Brain

A research breakthrough has proven that it is possible to reprogram mature cells from human skin directly into brain cells, without passing through the stem cell stage. The unexpectedly simple technique involves activating three genes in the skin cells; genes which are already known to be active in the formation of brain cells at the foetal stage.

The new technique avoids many of the ethical dilemmas that stem cell research has faced.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — In a new study, researchers tested the claims of a Boston police officer who said he ran past a brutal police beating without seeing it. After re-creating some of the conditions of the original incident and testing the perceptions of college students who ran past a staged fight, the researchers found the officer's story plausible.

The study appears in the peer-reviewed open access journal i-Perception.

ST. PAUL, Minn. – Older people who regularly exercise at a moderate to intense level may be less likely to develop the small brain lesions, sometimes referred to as "silent strokes," that are the first sign of cerebrovascular disease, according to a new study published in the June 8, 2011, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN).

A new crop of college graduates have just landed on the job market. Right now they're probably just hoping to get any job, if at all. However, for psychology majors, the salary outlook in both the short and long term is particularly poor, according to a new study which will be published in an upcoming issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Obesity among people who eat a high-fat diet may involve injury to neurons, or nerve cells, in a key part of the brain that controls body weight, according to the authors of a new animal study. The results will be presented Tuesday at The Endocrine Society's 93rd Annual Meeting in Boston.

With autism affecting close to one percent of children in the U.S., the urgency to find some sort of explanation for the disorder has never been greater. This week, three studies published in the 9 June issue of Neuron offer a definitive vindication of the theory that spontaneous, or de novo, genetic mutations underlie the development of autism in many families with no history of the disorder.

Hundreds of small genetic variations are associated with autism spectrum disorders, including an area of DNA that may be a key to understanding why humans are social animals, according to a multi-site collaborative study led by researchers at Yale University.

Montréal, June 8, 2011 – Dr. Frédéric Charron, researcher at the Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal (IRCM), and his team have shown for the first time that a key molecule of the vascular system directs axons during the formation of neural circuits. This connection between the nervous system and the vascular system could be a good starting point for the development of therapies for neurodegenerative diseases. The discovery will be published tomorrow by Neuron, a scientific journal of the Cell Press group.

Cold Spring Harbor, NY – A clinically extensive and mathematically powerful study of 1000 families with one autistic child and one unaffected sibling has validated a controversial theory of autism's complex genetic causation. The study for the first time estimates the minimum number of locations in the human genome -- 250 to 300 -- where gene copy number variation (CNV) can give rise to autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

MADISON – A University of Wisconsin-Madison research team has solved a 25-year mystery that may lead to better treatments for people with learning deficits and mental retardation.

June 6, 2011 – (Rensselaer, N.Y., USA) – A new study may explain why only 50% of patients experiencing chronic nerve pain achieve even partial relief from existing therapeutics. The study, published in the June 6 online version of the international research journal PAIN, reveals that certain types of chronic pain may be caused by signals from the skin itself, rather than damage to nerves within the skin, as previously thought.

A Medical Mystery

STANFORD, Calif. — New research has shown that children's risk for learning and behavior problems and obesity rises in correlation to their level of trauma exposure, says the psychiatrist at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital who oversaw the study. The findings could encourage physicians to consider diagnosing post-traumatic stress disorder rather than attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, which has similar symptoms to PTSD but very different treatment.

PHILADELPHIA - Dieticians will tell you it isn't healthy to eat late at night: it's a recipe for weight gain. In fruit flies, at least, there's another consequence: reduced fertility.

That's the conclusion of a new study this week in Cell Metabolism by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, in which they manipulated circadian rhythms in fruit flies and measured the affect on egg-laying capacity.

The world is a dazzling array of people, objects, sounds, smells and events: far too much for us to fully experience at any moment. So our attention may automatically be snagged by something startling, such as a slamming door, or we may deliberately focus on something that is important to us right then, such as locating our child among the happily screaming hordes on the school playground. We also know that people are hard-wired to seek out and pay attention to things that are rewarding, such as food when we are hungry, or water when we are thirsty.

Researchers reporting in the June issue of Cell Metabolism, a Cell Press publication, have what they say is some of the first solid proof that insulin has direct effects on the reward circuitry of the brain. Mice whose reward centers can no longer respond to insulin eat more and become obese, they show.

The findings suggest that insulin resistance might help to explain why those who are obese may find it so difficult to resist the temptation of food and take the weight back off.