Brain

People who inherit a specific form of a gene that puts them on a road to schizophrenia may be protected against some forms of cancer, according to a new study by scientists at The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research.

Montreal, January 19, 2010 – Half of sexual abuse survivors wait up to five years before disclosing they were victimized, according to a collaborative study from the Université de Montréal, the Université du Québec à Montréal and the Université de Sherbrooke published in The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry.

Quebec City, January 19, 2010–Even after regaining normal walking speed, traumatic brain injury (TBI) victims have not necessarily recovered all their locomotor functions, according to a study supervised by Université Laval's Bradford McFadyen and recently published in Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

Recent research indicates that school burnout among adolescents is shared with parental work burnout. Children of parents suffering from burnout are more likely than others to experience school burnout. Funding from the Academy of Finland has supported the first ever scientific study into the associations between adolescents' and parents' burnout. School burnout is a chronic school-related stress syndrome that is manifested in fatigue, experiences of cynicism about school and a sense of inadequacy as a student.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Today, the FDA shifted its stance on bisphenol A (BPA) and said that exposure to the chemical is of "some concern" for infants and children. Previously, the agency's stance was the chemical posed no risk to humans; this stance was consistent with the chemical industry's stance. Today, FDA officials declared that more research was needed and suggested reasonable steps to reduce exposure to BPA. Frederick vom Saal, a University of Missouri scientist, says that this stance is a step forward but more steps need to be taken.

Despite growing public interest in concussions because of serious hockey injuries or skiing deaths, a researcher from McMaster University has found that we may not be taking the common head injury seriously enough.

In a study to be published in the February issue of the journal Pediatrics, Carol DeMatteo, an associate clinical professor in the School of Rehabilitation Science, found that children who receive the concussion label spend fewer days in hospital and return to school sooner than their counterparts with head injuries not diagnosed as concussion.

HOUSTON - Cancer-initiating cells that launch glioblastoma multiforme, the most lethal type of brain tumor, also suppress an immune system attack on the disease, scientists from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center report in a paper featured on the cover of the Jan. 15 issue of Clinical Cancer Research.

PHOENIX, Ariz. — Jan. 15, 2009 — A scientific group led by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) have identified three kinases, or proteins, that dismantle connections within brain cells, which may lead to memory loss associated with Alzheimer's disease.

These findings, the results of a multi-year TGen study, are published in this month's edition of BMC Genomics in a paper titled: High-content siRNA screening of the kinome identifies kinases involved in Alzheimer's disease-related tau hyperphosphorylation.

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Jan. 15, 2010) — A breakthrough discovery by scientists at the University of Kentucky could someday lead to new treatments for a variety of diseases of the brain, spinal cord and the eye.

Researchers led by Royce Mohan, associate professor of ophthalmology and visual science in the UK College of Medicine, found that the small molecule withaferin A can simultaneously target two key proteins — vimentin and glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) — implicated in a damaging biological process called reactive gliosis.

In the February 1st issue of G&D, Dr. Brian Popko (The University of Chicago) and colleagues describe how mutation of a gene called ZFP191 leads to disordered CNS myelination in mice -- reminiscent of what is seen in human multiple sclerosis (MS) patients.

The paper will be released online ahead of print at www.genesdev.org.

NEW YORK (Jan. 14, 2010) -- Studying animals in behavioral experiments has been a cornerstone of psychological research, but whether the observations are relevant for human behavior has been unclear. Weill Cornell Medical College researchers have identified an alteration to the DNA of a gene that imparts similar anxiety-related behavior in both humans and mice, demonstrating that laboratory animals can be accurately used to study these human behaviors.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- A robust new technique for screening drugs' effects on zebrafish behavior is pointing Harvard University scientists toward unexpected compounds and pathways that may govern sleep and wakefulness in humans.

Among their more intriguing findings, described this week in the journal Science: Various anti-inflammatory agents in the immune system, long known to induce sleep during infection, may also shape normal sleep/wake cycles.

A landmark study from the University of British Columbia finds that the neighbourhoods in which children reside at kindergarten predict their reading comprehension skills seven years later.

The study, published this week in the journal Health & Place, finds children who live in neighbourhoods with higher rates of poverty show reduced scores on standardized tests seven years later – regardless of the child's place of residence in Grade 7. The study is the first of its kind to compare the relative effects of neighbourhood poverty at early childhood and early adolescence.

Many healthcare professionals are failing to advise people with medical conditions that could affect their ability to drive whether they should get behind the wheel, according to research from the University of Warwick.

Researchers from the University's Warwick Medical School have found many healthcare professionals are failing to tell patients with certain conditions such as diabetes or visual impairment if they are not fit to drive.

How do the visual images we experience, which have no tangible existence, arise out of physical processes in the brain? New research at the Weizmann Institute of Science provided evidence, for the first time, that an 'ignition' of intense neural activity underlies the experience of seeing.