Brain

Recent deaths in both Canada and the UK linked to PMA/PMMA in ecstasy pills has brought public scrutiny to this little known drug. With Canadian producing most of the ecstasy in the North American market, this timely paper (Ecstasy, legal highs and designer drug use: A Canadian perspective) published this week in Drug Science Policy and Law looks at trends in ecstasy adulteration, the facts around PMA/PMMA-linked deaths and explores alternatives to the endless banning of new drugs.

It finds:

Daejeon, Republic of Korea, February 17, 2014 – Walking around the streets searching for a place to eat will be no hassle when a head-mounted display (HMD) becomes affordable and ubiquitous. Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) developed K-Glass, a wearable, hands-free HMD that enables users to find restaurants while checking out their menus. If the user of K-Glass walks up to a restaurant and looks at the name of the restaurant, today's menu and a 3D image of food pop up. The Glass can even show the number of tables available inside the restaurant.

Asian elephants console others who are in distress, using physical touches and vocalizations, finds a study to be published in the open access journal PeerJ. The findings are the first empirical evidence of consolation in elephants, says lead author Joshua Plotnik, who began the research as a graduate student of psychology at Emory University.

"For centuries, people have observed that elephants seem to be highly intelligent and empathic animals, but as scientists we need to actually test it," he says.

PHILADELPHIA – A new study finds that football helmets currently used on the field may do little to protect against hits to the side of the head, or rotational force, an often dangerous source of brain injury and encephalopathy. The study released today will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 66th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, April 26 to May 3, 2014.

Teenage boys who show a combination of depressive symptoms and elevated levels of the 'stress hormone' cortisol are up to fourteen times more likely to develop major depression than those who show neither trait, according to research funded by the Wellcome Trust.

WASHINGTON D.C. Feb. 17, 2014 -- Alzheimer's disease has long been marked by progress -- but not the kind of progress the medical community seeks. It is the most common form of dementia among older Americans, and its risk increases with increasing age; for those living with the disease, its ravages get worse over time; and as we move into the 21st century, it will place a greater and greater burden on society. The number of Americans living with Alzheimer's has doubled since 1980 and is expected to triple again by 2050.

With a little practice on a computer or iPad—25 minutes a day, 4 days a week, for 2 months—our brains can learn to see better, according to a study of University of California, Riverside baseball players reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on February 17. The new evidence also shows that a visual training program can sometimes make the difference between winning and losing.

The study is the first, as far as the researchers know, to show that perceptual learning can produce improvements in vision in normally seeing individuals.

Neurotensin conjugate provides pain relief in animal models

Some people recall a dream every morning, whereas others rarely recall one. A team led by Perrine Ruby, an Inserm Research Fellow at the Lyon Neuroscience Research Center (Inserm/CNRS/Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1), has studied the brain activity of these two types of dreamers in order to understand the differences between them.

One factor that makes glioblastoma cancers so difficult to treat is that malignant cells from the tumors spread throughout the brain by following nerve fibers and blood vessels to invade new locations. Now, researchers have learned to hijack this migratory mechanism, turning it against the cancer by using a film of nanofibers thinner than human hair to lure tumor cells away.

CHICAGO --- Daniel K. Mroczek, professor of psychology and professor of medical social sciences in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University, will discuss his research at a symposium on resilient aging during the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Chicago.

The interdisciplinary symposium "The Science of Resilient Aging" will be held from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m., Sunday, Feb. 16, in Grand Ballroom A in the Hyatt Regency Chicago.

Feeling extreme loneliness can increase an older person's chances of premature death by 14 percent, according to research by John Cacioppo, professor of psychology at the University of Chicago.

Cacioppo and his colleagues' work shows that the impact of loneliness on premature death is nearly as strong as the impact of disadvantaged socioeconomic status, which they found increases the chances of dying early by 19 percent. A 2010 meta-analysis showed that loneliness has twice the impact on early death as does obesity, he said.

CHICAGO -- (Feb. 16, 2014) -- Attendees of a workshop at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science will be immersed into "active learning," an approach inspired by national reports targeting U.S. science education, in general, and, more specifically, the 60 percent dropout rate of students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

Chicago, Illinois - Understanding the human brain is one of the greatest challenges facing 21st century science. If we can rise to this challenge, we will gain profound insights into what makes us human, develop new treatments for brain diseases, and build revolutionary new computing technologies that will have far reaching effects, not only in neuroscience.

If two minds are better than one, what could thousands of minds accomplish? The possibilities are endless -- if researchers can learn to effectively harness and utilize all that knowledge.

Northwestern University professor Haoqi Zhang designs new forms of crowd-supported, mixed-initiative systems that tightly integrate crowd work, community process and intelligent user interfaces to solve complex problems that no machine nor person could solve alone. Zhang's systems can ease challenges in designing a custom trip or planning an academic conference, for example.