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Neuroscience news

Medical research

White matter may aid recovery from spinal cord injuries: Study

Injuries, infection and inflammatory diseases that damage the spinal cord can lead to intractable pain and disability. Some degree of recovery may be possible. The question is, how best to stimulate the regrowth and healing ...

Neuroscience

Brain activity associated with specific words is mirrored between speaker and listener during a conversation, data show

When two people interact, their brain activity becomes synchronized, but it was unclear until now to what extent this "brain-to-brain coupling" is due to linguistic information or other factors, such as body language or tone ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

Storing memories without destroying previous ones

The brain is constantly storing new experiences that it has to integrate into the jumble of existing memories. Surprisingly, it does not overwrite previous memory traces in the process.

Neuroscience

New insights into cellular processes after a stroke

Strokes lead to irreversible damage to the brain and are one of the most common causes of dependency or death. As the cellular reactions to a cerebral infarction are not yet fully understood, there are no current techniques ...

Neuroscience

Study uncovers unique brain plasticity in people born blind

A study led by Georgetown University neuroscientists reveals that the part of the brain that receives and processes visual information in sighted people develops a unique connectivity pattern in people born blind. They say ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

How adaptable to psychosocial stress is the teenage brain?

Mental illness often occurs for the first time during puberty and in young adulthood. This is because during adolescent brain development, a pronounced remodeling of cognitive networks takes place.

Neuroscience

Are cardiovascular risk factors linked to migraine?

Having high blood pressure, specifically high diastolic blood pressure, was linked to a slightly higher odds of ever having migraine in female participants, according to a new study published in the July 31, 2024, online ...

Genetics

Skin may hold key to neurodevelopmental disorder diagnoses

A genetic diagnostic method using a small sample of skin from the upper arm could identify rare neurodevelopmental disorders in a non-invasive way, according to researchers at the University of Adelaide.

Genetics

Novel cause of brain mosaicism and focal epilepsy identified

In most people, every cell in their body contains the same genetic information. However, sometimes people can have two or more genetically different sets of cells. This usually happens during fetal development and is known ...

Neuroscience

Study discovers new subset of retinal neurons impacting vision

Investigators have discovered a new subtype of interneurons in the retina that allows the eye to see and identify objects better in both the light and in the dark, according to a Northwestern Medicine study published in Nature ...

Neuroscience

Scientists record powerful signal in the brain's white matter

The human brain is made up of two kinds of matter: the nerve cell bodies (gray matter), which process sensation, control voluntary movement, and enable speech, learning and cognition, and the axons (white matter), which connect ...

Genetics

Researchers find that youthful proteins help nerves regrow

Damaged nerves of the brain, eye, and spinal cord cannot grow back. But specific gene therapies might be able to change this, leading to treatments for paralysis and other forms of nerve damage, UConn Health researchers report ...

Neuroscience

Scientists explain how the brain encodes lottery values

Neuroscientists have uncovered a key brain area in rats that encodes the value of economic choices when faced with the uncertainty of a lottery. This is the first time the causal role of frontal and parietal cortex has been ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

Molecular pathology of suicide: A postmortem study

What changes in the brains of people who commit or think about committing suicide? Ph.D. candidate Lin Zhang investigated at a molecular level the processes that take place in the human brain during suicide. The hope is that ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

How decision-making mechanisms go awry in OCD brains

A new study from UNSW Sydney shows that teenagers with OCD experience deficits in decision making and behavioral control. This is linked to abnormal activity in an area of the brain called the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). ...

Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes

Study finds increased risk of Guillain-Barré after COVID-19 infection

Having a COVID-19 infection is associated with an increased risk of developing the rare disorder called Guillain-Barré syndrome within the next six weeks, according to a study published in the October 18, 2023, online issue ...