http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. Brain scans are increasingly able to reveal whether or not you believe you remember some person or event in your life. In a new study presented at a cognitive neuroscience meeting today, researchers used fMRI brain scans to detect whether a person recognized scenes from their own lives, as captured in some 45,000 images by digital cameras. The study is seeking to test the capabilities and limits of brain-based technology for detecting memories, a technique being considered for use in legal settings. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-memory-adolescent-brain-lying-limits.html Neuroscience Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:40:25 EST news285349217 Electroencephalogram (EEG), which measures and records electrical activity in the brain, is a quick and efficient way of determining whether seizures are the cause of altered mental status (AMS) and spells, according to a study by scientists at the University of California, San Francisco. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-eeg-seizures-hospital-patients.html Neuroscience Wed, 27 Mar 2013 00:00:02 EST news283541870 Our understanding of brain activity has traditionally been linked to brain areas – when we speak, the speech area of the brain is active. New research by an international team of psychologists led by David Alexander and Cees van Leeuwen (KU Leuven – University of Leuven) shows that this view may be overly rigid. The entire cortex, not just the area responsible for a certain function, is activated when a given task is initiated. Furthermore, activity occurs in a pattern: waves of activity roll from one side of the brain to the other. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-brain-area-specific-view.html Neuroscience Wed, 20 Mar 2013 11:28:30 EST news282997699 (Medical Xpress)—Uplifting concertos from Vivaldi's The Four Seasons can boost mental alertness, according to research from Northumbria University. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-uplifting-music-boost-mental-capacity.html Psychology & Psychiatry Tue, 19 Mar 2013 08:50:33 EST news282901740 Determined to bring relief to seizure victims, a Michigan State University research team this month begins a groundbreaking clinical drug trial that could help prevent a quarter-million African children from developing epilepsy each year. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-team-groundbreaking-drug-trial-africa.html Medications Sat, 16 Feb 2013 01:16:53 EST news280199793 (Medical Xpress)—Driving through his hometown, a war veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder may see roadside debris and feel afraid, believing it to be a bomb. He's ignoring his safe, familiar surroundings and only focusing on the debris; yet, when it comes to the visual cortex, a recent study at the University of Florida suggests this is completely normal. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-factor-brain-response-scary-stimuli.html Neuroscience Fri, 08 Feb 2013 06:29:06 EST news279527338 Reading text on digital devices like tablet computers requires less effort from older adults than reading on paper, according to research published February 6 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Matthias Schlesewsky and colleagues from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany, in collaboration with colleagues from Georg August University Göttingen and the University of Marburg, Germany. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-older-readers-effort-e-readers.html Other Wed, 06 Feb 2013 17:00:05 EST news279388765 Scientists at the University of Essex have been working with NASA on a project where they controlled a virtual spacecraft by thought alone. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-minds-thought-controlled-virtual-spacecraft.html Neuroscience Tue, 05 Feb 2013 07:10:03 EST news279270541 A team of researchers led by Weill Cornell Medical College is calling into question the published statistics, methods and findings of a highly publicized research study that claimed bedside electroencephalography (EEG) identified evidence of awareness in three patients diagnosed to be in a vegetative state. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-science-opinion-flaws-patients-vegetative.html Neuroscience Thu, 24 Jan 2013 18:30:02 EST news278272883 When you're studying for an exam, is there something you can do while you sleep to retain the information better? http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-retained-stimuli.html Neuroscience Tue, 15 Jan 2013 07:55:30 EST news277458908 (Medical Xpress)—Functionally deaf patients can gain normal hearing with a new implant that replaces the middle ear. The unique invention from the Chalmers University of Technology has been approved for a clinical study. The first operation was performed on a patient in December 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-implant-impaired-middle-ear.html Medical research Mon, 14 Jan 2013 07:11:37 EST news277369882 Children of low socioeconomic status work harder to filter out irrelevant environmental information than those from a high-income background because of learned differences in what they pay attention to, according to new research published in the open access journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-family-economic-situation-brain-function.html Psychology & Psychiatry Wed, 28 Nov 2012 10:39:47 EST news273321580 Scientists have combined and translated two kinds of brain wave recordings into music, transforming one recording (EEG) to create the pitch and duration of a note, and the other (fMRI) to control the intensity of the music. The research, published November 14 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Jing Lu and colleagues from the University of Electronic Science and Technology, China, reveals an improved method to reflect the physiological processes of the scale-free brain in music. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-remixed-brain-reveal-soundtrack-human.html Neuroscience Wed, 14 Nov 2012 18:10:06 EST news272130506 (Medical Xpress)—Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, Stony Brook University, and collaborators may have found a way to predict drug-addicted individuals' responses to drug-related stimuli.  http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-eeg-insight-drug-related-choice-addiction.html Addiction Wed, 14 Nov 2012 07:27:32 EST news272100439 (Medical Xpress)—UCSF neuroscientists have found that by training on attention tests, people young and old can improve brain performance and multitasking skills. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-neuroscientists-late-retrain-brain.html Neuroscience Fri, 02 Nov 2012 11:44:34 EST news271075464 Scientists report that they can predict who will improve most on an unfamiliar video game by looking at their brain waves. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-brain-reveal-video-game-aptitude.html Neuroscience Wed, 24 Oct 2012 13:35:46 EST news270304510 Epileptic and psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES) may look similar, but actually have different causes and treatments. Up to 20 percent of patients diagnosed with epilepsy actually have PNES, which are not treated by antiepileptic drugs (AEDs). According to a new study by Rhode Island Hospital researcher W. Curt LaFrance Jr., M.D., M.P.H., director of neuropsychiatry and behavioral neurology, increasing access to video electroencephalography (video-EEG) may aid in distinguishing between epilepsy and PNES. The study is published online in advance of print in the journal Epilepsy & Behavior. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-differences-diagnosis-treatment-nonepileptic-seizures.html Neuroscience Tue, 02 Oct 2012 12:02:34 EST news268398143 (Medical Xpress)—Research at Sandia National Laboratories has shown that it's possible to predict how well people will remember information by monitoring their brain activity while they study.  http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-brain.html Psychology & Psychiatry Mon, 10 Sep 2012 17:29:55 EST news266516977 New research examining auditory mechanisms of language learning in babies has revealed that infants as young as three months of age are able to automatically detect and learn complex dependencies between syllables in spoken language. By contrast, adults only recognised the same dependencies when asked to actively search for them. The study by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig also highlights the important role of basic pitch discrimination abilities for early language development. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-babies-ability-complex-language-outshines.html Psychology & Psychiatry Mon, 10 Sep 2012 15:00:23 EST news266500899 (Medical Xpress) -- A new study from The University of Queensland shows monitoring the brain of stroke patients using Quantitative EEG (QEEG) studies could inform treatments and therefore, minimising brain damage of stroke victims. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-global-brain-minimised.html Neuroscience Mon, 13 Aug 2012 04:30:01 EST news264049683 Far from processing every word we read or hear, our brains often do not even notice key words that can change the whole meaning of a sentence, according to new research from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-message.html Psychology & Psychiatry Mon, 16 Jul 2012 09:56:34 EST news261651381 A Cleveland Clinic study has detected significant changes in the electroencephalogram (EEG) brain activity patterns of patients receiving chemotherapy. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-chemobrain-eeg.html Cancer Mon, 04 Jun 2012 10:50:37 EST news258025809 In 1619, the pioneering astronomer Johannes Kepler published Harmonices Mundi in which he analyzed data on the movement of planets and asserted that the laws of nature governing the movements of planets show features of harmonic relationships in music. In so doing, Kepler provided important support for the, then controversial, model of the universe proposed by Copernicus. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-music-hemispheres-schizophrenia.html Neuroscience Wed, 09 May 2012 13:40:02 EST news255787855 Smoking alters the impact of a schizophrenia risk gene. Scientists from the universities of Zurich and Cologne demonstrate that healthy people who carry this risk gene and smoke process acoustic stimuli in a similarly deficient way as patients with schizophrenia. Furthermore, the impact is all the stronger the more the person smokes. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-smokers-prone-schizophrenia.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Mon, 26 Mar 2012 15:00:20 EST news251982447 Different brain states produce different waves of electrical activity, with the alert brain, relaxed brain and sleeping brain producing easily distinguishable electroencephalogram (EEG) patterns. These patterns change even more dramatically when the brain goes into certain deeply quiescent states during general anesthesia or a coma.  http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-neuroscientists-link-brain-wave-pattern-energy.html Neuroscience Wed, 08 Feb 2012 06:00:01 EST news247901866 Researchers at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB) and Forschungszentrum Julich in Germany have developed a new method for detailed analyses of electrical activity in the brain. The method, recently published in Neuron, can help doctors and researchers to better interpret brain cell signals. In turn, this may lead to considerable steps forward in terms of interpreting for example EEG measurements, making diagnoses and treatment of various brain illnesses. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-brain-orchestra.html Neuroscience Mon, 12 Dec 2011 04:04:04 EST news242885033 A study published Online First by the Lancet shows that -- using a cheap, portable electroencephalography (EEG) device -- awareness can be detected in people previously thought to be in a permanently vegetative state. The article is by Professor Adrian M Owen and Dr. Damian Cruse, Centre for Brain and Mind, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada, and colleagues. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-eeg-awareness-people-previously-thought.html Medical research Wed, 09 Nov 2011 18:30:01 EST news240066875 Scientists have designed a novel, noninvasive system that allows users to control a virtual helicopter using only their minds, as reported in the online journal PLoS ONE on Oct. 26. The researchers, led by Dr. Bin He of University of Minnesota, created an EEG-based, noninvasive brain-computer interface that allowed users to accurately and continually navigate a virtual helicopter simply by thinking about where they wanted to craft to go. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-required-scientists-precise-virtual.html Neuroscience Wed, 26 Oct 2011 17:33:37 EST news238869187 During childhood and adolescence, children develop the ability to remember not only past events but the origin of those memories. For example, someone may remember meeting a particular person and the context in which he or she met that person. New research from Germany has found that the ability to remember the origin of memories is a relatively long process that matures during adolescence but isn't fully developed until adulthood. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-08-ability-memories-fully-youths.html Psychology & Psychiatry Tue, 30 Aug 2011 03:47:49 EST news233894854 New research focusing on high-frequency oscillations, termed ripples and fast ripples, recorded by intracranial electroencephalography (EEG), may provide an important marker for the localization of the brain region responsible for seizure activity. According to the study now available in Epilepsia, a journal of the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE), the resection of brain regions containing fast ripples, along with the visually-identified seizure-onset zone, may achieve a good seizure outcome in pediatric epilepsy. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-07-fast-ripples-valuable-biomarker-area.html Medical research Fri, 29 Jul 2011 03:29:32 EST news231128959