Brain

T-cells are the body's sentinels, patrolling every corner of the body in search of foreign threats such as bacteria and viruses. Receptor molecules on the T-cells identify invaders by recognizing their specific antigens, helping the T-cells discriminate attackers from the body's own cells. When they recognize a threat, the T-cells signal other parts of the immune system to confront the invader.

Newborns whose mothers were exposed during pregnancy to any one of a variety of environmental stressors — such as trauma, illness, and alcohol or drug abuse — become susceptible to various psychiatric disorders that frequently arise later in life. However, it has been unclear how these stressors affect the cells of the developing brain prenatally and give rise to conditions such as schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, and some forms of autism and bipolar disorders.

The willingness of decision makers to take risks increases when they play games of chance with money won earlier. Risk taking also rises when they have the opportunity to compensate for earlier losses by breaking even. This outcome was demonstrated by Dr. Kaisa Hytönen, a Finnish Aalto University researcher in neurofinance, together with her international colleagues.

Philadelphia, PA, April 10, 2014 – Two new studies published this week in Biological Psychiatry shed light on the propensity for habit formation in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). These studies suggest that a tendency to develop habits, i.e., the compulsive component of the disorder, may be a core feature of the disorder rather than a consequence of irrational beliefs.

Heroin abuse can damage many brain areas, including the pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus of the midbrain, the ventral tegmental area, and nucleus accumbens. Persistent use of heroin induced irreversible damage to the nervous system. To verify the relationship between acupuncture, neurotrophic factor expression and brain cell structural changes, a research team from Anhui University of Chinese Medicine in China established a rat model of heroin relapse using intramuscular injection of increasing amounts of heroin.

The boldest black-lined rainbowfish are those that are born in the wild. Also more fearless are those that analyze information both sides of their brains. This is the conclusion of Australian researchers Culum Brown and Anne-Laurence Bibost from Macquarie University, in a study published in Springer's journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.

Dr. Yuhong Zhao and co-workers from Sun Yat-sen University in China explored the projection of nestin+ neurons to the olfactory bulb and the time course of nestin+ neurons in the medial septum-diagonal band of Broca in adult rats during injury recovery after olfactory nerve transection. These researchers observed that all nestin+ neurons were double-labeled with ChAT in the medial septum-diagonal band of Broca. Approximately 53.6% of nestin+ neurons were projected to the olfactory bulb and co-labeled with fast blue.

New research has found that a child's relationships may be a hidden casualty long after a head injury.

Neuroscientists at Brigham Young University studied a group of children three years after each had suffered a traumatic brain injury – most commonly from car accidents. The researchers found that lingering injury in a specific region of the brain predicted the health of the children's social lives.

There is no point faking it in bed because chances are your sexual partner will be able to tell. A study by researchers at the University of Waterloo found that men and women are equally perceptive of their partners' levels of sexual satisfaction.

The study by Erin Fallis, PhD candidate, and co-authors Professor Uzma S. Rehman and Professor Christine Purdon in the Department of Psychology at Waterloo, identified sexual communication and ability to recognize emotions as important factors that predict accuracy in gauging one partner's sexual satisfaction.

A meta-analysis of studies that investigated measures designed to improve health professionals' interactions with patients confirms that such efforts can produce health effects just as beneficial as taking a daily aspirin to prevent heart attack. In contrast to previous such reviews, the current report from the Empathy and Relational Science Program at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) only included randomized, controlled trials with more reliable results than those included in earlier studies.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Statistics show that the amount of older adults in the criminal justice system has quadrupled in the past 15 years. Many of the adults have histories of mental health problems and are being placed in court-based treatment programs, where government officials and social workers tend to think that they are more likely to experience success compared to their younger counterparts.

It's a guessing game parents like to ponder: What will my child look like when she grows up? A computer could now answer the question in less than a minute.

University of Washington researchers have developed software that automatically generates images of a young child's face as it ages through a lifetime. The technique is the first fully automated approach for aging babies to adults that works with variable lighting, expressions and poses.

Irvine, Calif., April 9, 2014 — Stem cells culled from bone marrow may prove beneficial in stroke recovery, scientists at UC Irvine's Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center have learned.

In an analysis of published research, neurologist Dr. Steven Cramer and biomedical engineer Weian Zhao identified 46 studies that examined the use of mesenchymal stromal cells – a type of multipotent adult stem cells mostly processed from bone marrow – in animal models of stroke. They found MSCs to be significantly better than control therapy in 44 of the studies.

Hearing loss affects 36 million Americans to some degree, often leaving them feeling isolated, but it has received little attention from the pharmaceutical industry — until now. Small firms have brought a handful of potential therapies to the development pipeline, and pharmaceutical heavyweights are taking notice, according to an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly magazine of the American Chemical Society.

While many people have an opinion on whether animals can help to improve wellbeing and care for patients in hospitals, does anyone really know whether there are benefits both for the patients and the animals themselves?

Not according to a team of researchers from the University of Adelaide, which has conducted a worldwide review of all studies looking at the impact of "animal interventions" in healthcare settings for children.