Brain

DURHAM, N.C. – Though worlds apart, four unrelated families have been united in a medical mystery over the source of a rare inherited disorder that results in their children being born with abnormal brain growth and severe functional impairments.

An international team of scientists, led by genetic researchers at Duke Medicine, has solved the case by identifying a recessive gene mutation that reduces the abundance of a certain protein that previously had not been known to affect brain development.

Johns Hopkins scientists have developed new drugs that — at least in a laboratory dish — appear to halt the brain-destroying impact of a genetic mutation at work in some forms of two incurable diseases, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and dementia.

They made the finding by using neurons they created from stem cells known as induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), which are derived from the skin of people with ALS who have a gene mutation that interferes with the process of making proteins needed for normal neuron function.

Working with mice genetically engineered to display symptoms of schizophrenia, neuroscientists at the RIKEN-MIT Center for Neural Circuit Genetics at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT have uncovered a faulty brain mechanism that may underlie schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders in humans.

The study, to appear in the Oct. 16 issue of Neuron, is the first to tie a specific brain network abnormality to schizophrenia, whose symptoms range from disorganized thinking, hallucinations and paranoia to an inability to plan for the future.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Schizophrenia patients usually suffer from a breakdown of organized thought, often accompanied by delusions or hallucinations. For the first time, MIT neuroscientists have observed the neural activity that appears to produce this disordered thinking.

The researchers found that mice lacking the brain protein calcineurin have hyperactive brain-wave oscillations in the hippocampus while resting, and are unable to mentally replay a route they have just run, as normal mice do.

Philadelphia, PA, October 16, 2013 – There is a swirling controversy regarding the suspicion that medications prescribed for the treatment of ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder) primarily act to control disruptive behavior as opposed to having primary effects on the ability to attend to the environment. Thus, there is a continued need to better understand the neural basis of ADHD medication effects.

This news release is available in German.

Various behavioral treatment options are helping to treat the sleeplessness experienced by one in every two American soldiers who have been deployed in recent military operations. So says Dr. Adam Bramoweth of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Pittsburgh Healthcare System, and Dr. Anne Germain of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in the US. This review of research on deployment-related insomnia among military personnel and veterans, conducted since 2010, is published in Springer's journal Current Psychiatry Reports.

TORONTO, ON – Plans to provide high-speed Internet access in vehicles, announced last month by Canadian telecommunications company Rogers Communications and American provider Sprint Corporation, could do with some sobering second-thought, says a researcher in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto.

Concern over the safety of everyday household products, such as baby bottles and soaps, has spurred a wide-ranging research effort into predicting the health risks of tens of thousands of chemicals. That's the topic of the cover story in Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Human fingertips have several types of sensory neurons that are responsible for relaying touch signals to the central nervous system. Scientists have long believed these neurons followed a linear path to the brain with a "labeled-lines" structure.

Philadelphia, PA, October 16, 2013 – There is a swirling controversy regarding the suspicion that medications prescribed for the treatment of ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder) primarily act to control disruptive behavior as opposed to having primary effects on the ability to attend to the environment. Thus, there is a continued need to better understand the neural basis of ADHD medication effects.

Men with low-pitched voices have an advantage in attracting women, even though women know they're not likely to stick around for long.

Researchers at McMaster University have found that women were more attracted to men with masculine voices, at least for short-term relationships.

Those men were also seen as more likely to cheat and unsuitable for a longer relationship, such as marriage.

The study, published online in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, offers insight into the evolution of the human voice and how we choose our mates.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– The human mind is not only capable of cognition and registering experiences but also of being introspectively aware of these processes. Until now, scientists have not known if such introspection was a single skill or dependent on the object of reflection. Also unclear was whether the brain housed a single system for reflecting on experience or required multiple systems to support different types of introspection.

The expansion of publicly-funded preschool education is currently the focus of a prominent debate. The research brief "Investing in Our Future: The Evidence Base on Preschool Education," authored by an interdisciplinary group of early childhood experts, reviews rigorous evidence on why early skills matter, which children benefit from preschool, the short- and long-term effects of preschool programs on children's school readiness and life outcomes, the importance of program quality, and the costs versus benefits of preschool education.

An article by researchers at the University of Exeter has shed light on the link between depression and poor parenting. The article identifies the symptoms of depression that are likely to cause difficulties with parenting. The findings could lead to more effective interventions to prevent depression and other psychological disorders from being passed from parent to child.