Brain

Heart palpitations. Shortness of breath. Tiredness. More and more people can recognise the symptoms of atrial fibrillation, which is one of the most common types of heart disease. More than 65,000 Danes live with the disease, leading to a greatly increased risk of strokes, which are also known as apoplexy.

New research shows that patients who take anticoagulant medicine against atrial fibrillation not only reduce the risk of a thrombosis in the brain:

Teachers, parents and textbook companies use technical "readability" formulas to determine how difficult reading materials are and to set reading levels by age group. But new research from North Carolina State University shows that the readability formulas are usually inaccurate and offer little insight into which age groups will be able to read and understand a text.

San Francisco, CA—January 7, 2013—The most devastating aspect of Parkinson's disease may not be its debilitating symptoms, which rob its victims of their ability to control their own movement. It may not be the millions around the world and their families who suffer each day from the disease's harmful effects. Instead, it may in fact be that its root causes remain largely a mystery.

BOSTON (January 7, 2014, 5:00 pm ET) — A new neuroscience study sheds light on the biological underpinnings of obesity. The in vivo study, published in the January 8 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, reveals how a protein in the brain helps regulate food intake and body weight. The findings reveal a potential new avenue for the treatment of obesity and may help explain why medications that are prescribed for epilepsy and other conditions that interfere with this protein, such as gabapentin and pregabalin, can cause weight gain.

Human factors/ergonomics researchers have long studied the connection between cognitive function and the ability to perform well on multiple simultaneous tasks, and recently a group of neuroergonomics researchers went a step further to examine a genetic link to multitasking ability. Neuroergonomics is the study of the brain in relation to performance.

Australian researchers have shed more light on an underexplored aspect of the important brain-signaling system that controls appetite, body composition and energy use. Their findings suggest that a specific gene regulating our body clock may play a central role in determining how fat we become.

Evolution has preserved the 'neuropeptide Y (NPY) system', as it is known, in most species – indicating its importance – and much of our understanding comes from studying it in mice. There is one important difference, however, between the NPY system in mouse and man.

In adults, some brain regions retain a "childlike" ability to establish new connections, potentially contributing to our ability to learn new skills and form new memories as we age, according to new research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle.

SEATTLE, WASH. — January 7, 2014 — Although brain growth slows as individuals age, some regions of the brain continue to develop for longer than others, creating new connections and remodeling existing circuitry. How this happens is a key question in neuroscience, with implications for brain health and neurodegenerative diseases. New research published today shows that those areas of the adult brain that consume more fuel than scientists might expect also share key characteristics with the developing brain.

Jerusalem, January 7, 2014 -- Although drugs have been developed that inhibit the imbalance of neurotransmitters in the brain – a condition which causes many brain disorders and nervous system diseases – the exact understanding of the mechanism by which these drugs work has not yet been fully explained.

Now, researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, using baker's yeast as a model, have deciphered the mode by which the inhibitors affect the neurological transmission process and have even been able to manipulate it.

Philadelphia, Pa. (January 7, 2014) - Baseball players at bat follow coaches' advice to "keep your eye on the ball"—but head movements play a surprisingly important role in tracking pitches, suggests a study in Optometry and Vision Science, official journal of the American Academy of Optometry.

Ketamine is a potent anesthetic employed in human and veterinary medicine, and sometimes used illegally as a recreational drug. The drug is also a promising candidate for the fast treatment of depression in patients who do not respond to other medications. New research from the RIKEN Center for Life Science Technologies in Japan demonstrates using PET imaging studies on macaque monkeys that ketamine increases the activity of serotoninergic neurons in the brain areas regulating motivation.

CORAL GABLES, FL (January 6, 2014) — When it comes to deciding what food to eat, one might expect that people's choices will be driven by past experience and personal preference, but how does the general appearance of the package impact buying decisions of consumers?

Scientists believe colorful or otherwise noticeable food packages predispose where people look, how long they examine certain options and ultimately, influence which foods they choose, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Chemical compounds synthesised in the laboratory, similar to those found in cannabis, could be developed as potential drugs to reduce the pain of osteoarthritis.

These compounds could also reduce joint inflammation, according to new research carried out at the Arthritis Research UK Pain Centre at The University of Nottingham.

NEW YORK, NY (January 7, 2014) – Scientists at The New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF) Research Institute, working in collaboration with scientists from Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC), for the first time generated induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells lines from non-cryoprotected brain tissue of patients with Alzheimer's disease.

Practice alone doesn't make perfect, but learning can be optimized if you practice in the right way, according to new research based on online gaming data from more than 850,000 people.

The research, led by psychological scientist Tom Stafford of the University of Sheffield (UK), suggests that the way you practice is just as important as how often you practice when it comes to learning quickly.

The new findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.