http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. Researchers will be able to access samples from more than 7,000 donated human brains to help study major brain diseases, thanks to a new on-line database, launched by the Medical Research Council (MRC) today. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-human-brain-easier-database.html Neuroscience Thu, 21 Mar 2013 07:40:35 EST news283070424 Cognitive decline in old age is linked to decreasing production of new neurons. Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center have discovered in mice that significantly more neurons are generated in the brains of older animals if a signaling molecule called Dickkopf-1 is turned off. In tests for spatial orientation and memory, mice in advanced adult age whose Dickkopf gene had been silenced reached an equal mental performance as young animals. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-potential-age-related-cognitive-decline.html Medical research Thu, 07 Feb 2013 12:00:15 EST news279458847 All parents know the infant milestones: turning over, learning to crawl, standing, and taking that first unassisted step. Achieving each accomplishment presumably requires the formation of new connections among subsets of the billions of nerve cells in the infant's brain. But how, when and where those connections form has been a mystery. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-brain-circuit-voluntary-movements.html Neuroscience Wed, 23 Jan 2013 12:00:05 EST news278160799 Portions of Albert Einstein's brain have been found to be unlike those of most people and could be related to his extraordinary cognitive abilities, according to a new study led by Florida State University evolutionary anthropologist Dean Falk. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-uncommon-features-einstein-brain-remarkable.html Neuroscience Thu, 15 Nov 2012 19:00:08 EST news272219824 (Medical Xpress)—Early life experience results in a broad change in the way our DNA is "epigenetically" chemically marked in the brain by a coat of small chemicals called methyl groups, according to researchers at McGill University. A group of researchers led by Prof. Moshe Szyf, a professor of Pharmacology and Therapeutics in the Faculty of Medicine, and research scientists at the Douglas Institute have discovered a remarkable similarity in the way the DNA in human brains and the DNA in animal brains respond to early life adversity. The finding suggests an evolutionary conserved mechanism of response to early life adversity affecting a large number of genes in the genome.  http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-evidence-biological-embeds-social-dna.html Genetics Thu, 11 Oct 2012 06:49:09 EST news269156937 Researchers at Newcastle University have revealed the mechanism by which neurons, the nerve cells in the brain and other parts of the body, age. The research, published today in Aging Cell, opens up new avenues of understanding for conditions where the aging of neurons are known to be responsible, such as dementia and Parkinson's disease. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-brain-ages.html Neuroscience Wed, 12 Sep 2012 02:00:01 EST news266598942 A team led by a physician-scientist at the University of Southern California (USC) has created an experimental drug that reduces brain damage and improves motor skills among stroke-afflicted rodents when given with federally approved clot-busting therapy. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-experimental-drug-therapeutic-window.html Cardiology Tue, 17 Jul 2012 16:46:28 EST news261762312 Researchers have long been interested in discovering the ways that human brains represent thoughts through a complex interplay of elec-trical signals. Recent improvements in brain recording and statistical methods have given researchers unprecedented insight into the physical processes under-lying thoughts. For example, researchers have begun to show that it is possible to use brain recordings to reconstruct aspects of an image or movie clip someone is viewing, a sound someone is hearing or even the text someone is reading. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-neural-fingerprints-memory-associations.html Neuroscience Tue, 26 Jun 2012 17:00:11 EST news259944412 The Allen Institute for Brain Science convened the first ever Allen Brain Atlas Hackathon last week, opening its doors to a diverse group of programmers and informatics experts for a non-stop week of collaboration, learning and coding based on its public online platform of data, tools and source code. The event brought together more than 30 participants from top universities and institutes ranging from the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston to the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology in Poland, as well as from start-ups and established technology companies, to develop data analysis strategies and tools based on the newly enhanced Allen Brain Atlas application programming interface (API). http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-first-ever-allen-brain-atlas-hackathon.html Neuroscience Mon, 25 Jun 2012 13:40:04 EST news259847908 Human brains process large and small numbers of objects using two different mechanisms, but infants have not yet developed the ability to make those two processes work together, according to new research from the University of Missouri. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-infants-distinguish-large-small-groups.html Psychology & Psychiatry Tue, 19 Jun 2012 11:43:42 EST news259324975 For decades, researchers have debated whether Alzheimer's disease starts independently in vulnerable brain regions at different times, or if it begins in one region and then spreads to neuroanatomically connected areas. A new study by Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers strongly supports the latter, demonstrating that abnormal tau protein, a key feature of the neurofibrillary tangles seen in the brains of those with Alzheimer's, propagates along linked brain circuits, "jumping" from neuron to neuron. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-alzheimer-disease-brain-region.html Neuroscience Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:00:10 EST news247336803 After excessively violent events, shoot 'em up games regularly come under scrutiny. In Norway, several first-person shooter games actually disappeared from the market for a while after the killings. Does intense fighting on a flat screen display also result in aggressive behavior in real life? Researchers from the University of Bonn found brain activity patterns in heavy gamers that differed from those of non-gamers. The study's results have just been published in the scientific journal Biological Psychology. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-violent-games-emotionally-desensitizing.html Psychology & Psychiatry Wed, 12 Oct 2011 12:51:27 EST news237642659 Melatonin, best known for its role in sleep regulation, delayed the onset of symptoms and reduced mortality in a mouse model of Huntington's disease, say researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School. Their findings, published today in the Journal of Neuroscience, show for the first time that certain receptors for the hormone reside in the mitochondria, and that there are fewer of them both in affected mice and human brains. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-melatonin-onset-deaths-mouse-huntington.html Neuroscience Tue, 11 Oct 2011 17:34:40 EST news237573257