Brain

Berlin, Germany: Whole-brain radiotherapy should not be given routinely to all patients whose cancer has spread to the brain, say researchers who found that using it after surgery or radiosurgery in patients with a limited number of brain metastases and stable cancer in the rest of the body did not extend lives or help patients remain functionally independent for longer.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – After spinal cord injury, certain immune cells collect in the spinal fluid and release high levels of antibodies. What, if anything, those antibodies do there is unknown.

A new study by neuroscientists at The Ohio State University Medical Center may have solved the mystery. It found that the antibodies may actually worsen and extend the spinal cord damage.

According to a new review of neuroscientific research, coercive interrogation techniques used during the Bush administration to extract information from terrorist suspects are likely to have been unsuccessful and may have had many unintended negative effects on the suspect's memory and brain functions. A new article, published by Cell Press on September 21st in the journal, Trends in Cognitive Science, reviews scientific evidence demonstrating that repeated and extreme stress and anxiety have a detrimental influence on brain functions related to memory.

CINCINNATI—Cancer predisposition resulting from the presence of a specific gene variant shows a strong gender bias, researchers at the University of Cincinnati (UC) have demonstrated.

In addition, the research indicates that the risk for development of cancer in individuals harboring the gene variant can be further increased as a result of environmental exposure.

Individuals with ethanol in their bloodstreams appear less likely to die following a moderate to severe head injury, according to a report in the September issue of Archives of Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Picture this. A bunch of adolescent rats walk into a bar and start consuming Jell-O shots. Lots of them.

Then, three weeks later, some of those party rats are given the choice of pushing one lever that always will give them two sugary pellets or another lever that will give them a larger but uncertain reward of either four or zero treats. The alcohol-consuming rats tend to opt for uncertain rewards while a control group of teetotaling rodents match their choice well to whichever lever had the probability giving the larger reward.

Rush University Medical Center is participating in a large-scale, multi-center clinical trial in the U.S. and Canada to determine whether a vitamin-like substance, in high doses, can slow the progression of Parkinson's disease, a neurodegenerative disorder that affects about one million people in the United States.

The blood brain barrier is generally considered an obstacle to delivering therapies from the bloodstream to the brain. However, University of Iowa researchers have discovered a way to turn the blood vessels surrounding brain cells into a production and delivery system for getting therapeutic molecules directly into brain cells.

Rockville, MD – Researchers have long known of the brain's ability to learn based on visual motion input, and a recent study has uncovered more insight into where the learning occurs.

The brain first perceives changes in visual input (local motion) in the primary visual cortex. The local motion signals are then integrated in the later visual processing stages and interpreted as global motion in the higher-level processes.

BEER-SHEVA, September, 21 2009 – A researcher who is working on a vaccine for Alzheimer's disease (AD) has demonstrated that it is possible to test and measure specific immune responses in mice carrying human genes and to anticipate the immune response in Alzheimer's patients. This continuing research at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev could one day lead to specific Alzheimer's vaccines that reduce plaque, neuronal damage and inflammation associated with the disease.

Philadelphia, PA, 21 September 2009– A new report from the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which is published by Elsevier in the September-October 2009 issue of General Hospital Psychiatry, explores the management of pregnancy and depression.

Scientists have found that some individuals in the vegetative and minimally conscious states, despite lacking the means of reporting awareness themselves, can learn and thereby demonstrate at least a partial consciousness. Their findings are reported in today's (20 September) online edition of Nature Neuroscience.

UCLA researchers have discovered that a combination of drugs, electrical stimulation and regular exercise can enable paralyzed rats to walk and even run again while supporting their full weight on a treadmill.

Published in Nature Neuroscience, the findings suggest that the regeneration of severed nerve fibers is not required for paraplegic rats to learn to walk again. The finding may hold implications for human rehabilitation after spinal cord injuries.

Cytokines are small proteins secreted by cells that serve as molecular messengers between cells. Pro-inflammatory cytokines – which function in the immune system – may be involved in alcohol dependence (AD). A study of three polymorphisms of the interleukin-1 gene complex (IL-1) and one of the tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNFα) has found that IL-1 may directly contribute to AD among Spanish Caucasian males.

Results will be published in the December issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research and are currently available at Early View.

• People who begin drinking at an early age are more likely to subsequently develop alcohol dependence (AD).
• A new study has found that age at first drink (AFD) may enhance the role of genetic factors that are already associated with vulnerability to AD symptoms.
• Heritable influences on AD symptoms were considerably greater in those who reported an AFD younger than 15 years of age.