Brain

Researchers have developed a new screening method to diagnose autism, which unlike current methods does not rely on subjective criteria. These results are published in a series of studies in the open-access journal Frontiers in Neuroscience.

The studies, funded by a US$ 650,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, were led by Elizabeth Torres, a computational neuroscientist, and Dimitri Metaxas, a computer scientist, both at Rutgers University, in collaboration with Jorge V. Jose, a theoretical physicist and computational neuroscientist from Indiana University.

For almost a century, scientists have been studying brain waves to learn about mental health and the way we think. Yet the way billions of interconnected neurons work together to produce brain waves remains unknown. Now, scientists from EPFL's Blue Brain Project in Switzerland, at the core of the European Human Brain Project, and the Allen Institute for Brain Science in the United States, show in the July 24th edition of the journal Neuron how a complex computer model is providing a new tool to solve the mystery.

If you are trying to lose weight or save for the future, new research suggests avoiding temptation may increase your chances of success compared to relying on willpower alone. The study on self-control by researchers from the Universities of Cambridge and Dusseldorf was published today in the journal Neuron.

Regular marijuana use in adolescence, but not adulthood, may permanently impair brain function and cognition, and may increase the risk of developing serious psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, according to a recent study from the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Researchers hope that the study, published in Neuropsychopharmacology — a publication of the journal Nature – will help to shed light on the potential long-term effects of marijuana use, particularly as lawmakers in Maryland and elsewhere contemplate legalizing the drug.

Little is known about how sibling relationships impact child and family functioning, but Penn State researchers are beginning to shed light on intervention strategies that can cultivate healthy and supportive sibling relationships.

Parents frequently rank their children's sibling rivalry and conflict as the number one problem they face in family life.

Infants develop a fear of heights as a result of their experiences moving around their environments, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Learning to avoid cliffs, ledges, and other precipitous hazards is essential to survival and yet human infants don't show an early wariness of heights.

Scientists from The University of Manchester have used stem cell gene therapy to treat a fatal genetic brain disease in mice for the first time.

The method was used to treat Sanfilippo – a fatal inherited condition which causes progressive dementia in children – but could also benefit several neurological, genetic diseases.

Researchers behind the study, published in the journal Molecular Therapy this month, are now hoping to bring a treatment to trial in patients within two years.

Scars are prone to appear at high tension parts, such as the sternum, shoulder and back, which are serious clinical problems. Surgeons reduce scar formation through Z, W, V-Y flap variation and reducing blade tension, but its specific mechanism are still not very clear. Hu Xiao and colleagues from Shandong Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong University verified that mechanical tension contributed to the formation of a hyperplastic scar in the back skin of rats, in conjunction with increases in both nerve density and nerve growth factor expression in the scar tissue.

A recent study entitled "Neuropeptide Y and leptin receptor expression in the hypothalamus of rats with chronic immobilization stress" showed that the body weight and food intake of rats subjected to chronic immobilization stress were significantly decreased; the expression of leptin receptor and the co-localization coeffient in these leptic receptor neurons in the arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus were both upregulated, while the number of neuropeptide Y neurons was decreased. These findings which were in the Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 8, No.

Cognitive performance of adolescent girls who walk to school is better than that of girls who travel by bus or car. Moreover, cognitive performance is also better in girls who take more than 15 minutes than in those who live closer and have a shorter walk to school.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Though humans generally have a tendency to look at a region just below the eyes and above the nose toward the midline when first identifying another person, a small subset of people tend to look further down –– at the tip of the nose, for instance, or at the mouth. However, as UC Santa Barbara researchers Miguel Eckstein and Matthew Peterson recently discovered, "nose lookers" and "mouth lookers" can do just as well as everyone else when it comes to the split-second decision-making that goes into identifying someone.

The motor relearning program can significantly improve various functional disturbance induced by ischemic cerebrovascular diseases. However, its mechanism of action remains poorly understood. According to a study published in the Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 8, No. 16, 2013), models of ischemic brain injury in the rhesus macaque were induced by electrocoagulation of the M1 segment of the right middle cerebral artery, then the motor relearning program was after model establishment.

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers and their colleagues have used digital versions of a standard molecular biology tool to detect a common tumor-associated mutation in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of patients with brain tumors.

This news release is available in French.

Montreal, July 23, 2013 – It's no surprise that those who tend to see a rose's blooms before its thorns are also better at handling stress. But science has failed to reliably associate optimism with individuals' biological stress response – until now.

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- One of regenerative medicine's greatest goals is to develop new treatments for stroke. So far, stem cell research for the disease has focused on developing therapeutic neurons — the primary movers of electrical impulses in the brain — to repair tissue damaged when oxygen to the brain is limited by a blood clot or break in a vessel. New UC Davis research, however, shows that other cells may be better suited for the task.