Brain

A team of Scripps Research Institute scientists has found a key biological mechanism underpinning the transition to alcohol dependence. This finding opens the door to the development of drugs to manage excessive alcohol consumption.

"Our focus in this study, like much of our lab's research, was to examine the role of the brain's stress system in compulsive alcohol drinking driven by the aversive aspects of alcohol withdrawal," said Scripps Research Associate Professor Marisa Roberto, Ph.D., senior author of the study.

How do people who speak more than one language keep from mixing them up? How do they find the right word in the right language when being fluent in just one language means knowing about 30,000 words?

That's what science has wondered about for decades, offering complicated theories on how the brain processes more than one language and sometimes theorizing that bilingualism degrades cognitive performance.

Alexandria, VA –Next week marks the 67th anniversary of D-Day, when the Allies stormed the beaches at Normandy, France, and changed the face of World War II. Not much evidence of the war remains in Normandy: a few dilapidated relics, a cemetery, a war memorial. But something else was left behind that cannot be seen by the naked eye: shrapnel and iron and glass beads left over from the D-Day invasions in 1944.

Each time you see a person that you know, your brain rapidly and seemingly effortlessly recognizes that person by his or her face.

Analysis of data from two long-term studies of the impact of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) on the development of psychiatric disorders in young adults confirms that ADHD alone significantly increases the risk of cigarette smoking and substance abuse in both boys and girls. The report from a team of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators will appear in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry and has been released online.

A survey of nearly 4,000 Americans finds that obese women reported significantly worse health than obese men. Blacks who were overweight also reported better health than blacks in the normal or obese weight categories. Respondents were divided into three categories: normal, overweight, or obese, according to their height and weight.

May 30 – Fredericton, NB – A student writing an essay for their teacher may be tempted to plagiarize or leave facts unchecked. A new study shows that if you ask that same student to write something that will be posted on Wikipedia, he or she suddenly becomes determined to make the work as accurate as possible, and may actually do better research.

Hamilton, ON (May 29, 2011) – McMaster University researchers have discovered a new drug target that may be effective at preventing the onset of Huntington's disease, working much the same way heart medications slow the progression of heart disease and reduce heart attacks.

Their landmark research discovered a family of kinase inhibitor drugs -- that all target one enzyme called IKK beta kinase -- as effective for Huntington's.

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) may provide an early and objective indicator of autism, according to researchers at Columbia University in New York City, who used the technique to document language impairment in autistic children. Results of their study appear online and in the August issue of Radiology.

People's moral responses to similar situations change as they age, according to a new study at the University of Chicago that combined brain scanning, eye-tracking and behavioral measures to understand how the brain responds to morally laden scenarios.

A new treatment that treats a subset of stroke patients by combining minimally invasive surgery, an imaging technique likened to "GPS for the brain," and the clot-busting drug t-PA appears to be safe and effective, according to a multicenter clinical trial led by Johns Hopkins researchers.

NEW YORK – May 27, 2011 – A study by Columbia Business School Professor Eric Johnson, co-director of the Center for Decision Sciences (http://www4.gsb.columbia.edu/decisionsciences) at Columbia Business School, Ye Li, a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Decision Sciences, and Lisa Zaval, a Columbia graduate student in psychology, found that those who thought the current day was warmer than usual were more likely to believe in and feel concern about global warming than those who thought the day was unusually

Brain interventions must be planned so that the neurosurgeon can access and remove the tumor without causing unnecessary damage. Before the brain tumor can be removed, crucial questions must be answered. Where do the functional areas of the cortex (gray matter) of the patient lie? What are the paths of the nerve fiber tracts that connect them? Answering these questions is important because the functional areas of the brain are interconnected via nerve pathways, also known as nerve fiber tracts.

Recalling painful memories while under the influence of the drug metyrapone reduces the brain's ability to re-record the negative emotions associated with them, according to a study published in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. The study by a team of University of Montreal researchers at the Centre for Studies on Human Stress of Louis-H. Lafontaine Hospital challenges the theory that memories cannot be modified once they are stored in the brain.

How can someone with perfectly normal hearing become deaf to the world around them when their mind is on something else? New research funded by the Wellcome Trust suggests that focusing heavily on a task results in the experience of deafness to perfectly audible sounds.

In a study published in the journal Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, researchers at UCL (University College London) demonstrate for the first time this phenomenon, which they term 'inattentional deafness'.