Brain

CINCINNATI—A minimally invasive endoscopic procedure holds promise for safely removing large brain tumors from an area at the bottom of the skull, near the sinus cavities, clinical researchers at the Brain Tumor Center at the University of Cincinnati Neuroscience Institute (UCNI) at University Hospital have found.

The findings, to be published in the April 2010 issue of the Journal of Neurosurgery and previously published online in October 2009, have important implications for patients with large pituitary tumors (pituitary macroadenomas).

With the sequencing of the zebra finch genome, a new resource has been made available to biologists of many disciplines. A thematic series published by BioMed Central, the open access publisher, touches upon several of their unique insights.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new study of brain activity in depressed and anxious people indicates that some of the ill effects of depression are modified – for better or for worse – by anxiety.

The study, in the journal Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience, looked at depression and two types of anxiety: anxious arousal, the fearful vigilance that sometimes turns into panic; and anxious apprehension, better known as worry.

Medication and behavioural interventions help children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) better maintain attention and self control by normalising activity in the same brain systems, according to research funded by the Wellcome Trust.

WASHINGTON – Self-esteem rises steadily as people age but starts declining around the time of retirement, according to a longitudinal study of men and women ranging in age from 25 to 104.

"Self-esteem is related to better health, less criminal behavior, lower levels of depression and, overall, greater success in life," said the study's lead author, Ulrich Orth, PhD. "Therefore, it's important to learn more about how the average person's self-esteem changes over time."

The "cradle" of new neurons in the adult brain is well known. It is what is called the subventricular zone, a tissue structure lining the lateral ventricles. This is where neural or brain stem cells reside, which are responsible for generating new neurons if needed. For many years now, the subventricular zone has been suspected to be the origin of specific malignant brain tumors called gliomas, the most deadly type of which is glioblastoma.

The way people choose to cope with personal experiences of racism influences the distress caused by the encounter, according to a new study of Filipino-American men and women. Published today in the Journal of Counseling Psychology, the study finds that denying or ignoring racial discrimination leads to greater psychological distress, including anxiety and depression, and lowers self-esteem.

April 1, 2010 (Portland, Ore.) – A new study finds that a self-guided, 12-week program helps binge eaters stop binging for up to a year and the program can also save money for those who participate. Recurrent binge eating is the most common eating disorder in the country, affecting more than three percent of the population, or nine million people, yet few treatment options are available.

To probe the relationship between space and time in the developing mind, Daniel Casasanto of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and colleagues at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and Stanford University showed children movies of two snails racing along parallel paths for different distances or durations. The children judged either the spatial or temporal aspect of each race, reporting which animal went for a longer distance or a longer time.

When people talk about positive and negative emotions they often use spatial metaphors. A happy person is on top of the world, but a sad person is down in the dumps. Some researchers believe these metaphors are a clue to the way people understand emotions: not only do we use spatial words to talk about emotional states, we also use spatial concepts to think about them.

Motion and emotion

The strongest known recurrent genetic cause of schizophrenia impairs communications between the brain's decision-making and memory hubs, resulting in working memory deficits, according to a study in mice.

BOZEMAN, Mont. -- Bile secretions in the small intestine send signals to disease-causing gut bacteria allowing them to change their behavior to maximize their chances of surviving, Montana State University research associate Steve Hamner told the Society for General Microbiology during its spring meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland.

An SGM press release said the findings could allow us to better protect food from contamination by these harmful bacteria, as well as understand how they manage to cause disease.

In their investigation of the zebra finch genome, the scientists demonstrated that the act of singing or hearing a song activates large, complex gene networks in the bird's brain. Past research has shown that hundreds of genes light up in the zebra finch brain as the bird learns a new song. Now, as the investigators looked across the entire genome, they could see hundreds more genes – some 800 in all – significantly engaged by the act of singing.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The Australian zebra finch, Taeniopygia guttata, weighs less than half an ounce, mates for life and, unlike most vocalizing animals, learns its songs from its elders. A new analysis of its genome, the first of a songbird, is providing tantalizing clues to the mechanisms and evolution of vocal communication.

To hear the unique songs of two finches, please click here.

NEW YORK, NY – In what may provide the most compelling evidence to date, researchers at Columbia University Medical Center have illuminated how a genetic variant may lead to schizophrenia by causing a disruption in communication between the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex regions of the brain, areas believed to be responsible for carrying out working memory. Findings are published in the current online edition of Nature.