Brain

Optical illusions have fascinated humans throughout history. Greek builders used an optical illusion to ensure that that their columns appeared straight (they built them with a bulge) and we are all intrigued by the mental flip involved in the case of the young girl/old woman faces. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Neuroscience demonstrates a more serious use of these illusions in understanding how the brain assesses relative size.

It seems that women become addicted to cocaine more easily than men and find it harder to give up. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Biology of Sex Differences reinforces this position by showing that the motivation of female rats to work for cocaine is much higher than males.

Depression is associated with an increased risk of developing kidney failure in the future, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology (CJASN). Approximately 10% of the US population will suffer from depression at some point during their lifetime.

HOUSTON – (March 10, 2011) – Stem cells derived from a patient's own bone marrow were safely used in pediatric patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI), according to results of a Phase I clinical trial at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth). The results were published in this month's issue of Neurosurgery, the journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons.

Drinking more than a cup of coffee a day was associated with a 22 percent to 25 percent lower risk of stroke, compared with those who drank less, in a study reported in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.

Low or no coffee consumption was associated with an increased risk of stroke in a study of 34,670 women (ages 49 to 83) followed for an average 10.4 years. It's too soon to change coffee-drinking habits, but the study should ease the concerns of some women, researchers noted.

During spring training, you will find Major League pitchers practicing their pitches, perfecting their technique and strengthening their muscles to endure the grueling 162 game season. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that hurlers might also consider the effect these sweltering months could have on their brains.

A team of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) has developed a new model for how inherited genes contribute to a common but untreatable and incurable neurodegenerative disease. The disease, frontotemporal lobar degeneration, is the second most common cause of dementia before age 65, after Alzheimer's disease.

What happened to being "quiet as a mouse"? Researchers have recently shown that, rather than being the silent creatures of popular belief, mice emit ultrasonic calls in a variety of social contexts, and these calls have song-like characteristics.

Vanderbilt researchers are studying heavy users of marijuana to help understand what exercise does for the brain, contributing to a field of research that uses exercise as a modality for prevention and treatment.

Participants saw a significant decrease in their cravings and daily use after just a few sessions of running on the treadmill, according to a Vanderbilt study published today in the journal PLoS ONE. It is the first study to demonstrate that exercise can reduce cannabis use in persons who don't want to stop.

Unconsciously, right-handers associate good with the right side of space and bad with the left. But this association can be rapidly changed, according to a study published online March 9, 2011 in Psychological Science, by Daniel Casasanto (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics) and Evangelia Chrysikou (University of Pennsylvania). Even a few minutes of using the left hand more fluently than the right can reverse right-handers' judgments of good and bad, making them think that the left is the 'right side' of space.

Tampa, Fla. (March 10, 2011) – When prostate cancer stem cells (CSCs) were enclosed in self-assembling nanomaterials made of peptides (SAP), the SAP stopped cancer stem cell colony formation and also stopped the division of cancer cells in laboratory cultures (in vitro).

MILWAUKEE — Women who leave engineering jobs after obtaining the necessary degree are significantly more likely to leave the field because of an uncomfortable work climate than because of family reasons, according to a study being undertaken at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM).

Nearly half of women in the survey who left an engineering career indicated they did so because of negative working conditions, too much travel, lack of advancement or low salary, the study shows.

Tampa, Fla. (Mar. 10, 2011) – Two studies published by an interdisciplinary team in the current special issue of Cell Transplantation (20:1) (free to read), link the regrowth of key adult brain cells (neurogenesis) in two critical areas of the brain to both the benefits of exercise as a stress reducer and also to sexual behavior and reproductive issues. The two studies reviewing the causes and impacts of neurogenesis came out of a recent Pan Pacific Symposium on Stem Cell Research held in Taichung, Taiwan.

Neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's are partly attributable to brain inflammation. Researchers at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet in Sweden now demonstrate in a paper published in Nature that a well-known family of enzymes can prevent the inflammation and thus constitute a potential target for drugs.

Providing further understanding of the link between low birth weights and obesity later in life, researchers found nutritionally deprived newborns are "programmed" to eat more because they develop less neurons in the region of the brain that controls food intake, according to an article published today in the journal, Brain Research.