over intravenous injection (IV) and intrathecal (IT) injection. The study, by a team of Keio University (Japan) researchers, is now freely available on-line at http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/ .

The Ohio residential correctional programs – halfway houses and community-based correctional facilities – that are most successful at reducing recidivism among offenders enjoy an impressive track record.

Milan, Italy, 11 July 2011 – Although out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are typically associated with migraine, epilepsy and psychopathology, they are quite common in healthy and psychologically normal individuals as well. However, they are poorly understood. A new study, published in the July 2011 issue of Elsevier's Cortex, has linked these experiences to neural instabilities in the brain's temporal lobes and to errors in the body's sense of itself – even in non clinical populations.

BOSTON – As any student who's had to study for multiple exams can tell you, trying to learn two different sets of facts one after another is challenging. As you study for the physics exam, almost inevitably some of the information for the history exam is forgotten. It's been widely believed that this interference between memories develops because the brain simply doesn't have the capacity necessary to process both memories in quick succession. But is this truly the case?

Advances in research into Alzheimer's disease: transporter proteins at the blood CSF barrier and vitamin D may help prevent amyloid β build up in the brain

Advancing age is a major risk factor for Alzheimer's disease and is associated with build- up of the peptide amyloid β in the brain. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Fluids and Barriers of the CNS shows that removal of amyloid β from the brain depends on vitamin D and also on an age-related alteration in the production of transporter proteins which move amyloid β in and out of the brain.

EMBARGOED UNTIL 12P.M. EST, Friday, July 8, 2011, Cleveland: Cleveland Clinic researchers have identified a cellular pathway that cancer stem cells use to promote tumor growth in malignant glioma, an aggressive brain tumor. The research – published in the July 8 issue of Cell – also found that existing medications block this cancer-promoting pathway and delay glioma growth in animal models, suggesting a new treatment option for these often fatal brain tumors.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Oh, the challenges of being a neuron, responsible for essential things like muscle contraction, gland secretion and sensitivity to touch, sound and light, yet constantly bombarded with signals from here, there and everywhere.

How on earth are busy nerve cells supposed to pick out and respond to relevant signals amidst all that information overload?

Scientists have shed light on why it is easier to learn about things related to what we already know than it is to learn about unfamiliar things, according to a new study.

The team says this is a paradox, as very different things are arguably more novel, yet adding to what we already know is so much easier.

Researchers at the Universities of Edinburgh and Tokyo have found that building on existing knowledge activates a key set of genes in the brain.

Is your kid a "dove" – cautious and submissive when confronting new environments, or perhaps you have a "hawk" – bold and assertive in unfamiliar settings?

These basic temperamental patterns are linked to opposite hormonal responses to stress – differences that may provide children with advantages for navigating threatening environments, researchers report in a study published online July 8, 2011, in Development and Psychopathology.

Foxp2, a gene involved in speech and language, helps regulate the wiring of neurons in the brain, according to a study which will be published on July 7th in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics. The researchers identified this functional link by first identifying the major targets of Foxp2 in developing brain tissue and then analysing the function of relevant neurons.