Brain

NEW YORK, NY (March 7, 2014) — Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers have found that decision-making accuracy can be improved by postponing the onset of a decision by a mere fraction of a second. The results could further our understanding of neuropsychiatric conditions characterized by abnormalities in cognitive function and lead to new training strategies to improve decision-making in high-stake environments. The study was published in the March 5 online issue of the journal PLoS One.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — You may have only had one glass of wine with dinner, but if you're 55 or older, that single serving may hit you hard enough to make you a dangerous driver.

So, baby boomers, what you suspected is true: you can't party like you used to.

MATERIALS – Lighter, stronger engines . . .

TORONTO, March 7, 2014 -- A new study from St. Michael's Hospital found that, after four years of declining, the rates of teenagers coming into Ontario emergency departments with suicide-related behaviours stopped dropping between 2006 and 2010.

Suicide-related behaviours are incidents of self-inflicted injuries or self-poisonings.

EVANSTON, Ill. --- There is a lot that 19-month-old children can't do: They can't tie their shoes or get their mittens on the correct hands. But they can use words they do know to learn new ones.

New research from Northwestern University demonstrates that even before infants begin to talk in sentences, they are paying careful attention to the way a new word is used in conversations, and they learn new words from this information in sentences.

In a paper published in the prestigious journal Science Translational Medicine, Professor Colin Masters from the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health and University of Melbourne – and colleagues in the UK and US – have found rapid neuronal damage begins 10 to 20 years before symptoms appear.

"As part of this research we have observed other changes in the brain that occur when symptoms begin to appear. There is actually a slowing of the neurodegeneration," said Professor Masters.

The findings of the survey, which was led by Orygen Youth Health Research Centre, in collaboration with the University of Melbourne, also indicated improved knowledge and beliefs about mental health problems within the community due, in part, to educational campaigns about mental health.

Cerebral malaria is a serious complication of infection with the malaria parasite, affecting approximately one in a thousand children in areas where malaria is common. Many of the patients die, and among those who survive, about a third have lasting cognitive and neurological disabilities, including epilepsy and learning disorders. A study published on March 6th in PLOS Pathogens shows that a known drug can prevent brain damage in a cerebral malaria mouse model and eliminate subsequent neurological deficits.

Flocks of birds manage to navigate through difficult environments by individuals having predispositions to favour the left- or right-hand side, according to research published in PLOS Computational Biology this week.

Scientists at The University of Queensland's Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Vision Science found that budgerigars display individual bias to fly to the left or right. This allows flocks to quickly navigate past obstacles by being able to split and not slow down due to crowding.

MATERIALS – Lighter, stronger engines . . .

Preschoolers can be smarter than college students at figuring out how unusual toys and gadgets work because they're more flexible and less biased than adults in their ideas about cause and effect, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Edinburgh.

LA JOLLA, CA, and NASHVILLE, TN – March 6, 2014 – Researchers at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and Vanderbilt University have created the most detailed 3-D picture yet of a membrane protein that is linked to learning, memory, anxiety, pain and brain disorders such as schizophrenia, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and autism.

An international group led by Vanderbilt University researchers has found cannabinoid receptors, through which marijuana exerts its effects, in a key emotional hub in the brain involved in regulating anxiety and the flight-or-fight response.

This is the first time cannabinoid receptors have been identified in the central nucleus of the amygdala in a mouse model, they report in the current issue of the journal Neuron.

Millions of high school and college algebra students are united in a shared agony over solving for x and y, and for those to whom the answers don't come easily, it gets worse: Most preschoolers and kindergarteners can do some algebra before even entering a math class.

People born unable to see are readily capable of learning to perceive the shape of the human body through soundscapes that translate images into sound, according to researchers who report their findings in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on March 6. With a little training, soundscapes representing the outlines and silhouettes of bodies cause the brain's visual cortex—and specifically an area dedicated in normally sighted people to processing body shapes—to light up with activity.