Brain

Chimpanzees are sensitive to social influences but they maintain their own strategy to solve a problem rather than conform to what the majority of group members are doing. However, chimpanzees do change their strategy when they can obtain greater rewards, MPI researchers found.

If you have ever said or done the wrong thing at the wrong time, you should read this. Neuroscientists at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) and the University of California, San Diego, have successfully demonstrated a technique to enhance a form of self-control through a novel form of brain stimulation.

A study in mice shows how a breakdown of the brain's blood vessels may amplify or cause problems associated with Alzheimer's disease. The results published in Nature Communications suggest that blood vessel cells called pericytes may provide novel targets for treatments and diagnoses.

Skepticism about repressed traumatic memories has increased over time, but new research shows that psychology researchers and practitioners still tend to hold different beliefs about whether such memories occur and whether they can be accurately retrieved.

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

Cambridge, Mass. – December 12, 2013 – Computer scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have joined forces to put powerful probabilistic reasoning algorithms in the hands of bioengineers.

In a new paper presented at the Neural Information Processing Systems conference on December 7, Ryan P. Adams and Nils Napp have shown that an important class of artificial intelligence algorithms could be implemented using chemical reactions.

Civilians traumatized by Libya's civil war in 2011 — which left many homeless, poor and grieving — have virtually no access to mental health professionals, but many have found healing through small groups led by Libyan volunteers who were trained by American professionals, according to a Baylor University study.

AURORA, Colorado (December 12, 13) – People from around the country and the world turn to Johan Van Hove, MD, PhD, for advice on a rare metabolic disease known as NKH, which can disrupt the body in devastating and even deadly ways. Now, Van Hove, a University of Colorado medical school professor, has identified a new disease related to NKH, a finding that resolves previously baffling cases including the death of a Colorado girl.

"This opens the door," Van Hove said. "I am hopeful that it will eventually lead to major advances in dealing with these diseases."

Most people – including scientists – assumed we can't just sniff out danger.

It was thought that we become afraid of an odor – such as leaking gas – only after information about a scary scent is processed by our brain.

But neuroscientists at Rutgers University studying the olfactory – sense of smell – system in mice have discovered that this fear reaction can occur at the sensory level, even before the brain has the opportunity to interpret that the odor could mean trouble.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Neuroscientists are eagerly, but not always successfully, looking for proof that optogenetics – a celebrated technique that uses pulses of visible light to genetically alter brain cells to be excited or silenced – can be as successful in complex and large brains as it has been in rodent models.

WASHINGTON – There is no single personality profile that can reliably predict who will use a gun in a violent act – but individual prediction is not necessary for violence prevention, according to a comprehensive report on gun violence released today by the American Psychological Association.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new study suggests that political bias can influence how people perceive the facial characteristics of a presidential candidate – even after seeing his face on TV thousands of times.

The study of Ohioans immediately before and after the 2012 presidential election showed that people's mental representation of Republican candidate Mitt Romney's face differed based on their political persuasion.

NEW YORK (December 11, 2013) -- Access to mental health care has become a prominent issue in Congress following mass shootings around the country. But a new study in JAMA Psychiatry, led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College, suggests that unless those in need of help have deep pockets, they might have a hard time finding a psychiatrist that will provide the needed services.

Hollywood, FL (December 12, 2013) – A new study shows that high levels of maternal care during the early post-natal period in rodents can reduce the sensitivity of the offspring to stressful events during adulthood. Maternal care is shown to chemically modify and thereby re-program genes that control stress responses making them less likely to be activated. The findings have important implications for understanding early environment influences on stress-related disorders.

Hollywood, FL (December 12, 2013) – A new study shows that immune cells outside the brain may regulate propensity to develop depression. The data were presented today at the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP) Annual Meeting.

Depression is a chronic disorder with a devastating impact on the quality of life, health and life expectancy of those who suffer from the disorder. The underlying causes of the disorder remain something of a mystery.

Philadelphia, PA, December 12, 2013 – The critical enzyme beta-secretase1 (BACE1) is known to be elevated in brains with sporadic Alzheimer disease (AD). Scientists have now found increased levels of BACE1 in brains with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), suggesting that BACE1 activity is important for conversion of mild cognitive impairment to AD and may be an early indicator of AD. The results are published in the January issue of The American Journal of Pathology.