http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. (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 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 A retrospective study of patients who had in-hospital electroencephalography (EEG) has established that EEG is a valuable tool that could be deployed more widely to identify treatable causes of impaired consciousness in the hospital setting. The study is published in the April issue of the Mayo Clinic Proceedings. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-electroencephalography-underused-tool-hospitals.html Neuroscience Mon, 01 Apr 2013 12:24:08 EST news284037840 Dravet syndrome (DS) is a form of infantile-onset, treatment-resistant epilepsy that is caused by a mutation in the gene encoding a voltage-gated sodium channel, SCN1A. DS patients have a 30-fold increased risk of dying from sudden unexplained death in epilepsy (SUDEP) compared to patients with other forms of pediatric-onset epilepsy. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-exploring-sudden-unexplained-death-epilepsy.html Medical research Mon, 25 Mar 2013 12:29:58 EST news283433391 (HealthDay)—The American Academy of Neurology's (AAN's) Top Five Recommendations in the Choosing Wisely campaign, established to promote high-value neurologic medicine and to foster physician-patient communication, have been approved and issued, according to a special article published online Feb. 20 in Neurology. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-aan-issues-wisely.html Neuroscience Mon, 25 Feb 2013 14:00:01 EST news281019179 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 More than a hundred patients suffering from severe motor impairments have voluntarily participated in the development of non-invasive brain-machine interfaces. The main purpose of these machines is to allow the patients either regain some of their mobility or improve their social relationships. Today, three presentations took place in Sion during the closing seminar of the TOBI European research program, which has been coordinated by EPFL for approximately four years. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-mind-machines.html Neuroscience Thu, 24 Jan 2013 06:40:01 EST news278231329 (Medical Xpress)—The apparent ease and immediacy of human perception is deceptive, requiring highly complex neural operations to determine the category of objects in a visual scene. Nevertheless, the human brain is able to complete operations such as face category tuning (the ability differentiate faces from other similar objects) completely outside of conscious awareness. Apparently, such complex processes are not sufficient for us to consciously perceive faces. Now, scientists from the University of Amsterdam used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) to show that while visible and invisible faces produce similar category-selective responses in the brain's ventral visual cortex, only visible faces caused widespread response enhancements and changes in neural oscillatory synchronization. The team concluded that sustained neural information integration is a key factor in conscious face perception. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-facts-neural-unconscious-conscious-perception.html Neuroscience Mon, 31 Dec 2012 08:50:01 EST news276156621 (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 What's in a dream? For Yukiyasu Kamitani, the question is important. He has been testing how dreams relate to brain activity and what really is the function of dreaming, He leads a team of researchers at the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan. The labs work toward exploring the function of the brain through computational neuroscience. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-scientists-sleep-wake-decode.html Neuroscience Mon, 29 Oct 2012 16:48:36 EST news270748055 (Medical Xpress)—Researchers at Trinity College Dublin in collaboration with colleagues in the Department of Neurology at St Vincent's University Hospital and University College Dublin have recently reported new insights into cognitive changes in multiple sclerosis, using newly developed signal processing methods. The findings have been recently published in the international journal PlosOne. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-insight-cognitive-multiple-sclerosis.html Neuroscience Wed, 10 Oct 2012 10:00:01 EST news269081075 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)—Looking at a tangled mass of network cables plugged into a crowded router doesn't yield much insight into the network traffic that runs through the hardware. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-analysis-techniques-neural.html Neuroscience Thu, 13 Sep 2012 11:29:05 EST news266754535 (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 (HealthDay) -- A supplement mixture (Souvenaid) containing dietary precursors and specific nutrients can improve memory in drug-naive patients with mild Alzheimer's disease (AD), according to a study published in the July issue of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-supplement-mixture-memory-mild-alzheimer.html Alzheimer's disease & dementia Thu, 12 Jul 2012 05:50:02 EST news261287299 A new video article in JoVE, the Journal of Visualized Experiments, describes a novel procedure to monitor brain function and aid in functional mapping of patients with diseases such as epilepsy. This procedure illustrates the use of pre-placed electrodes for cortical mapping in the brains of patients who are undergoing surgery to minimize the frequency of seizures. This technique, while invasive, provides real-time analysis of brain function at a much higher resolution than current technologies. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-invasive-imaging-technique-brain-function.html Neuroscience Tue, 26 Jun 2012 12:00:01 EST news259925160 Visual and auditory stimuli that elicit high levels of engagement and emotional response can be linked to reliable patterns of brain activity, a team of researchers from The City College of New York and Columbia University reports. Their findings could lead to new ways for producers of films, television programs and commercials to predict what kinds of scenes their audiences will respond to. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-tense-scenes-trigger-brain-ways.html Neuroscience Thu, 14 Jun 2012 12:44:29 EST news258896526 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 What does love look like? A dozen roses delivered on an ordinary weekday? Breakfast in bed? Or just a knowing glance between lovers? http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-what-does-love-look-like.html Psychology & Psychiatry Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:40:53 EST news248085636 The combination of transcranial magnetic stimulation and electroencephalography constitutes a new method allowing the traces of conscious activity to be revealed in brain injured patients. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-combined-method-consciousness.html Neuroscience Mon, 09 Jan 2012 09:02:48 EST news245322160 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 (Medical Xpress) -- A key phenomenon studied by neuroscientists is the brain’s ability to recognize errors when they occur, link them to the associated behavior, and apply those errors in a way that modifies the behavior - the overall goal being to optimize the intended result of engaging in that behavior. Two neural measurements – the error-related negativity (ERN) and error-related functional MRI (fMRI) activation of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC, sometimes referred to as the medial frontal cortex) – have historically been seen as reflecting the same underlying neural process. Recently, however, findings by scientists at Harvard Medical School-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital have suggested that the ERN is differentially localized to the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-error-correcting-brain-insights-neurobiology-behavior.html Neuroscience Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:15:18 EST news238929259 (Medical Xpress) -- In the ongoing quest to find the exact way that anesthetics interact with the central nervous system, anesthesiology researchers have been examining whether the state induced by anesthetics resembles natural sleep. One way to measure this is to determine whether undergoing general anesthesia results in a sleep debt for patients. Previous research has shown that the injected anesthetic propofol does not cause a sleep deficit. Now, researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have shown in animal models that another group of anesthetics, commonly used in the operating room, do not substitute for natural sleep and may cause complications for surgery patients already at-risk for sleep-related issues. The new research is published in the October 2011 issue of the journal Anesthesiology. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-anesthetics-affects-ways.html Sleep apnea Tue, 04 Oct 2011 08:25:00 EST news236935493 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 (Medical Xpress) -- While currently in the realm of sci-fi fantasy, the ability to read people’s minds has taken a step closer to reality thanks to neuroscientists at the University of Glasgow. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-decoding-brainwaves-scientists-minds.html Neuroscience Tue, 17 May 2011 20:00:01 EST news224860634 There is a significant need for objective tests that could improve clinical prediction of future psychosis. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-brain-schizophrenia.html Psychology & Psychiatry Tue, 17 May 2011 11:15:41 EST news224849728 Teens are rarely described as stable, so when something about their rapidly changing brains remains placidly unaltered, neuroscientists take notice. Such is the case in a new study of electroencephalography (EEG) readings gathered from dozens of teens while they slept. Despite the major neural overhaul underway during adolescence, most individuals maintained a unique and consistent pattern of underlying brain oscillations. The work lends a new level of support to the idea, already observed in adults, that people produce a kind of brainwave "fingerprint." http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-04-teen-evidence-neural-fingerprint.html Neuroscience Tue, 26 Apr 2011 17:37:04 EST news223058201