Brain

A brief coping strategies therapy which provides stress relief and emotional support for people caring for relatives with dementia can reduce depression and anxiety and improve wellbeing at no extra cost to standard care, new research published in The Lancet Psychiatry suggests.

A new diagnostic technique -- resulting from monitoring thousands of courtship calls from songbirds -- can be used to safely map the human brain during complex neurosurgery, according to research from Neuroscientists at NYU Langone Medical Center and elsewhere.

The mapping process, first tested in zebra finches, involves gently placing a miniature electrical cooling device at different locations on a small region of the songbirds' brains. This slows down processing of complex neural behaviors, such as a birdsong or human speech.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Holiday shopping can be mentally exhausting for anyone. But a new Duke University study finds that older adults seem to need extra brainpower to make shopping decisions -- especially ones that rely on memory.

The study appearing Nov. 19 in the Journal of Neuroscience suggests that older shoppers use an additional brain area to remember competing consumer products and choose the better one.

Sleep is a critical period for memory consolidation, and most people don't get enough. Research has shown that even brief periods of sleep deprivation can lead to deficits in memory formation.

In a new study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, a team led by scientists from the University of Pennsylvania found that a particular set of cells in a small region of the brain are responsible for memory problems after sleep loss. By selectively increasing levels of a signaling molecule in these cells, the researchers prevented mice from having memory deficits.

• Youths with a family history of alcohol and other drug use disorders have a greater risk of developing substance-use disorders (SUDs) themselves than their peers with no such family histories.
• A new study examines forebrain activity in youths with and without a family history of SUDs.
• Findings indicate that youths with a family history have forebrain regions that function less efficiently.

• Chronic misuse of alcohol results in measurable damage to the brain.
• A new study uses high-resolution structural magnetic resonance (MR) scans to compare the brains of individuals with a history of alcoholism versus those of healthy light drinkers.
• The abstinent alcoholics showed pronounced reductions in frontal and superior white matter tracts.

Computerized cognitive training (CCT) has been widely promoted for older adults, but its effectiveness for cognitively health older adults has been unclear in systematic reviews to date.

Computer based 'brain training' can boost memory and thinking skills in older adults, but many programs promoted by the $1 billion brain training industry are ineffective, reveals new research by the University of Sydney.

Published today in PLOS Medicine, the study shows that engaging older adults computer-based cognitive training (also known as brain training) can lead to improvements in memory, speed, and visuospatial skills.

However, it has no impact on attention or executive functions such as impulse control, planning and problem solving.

Over the last decade, neuroscientists have largely come to believe that physical pain and social pain are processed by the brain in the same way. But a new study led by the University of Colorado shows that the two kinds of pain actually use distinct neural circuits, a finding that could lead to more targeted treatments and a better understanding of how the two kinds of pain interact.

The consumption of a diet high in fructose throughout adolescence can worsen depressive- and anxiety-like behavior and alter how the brain responds to stress, according to new animal research scheduled for presentation at Neuroscience 2014, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and the world's largest source of emerging news about brain science and health.

Washington, D.C. - November 18, 2014 - Lumosity is presenting new research today at the 2014 Society for Neuroscience conference on how altering cognitive task parameters affects learning rates. The study, titled "Optimizing Cognitive Task Designs to Improve Learning Rates in a Large Online Population," analyzed game play performance from 99,022 participants, and found that participants operating closer to their performance threshold earlier in their experience with a cognitive task tend to have faster learning rates - especially at higher levels of difficulty.

A mother's "TLC" not only can help soothe pain in infants, but it may also impact early brain development by altering gene activity in a part of the brain involved in emotions, according to new study from NYU Langone Medical Center.

By carefully analyzing what genes were active in infant rat brains when the mother was present or not present, the NYU researchers found that several hundred genes were more, or less, active in rat infants experiencing pain than in those that were not. With their mothers present, however, fewer than 100 genes were similarly expressed.

A peek inside the brains of professional musicians has given University of Texas at Arlington psychology researchers what may be the first links between music expertise and advantages in long-term memory.

HANOVER, N.H. - Dartmouth researchers and their colleagues have created an artificial intelligence software that uses photos to locate documents on the Internet with far greater accuracy than ever before.

You can't catch attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Yet the diagnosis and treatment of this behavioral condition is spreading like a contagion -- surging as much as tenfold in some countries.

Call it an economic and cultural plague, but not necessarily a medical one, says Brandeis professor Peter Conrad. In a recent paper in the journal Social Science and Medicine, Conrad and coauthor Meredith Bergey examined the growth of ADHD in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Brazil.