Brain

INDIANAPOLIS – Learning words may be facilitated by early exposure to auditory input, according to research presented by the Indiana University School of Medicine at the American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting in San Diego, Feb. 18-22.

Marcos Frank, PhD, associate professor of Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, will present information on early brain development and the importance of sleep during early life when the brain is rapidly maturing and highly changeable.

Anyone who grew up in a large family likely remembers hearing "Don't wake the baby." While it reinforces the message to older kids to keep it down, research shows that sleep also is an important part of how infants learn more about their new world.

Rebecca Gomez, Richard Bootzin and Lynn Nadel in the psychology department at the University of Arizona in Tucson found that babies who are able to get in a little daytime nap are more likely to exhibit an advanced level of learning known as abstraction.

If you see a student dozing in the library or a co-worker catching 40 winks in her cubicle, don't roll your eyes. New research from the University of California, Berkeley, shows that an hour's nap can dramatically boost and restore your brain power. Indeed, the findings suggest that a biphasic sleep schedule not only refreshes the mind, but can make you smarter.

Scientists know little about how the brain creates and controls emotions – an uncertainty that presents a major obstacle in the effort to develop treatments for emotional disorders. "The study of the brain science of emotion is in its infancy," says Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator David Anderson, "yet emotional and psychiatric disorders continue to take an enormous toll on human society."

EVANSTON, Ill. --- At an 11 a.m. press briefing, Saturday, Feb. 20, at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting, a Northwestern University neuroscientist will argue that music training has profound effects that shape the sensory system and should be a mainstay of K-12 education.

A lawyer is trying to convince a jury that his client really is crazy. It's usually a tough argument to sell in a court of law. But what if the lawyer has a picture of his client's brain that shows there's something biologically wrong with it? Can that evidence help persuade a jury? Should it even be allowed as evidence?

Those are some of the questions that will be addressed during a presentation and mock trial scheduled from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. Feb. 20 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in San Diego.

Douglas Smith, MD, director of the Center for Brain Injury and Repair and professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, will present information on the molecular mechanism at play in mild TBI (mTBI), commonly called concussions. Although mTBI affects over 1 million people each year in the United States, it is generally ignored as a major health issue. However, this 'mild' form of injury induces persisting neurological and cognitive problems in many of these patients, exacting an enormous emotional and financial toll on society.

Researchers at 17 medical centers across the country soon will begin using the hormone progesterone to treat patients who experience traumatic brain injury (TBI). The treatment is part of a randomized, double-blind Phase III clinical trial that will enroll approximately 1,140 people over a three- to six-year period beginning in March, 2010. The trial is funded by a grant to Emory University from the National Institutes of Health.

SAN DIEGO, CA – How can the United States benefit from an "informed public" when policy debates revolve around scientific questions that bewilder or confuse most Americans? Our society will be unsuccessful in doing so, according to Daniel Yankelovich, a preeminent social scientist, until and unless we first redefine what an "informed public" really is.

TEMPE, Ariz. – Engineering frequently expands technological boundaries, but Brad Allenby says engineering education is often less pioneering.

"The way we are teaching engineering now is not sufficiently responsive to the rapid technological change we're seeing in the world around us," says the Arizona State University professor.

Today's engineering students need not only a broader palette of technical knowledge but a finely tuned cultural literacy and competency as communicators, he explains.

TEMPE, Ariz. -- Some parents might see video games as an impediment to children keeping up with their schoolwork. James Gee, however, thinks video games are some of the best learning environments around. He says that if schools adopted some of the strategies that games use, they could educate children more effectively.

"Commercial video games, the ones that make a lot of money, are nothing but problem-solving spaces," says Gee, the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Chair in Literacy Studies in the Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education at Arizona State University.

Brain researcher Hiroshi Kawabe has discovered the workings of a process that had been completely overlooked until now, and that allows nerve cells in the brain to grow and form complex networks. The study shows that an enzyme which usually controls the destruction of protein components has an unexpected function in nerve cells: it controls the structure of the cytoskeleton and thus ensures that nerve cells can form the tree-like extensions that are necessary for signal transmission in the brain.

Scientists have known that newly acquired, short-term memories are often fleeting. But a new study in flies suggests that kind of forgetfulness doesn't just happen. Rather, an active process of erasing memories may in some ways be as important as the ability to lay down new memories, say researchers who report their findings in the February 19th issue of the journal Cell, a publication of Cell Press.

Emory University neuroscientist Lori Marino will speak on the anatomical basis of dolphin intelligence at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference (AAAS) in San Diego, on Sunday, Feb. 21 at 3:30 p.m.

"Many modern dolphin brains are significantly larger than our own and second in mass to the human brain when corrected for body size," Marino says.

A leading expert in the neuroanatomy of dolphins and whales, Marino will appear as part of a panel discussing these findings and their ethical and policy implications.