Brain

Most Americans know about MyPyramid – the triangle depicting how many servings of each food group you should eat in a day - but who knows about MyPlate - the circle showing what a healthy meal looks like? MyPlate was created in 2011 by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to help American consumers put the Dietary Guidelines into practice. It's a simple, colorful icon that prompts us to think about what's on our plate, illustrating healthy proportions of fruit, vegetables, grains, protein, and dairy within a single meal.

Human beings are highly efficient at recognising familiar faces, even from very poor quality images.

New research led by a psychologist at the University of York is using advances in the level of detail available in digital photography to harness this human ability for use in forensics.

MINNEAPOLIS – A new study suggests that a history of concussion involving at least a momentary loss of consciousness may be related to the buildup of Alzheimer's-associated plaques in the brain. The research is published in the December 26, 2013, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

PORTLAND, Ore. — Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University have discovered that an antioxidant designed more than a dozen years ago to fight damage within human cells significantly helps symptoms in mice that have a multiple sclerosis-like disease.

The antioxidant — called MitoQ — has shown some promise in fighting neurodegenerative diseases. But this is the first time it has been shown to significantly reverse an MS-like disease in an animal.

"Good to see you. I'm sorry. It sounds like you've had a tough, tough, week." Spoken by a doctor to a cancer patient, that statement is an example of compassionate behavior observed by a University of Rochester Medical Center team in a new study published by the journal Health Expectations.

Substance P and calcitonin gene-related peptide are the main neuropeptides in peripheral nerve ganglia, which can anterogradely transmit nociceptive information to the central nervous system. In a study by Dr. Changma Fu and co-workers from First Hospital of Anhui Medical University in China, a model of sciatic nerve defect was prepared by dissecting the sciatic nerve at the middle, left femur in female Sprague Dawley rats. The two ends of the nerve were encased in a silica gel tube.

The Kinect-based virtual reality system for the Xbox 360 enables users to control and interact with the game console without the need to touch a game controller, and provides rehabilitation training for stroke patients with lower limb dysfunctions.

Various medications have been developed to treat neurodegenerative disorders, and drugs without significant side effects are gaining widespread interest such disorders. Brain Research Institute of Synergon Consulting in Romania, led by Dragoş Cîrneci, found that the protein p300, which is a transcription co-activator required for consolidation of memories during specific learning tasks, is at the same time involved in DNA replication and repair, playing a central role in the long-patch pathway of base excision repair.

(PHILADELPHIA) – Researchers at Penn Medicine report in the December 25 issue of JAMA that a modified form of prolonged exposure therapy – in which patients revisit and recount aloud their trauma-related thoughts, feelings and situations – shows greater success than supportive counseling for treating adolescent PTSD patients who have been sexually abused.

Despite a high prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in adolescents, evidence-based treatments like prolonged exposure therapy for PTSD in this population have never been established.

C677T polymorphism in the methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) gene is a risk factor for stroke. Studies have report a higher C677T homozygosity frequency in Chinese than in Europeans. Usually, the detection of genetic diseases is rather complicated on a large scale owing to the invasive sampling and a cumbersome DNA extraction process. In a study by Dr. Li Yi and team from Peking University Shenzhen Hospital in China, DNA from stroke patients and healthy controls was extracted from the saliva using a magnetic nanoparticles-based method and from the blood using conventional methods.

In a recent study published in the Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 8, No. 33, 2013), Prof. Feng Li and team from Zhongshan School of Medicine, Sun Yat-sen University in China, synthesized a 19-nt oligonucleotide targeting BACE1, the key enzyme in amyloid beta protein (Aβ) production, and introduced it into the pSilenCircle vector to construct a short hairpin (shRNA) expression plasmid against the BACE1 gene.

The use of antidepressants in the treatment of bipolar disorder remains controversial. Some studies and treatment guidelines suggest that antidepressant treatment for bipolar disorder may have the potential to increase the manic switch, while others recommend short-term antidepressant treatment and early discontinuation. A recent study by Dr.

A clinical trial assessing the potential of the nutritional supplement inosine to treat Parkinson disease has found that the studied dosages successfully raised participants' levels of the antioxidant urate without producing serious side effects. Results of the two-year phase 2 trial – conducted by a consortium led by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Harvard School of Public Health, and the University of Rochester – are being published in JAMA Neurology.

New findings suggest the oxytocin receptor, a gene known to influence mother-infant bonding and pair bonding in monogamous species, also plays a special role in the ability to remember faces. This research has important implications for disorders in which social information processing is disrupted, including autism spectrum disorder. In addition, the finding may lead to new strategies for improving social cognition in several psychiatric disorders.

Putnam Valley, NY. (Dec. 23, 2013) – Cell-based therapies have been shown to enhance cardiac regeneration, but autologous (patient self-donated) cells have produced only "modest results." In an effort to improve myocardial regeneration through cell transplantation, a research team from Germany has taken epithelial cells from placenta (amniotic epithelial cells, or AECs) and converted them into mesenchymal cells.