Brain

New data offer hints to why Parkinson's disease so selectively harms brain cells that produce the chemical dopamine, say researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

The older we get, the more difficulty we seem to have remembering things. We reassure ourselves that our brains' "hard drives" are too full to handle the new information that comes in daily. But a Johns Hopkins neuroscientist suggests that our aging brains are unable to process this information as "new" because the brain pathways leading to the hippocampus become degraded over time. As a result, our brains cannot accurately "file" new information.

How human children acquire language remains largely a mystery. A groundbreaking study by cognitive scientists at the Johns Hopkins University confirms that human beings are born with knowledge of certain syntactical rules that make learning human languages easier.

Two proteins that are abnormally modified in the brains of patients with Alzheimer disease collude, resulting in ill effects on the crucial energy centers of brain cells, according to new findings published online in Neurobiology of Aging.

A team of researchers at the University of Arizona has brought a high-tech tool to bear on the study of a familiar and age-old emotion – guilt.

What makes the investigation unique is the use of fMRI scans to target the regions of the brain associated with guilt. It also opens a new avenue in understanding behavioral disorders associated with guilt, such as depression and anxiety.

The study, "Triangulating the Neural, Psychological and Economic Bases of Guilt Aversion," is published by Cell today in the journal Neuron.

EVANSTON, Ill. --- A growing body of research finds musical training gives students learning advantages in the classroom. Now a Northwestern University study finds musical training can benefit Grandma, too, by offsetting some of the deleterious effects of aging.

On a daily basis, our social life places us in situations where we have to decide whether or not to cooperate with others. However, the motivation that encourages us to behave cooperatively is often not clear. Now, new research published by Cell Press in the May 12, 2011, issue of the journal Neuron suggests that anticipation of the feeling of guilt can motivate us to behave unselfishly and reveals a neural mechanism that may underlie this guilt aversion-driven cooperation.

How useful would it be to anticipate how well someone will control their emotions? To predict how well they might be able to stay calm during stress? To accept critical feedback stoically?

Heath A. Demaree, professor of psychology at Case Western Reserve University, finds clues in what psychologists call "hot" and "cold" psychology.

"People differ with regard to how well they can control their emotions, and one factor that predicts it is non-emotional in nature – it is a 'cold' cognitive construct," Demaree explains referring to Working Memory Capacity.

Philadelphia, PA - 11 May 2011 - Two new research studies published in Biological Psychiatry point to progressive abnormalities in brain development that emerge as vulnerable individuals develop schizophrenia.

The inability of individuals to remember the very earliest years of their lives, called infantile amnesia, has been studied for many years in adults, who seem to recall very little before ages 3 or 4. But children also experience infantile amnesia—and a new study out of Canada explores their experiences.

The study was conducted by researchers at Memorial University of Newfoundland and appears in the journal Child Development.

DETROIT — A landmark study by scientists at Wayne State University published in the May 6, 2011, issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, the most prestigious journal in the field, has revealed a new way to distinguish children with major depressive disorder (MDD) from not only normal children, but also from children with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

WASHINGTON -- People who have a good peer support system at work may live longer than people who don't have such a support system, according research published by the American Psychological Association.

This effect of peer social support on the risk of mortality was most pronounced among those between the ages of 38 and 43. Yet similar support from workers' supervisors had no effect on mortality, the researchers found.

The antibody 5750 recognises a specific sugar residue on the cell surface, which is called LewisX. The research group lead by Prof. Dr. Andreas Faissner has now been able to use LewisX for the first time to separate different types of stem cells. The researchers report on their results in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Unexpected sugar diversity

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Boys and girls have put many of the trappings of teenagerhood behind them by the age of 18 or 19, but at least some of the brain resculpting that characterizes the decade of adolescence may still be going as strong as ever, according to findings in a new study that measured brainwaves of subjects in their midteens and again in their late teens.

Researchers with UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have discovered a way to amp up the power of killer T-cells, called CD8 cells, making them more functional for longer periods of time and boosting their ability to multiply and expand within the body to fight melanoma, a new study has found.