http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. 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 Infants at 7 months of age who go on to develop autism are slower to reorient their gaze and attention from one object to another when compared to 7-month-olds who do not develop autism, and this behavioral pattern is in part explained by atypical brain circuits. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-atypical-brain-circuits-slower-shifting.html Autism spectrum disorders Wed, 20 Mar 2013 00:00:01 EST news282938650 Jackson Laboratory researchers led by Associate Professor Zhong-wei Zhang, Ph.D., have provided direct evidence that a specific neurotransmitter receptor is vital to the process of pruning synapses in the brains of newborn mammals. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-definitive-proof-receptor-role-synapse.html Neuroscience Mon, 31 Dec 2012 15:00:08 EST news276174039 Scientists have shown how the common fruit fly Drosophila, which possess similar electrophysiological and pharmacological properties as humans, could now be used to screen and develop new therapies for alcohol-related behavioural disorders and some genetic diseases. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-common-fruit-scientists-alcohol-related-disorders.html Medical research Thu, 20 Dec 2012 12:13:43 EST news275228014 (Medical Xpress)—The human brain accomplishes its remarkable feats through the interplay of an unimaginable number of neurons that are interconnected in complex networks. A team of scientists has now developed a method for decoding neural circuit diagrams. Using measurements of total neuronal activity, they can determine the probability that two neurons are connected with each other. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-brain-circuit-diagram-method-neurons.html Neuroscience Thu, 18 Oct 2012 08:07:08 EST news269766420 A new study from MIT neuroscientists sheds light on a neural circuit that makes us likelier to remember what we're seeing when our brains are in a more attentive state. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-attention.html Neuroscience Thu, 27 Sep 2012 09:56:05 EST news267958556 The traditional approach to psychiatric diagnosis is based on grouping patients on the basis of symptom clusters. This approach to diagnosis has a number of problems, as symptoms are not necessarily specific to a single diagnosis. Symptoms may vary among patients with a particular diagnosis, and there are no clear diagnostic biomarkers or tests for psychiatry as there are for other areas of medicine. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-neural-circuit-dysfunctions-neuroeconomics.html Psychology & Psychiatry Tue, 24 Jul 2012 10:45:51 EST news262345545 Korean scientists have used tiny stars, squares and triangles as a toolkit to create live neural circuits in a dish. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-triangles-neural-circuits-dish.html Neuroscience Thu, 19 Jul 2012 19:00:02 EST news261932412 Japanese researchers developed a gene transfer technique that can "eliminate" a specific neural circuit in non-human primates for the first time in the world. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-transgenic-technique-specific-neural-circuit.html Neuroscience Tue, 26 Jun 2012 09:32:47 EST news259921956 A collaborative research team led by Professor Tadashi ISA from The National Institute for Physiological Sciences, The National Institutes of Natural Sciences and Fukushima Medical University and Kyoto University, developed a "double viral vector transfection technique" which can deliver genes to a specific neural circuit by combining two new kinds of gene transfer vectors. With this method, they found that "indirect pathways", which were suspected to have been left behind when the direct connection from the brain to motor neurons (which control muscles) was established in the course of evolution, actually plays an important role in the highly developed dexterous hand movements. This study was supported by the Strategic Research Program for Brain Sciences by the MEXT of Japan. This research result will be published in Nature (June 17th, advance online publication). http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-specific-neural-circuit-complicated-brain.html Neuroscience Sun, 17 Jun 2012 13:00:01 EST news259148472 The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has awarded the 12th Perl-UNC Neuroscience prize to Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD of Stanford University and Edward Boyden, PhD and Feng Zhang, PhD of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-stanford-mit-scientists-perl-unc-neuroscience.html Neuroscience Wed, 25 Apr 2012 11:57:02 EST news254573815 Huntington's disease, the debilitating congenital neurological disorder that progressively robs patients of muscle coordination and cognitive ability, is a condition without effective treatment, a slow death sentence. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-stem-cells-hint-potential-treatment.html Neuroscience Thu, 15 Mar 2012 12:00:55 EST news251031617 In 1991, Carl Lewis was both the fastest man on earth and a profound long jumper, perhaps the greatest track-and-field star of all time in the prime of his career. On June 14th of that year, however, Carl Lewis was human. Leroy Burrell blazed through the 100-meters, besting him by a razor-thin margin of three-hundredths of a second. In the time it takes the shutter to capture a single frame of video, Lewis's three-year-old world record was gone. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-08-fast-neural-circuitry-reaction.html Neuroscience Wed, 10 Aug 2011 13:41:30 EST news232202476 Using a combination of genetic engineering and laser technology, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have manipulated brain wiring responsible for reward-seeking behaviors, such as drug addiction. The work, conducted in rodent models, is the first to directly demonstrate the role of these specific connections in controlling behavior. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-06-optogenetics-reward-seeking-behavior.html Medical research Wed, 29 Jun 2011 13:00:25 EST news228571128 The circadian system that controls normal sleep patterns is regulated by a group of glial brain cells called astrocytes, according to a study published online on April 14th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. Neuroscientists from Tufts University School of Medicine found that disruption of astrocyte function in fruit flies (Drosophila) led to altered daily rhythms, an indication that these star-shaped glial cells contribute to the control of circadian behavior. These results provide, for the first time, a tractable genetic model to study the role of astrocytes in circadian rhythms and sleep disorders. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-04-star-brain-circadian-rhythms.html Medical research Thu, 14 Apr 2011 13:34:17 EST news222006846