http://medicalxpress.com/neuroscience-news/ en-us Medical Xpress provides the latest news on neuroscience Activating an enzyme known to play a role in the anti-aging benefits of calorie restriction delays the loss of brain cells and preserves cognitive function in mice, according to a study published in the May 22 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. The findings could one day guide researchers to discover drug alternatives that slow the progress of age-associated impairments in the brain. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-caloric-intake-nerve-cell-loss.html Neuroscience Tue, 21 May 2013 17:00:09 EST news288374042 (Medical Xpress)—Despite spending billions of dollars on research and development, drug companies have been unable to come up with effective treatments for dementia and Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Now, A. David Smith at the University of Oxford and his colleagues have discovered that, in some patients experiencing mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a cocktail of high-dose B vitamins could prevent gray matter loss associated with progression to AD. The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-vitamins-dementia.html Neuroscience Tue, 21 May 2013 13:22:54 EST news288361359 You're standing near an airport luggage carousel and your bag emerges on the conveyor belt, prompting you to spring into action. How does your brain make the shift from passively waiting to taking action when your bag appears? http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-potential-brain-behavior.html Neuroscience Tue, 21 May 2013 12:43:55 EST news288359022 (Medical Xpress)—Native peoples in regions where cameras are uncommon sometimes react with caution when their picture is taken. The fear that something must have been stolen from them to create the photo is often inescapable. On small scales, we know it is in fact impossible to measure something without changing its essential character in some way. One idea that has recently gained momentum, is that although our brains have mechanisms for unpacking past experience into a form where it can be consciously manipulated with the full power of the mind, mechanisms to repack those memories into the original form lack similar finesse. In this light, once touched, a memory is no longer exactly the same. A paper just published in PNAS takes a closer look at how memories are reconsolidated after their retrieval. In showing just how easy it is to change certain kinds of memories, the authors not only raise new concerns for eyewitness testimony in the courtroom, but may explain in part why such testimony often tends to accumulate doubt in the face of continued questioning. The implication is that this new knowledge may be useful in the treatment post traumatic stress in veterans and victims. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-wrong.html Neuroscience Tue, 21 May 2013 11:12:02 EST news288353383 In a remote fishing community in Venezuela, a lone fisherman sits on a cliff overlooking the southern Caribbean Sea. This man –– the lookout –– is responsible for directing his comrades on the water, who are too close to their target to detect their next catch. Using abilities honed by years of scanning the water's surface, he can tell by shadows, ripples, and even the behavior of seabirds, where the fish are schooling, and what kind of fish they might be, without actually seeing the fish. This, in turn, changes where the boats go, and how the men fish. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-scene-context-brain.html Neuroscience Tue, 21 May 2013 09:19:06 EST news288346735 Researchers from King's College London have for the first time used a novel form of MRI to identify crucial developmental processes in the brain that are vulnerable to the effects of premature birth. This new study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), shows that disruption of these specific processes can have an impact on cognitive function. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-premature-birth-vital-brain-cognitive.html Neuroscience Mon, 20 May 2013 15:00:24 EST news288271189 While the effects of acute stroke have been widely studied, brain damage during the subacute phase of stroke has been a neglected area of research. Now, a new study by the University of South Florida reports that within a week of a stroke caused by a blood clot in one side of the brain, the opposite side of the brain shows signs of microvascular injury. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-far-reaching-microvascular-uninjured-side-brain.html Neuroscience Mon, 20 May 2013 12:38:37 EST news288272253 Over the past few decades, neuroscientists have made much progress in mapping the brain by deciphering the functions of individual neurons that perform very specific tasks, such as recognizing the location or color of an object. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-neurons-multitask-greatly-brain-power.html Neuroscience Mon, 20 May 2013 09:33:40 EST news288261161 Chronic trauma can inflict lasting damage to brain regions associated with fear and anxiety. Previous imaging studies of people with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, have shown that these brain regions can over-or under-react in response to stressful tasks, such as recalling a traumatic event or reacting to a photo of a threatening face. Now, researchers at NYU School of Medicine have explored for the first time what happens in the brains of combat veterans with PTSD in the absence of external triggers. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-combat-veterans-post-traumatic-stress-disorder.html Neuroscience Sat, 18 May 2013 01:49:34 EST news288060554 The neural machinery underlying our olfactory sense continues to be an enigma for neuroscience. A recent review in Neuron seeks to expand traditional ideas about how neurons in the olfactory bulb might encode information about odorants. One of the main authors, Terry Sejnowski, had the floor for a brief while at last week's national BRAIN Initiative meeting, where discussion of neural codes was a key issue. The Neuron review was published the day after the meeting, and it supports the previously established idea that the olfactory bulb is in many ways structurally comparable to the retina. The authors note however, that due to the apparent sparsity and lack of topographical organization in the olfactory front end, the particular blend of temporal coding used there should differ significantly from that used in the retina. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-temporal-olfactory.html Neuroscience Fri, 17 May 2013 15:00:02 EST news288014780 (Medical Xpress)—What if the quality of your work depends more on your focus on the piano keys or canvas or laptop than your musical or painting or computing skills? If target users can be convinced, they will make generous use of the Melon headband with its three electrodes placed against the forehead to track their mental concentration. This is a Kickstarter project. The Melon makers set a $100,000 goal to effect a full production run. At the time of this writing, they drew in $109,739. What is being offered is a headband and mobile app designed to help the person measure concentration and understand the person's focus highs and lows and try to improve. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-melon-focus-headband-kickstarter-rollout.html Neuroscience Fri, 17 May 2013 14:10:01 EST news288014668 Neurological disorders can have a devastating impact on the lives of sufferers and their families. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-deep-brain-drugs-dont.html Neuroscience Fri, 17 May 2013 09:29:38 EST news288001707 If you're a left-brain thinker, chances are you use your right hand to hold your cell phone up to your right ear, according to a newly published study from Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-brain-ear-cell.html Neuroscience Thu, 16 May 2013 16:25:49 EST news287940339 In the future, if you want to improve your ability to manipulate numbers in your head, you might just plug yourself in. So say researchers who report in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on May 16 on studies of a harmless form of brain stimulation applied to an area known to be important for math ability. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-fast-painless-mental-arithmetic.html Neuroscience Thu, 16 May 2013 12:00:06 EST news287923111 In our interaction with our environment we constantly refer to past experiences stored as memories to guide behavioral decisions. But how memories are formed, stored and then retrieved to assist decision-making remains a mystery. By observing whole-brain activity in live zebrafish, researchers from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute have visualized for the first time how information stored as long-term memory in the cerebral cortex is processed to guide behavioral choices. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-visualize-memory-formation-zebrafish.html Neuroscience Thu, 16 May 2013 12:00:01 EST news287923163 A study led by researchers from Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry has for the first time revealed how the loss of a particular tumour suppressing protein leads to the abnormal growth of tumours of the brain and nervous system. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-greater-tumor-growth-mechanism.html Neuroscience Thu, 16 May 2013 10:31:24 EST news287919075 (Medical Xpress)—Investigation by researchers from the University of Exeter and ETH Zurich has shed new light on a protein which is linked to a common neurological disorder called Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-machinery-cells-reveals-clues-neurological.html Neuroscience Thu, 16 May 2013 08:29:30 EST news287911675 (Medical Xpress)—The breakthrough technique that allowed scientists to obtain one-of-a-kind, colorful images of the myriad connections in the brain and nervous system is about to get a significant upgrade. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-brainbow-version-refine-breakthrough-images.html Neuroscience Thu, 16 May 2013 08:09:06 EST news287910539 (Medical Xpress)—University of Bath researchers have found a previously undiscovered link between epileptic seizures and the signs of autism in adults. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-link-epilepsy-autism.html Neuroscience Thu, 16 May 2013 06:53:14 EST news287905983 (Medical Xpress)—Scientists from the United States and Australia have advanced our understanding of brain plasticity by showing that the brain forms complex new circuits after damage, often far from the damaged site, to compensate for lost function. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-evidence-brains-re-wire-injury.html Neuroscience Wed, 15 May 2013 09:30:06 EST news287827520 New technology developed at the University of California, Berkeley, is using wireless signals to provide real-time, non-invasive diagnoses of brain swelling or bleeding. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-wireless-brain-trauma-diagnostics.html Neuroscience Tue, 14 May 2013 17:00:02 EST news287758913 (Medical Xpress)—The instability of "white matter" in humans may contribute to greater cognitive decline during the aging of humans compared with chimpanzees, scientists from Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University have found. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-white-imaging-insight-human-chimpanzee.html Neuroscience Tue, 14 May 2013 08:24:15 EST news287738527 Your brain often works on autopilot when it comes to grammar. That theory has been around for years, but University of Oregon neuroscientists have captured elusive hard evidence that people indeed detect and process grammatical errors with no awareness of doing so. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-grammar-errors-brain-unaware.html Neuroscience Mon, 13 May 2013 16:51:08 EST news287682661 Human intelligence cannot be explained by the size of the brain's frontal lobes, say researchers. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-human-brain-frontal-lobes-large.html Neuroscience Mon, 13 May 2013 15:00:08 EST news287657730 (Medical Xpress)—Some parts of the body, like the liver, can regenerate themselves after damage. But others, such as our nervous system, are considered either irreparable or slow to recover, leaving thousands with a lifetime of pain, limited mobility, or even paralysis. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-reversing-paralysis-gel-implant-regenerate.html Neuroscience Mon, 13 May 2013 10:18:54 EST news287659107 (Medical Xpress)—In the absence of any real progress in defining neuronal codes for the brain, the simple idea of the grandmother cell continues to percolate through the scientific and popular literature. Many researchers have reported marked increases in the firing rate of otherwise quiet or idling neurons in response to very specific stimuli, like for example, a picture of grandma. If these experiments are taken at face value, we must accept that grandmother cells, at least in some form, exist. Last December, Asim Roy from Arizona State revived some discussion of this topic with a paper in Frontiers in Cognitive Science. He has just released a follow-up paper in the same journal where he seeks to further extend the idea of the grandmother cell into a more general concept cell principle. A further implication of his paper is that such localist neurons should not be rare in the brain, but rather a commonly found feature. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-grandmother-cells-revisited.html Neuroscience Fri, 10 May 2013 10:00:01 EST news287395884 In a study recently published in IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, neurobiologists at the University of Chicago show how an organism can sense a tactile stimulus, in real time, through an artificial sensor in a prosthetic hand. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-prosthetic.html Neuroscience Fri, 10 May 2013 08:44:06 EST news287394236 By monitoring the behavior of a class of cells in the brains of living mice, neuroscientists at Johns Hopkins discovered that these cells remain highly dynamic in the adult brain, where they transform into cells that insulate nerve fibers and help form scars that aid in tissue repair. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-dynamic-behavior-progenitor-cells-brain.html Neuroscience Thu, 09 May 2013 15:50:11 EST news287333402 How do organisms evolve into individuals that are distinguished from others by their own personal brain structure and behavior? Scientists in Dresden, Berlin, Münster, and Saarbrücken have now taken a decisive step towards clarifying this question. Using mice as an animal model, they were able to show that individual experiences influence the development of new neurons, leading to measurable changes in the brain. The results of this study are published in Science on May 10, 2013. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-individuality-growth-brain-cells.html Neuroscience Thu, 09 May 2013 14:00:05 EST news287313261 Many medical issues affect nerves, from injuries in car accidents and side effects of chemotherapy to glaucoma and multiple sclerosis. The common theme in these scenarios is destruction of nerve axons, the long wires that transmit signals to other parts of the body, allowing movement, sight and sense of touch, among other vital functions. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-scientists-nerve-wiring-self-destructs.html Neuroscience Thu, 09 May 2013 12:00:10 EST news287305987