http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. With their whiskers rats can detect the texture of objects in the same way as humans do using their fingertips. A study, in which some scientists of SISSA have taken part, shows that it is possible to understand what specific object has been touched by a rat by observing the activation of brain neurons. A further step towards understanding how the brain, also in humans, represents the outside world. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-decoding.html Neuroscience Tue, 23 Apr 2013 08:02:40 EST news285922953 For the first time, scientists have transplanted neural cells derived from a monkey's skin into its brain and watched the cells develop into several types of mature brain cells, according to the authors of a new study in Cell Reports. After six months, the cells looked entirely normal, and were only detectable because they initially were tagged with a fluorescent protein. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-transplanted-brain-cells-monkeys-personalized.html Medical research Thu, 14 Mar 2013 12:00:06 EST news282480185 Working with a group from Nagasaki University, a research group at the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA) at Japan's Kyoto University has announced in the Feb. 21 online publication of Cell Stem Cell has successfully modeled Alzheimer's disease (AD) using both familial and sporadic patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), and revealed stress phenotypes and differential drug responsiveness associated with intracellular amyloid beta oligomers in AD neurons and astrocytes. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-alzheimer-disease-ipscs.html Alzheimer's disease & dementia Thu, 21 Feb 2013 12:14:55 EST news280671287 Nearly every cell in the human body carries a copy of the full human genome. So how is it that the cells that detect light in the human eye are so different from those of, say, the beating heart or the spleen? http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-epigenetic-marker-5hmc-door-role.html Genetics Mon, 04 Feb 2013 16:08:27 EST news279216417 A new finding in neuroscience for the first time points to a developmental mechanism linking the disease-causing mutation in an autism-related disorder, Timothy syndrome, and observed defects in brain wiring, according to a study led by scientist Ricardo Dolmetsch and published online yesterday in Nature Neuroscience. These findings may be at the heart of the mechanisms underlying intellectual disability and many other brain disorders. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-discovery-autism-related-disorder-reveals-key.html Neuroscience Mon, 14 Jan 2013 09:08:08 EST news277376881 (Medical Xpress)—Adriano Aguzzi, Ben Barres and Mariko Bennett, noted American neurologists for their research into the role glia cells play in brain function, have written a review paper for the journal Science. In it, they assert that it is their belief that glia cells play a far more important role in brain function than is commonly believed. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-neurologists-reveal-insights-glia-cell.html Medical research Fri, 11 Jan 2013 08:47:38 EST news277116345 A scientist at the University of British Columbia and Vancouver Coastal Health has identified the molecule that controls a scissor-like protein responsible for the production of plaques – the telltale sign of Alzheimer's disease (AD). http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-alzheimer-reveals-protein-dual-destructivenessand.html Alzheimer's disease & dementia Mon, 03 Dec 2012 16:28:23 EST news273774496 Huntington disease (HD) is an incurable neurodegenerative disease caused by a mutation in the huntingtin gene (htt). Though most of the symptoms of HD are neurological, the mutant HTT protein is expressed in non-neural cells as well. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-immune-cell-migration-impeded-huntington.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Mon, 19 Nov 2012 12:00:06 EST news272536182 Two studies published in the current issue of Cell Transplantation (21:7), now freely available on-line, investigate the role of oxygen in cell transplantation. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-oxygen-impact-factor-transplantation.html Medical research Thu, 15 Nov 2012 13:18:52 EST news272207920 (Medical Xpress)—Brazilian researchers Karina Fonseca-Azevedo and Suzana Herculano-Houzel suggest humans evolved bigger brains because they learned to cook their food. In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the two outline research they've conducted that involved counting the number of neurons in the brains of various primates, the results of which showed that the only way early humans could have evolved bigger brains was to find a way to get more energy from the food they ate, i.e. cooking it. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-cooked-food-larger-human-brains.html Medical research Tue, 23 Oct 2012 10:30:08 EST news270204231 (Medical Xpress)—A diverse team of biologists has shown using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) that a gene mutation that causes malformations in the structure of the nuclear envelope of neural cells, is associated with Parkinson's disease. In their paper published in the journal Nature, they describe how they found iPSC cells taken from Parkinson's patients over time demonstrated the same cell disruption found in neural cells taken from other deceased patient's with the disease. They also found that by introducing a compound known to disrupt the gene mutation, that they could reverse the cell malformation. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-stem-cells-neural-cell-disruption.html Parkinson's & Movement disorders Thu, 18 Oct 2012 09:40:03 EST news269768714 Scientists have discovered the first direct evidence that a biological mechanism long suspected in epilepsy is capable of triggering the brain seizures – opening the door for studies to seek improved treatments or even preventative therapies. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-scientists-biological-mechanism-trigger-epileptic.html Neuroscience Wed, 19 Sep 2012 12:00:01 EST news267273778 (Medical Xpress)—The medial preoptic area of the brain has been found over the years to be very closely involved with certain behaviors in mice, such as sexual proclivity, locomotion, aggression and the motivation to care for young. The chemistry involved in such behavioral activity has unfortunately though, remained rather a mystery. Now a team of researchers working at Rockefeller University have found, as they describe in their paper detailing their findings published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that a gene encoding estrogen receptor protein called ERα which is expressed in neurons in the preoptic part of the mouse brain, appears to impact the degree to which mice care for their young. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-gene-partly-responsible-maternal-mice.html Genetics Tue, 18 Sep 2012 06:43:11 EST news267169382 (Medical Xpress)—A team of scientists from Johns Hopkins and other institutions report that restoring tiny, hair-like structures to defective cells in the olfactory system of mice is enough to restore a lost sense of smell. The results of the experiments were published online this week in Nature Medicine, and are believed to represent the first successful application of gene therapy to restore this function in live mammals. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-gene-therapy-mice.html Medical research Tue, 11 Sep 2012 07:50:10 EST news266568598 Imagine if we could under­stand the lan­guage two neu­rons use to com­mu­ni­cate. We might learn some­thing about how thoughts and con­scious­ness are formed. At the very least, our improved under­standing of neuron com­mu­ni­ca­tion would help biol­o­gists study the brain with more pre­ci­sion than ever before. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-language-neural-cells.html Neuroscience Thu, 23 Aug 2012 06:34:58 EST news264922491 Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital have identified commensal bacteria in the human intestine that produce a neurotransmitter that may play a role in preventing or treating inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn's disease. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-intestinal-bacteria-neurotransmitter-role-inflammation.html Inflammatory disorders Sun, 17 Jun 2012 13:00:08 EST news259148909 A substance in human mesenchymal stem cells that promotes growth appears to spur restoration of nerves and their function in rodent models of multiple sclerosis (MS), researchers at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have found. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-growth-factor-stem-cells-spur.html Neuroscience Mon, 21 May 2012 09:33:42 EST news256811615 Researchers at the University of Montreal's Sainte-Justine Hospital have identified how neural cells like those in our bodies are able to build up resistance to opioid pain drugs within hours. Humans have known about the usefulness of opioids, which are often harvested from poppy plants, for centuries, but we have very little insight into how they lose their effectiveness in the hours, days and weeks following the first dose. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-pain-drugs-effective.html Neuroscience Tue, 03 Apr 2012 17:00:08 EST news252688344 Repeated, low-dose injections of mononuclear cells derived from human umbilical cord blood (MNC hUCB, tradename: U-CORD-CELL) have been found effective in protecting motor neuron cells, delaying disease progression and increasing lifespan for mice modeling amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, also referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease, report University of South Florida researchers and colleagues from Saneron CCEL Therapeutics, Inc., and the Ribeirao Preto School of Medicine at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-additional-benefits-cord-blood-cells.html Medical research Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:56:42 EST news247744594 (Medical Xpress) -- To study spinal cord injuries, researchers have had to conduct exploratory surgeries on mice to determine how nerves and other cells respond after trauma. But these approaches have only shown snapshots in time and have failed to provide key, game-changing information. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-imaging-mouse-spinal-cord-aid.html Medical research Wed, 25 Jan 2012 06:40:04 EST news246693850 A research group from the University of Leeds has shown that infection by the brain parasite Toxoplasma gondii, found in 10-20 per cent of the UK's population, directly affects the production of dopamine, a key chemical messenger in the brain. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-brain-parasite-chemistry.html Medical research Fri, 04 Nov 2011 11:40:05 EST news239623219 Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have uncovered new details of an unusual biological mechanism in the brains of diverse species that not only helps regulate how their brains develop, but also how they function later in life. The discovery could lead to new biomarkers for specific neurological diseases in humans and, possibly, the development of drugs to cure them. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-frogs-chickens-people-highly-dual.html Medical research Thu, 19 May 2011 15:10:01 EST news225033617