Brain

Critical illness polyneuropathy and critical illness myopathy are frequent complications of severe illness that involve sensorimotor axons and skeletal muscles, respectively. Differentiating critical illness polyneuropathy from Guillain-Barré syndrome, especially the axonal variants, may be difficult on purely clinical grounds, as Guillain-Barré syndrome is known for its variable atypical manifestations. Prof.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Although markets for trading carbon emission credits to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have stalled in United States federal policy-making, carbon markets are emerging at the state level within the U.S. and around the world, teaching us more about what does and doesn't work.

To date, it remains poorly understood whether astrocytes can be easily reprogrammed into neurons. Mash1 and Brn2 have been previously shown to cooperate to reprogram fibroblasts into neurons. Dr. Yongjun Wang and team from Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in China found that and found that Brn2 was expressed in astrocytes from 2-month-old Sprague-Dawley rats, but Mash1 was not detectable. Thus, the researchers hypothesized that Mash1 alone could be used to reprogram astrocytes into neurons.

The Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden (cfaed) presents its new microchip 'Tomahawk 2' at the DATE'14 Conference in the International Congress Center Dresden from March 24 to 28, 2014. The new Tomahawk is extremely fast, energy-efficient and resilient. It is a heterogeneous multi-processor which can easily integrate very different kinds of devices. The researchers of the Cluster of Excellence for microelectronics of Technische Universität Dresden use the new prototype to prepare the so-called 'tactile internet'.

Researchers have found that preterm children are at an increased risk of having general cognitive and mathematic problems.

The new study by the University of Warwick and Ruhr-University Bochum, published in the Journal of Pediatrics, sought to understand the relationship between preterm birth and dyscalculia.

Dyscalculia, a learning disorder which involves frequent problems with everyday arithmetic tasks, is diagnosed when children do worse in maths than would be expected based on their general intelligence.

The same gene family that may have helped the human brain become larger and more complex than in any other animal also is linked to the severity of autism, according to new research from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

The gene family is made up of over 270 copies of a segment of DNA called DUF1220. DUF1220 codes for a protein domain – a specific functionally important segment within a protein. The more copies of a specific DUF1220 subtype a person with autism has, the more severe the symptoms, according to a paper published in the PLoS Genetics.

Depression and obesity have long been associated, but how they relate over time is less clear. New research from a Rutgers University–Camden professor shows that adolescent females who experience one of the disorders are at a greater risk for the other as they get older.

"Adolescence is a key developmental period for both obesity and depression, so we thought it significant to look at the onset of these disorders at an early age," says Naomi Marmorstein, an associate professor of psychology at Rutgers–Camden.

This news release is available in German.

TORONTO, March 21, 2014—Homeless and vulnerably housed people who have suffered a traumatic brain injury at some point in their life are more likely to visit an Emergency Department, be arrested or incarcerated, or be victims of physical assault, new research has found.

"Given the high costs of Emergency Department visits and the burden of crime on society, these findings have important public health and criminal justice implications," the researchers from St. Michael's Hospital wrote today in the Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – What happens when white video game players see themselves as black characters in a violent game?

A new study suggests some disturbing answers: It makes the white players act more aggressively after the game is over, have stronger explicit negative attitudes toward blacks and display stronger implicit attitudes linking blacks to weapons.

These results are the first to link avatar race in violent video games to later aggression, said Brad Bushman, co-author of the study and professor of communication and psychology at The Ohio State University.

Stroke caregivers are happier when they continue to enjoy their own hobbies and interests, according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Stroke.

Researchers used several questionnaires to assess well-being after one year among 399 family members caring for a loved one who survived a stroke. The caregivers were mostly women (69 percent) and married to the person they were caring for (70 percent).

In a two-year follow-up, 80 of the caregivers completed the questionnaires again, with most of their answers similar to those at the end of one year.

PHILADELPHIA – Using a University of Pennsylvania-designed device to noninvasively and continuously monitor cerebral blood flow (CBF) in acute stroke patients, researchers from Penn Medicine and the Department of Physics & Astronomy in Penn Arts and Sciences are now learning how head of bed (HOB) positioning affects blood flow reaching the brain. Most patients admitted to the hospital with an acute stroke are kept flat for at least 24 hours in an effort to increase CBF in vulnerable brain regions surrounding the damaged tissue.

The human sense of smell does not get the respect it deserves, new research suggests. In an experiment led by Andreas Keller, of Rockefeller's Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior, researchers tested volunteers' ability to distinguish between complex mixtures of scents. Based on the sensitivity of these people's noses and brains, the team calculated the human sense of smell can detect more than 1 trillion odor mixtures, far more discrete stimuli than previous smell studies have estimated.

We don't often think of them in these terms, but our brains, global financial markets and groups of friends are all examples of different kinds of complex networks or systems. And unlike the kind of system that exists in your car that has been intentionally engineered for humans to use, these systems are convoluted and not obvious how to control.

Neuroimages play a growing role in biomedical research, medicine, and courtrooms, as well as in shaping our understanding of what it means to be human. But how helpful are they at answering complex questions such as: What is depression? Is a defendant lying? Do we have free will?