Brain

Newly published research from an international team featuring UT Arlington assistant professor Jacob Resch has reaffirmed questions about portions of the popular computerized concussion assessment tool ImPACT.

When administered as it is in a clinical setting, the test possessed strong reliability on some evaluation factors. But, on other factors, it miscategorized healthy participants as impaired as much as 46 percent of the time.

Many women get too little sleep, despite considerable evidence showing the importance of sleep to overall health. Now a new UC San Francisco study has discovered another reason why inadequate sleep may be harmful, especially to women and their hearts.

A remote controlled helicopter has been flown through a series of hoops around a college gymnasium in Minnesota.

It sounds like your everyday student project; however, there is one caveat…the helicopter was controlled using just the power of thought.

The experiments have been performed by researchers hoping to develop future robots that can help restore the autonomy of paralysed victims or those suffering from neurodegenerative disorders.

For many older adults, the aging process seems to go hand-in-hand with an annoying increase in clumsiness — difficulties dialing a phone, fumbling with keys in a lock or knocking over the occasional wine glass while reaching for a salt shaker.

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – June 4, 2013 – People suffering from type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease (CVD) are at an increased risk of cognitive decline, according to a new study from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.

A new study shows compelling evidence that associations between cognitive ability and cortical grey matter in old age can largely be accounted for by cognitive ability in childhood. The joint study by the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, The Neuro, McGill University and the University of Edinburgh, UK was published today, June 4 in Molecular Psychiatry.

BEER-SHEVA, Israel…June 4, 2013 — Chronic exposure to rocket attacks launched from the Gaza Strip into Israel is causing an increase in severe adolescent violence, according to a new study by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers.

The study, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP), followed 362 Israeli adolescents from the southwestern Negev from 2008 to 2011, and conducted annual assessments of exposure to rocket attacks, symptoms of depression and anxiety, as well as acts of violence.

(INDIANAPOLIS) A cross-disciplinary collaboration of researchers in the School of Science at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) explores the neural synchrony between circuits in the brain and their behavior under simulated drug addiction. The two-year study could have broad implications for treating addiction and understanding brain function in conditions such as Parkinson's disease.

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., – June 3, 2013 – Scientists, like Buddhist monks and Zen masters, have known for years that meditation can reduce anxiety, but not how. Scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, however, have succeeded in identifying the brain functions involved.

New research from McMaster University suggests women can remember faces better than men, in part because they spend more time studying features without even knowing it, and a technique researchers say can help improve anyone's memories.

The findings help to answer long-standing questions about why some people can remember faces easily while others quickly forget someone they've just met.

If people are unable to perceive their own errors as they complete a routine, simple task, their skill will decline over time, Johns Hopkins researchers have found — but not for the reasons scientists assumed. The researchers report that the human brain does not passively forget our good techniques, but chooses to put aside what it has learned.

Fear is one of the most primal feelings known to man and beast. As we develop in society and learn, fear is hard coded into our neural circuitry through the amygdala, a small, almond-shaped nuclei of neurons within the medial temporal lobe of the brain. For psychologists and neurologists, the amygdala is a particularly interesting region of the brain because it plays a role in emotional learning and can have profound effects on human and animal behavior.

The genetic malady known as Fragile X syndrome is the most common cause of inherited autism and intellectual disability. Brain scientists know the gene defect that causes the syndrome and understand the damage it does in misshaping the brain's synapses — the connections between neurons. But how this abnormal shaping of synapses translates into abnormal behavior is unclear.

Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa –disorders characterized by extreme eating behavior and distorted body image – are among the deadliest of psychiatric disorders, with few proven effective treatments.

NORTH GRAFTON, Mass. —Another piece of the puzzle to better understand and treat obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) has fallen into place with the publication of new research that shows that the structural brain abnormalities of Doberman pinschers afflicted with canine compulsive disorder (CCD) are similar to those of humans with OCD. The research suggests that further study of anxiety disorders in dogs may help find new therapies for OCD and similar conditions in humans.