Brain

SAN DIEGO — New findings show that extensive musical training affects the structure and function of different brain regions, how those regions communicate during the creation of music, and how the brain interprets and integrates sensory information. The findings were presented at Neuroscience 2013, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and the world's largest source of emerging news about brain science and health.

A specific cell population is responsible for ensuring that our heartbeat remains regular. Researchers from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich have now elucidated the mode of action of one of the crucial components of the heart's intrinsic pacemaker.

Using morphine to fight the pain associated with abdominal surgery may paradoxically prolong a patient's suffering, doubling or even tripling the amount of time it takes to recover from the surgical pain, according to researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder.

A new study conducted by researchers at the Center for BrainHealth at The University of Texas at Dallas published online in the open-access journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience found that engaging in a physical exercise regimen helps healthy aging adults improve their memory, brain health and physical fitness. This finding is significant considering that among adults 50 and older, "staying mentally sharp" outranks social security and physical health as the top priority and concern in the United States.

What colour is H? Is 4 brighter than 9? For most people these questions might seem baffling, but not for people with grapheme-color synesthesia.

In the first long-term childhood study on grapheme-color synesthesia, researchers followed 80 children to determine when and how associations between graphemes and colors develop. The latest results are published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

Conscientious people are more likely to provide good customer service, according to a new study from researchers at Rice University.

A polymer originally designed to help mend broken bones could be successful in delivering chemotherapy drugs directly to the brains of patients suffering from brain tumours, researchers at The University of Nottingham have discovered.

Their study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, shows that the biomaterial can be easily applied to the cavity created following brain cancer surgery and used to release chemotherapy drugs over several weeks.

African-Americans are the most likely of all ethnic groups to emphasize the importance of postsecondary education, according to the 2013 Houston Education Survey. This and other findings were revealed in the first-of-its-kind report from Rice University's Kinder Institute for Urban Research.

The survey offers a comprehensive look at Harris County residents' attitudes toward education, their aspirations for their children, their evaluations of the public schools and their support for a variety of reform proposals.

Importance of education

Using scores obtained from cognitive tests, Johns Hopkins researchers think they have developed a model that could help determine whether memory loss in older adults is benign or a stop on the way to Alzheimer's disease.

SAN DIEGO — Research released today reveals a new model for a genetic eye disease, and shows how animal models — from fruit flies to armadillos and monkeys — can yield valuable information about the human brain. The findings were presented at Neuroscience 2013, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and the world's largest source of emerging news about brain science and health.

Lumosity, the online cognitive training and neuroscience research company, is presenting today at the annual 2013 Society for Neuroscience meeting on the effects of cognitive training in the academic setting. Study results found that students who trained with Lumosity improved more on a battery of online cognitive assessments compared to students who kept to a standard academic schedule. Effects were dose-dependent; those who spent more than nine hours training with Lumosity improved almost twice as much as those who did not train.

Patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI) had increased deposits of β-Amyloid (Aβ) plaques, a hallmark of Alzheimer Disease (AD), in some areas of their brains in a study by Young T. Hong, Ph.D., of the University of Cambridge, England, and colleagues.

There may be epidemiological or pathophysiological (changes because of injury) links between TBI and AD, and Aβ plaques are found in as many as 30 percent of patients who die in the acute phase after a TBI. The plaques appear within hours of the injury and can occur in patients of all ages, according to the study background.

Philadelphia, Pa. (November 11, 2013) – Hospitals vary in management of children with traumatic brain injury—particularly in monitoring and preventing the harmful effects of increased intracranial pressure (ICP), according to a study in the November issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons.

SAN DIEGO — Research released today reveals new mechanisms and areas of the brain associated with anxiety and depression, presenting possible targets to understand and treat these debilitating mental illnesses. The findings were presented at Neuroscience 2013, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and the world's largest source of emerging news about brain science and health.

Johns Hopkins engineers and cardiology experts have teamed up to develop a fingernail-sized biosensor that could alert doctors when serious brain injury occurs during heart surgery. By doing so, the device could help doctors devise new ways to minimize brain damage or begin treatment more quickly.

In the Nov. 11 issue of the journal Chemical Science, the team reported on lab tests demonstrating that the prototype sensor had successfully detected a protein associated with brain injuries.