Brain

Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. – You are sitting on your couch flipping through TV channels trying to decide whether to stay put or get up for a snack. Such everyday decisions about whether to "stay" or to "go" are supported by a brain region called the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which is part of the prefrontal cortex. Neuroscientists from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have now identified key circuit elements that contribute to such decisions in the ACC.

Humans and most mammals can determine the spatial origin of sounds with remarkable acuity. We use this ability all the time -- crossing the street; locating an invisible ringing cell phone in a cluttered bedroom. To accomplish this small daily miracle, the brain has developed a circuit that's rapid enough to detect the tiny lag that occurs between the moment the auditory information reaches one of our ears, and the moment it reaches the other. The mastermind of this circuit is the "Calyx of Held," the largest known synapse in the brain.

It simply feels good to regain your bearings after getting lost, especially when you are hungry and had been looking for a particular restaurant.

Jeremy Seamans and colleagues from the University of British Columbia, Canada, here show that hungry rats experience a similar abrupt neural change when they stumble upon food in an unfamiliar environment.

In a stressful situation, rodents produce the stress hormone corticosterone.

This helps the animal, because spatial learning is promoted when corticosterone binds to one of the stress hormone receptors (mineralocorticoid receptors) in the hippocampus, a region of the brain. Judith ter Horst and colleagues from Leiden University here show that female mice that lack the gene for the mineralocorticoid receptor in the forebrain have difficulty finding their way home through a maze, especially shortly before ovulation.

In the search for medication against Alzheimer's disease, scientists have focused – among other factors – on drugs that can break down Amyloid beta (A-beta). After all, it is the accumulation of A-beta that causes the known plaques in the brains of Alzheimer's patients. Starting point for the formation of A-beta is APP. Alessia Soldano and Bassem Hassan (VIB/KU Leuven) were the first to unravel the function of APPL – the fruit-fly version of APP – in the brain of healthy fruit flies.

Talking on a hands-free device while behind the wheel can lead to a sharp increase in errors that could imperil other drivers on the road, according to new research from the University of Alberta.

In a study that evaluated some of the latest in automatic facial recognition technology, researchers at Michigan State University were able to quickly identify one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects from law enforcement video, an experiment that demonstrated the value of such technology.

In the Pattern Recognition and Image Processing laboratory, Anil Jain, MSU Distinguished Professor of computer science and engineering, and Josh Klontz, a research scientist, tested three different facial-recognition systems.

Women at a particular stage in their monthly menstrual cycle may be more vulnerable to some of the psychological side-effects associated with stressful experiences, according to a study from UCL.

The results suggest a monthly window of opportunity that could potentially be targeted in efforts to prevent common mental health problems developing in women. The research is the first to show a potential link between psychological vulnerability and the timing of a biological cycle, in this case ovulation.

In Parkinson's disease, the protein "alpha-synuclein" aggregates and accumulates within neurons. Specific areas of the brain become progressively affected as the disease develops and advances. The mechanism underlying this pathological progression is poorly understood but could result from spreading of the protein (or abnormal forms of it) along nerve projections connecting lower to upper brain regions.

How can healthy people who hear voices help schizophrenics? Finding the answer for this is at the centre of research conducted at the University of Bergen.

Biological processes are generally based on events at the molecular and cellular level. To understand what happens in the course of infections, diseases or normal bodily functions, scientists would need to examine individual cells and their activity directly in the tissue. The development of new microscopes and fluorescent dyes in recent years has brought this scientific dream tantalisingly close.

New research presented today shows that formation of new neurons in the hippocampus - a brain region known for its importance in learning and remembering - could cause forgetting of old memories by causing a reorganization of existing brain circuits. Drs. Paul Frankland and Sheena Josselyn, both from the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, argue this reorganization could have the positive effect of clearing old memories, reducing interference and thereby increasing capacity for new learning.

ITHACA, NY: Ernie Pyle – an iconic war correspondent in World War II – reportedly said "There are no atheists in foxholes." A new joint study between two brothers at Cornell and Virginia Wesleyan found that only part of this is true.

A recent analysis of archived World War II surveys of Army Infantry after a battle showed a soldier's reliance on prayer rose from 32% to 74% as the battle intensified. "The question is whether that reliance on faith lasts over time," said Craig Wansink, author and Professor of Religion at Virginia Wesleyan College.

People with high IQ scores aren't just more intelligent. They also process sensory information differently, according to a study reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on May 23.

The findings show that the brains of people with high IQ are automatically more selective when it comes to perceiving objects in motion; they are specifically more likely to suppress larger and less relevant background motion.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — An anti-cancer drug about to be tested in a clinical trial by a biomedical company in Ohio as a possible treatment for Alzheimer's disease has failed to work with the same type of brain plaques that plague Alzheimer's patients, according to results of a study by University of Florida researchers.