Brain

Researchers at the Vanderbilt Eye Institute are now a step closer to deciphering a leading cause of blindness in the United States – glaucoma.

In a recent study, David Calkins, Ph.D., director of Research at the VEI, discovered that the first sign of injury in glaucoma actually occurs in the brain.

AMES, Iowa -- Iowa State University Distinguished Professor of Psychology Craig Anderson has made much of his life's work studying how violent video game play affects youth behavior. And he says a new study he led, analyzing 130 research reports on more than 130,000 subjects worldwide, proves conclusively that exposure to violent video games makes more aggressive, less caring kids -- regardless of their age, sex or culture.

LOWELL, Mass., March 1 – A team of researchers at UMass Lowell has found a new mechanism by which a key protein associated with Alzheimer's disease can spread within the human brain.

Philadelphia, PA, 1 March 2010 - Conventional antidepressant treatments generally require three to four weeks to become effective, thus the discovery of treatments with a more rapid onset is a major goal of biological psychiatry. The first drug found to produce rapid improvement in mood was the NMDA glutamate receptor antagonist, ketamine.

TORONTO, March 1 /CNW/ - The next advance in treating major depression may relate to a group of brain chemicals that are involved in virtually all our brain activity, according to a study published today in Biological Psychiatry. The study is co-authored by Drs. Andrea J. Levinson and Zafiris J. Daskalakis of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH).

Children exposed to cocaine in the womb face serious consequences from the drug, but fortunately not in certain critical physical and cognitive areas as previously believed, according to a new comprehensive review of research on the subject from scientists at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. When a pregnant woman uses cocaine, it can interrupt the flow of nutrients and oxygen to the baby, putting such children at risk for premature birth, low birth weight and many other problems.

Bone marrow transplant patients say two of the most debilitating side effects of the treatment are nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapy and radiation.

But a Loyola University Health System study has found the drug aprepitant can dramatically reduce both nausea and vomiting when combined with other anti-nausea drugs.

MAYWOOD, Il. -- The CREST trial that compared traditional surgery with less-invasive stenting to clear dangerously clogged carotid arteries in the neck is being called "seminal and robust."

The Carotid Revascularization Endarterectomy vs. Stenting Trial (CREST) found that the safety and efficacy of both procedures are roughly equal. The trial, conducted throughout the United States and Canada, is one of the largest randomized stroke prevention trials ever.

Loyola University Medical Center is among the centers that participated in CREST.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Two stroke-prevention procedures are safe and equally beneficial for men and women at risk for stroke, but the effectiveness does vary by age, say researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) in collaboration with other North American stroke investigators.

Since at least the days of Socrates, humans have been advised to "know thyself."

And through all the years, many, including many personality and social psychologists, have believed the individual is the best judge of his or her own personality.

Now a psychologist at Washington University in St. Louis has shown that we are not the know-it-alls that we think we are.

A non-pathogenic bacterium is capable to trigger an autoimmune disease similar to the multiple sclerosis in the mouse, the model animal which helps to explain how human diseases work. This is what a group of researchers from the Catholic University of Rome, led by Francesco Ria (Institute of General Pathology) and Giovanni Delogu (Institute of Microbiology), have explained for the first time in a recently published article on the Journal of Immunology.

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Hypnosis can help alleviate the pain and suffering experienced by women being treated for breast cancer, according to a study by a University at Buffalo School of Social Work professor.

The randomized trial measured pain and suffering, frequency of pain and degree of constant pain among 124 women with metastatic breast cancer, according to Lisa D. Butler, associate professor in UB's School of Social Work, a faculty member in the Buffalo Center for Social Research and first author of the study.

DALLAS – March 2, 2010 – Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center hope they have begun paving a new pathway in the fight against drug dependence. Their hypothesis – that increasing the normally occurring process of making nerve cells might prevent addiction – is based on a rodent study demonstrating that blocking new growth of specific brain nerve cells increases vulnerability for cocaine addiction and relapse.

For people who carry common gene variants, cigarette smoking greatly increases the risk that a blood vessel in the brain will weaken and balloon out – called an aneurysm – which could be life-threatening if it ruptures, according to research presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2010.

People talk to their plants, pray to humanlike gods, name their cars, and even dress their pets up in clothing. We have a strong tendency to give nonhuman entities human characteristics (known as anthropomorphism), but why? In a new report in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychological scientists Adam Waytz from Harvard University and Nicholas Epley and John T. Cacioppo from University of Chicago, examine the psychology of anthropomorphism.