Brain

Many people can recall reading at least one cherished story that they say changed their life. Now researchers at Emory University have detected what may be biological traces related to this feeling: Actual changes in the brain that linger, at least for a few days, after reading a novel.

Their findings, that reading a novel may cause changes in resting-state connectivity of the brain that persist, were published by the journal Brain Connectivity.

Supratentorial cerebral infarction can cause functional inhibition of remote regions such as the cerebellum, which may be relevant to diaschisis. This phenomenon is often analyzed using positron emission tomography and single photon emission CT. However, these methods are expensive and radioactive. Dr.

Over-production of nitric oxide and ion disturbance are involved in neuronal apoptosis around the ischemic area following ischemic brain injury. Prof. Quanzhong Chang and team from Zhuhai Campus of Zunyi Medical College in China established a rat model of hippocampal neuronal apoptosis by using 3-morpholinosyndnomine (SIN-1), a nitric oxide donor.

Endoplasmic reticulum stress is closely involved in the early stage of diabetic retinopathy. According a study published in the Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 8, No. 33, 2013), endoplasmic reticulum stress played an important role in the hyperglycemia-induced death of ganglion cells and impairment of retinal microvessels. Tauroursodeoxycholic acid treatment effectively inhibited the activation of the endoplasmic reticulum stress pathway, and provided effective protection against diabetic retinopathy.

MAYWOOD, Il. - In the journal Neurology, researchers report a novel technique that enables a patient with "word blindness" to read again.

Word blindness is a rare neurological condition. (The medical term is "alexia without agraphia.") Although a patient can write and understand the spoken word, the patient is unable to read.

The article is written by Jason Cuomo, Murray Flaster, MD, PhD and Jose Biller, MD, of Loyola University Medical Center.

Two INSERM research teams led by Pier Vincenzo Piazza and Giovanni Marsicano (INSERM Unit 862 "Neurocentre Magendie" in Bordeaux) recently discovered that pregnenolone, a molecule produced by the brain, acts as a natural defence mechanism against the harmful effects of cannabis in animals. Pregnenolone prevents THC, the main active principle in cannabis, from fully activating its brain receptor, the CB1 receptor, that when overstimulated by THC causes the intoxicating effects of cannabis.

Stretches of DNA called retrotransposons, often dubbed "junk DNA", might play an important role in schizophrenia. In a study published today in the journal Neuron, a Japanese team revealed that LINE-1 retrotransposons are abnormally abundant in the schizophrenia brain, modify the expression of genes related to schizophrenia during brain development, and may be one of the causes of schizophrenia.

Amsterdam, NL, January 2, 2014 – Scientists know that vision restoration training (VRT) can help patients who have lost part of their vision due to glaucoma, optic nerve damage, or stroke regain some of their lost visual functions, but they do not understand what factors determine how much visual recovery is achieved.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Parents and other adults heap the highest praise on children who are most likely to be hurt by the compliments, a new study finds.

Researchers found that adults seem to naturally give more inflated praise to children with low self-esteem. But while children with high self-esteem seem to thrive with inflated praise, those with low self-esteem actually shrink from new challenges when adults go overboard on praising them.

If bulging or protruding intervertebral discs occupies the intervertebral foramen, and nerve roots are compressed. The cross-sectional area of nerve root fibers is reduced, fiber bundles gathered together and interrupted at the affected side, with no branching. Dr. Xin Tian and colleagues from the Second Hospital of Hebei Medical University in China was the first to use diffusion tensor tractography to reveal spinal nerve root function.

EUGENE, Ore. -- Search for "brain training" on the Web. You'll find online exercises, games, software, even apps, all designed to prepare your brain to do better on any number of tasks. Do they work? University of Oregon psychologists say, yes, but "there's a catch."

The catch, according to Elliot T. Berkman, a professor in the Department of Psychology and lead author on a study published in the Jan. 1 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, is that training for a particular task does heighten performance, but that advantage doesn't necessarily carry over to a new challenge.

Hypobaric hypoxia can cause severe brain damage and mitochondrial dysfunction, and is involved in hypoxic brain injury. Dr. Jianyu Li and colleagues from Logistics College of Chinese People's Armed Police Forces evaluated the degree of brain damage with different exposure times to hypoxia and further investigate the differential expression of cerebral mitochondrial proteins by comparative proteomic analysis, in a broader attempt to search for treatment targets of hypobaric hypoxia brain injury. Furthermore, ten protein spots were selected and identified by mass spectrometry.

Accumulating evidence indicates that chronic pain of different etiologies is often associated with distinct gray matter volume reductions in multiple brain regions associated with acute pain processing, and gray matter atrophy critically affects the perception and modulation of chronic pain. Dr. Cuiping Mao and co-workers from Xi'an Jiaotong University in China investigated changes in gray matter volume in chronic back pain patients having different sites of pain using voxel-based morphometry.

A new study from Uppsala University, Sweden, shows that one night of sleep deprivation increases morning blood concentrations of NSE and S-100B in healthy young men. These molecules are typically found in the brain. Thus, their rise in blood after sleep loss may indicate that a lack of snoozing might be conducive to a loss of brain tissue. The findings are published in the journal SLEEP.

Fifteen normal-weight men participated in the study. In one condition they were sleep-deprived for one night, while in the other condition they slept for approximately 8 hours.

Hyperhomocysteinemia and abnormal blood lipids are independent risk factors for stroke. However, whether both factors exert a synergistic effect in the onset of stroke remains unclear. As reported in the Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 8, No. 31, 2013), a study by Dr. Xiaoyong Sai and colleagues from Chinese PLA General Hospital is a retrospective analysis of inpatients across a 5 year period from the Chinese PLA General Hospital, based on a matched pairs case control design.