Brain

Why do neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's affect only the elderly? Why do some people live to be over 100 with intact cognitive function while others develop dementia decades earlier?

More than a century of research into the causes of dementia has focused on the clumps and tangles of abnormal proteins that appear in the brains of people with neurodegenerative diseases. However, scientists know that at least one piece of the puzzle has been missing because some people with these abnormal protein clumps show few or no signs of cognitive decline.

New research in mice suggests that autism is characterized by reduced activity of inhibitory neurons and increased activity of excitatory neurons in the brain, but balance can be restored with low doses of a well-known class of drugs currently used in much higher doses to treat anxiety and epileptic seizures. The findings, which are reported in the March 19th issue of the Cell Press journal Neuron, point to a new therapeutic approach to managing autism.

March 19, 2014 – The open-access International Journal of Alcohol and Drug Research has released a special issue on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD), with the intention of increasing awareness of the negative effects of alcohol use in pregnancy and improving prevention, treatment and care for those living with FASD.

In a study published today (19/3/2014) in the scientific journal Neuron, neuroscientists at the Champalimaud Foundation, in collaboration with neuroscientists from Harvard University, describe the first activity maps at the resolution of single cells and throughout the entire brain of behaving zebrafish.

Influential policy-informing 'evidence' that children's brains are irreversibly 'sculpted' by parental care is based on questionable evidence.

The researchers warn that the success that advocates of 'brain-based' parenting have had in influencing government policy could undermine parent-child relationships.

BOSTON (March 19, 2014) – Experts across academia, industry and government propose a new method for health care providers to get the right treatments to the right patients at the right time. This new approach, A Proposal for Integrated Efficacy-to-Effectiveness (E2E) Clinical Trials, published in Nature Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics, recommends a seamless transition from controlled experiments to real-world comparative effectiveness trials.

Scientists at UNC's Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG) report that high school students with autism can learn under Common Core State Standards (CCSS), boosting their prospects for college and employment. Newly published recommendations from FPG's team also provide strategies for educating adolescents with autism under a CCSS curriculum.

When individuals engage in risky business transactions with each other, they may end up being disappointed. This is why they'd rather leave the decision on how to divvy up jointly-owned monies to a computer than to their business partner. This subconscious strategy seems to help them avoid the negative emotions associated with any breaches of trust. This is the result of a study by scientists from the University of Bonn and US peers. They are presenting their findings in the scientific journal "Proceedings of the Royal Society B."

People lie – we know this. People lie to kids – we know this, too. But what happens next? Do children who've been lied to lie more themselves?

Surprisingly, the question had not been asked experimentally until Chelsea Hays, then an undergraduate student in psychology at the University of California, San Diego, approached professor Leslie Carver with it. Now the pair have a paper out in Developmental Science, suggesting that adult dishonesty does make a difference, and not in a good way.

According to Dr. Fletcher, typical approaches for evaluating anti-obesity type drugs rely on more subjective methods—like having test subjects self-report their ratings of hunger and cravings.

"When a person is asked how much they subjectively desire a food, they may feel pressured to give a 'correct' rather than a true answer," said Dr. Fletcher, "[Our] grip force task may, under certain circumstances, present a more accurate reflection of what they really want."

New research from Queen Mary University of London has found youth, wealth, and being in full-time education to be risk factors associated with violent radicalisation. Contrary to popular views – religious practice, health and social inequalities, discrimination, and political engagement showed no links.

PHILADELPHIA - Most people appreciate that not getting enough sleep impairs cognitive performance. For the chronically sleep-deprived such as shift workers, students, or truckers, a common strategy is simply to catch up on missed slumber on the weekends. According to common wisdom, catch up sleep repays one's "sleep debt," with no lasting effects. But a new Penn Medicine study shows disturbing evidence that chronic sleep loss may be more serious than previously thought and may even lead to irreversible physical damage to and loss of brain cells.

Results of a phase 2 study published in The Lancet suggest that simvastatin, a cheap cholesterol lowering drug, might be a potential treatment option for the secondary progressive, or chronic, stage of multiple sclerosis (MS), which is currently untreatable.

Findings from the MS-STAT trial showed that a high, daily dose of simvastatin was safe, well tolerated, and slowed brain atrophy (shrinkage) by 43% over two years compared with placebo. Longitudinal studies suggest that atrophy progression is linked with disability.

West Orange, NJ. March 18, 2014. Kessler Foundation researchers have demonstrated for the first time ever that body temperature is elevated endogenously in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) and linked to worse fatigue. The article was published ahead of print on Feb. 21, 2014 in Archives of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation. Sumowski J, Leavitt V: Body temperature is elevated and linked to fatigue in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis, even without heat exposure. doi:10.1016/j.apmr.2014.02.004.

They may have tiny brains, but bumblebees are capable of some remarkable learning feats, especially when they might get a tasty reward, according to two studies by University of Guelph researchers.

PhD student Hamida Mirwan and Prof. Peter Kevan, School of Environmental Sciences, are studying bees' ability to learn by themselves and from each other.

In the first study, published in February in Animal Cognition, the researchers found bees capable of learning to solve increasingly complex problems.