Brain

Scientists at the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) of the University of Luxembourg have grafted neurons reprogrammed from skin cells into the brains of mice for the first time with long-term stability. Six months after implantation, the neurons had become fully functionally integrated into the brain. This successful, because lastingly stable, implantation of neurons raises hope for future therapies that will replace sick neurons with healthy ones in the brains of Parkinson's disease patients, for example.

A new e-memo for the boss: Online breaks at work can refresh workers and boost productivity. Early findings from a University of Cincinnati study will be presented on Aug. 5, at the 74th annual meeting of the Academy of Management in Philadelphia.

The study led by Sung Doo Kim, a doctoral candidate in the Carl H. Lindner College of Business, opens a rare avenue of research into coping with technology-induced distractions in our contemporary society.

Previous studies show that violent video games increase adolescent aggressiveness, but new Dartmouth research finds for the first time that teen-agers who play mature-rated, risk-glorifying video games are more likely subsequently to engage in a wide range of deviant behaviors beyond aggression, including alcohol use, smoking cigarettes, delinquency and risky sex.

More generally, such games – especially character-based games with anti-social protagonists – appear to affect how adolescents think of themselves, with potential consequences for their alter ego in the real world.

A new study reveals surprising similarities between the way mammals and flies eat. What and how we eat is a crucial determinant of health and wellbeing. Model organisms such as fruit flies have provided crucial insights into how our brain decides what and how much to eat. But until now it was not clear how similar eating was in fruit flies and mammals (vertebrates).

Neurons are the cells of our brain, spinal cord, and overall nervous system. They form complex networks to communicate with each other through electrical signals that are carried by chemicals. These chemicals bind to structures on the surface of neurons that are called neuroreceptors, opening or closing electrical pathways that allow transmission of the signal from neuron to neuron. One neuroreceptor, called 5HT3-R, is involved in conditions like chemotherapy-induced nausea, anxiety, and various neurological disorders such as schizophrenia.

Issues of crime and punishment, vengeance and justice date back to the dawn of human history, but it is only in the last few years that scientists have begun exploring the basic nature of the complex neural processes in the brain that underlie these fundamental behaviors.

DURHAM, N.C. -- The tiny addition of a chemical mark atop a gene that is well known for its involvement in clinical depression and posttraumatic stress disorder can affect the way a person's brain responds to threats, according to a new study by Duke University researchers.

The results, which appear online August 3 in Nature Neuroscience, go beyond genetics to help explain why some individuals may be more vulnerable than others to stress and stress-related psychiatric disorders.

For many animals, making sense of the clutter of sensory stimuli is often a matter or literal life or death.

Exactly how animals separate objects of interest, such as food sources or the scent of predators, from background information, however, remains largely unknown. Even the extent to which animals can make such distinctions, and how differences between scents might affect the process were largely a mystery – until now.

New research by clinical psychologists from the UK and US has revealed psychogenic seizures which could be mistaken for epilepsy are linked to feelings of anxiety.

The team of researchers devised a new set of tests to determine whether there was a link between how people interpret and respond to anxiety, and incidences of psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNESs) – seizures that can be brought on by threatening situations, sensations, emotions, thoughts, or memories.

New Haven, Conn. -- Preventing weight gain, obesity, and ultimately diabetes could be as simple as keeping a nuclear receptor from being activated in a small part of the brain, according to a new study by Yale School of Medicine researchers.

Published in the Aug. 1 issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI), the study showed that when the researchers blocked the effects of the nuclear receptor PPARgamma in a small number of brain cells in mice, the animals ate less and became resistant to a high-fat diet.

New research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis helps explain why brain tumors occur more often in males and frequently are more harmful than similar tumors in females. For example, glioblastomas, the most common malignant brain tumors, are diagnosed twice as often in males, who suffer greater cognitive impairments than females and do not survive as long.

The researchers found that retinoblastoma protein (RB), a protein known to reduce cancer risk, is significantly less active in male brain cells than in female brain cells.

The brain plays a central role in regulating appetite and whole-body metabolism. A protein known as PPARγ is important in the brain's control of food intake and body weight, but the identity of the neurons regulating this process has been unclear. A new study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation demonstrates that PPARγ activity in a type of neuron known as pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC) neurons is critical in mediating the response to high-fat diet.

Spinal cord injury (SCI) currently ranks second after mental retardation among neurological disorders in terms of cost to society. Pain is a debilitating consequence of SCI related to the nature of the lesion, neurological structures damaged, and secondary pathophysiological changes of surviving tissues1. Approximately two-thirds of persons who have sustained SCI experience clinically significant pain after injury, of whom one-third have severe pain2, 3. Post-SCI pain can increase with time and is often refractory to conventional treatment approaches4.

Acrolein, a highly reactive unsaturated aldehyde, has been shown to play a major role in the secondary injury by contributing significantly to both motor and sensory deficits. Prof. Riyi Shi, who comes from University of Purdue in USA will highlight the recent developments in the understanding of the mechanisms of acrolein in motor and sensory dysfunction in animal models of spinal cord injury, and will also discuss the therapeutic benefits of using acrolein scavengers to attenuate acrolein-mediated neuronal damage following spinal cord injury.

Advances in stem cell research will provide enormous opportunities for both biological and future clinical applications. Basically, stem cells could replicate any other cells in the body, offering immense hope of curing Alzheimer's disease, repairing damaged spinal cords, treating kidney, liver and lung diseases and making damaged hearts whole. The potential for profit is staggering. Prof. Jinhui Chen from Indiana University in USA considered that this field of research still faces myriad biological, ethical, legal, political, and financial challenges.