Fragile X and Down Syndromes Share Signalling Pathway for Intellectual Disability

"We have shown for the first time that some of the proteins altered in Fragile X and Down syndromes are common molecular triggers of intellectual disability in both disorders," said Kyung-Tai Min, one of the lead authors of the study and a professor at Indiana University and the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in Korea. "Specifically, two proteins interact with each other in a way that limits the formation of spines or protrusions on the surface of dendrites." He added: "These outgrowths of the cell are essential for the formation of new contacts with other nerve cells and for the successful transmission of nerve signals. When the spines are impaired, information transfer is impeded and mental retardation takes hold."

'Inattention blindness' due to brain load

“Engaging attention on a high load task has a strong effect on the brain’s response to the rest of the world,” says Professor Nilli Lavie of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience.

"It reduces both the level and precision, or ‘tuning’, of neural response to anything else around us that is not part of the task. "These effects of load on neural response explain inattentional blindness. Although our environment hasn’t changed, the change in our brain response under load leads to inability to perceive otherwise perfectly visible stimuli outside our focus of attention,” she explains.

A Mathematical View of Track and Field World Records

A mathematician has developed a new model that can estimate which track and field world records are the most likely to be broken.

Brian Godsey, a graduate student in mathematics at the Vienna University of Technology in Austria, recently published a paper including computations of the likelihood of record-setting performances in 48 different men’s and women’s track and field events during this calendar year.

Godsey’s paper did not directly address the likelihood of an athlete setting a track and field world record at the 2012 London Olympics, but his analysis suggests that viewers should keep a close watch on the men’s 110-meter hurdles and three women’s events, the 5,000-meter and 3000-meter steeplechase races, as wells as the hammer throw. There is a 95 percent chance that the women’s steeplechase record will be broken this year, Godsey wrote in the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports.

New statistical method provides way to analyze synchronized neural activity in animals

The synchronized electrical activity of multiple neurons gives rise to coordinated network activity. This cooperative activity is highly dynamic and widely thought to be critical for organization behavior and cognitive processes.

Current methods for the statistical analysis of synchronized activity can analyze pairs of cells or detect the existence of correlations between multiple neurons. However, there is no way of accurately determining specific groups of neurons that interact with each other, and how this activity changes with time.

New Generation of Virtual Humans Helping to Train Psychologists

New technology has led to the creation of virtual humans who can interact with therapists via a computer screen and realistically mimic the symptoms of a patient with clinical psychological disorders, according to new research presented at the American Psychological Association’s 120th Annual Convention.

Irony seen through the eye of MRI

A French team has shown that the activation of the ToM neural network increases when an individual is reacting to ironic statements. Published in Neuroimage, these findings represent an important breakthrough in the study of Theory of Mind and linguistics, shedding light on the mechanisms involved in interpersonal communication.

In our communications with others, we are constantly thinking beyond the basic meaning of words. For example, if asked, “Do you have the time?” one would not simply reply, “Yes.” The gap between what is said and what it means is the focus of a branch of linguistics called pragmatics. In this science, “Theory of Mind” (ToM) gives listeners the capacity to fill this gap. In order to decipher the meaning and intentions hidden behind what is said, even in the most casual conversation, ToM relies on a variety of verbal and non-verbal elements: the words used, their context, intonation, “body language,” etc.

How Low Can You Go? Physical Production Mechanism of Elephant Infrasonic Vocalizations

Elephants can communicate using sounds below the range of human hearing (“infrasounds” below 20 hertz). It is commonly speculated that these vocalizations are produced in the larynx, either by neurally controlled muscle twitching (as in cat purring) or by flow-induced self-sustained vibrations of the vocal folds (as in human speech and song). We used direct high-speed video observations of an excised elephant larynx to demonstrate flow-induced self-sustained vocal fold vibration in the absence of any neural signals, thus excluding the need for any “purring” mechanism. The observed physical principles of voice production apply to a wide variety of mammals, extending across a remarkably large range of fundamental frequencies and body sizes, spanning more than five orders of magnitude.

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Musicians’ Brains Might Have an Edge on Aging

It’s been said that music soothes the savage beast, but if you’re the one playing the instrument it might benefit your brain.

A growing body of evidence suggests that learning to play an instrument and continuing to practice and play it may offer mental benefits throughout life. Hearing has also been shown to be positively affected by making music.