Brain

The team, working with Sichuan University in Chengdu, China, investigated eye movements in Chinese and British people to further understanding of the brain mechanisms that control them and how they compare between different human populations. They found that a type of eye movement, that is rare in British people, is much more common in Chinese people, suggesting that there could be subtle differences in brain function between different populations.

HAMILTON, ON (March 23, 2011) - A lot of chatter goes on inside each one of us and not all of it happens between our ears.

Researchers at McMaster University discovered that the "cross-talk" between bacteria in our gut and our brain plays an important role in the development of psychiatric illness, intestinal diseases and probably other health problems as well including obesity.

CHICAGO --- Exposure to alcohol in the womb doesn't affect all fetuses equally. Why does one woman who drinks alcohol during pregnancy give birth to a child with physical, behavioral or learning problems -- known as fetal alcohol spectrum disorder -- while another woman who also drinks has a child without these problems?

Montreal, March 23, 2011 – Researchers at Concordia University have pioneered a computer-based method to detect epileptic seizures as they occur – a new technique that may open a window on the brain's electrical activity. Their paper, "A Novel Morphology-Based Classifier for Automatic Detection of Epileptic Seizures," presented at the annual meeting of the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, documents the very successful application of this new seizure-detection method.

Free will may be an illusion. Yet we persist in believing we are the masters of our fates—and that belief affects how we act. Think you determine the course of your life and you're likely to work harder toward your goals and feel better about yourself too. Think you don't, and you're likelier to behave in ways that fulfill that prophesy.

A new research report published online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.faseb.org) suggests that pregnant mothers who eat high sugar and high fat diets have babies who are likely to become junk food junkies themselves. According to the report, which used rats, this happens because the high fat and high sugar diet leads to changes in the fetal brain's reward pathway, altering food preferences.

AUSTIN, Texas — Bottling up emotions can make people more aggressive, according to new research from The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Minnesota that was funded, in part, by a grant from the U.S. Army.

The study, published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, could have important implications for reducing violence and helping people in professions such as law enforcement and the military better cope with long hours and stressful situations.

New research provides the first evidence that sensory recalibration — the brain's automatic correcting of errors in our sensory or perceptual systems — can occur instantly.

A sleepless night can make us cranky and moody. But a lesser known side effect of sleep deprivation is short-term euphoria, which can potentially lead to poor judgment and addictive behavior, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley.

The findings, published today, March 22, in the Journal of Neuroscience, underscore the need for people in high-stakes professions and circumstances not to shortchange themselves on sleep, Walker said.

Methadone has been used to treat heroin addicts for nearly 50 years. Yet we have surprisingly incomplete knowledge about possible harmful effects from prolonged use. New research from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health shows that methadone affects the brain and impairs the attention of experimental animals.

In general, opioids such as heroin and morphine are known to weaken intellectual functions such as learning, memory and attention.

In the cerebral cortex, the balance between excitation (pyramidal neurons) and inhibition (interneurons) is thought to be mediated by the primary mode of neuronal communication: "all-or-none" action potentials, or spikes. However, Dr. Yousheng Shu's research group at the Institute of Neuroscience of Chinese Academy of Sciences has discovered a new strategy by which the cortex can maintain this balance, by showing that the amount of inhibition depends on the membrane potentials (Vm) in pyramidal cells, which represents an "analog" strategy.

Do people overeat because they experience less reward from eating or because they experience more reward from eating? In the March 23, 2011 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience Oregon Research Institute (ORI) senior scientist Eric Stice, Ph.D. and colleagues, including Dana Small, Ph.D. from the J.B. Pierce Laboratory in New Haven Connecticut, provide possible answers to the chicken or egg dilemma of overeating.

Patients admitted to a hospital with major trauma and treated with the steroid hydrocortisone were less likely to be diagnosed with hospital-acquired pneumonia than patients who received placebo, according to a study in the March 23/30 issue of JAMA.

A mother's iron deficiency early in pregnancy may have a profound and long-lasting effect on the brain development of the child, even if the lack of iron is not enough to cause severe anemia, according to a University of Rochester Medical Center study published in the scientific journal PLoS One.

The results are important because obstetricians might not notice or treat mild or moderate iron deficiency, and therefore the study authors believe their research underscores the need for monitoring a pregnant woman's iron status beyond anemia.