April 2012
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A new drug to manage resistant chronic pain
April 30, 2012
Neuropathic pain, caused by nerve or tissue damage, is the culprit behind many cases of chronic pain. It can be the result of an accident or caused by a variety of medical conditions and diseases such as tumors, lupus, and diabetes. Typically resistant to common types of pain management including ibuprofen and even morphine, neuropathic pain can lead to lifelong disability for many...
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Scientists identify brain circuitry associated...
April 30, 2012
(Medical Xpress) — Scientists at the UCSF-affiliated Gladstone Institutes have determined how specific circuitry in the brain controls not only body movement, but also motivation and learning, providing new insight into neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease — and psychiatric disorders such as addiction and depression.
Previously, researchers in the...
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Overlooked nighttime spikes on EEGs may reflect an...
April 30, 2012
Children with developmental delay or autism may have unrecognized epilepsy-like brain activity during sleep, report researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital. These nighttime electrical spikes, detectable only on EEGs, occur even in some children without known epilepsy and appear to result from early strokes or other early life injuries to the developing brain, the study found....
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Huge study finds brain networks connected to teen...
April 29, 2012
Why do some teenagers start smoking or experimenting with drugs—while others don’t?
Newly discovered networks in the brain, shown here in color, go a long way toward explaining why some teenagers are more likely to start experimenting with drugs and alcohol. Diminished activity in some of these networks, discovered by two scientists at the University of Vermont and their...
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Fruit Flies Provide New Knowledge About...
ScienceDaily (Apr. 27, 2012) — In a new study, scientists at the University of Copenhagen show that a specific type of carbohydrate plays an important role in the intercellular signalling that controls the growth and development of the nervous system. In particular, defects in that carbohydrate may result in the uninhibited cell growth that characterizes the genetic disease neurofibromatosis and...
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Maintain your brain: The secrets to aging success
April 27, 2012
Aging may seem unavoidable, but that’s not necessarily so when it comes to the brain. So say researchers in the April 27th issue of the Cell Press journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences explaining that it is what you do in old age that matters more when it comes to maintaining a youthful brain not what you did earlier in life.
“Although some memory functions do tend to...
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Childhood socioeconomic status affects brain...
April 27, 2012
(HealthDay) — Childhood socioeconomic status affects hippocampal volume in older adults, after adjusting for adult socioeconomic status, gender, education, and other factors, according to a study published in the May issue of the Annals of Neurology.
Childhood socioeconomic status affects hippocampal volume in older adults, after adjusting for adult socioeconomic status,...
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Novel Regulatory Molecules Called Mirror-microRNAs...
ScienceDaily (Apr. 27, 2012) — Our genes control many aspects of who we are — from the colour of our hair to our vulnerability to certain diseases — but how are the genes, and consequently the proteins they make themselves controlled? Researchers have discovered a new group of molecules which control some of the fundamental processes behind memory function and may hold the key to...
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New Form of Intellectual Disability Discovered
ScienceDaily (Apr. 27, 2012) — Researchers at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) led a study discovering a gene for a new form of intellectual disability, as well as how it likely affects cognitive development by disrupting neuron functioning.
CAMH Senior Scientist Dr. John Vincent and his team found a mutation in the gene NSUN2 among three sisters with intellectual disability, a...
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Analytic Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief,...
ScienceDaily (Apr. 26, 2012) — A new University of British Columbia study finds that analytic thinking can decrease religious belief, even in devout believers.
The statue “The Thinker,” by Auguste Rodin. (Credit: © Ignatius Wooster / Fotolia)
The study, which is published in the April 27 issue of Science, finds that thinking analytically increases disbelief among believers and...
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Mechanism That Could Contribute to Problems in...
ScienceDaily (Apr. 26, 2012) — Scientists at the Gladstone Institutes have unraveled a process by which depletion of a specific protein in the brain contributes to the memory problems associated with Alzheimer’s disease. These findings provide insights into the disease’s development and may lead to new therapies that could benefit the millions of people worldwide suffering from...
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Clues to Reverse Cognitive Deficits in People With...
ScienceDaily (Apr. 26, 2012) — The ability to navigate using spatial cues was impaired in mice whose brains were minus a channel that delivers potassium — a finding that may have implications for humans with damage to the hippocampus, a brain structure critical to memory and learning, according to a Baylor University researcher.
Mice missing the channel also showed diminished learning...
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Learning Mechanism of the Adult Brain Revealed
ScienceDaily (Apr. 26, 2012) — They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Fortunately, this is not always true. Researchers at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (NIN-KNAW) have now discovered how the adult brain can adapt to new situations. The Dutch researchers’ findings are published on April 25 in the journal Neuron. Their study may be significant in developing...
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Learning mechanism of the adult brain revealed
April 26, 2012
They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Fortunately, this is not always true. Researchers at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience have now discovered how the adult brain can adapt to new situations. The Dutch researchers’ findings are published on Wednesday in the prestigious journal Neuron. Their study may be significant in the treatment of...
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Watching neurons learn
April 26, 2012
What happens at the level of individual neurons while we learn? This question intrigued the neuroscientist Daniel Huber, who recently arrived at the Department of Basic Neuroscience at the University of Geneva. During his stay in the United States, he and his team tried to unravel the network mechanisms underlying learning and memory at the level of the cerebral cortex.
...
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Seeing is as seeing does: Spatially-structured...
April 26, 2012 by Stuart Mason Dambrot
(Medical Xpress) — Remarkably, cortical maps show that neurons in the primary visual cortex have specific preferences for the location and orientation of a given visual field stimulus – but how these maps develop and what function they play in visual processing remains a mystery. Evidence suggests that the retinotopic map is established by molecular...
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Gauging seizures' severity
April 26, 2012 by Larry Hardesty
In this week’s issue of the journal Neurology, researchers at MIT and two Boston hospitals provide early evidence that a simple, unobtrusive wrist sensor could gauge the severity of epileptic seizures as accurately as electroencephalograms (EEGs) do — but without the ungainly scalp electrodes and electrical leads. The device could make it possible to collect...
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Scientists discover a ‘handbrake’ for MS
April 26, 2012
(Medical Xpress) — The progression of the debilitating disease Multiple Sclerosis (MS) could be slowed or even halted by blocking a protein that contributes to nerve damage, according to a new study.
Professor Claude Bernard and Dr Steven Petratos
In research published today in the journal Brain, scientists from the Monash Immunology and Stem Cell Laboratories (MISCL),...
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Striatal brain volume predicts Huntington disease...
April 26, 2012
Huntington disease (HD) is an inherited neurodegenerative disorder caused by a defect on chromosome four where, within the Huntingtin gene, a CAG repeat occurs too many times. Most individuals begin experiencing symptoms in their 40s or 50s, but studies have shown that significant brain atrophy occurs several years prior to an official HD diagnosis. As a result, the field has...
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Action Videogames Change Brains, Improve Visual...
ScienceDaily (Apr. 26, 2012) — A team led by psychology professor Ian Spence at the University of Toronto reveals that playing an action videogame, even for a relatively short time, causes differences in brain activity and improvements in visual attention.
Playing an action videogame, even for a relatively short time, causes differences in brain activity and improvements in visual attention....
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Agent Reduces Autism-like Behaviors in Mice
April 25th, 2012
National Institutes of Health researchers have reversed behaviors in mice resembling two of the three core symptoms of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). An experimental compound, called GRN-529, increased social interactions and lessened repetitive self-grooming behavior in a strain of mice that normally display such autism-like behaviors, the researchers say.
GRN-529 is a member...
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How PCBs Promote Dendrite Growth, May Increase...
ScienceDaily (Apr. 25, 2012) — New research from UC Davis and Washington State University shows that PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, launch a cellular chain of events that leads to an overabundance of dendrites — the filament-like projections that conduct electrochemical signals between neurons — and disrupts normal patterns of neuronal connections in the brain.
New findings...
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New Embryonic Stem Cell Line Will Aid Research on...
April 25th, 2012
Second U-M stem cell line now publicly available to help researchers find treatments for nerve condition. Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease line made from a never-frozen donated embryo.
The University of Michigan’s second human embryonic stem cell line has just been placed on the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s registry, making the cells available for federally-funded research....
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Strong Support for Once-Marginalized Theory On...
ScienceDaily (Apr. 25, 2012) — University of California, San Diego scientists have used powerful computational tools and laboratory tests to discover new support for a once-marginalized theory about the underlying cause of Parkinson’s disease.
This image shows a construction of a possible ring oligomer position in the cell membrane after four nanoseconds of molecular dynamics simulations....
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Your Brain Knows Which Ads Are Winners, Better...
ScienceDaily (Apr. 25, 2012) — Advertisers and public health officials may be able to access hidden wisdom in the brain to more effectively sell their products and promote health and safety, UCLA neuroscientists report in the first study to use brain data to predict how large populations will respond to advertisements.
The brain, with the medial prefrontal cortex highlighted in green. (Credit:...
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Growing up as a neural stem cell: The importance...
April 25, 2012
Can one feel too attached? Does one need to let go to mature? Neural stem cells have this problem, too.
As immature cells, neural stem cells must stick together in a protected environment called a niche in order to divide so they can make all of the cells that populate the nervous system. But when it’s time to mature, or differentiate, the neural stem cells must stop...
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Taking it all in: Revealing how we sense things
April 25, 2012 By Allison Flynn
McGill physiology research team sheds light on how the brain processes what we sense.
We rely on our senses in all aspects of our lives. Unfortunately, many people suffer from some kind of impaired sensory function. In Canada alone, 600,000 people are visually impaired while almost three million suffer from partial or total hearing loss. In a paper published...
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How Your Eyes Deceive You
April 24th, 2012
Researchers at the University of Sydney have thrown new light on the tricks the brain plays as it struggles to make sense of the visual and other sensory signals it constantly receives.
In this tilt illusion, the lines in the centre of the image appear tilted counterclockwise, but they are actually vertical. Image adapted from University of Sydney image.
The research has...
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Myth, busted: You only use 10 percent of brain
By Brian Alexander
Good news for all those who ever had a teacher or a parent say “If you would just apply yourself you could learn anything! You’re only using 10 percent of your brain!”
All those people were wrong. If we did use only 10 percent of our brains we’d be close to dead, according to Eric Chudler, director of the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering at the University of...
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Brain cell changes may cause sleep troubles in...
April 24, 2012
Older animals show cellular changes in the brain “clock” that sets sleep and wakeful periods, according to new research in the April 25 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. The findings may help explain why elderly people often experience trouble sleeping at night and are drowsy during the day.
Like humans, mice experience shifts in daily activities and sleep patterns...
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Binge eating may lead to addiction-like behaviors
April 24, 2012
A history of binge eating — consuming large amounts of food in a short period of time — may make an individual more likely to show other addiction-like behaviors, including substance abuse, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers. In the short term, this finding may shed light on the factors that promote substance abuse, addiction, and relapse. In the...
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Anticonvulsant Drug Helps Marijuana Smokers Kick...
ScienceDaily (Apr. 24, 2012) — Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have found clinical evidence that the drug gabapentin, currently on the market to treat neuropathic pain and epilepsy, helps people to quit smoking marijuana (cannabis). Unlike traditional addiction treatments, gabapentin targets stress systems in the brain that are activated by drug withdrawal.
In a 12-week trial of 50...
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Study Points to Potential Treatment for Stroke
ScienceDaily (Apr. 24, 2012) — Stanford University School of Medicine neuroscientists have demonstrated, in a study published online April 24 in Stroke, that a compound mimicking a key activity of a hefty, brain-based protein is capable of increasing the generation of new nerve cells, or neurons, in the brains of mice that have had strokes. The mice also exhibited a speedier recovery of their...
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Evaluating the First Drug to Show Improvement in...
ScienceDaily (Apr. 24, 2012) — In an important test of one of the first drugs to target core symptoms of autism, researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine are undertaking a pilot clinical trial to evaluate insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1) in children who have SHANK3 deficiency (also known as 22q13 Deletion Syndrome or Phelan-McDermid Syndrome), a known cause of autism spectrum disorder...
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Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Patients Had Reduced...
ScienceDaily (Apr. 24, 2012) — Chronic fatigue syndrome, a medical disorder characterized by extreme and ongoing fatigue with no other diagnosed cause, remains poorly understood despite decades of scientific study. Although researchers estimate that more than 1 million Americans are affected by this condition, the cause for chronic fatigue syndrome, a definitive way to diagnose it, and even its...
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Prions in the Brain Eliminated by Homing Molecules
ScienceDaily (Apr. 24, 2012) — Toxic prions in the brain can be detected with self-illuminating polymers. The originators, at Linköping University in Sweden, has now shown that the same molecules can also render the prions harmless, and potentially cure fatal nerve-destroying illnesses.
Linköping researchers and their colleagues at the University Hospital in Zürich tested the luminescent...
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Nano-Devices that Cross Blood-Brain Barrier Open...
April 23rd, 2012
A team of scientists from Johns Hopkins and elsewhere have developed nano-devices that successfully cross the brain-blood barrier and deliver a drug that tames brain-damaging inflammation in rabbits with cerebral palsy.
Schematic picture of a dendrimer with multiple branches that are tagged with drug molecules and imaging agents. Image adapted from press release image from...
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Protein prevents DNA damage in the developing...
April 23, 2012
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists have rewritten the job description of the protein TopBP1 after demonstrating that it guards early brain cells from DNA damage. Such damage might foreshadow later problems, including cancer.
Researchers showed that cells in the developing brain require TopBP1 to prevent DNA strands from breaking as the molecule is copied prior...
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Gatekeeper of brain steroid signals boosts...
April 23, 2012
A cellular protein called HDAC6, newly characterized as a gatekeeper of steroid biology in the brain, may provide a novel target for treating and preventing stress-linked disorders, such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Glucocorticoids are natural steroids secreted...
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Brain surgery for epilepsy underutilized: study
April 23, 2012
Ten years ago, a landmark clinical trial in Canada demonstrated the unequivocal effectiveness of brain surgeries for treating uncontrolled epilepsy, but since then the procedure has not been widely adopted—in fact, it is dramatically underutilized according to a new study from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
The study, published this month in the journal...
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Omega-3 fatty acids not associated with beneficial...
April 23, 2012
Omega-3 fatty acid supplements were not associated with beneficial effects on disease activity in patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis, according to a report of a randomized controlled trial published Online First by Archives of Neurology.
Multiple sclerosis is a chronic, incurable disease of the central nervous system that affects about 2.5 million people...
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Clinical decline in Alzheimer's requires plaque...
April 23, 2012
According to a new study, the neuron-killing pathology of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), which begins before clinical symptoms appear, requires the presence of both amyloid-beta (a-beta) plaque deposits and elevated levels of an altered protein called p-tau.
Without both, progressive clinical decline associated with AD in cognitively healthy older individuals is “not...
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New guidelines: Treatments can help prevent...
April 23, 2012
Research shows that many treatments can help prevent migraine in certain people, yet few people with migraine who are candidates for these preventive treatments actually use them, according to new guidelines issued by the American Academy of Neurology. The guidelines, which were co-developed with the American Headache Society, will be announced at the American Academy of...
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Neuroscientists discover key protein responsible...
April 22, 2012
A key protein, which may be activated to protect nerve cells from damage during heart failure or epileptic seizure, has been found to regulate the transfer of information between nerve cells in the brain. The discovery, made by neuroscientists at the University of Bristol and published in Nature Neuroscience and PNAS, could lead to novel new therapies for stroke and epilepsy.
The...
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Cocaine decreases activity of a protein necessary...
April 22, 2012
New research from Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York reveals that repeated exposure to cocaine decreases the activity of a protein necessary for normal functioning of the brain’s reward system, thus enhancing the reward for cocaine use, which leads to addiction. Investigators were also able to block the ability of repeated cocaine exposure, to induce addiction. The...
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Key Protein Responsible for Controlling Nerve Cell...
ScienceDaily (Apr. 22, 2012) — A key protein, which may be activated to protect nerve cells from damage during heart failure or epileptic seizure, has been found to regulate the transfer of information between nerve cells in the brain. The discovery, made by neuroscientists at the University of Bristol and published in Nature Neuroscience and PNAS, could lead to novel new therapies for stroke and...
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New Technique May Help Severely Damaged Nerves...
ScienceDaily (Apr. 22, 2012) — Engineers at the University of Sheffield have developed a method of assisting nerves damaged by traumatic accidents to repair naturally, which could improve the chances of restoring sensation and movement in injured limbs.
Scanning electron microscopy images of the structures fabricated by (left) 2PP and (right) microreplication techniques. (Credit: Image courtesy...
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'Housekeeping' Mechanism for Brain Stem Cells...
ScienceDaily (Apr. 22, 2012) — Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) have identified a molecular pathway that controls the retention and release of the brain’s stem cells. The discovery offers new insights into normal and abnormal neurologic development and could eventually lead to regenerative therapies for neurologic disease and injury. The findings, from a collaborative...
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