Brain

SAN DIEGO — New human and animal research released today demonstrates how experiences impact genes that influence behavior and health. Today's studies, 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, provide new insights into how experience might produce long-term brain changes in behaviors like drug addiction and memory formation.

SAN DIEGO— Pregnant women may transmit the damaging effects of stress to their unborn child by way of the bacteria in their vagina and through the placenta, suggest new findings from two animal studies presented by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania at Neuroscience 2013, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

Stresses felt by mothers during pregnancy have been shown to affect offspring neurodevelopment and increase the risk for disorders such as autism and schizophrenia, but the mechanisms by which it can reprogram the developing brain are not clear.

SAN DIEGO— A father's cocaine use may make his sons less sensitive to the drug and thereby more likely to resist addictive behaviors, suggests new findings from an animal study presented by Penn Medicine researchers at Neuroscience 2013, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

A specialized type of brain cell that tamps down stem cell activity ironically, perhaps, encourages the survival of the stem cells' progeny, Johns Hopkins researchers report. Understanding how these new brain cells "decide" whether to live or die and how to behave is of special interest because changes in their activity are linked to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, mental illness and aging.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The ever-increasing adoption of digital surveillance technologies by local police departments may dramatically improve the efficiency of criminal investigations, but it also creates the opportunity for abuse and misuse, a University of Illinois expert in criminal law and information privacy says.

Augusta, Ga. – An antibody to a protein critical to enabling the brain to talk to muscles has been identified as a cause of myasthenia gravis, researchers report.

A specialized type of brain cell that tamps down stem cell activity ironically, perhaps, encourages the survival of the stem cells' progeny, Johns Hopkins researchers report. Understanding how these new brain cells "decide" whether to live or die and how to behave is of special interest because changes in their activity are linked to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, mental illness and aging.

What do bullies and sex have in common? Based on work by scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Monterotondo, Italy, it seems that the same part of the brain reacts to both. In a study published today in Nature Neuroscience, the researchers found that – at least in mice – different types of fear are processed by different groups of neurons, even if the animals act out those fears in the same way. The findings could have implications for addressing phobias and panic attacks in humans.

Imagine that you have not eaten anything for the past few hours. It is almost lunch time, and you are getting hungry. You receive an email. It is a survey asking about your political position regarding the welfare state. You answer the questions quickly and head off to lunch. Now imagine a different scenario. You have just come back from lunch. You are feeling full, as you sit down in front of your computer. You receive the same email. You answer the survey quickly and then get back to work. Do you think your answers in these two scenarios would be the same – or different?

Lumosity, the online cognitive training and neuroscience research company, is presenting today at the annual 2013 Society for Neuroscience meeting showing that optimizing training tasks can accelerate and lengthen learning rates. The study, titled "Optimizing Cognitive Training Task Designs to Improve Learning Rates in a Large Online Population," found that altering various psychophysical task parameters that make a task more challenging led to different learning rates of the tasks.

SAN DIEGO — Research released today demonstrates unexpected roles that sex hormones may play in the cognitive function of females, including memory and interpreting social cues. Additionally, a chemical identified in pregnant mice may provide insight into developmental disorders, such as schizophrenia. 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.

Today's new findings show that:

A new Dartmouth neuroimaging study suggests chronic dieters overeat when the regions of their brain that balance impulsive behavior and self-control become disrupted, decreasing their capacity to resist temptation.

The findings, which appear in the journal Psychological Science, indicate that chronic dieters will have more success if they avoid situations that challenge their self-control. A PDF of the study is available on request.

BOSTON—Investigators at Boston Children's Hospital report that infants dying suddenly and unexpectedly, in both safe and unsafe sleep environments, have underlying brainstem abnormalities and are not all normal prior to death.

The researchers also point to the need to detect and treat this underlying vulnerability early, the focus of their current work. They report their findings in the December issue of Pediatrics.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—November 11, 2013—What does it mean to be human? According to scientists the key lies, ultimately, in the billions of lines of genetic code that comprise the human genome. The problem, however, has been deciphering that code. But now, researchers at the Gladstone Institutes have discovered how the activation of specific stretches of DNA control the development of uniquely human characteristics—and tell an intriguing story about the evolution of our species.

SAN DIEGO — Physical and chemical changes in the brain during development can potentially play a role in some delinquent and deviant behaviors, according to research released today. Studies looking at the underlying mechanisms that influence our ability to exercise self-control 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.