SAN ANTONIO (Feb. 24, 2010) — Rapamycin, a drug that keeps the immune system from attacking transplanted organs, may have another exciting use: fighting Alzheimer's disease.
Rapamycin rescued learning and memory deficits in a mouse model of Alzheimer's, a team from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio reported Tuesday (Feb. 23).
PASADENA, Calif.—The human brain is a big believer in equality—and a team of scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, has become the first to gather the images to prove it.
Specifically, the team found that the reward centers in the human brain respond more strongly when a poor person receives a financial reward than when a rich person does. The surprising thing? This activity pattern holds true even if the brain being looked at is in the rich person's head, rather than the poor person's.
Scientists have pinpointed how a key hormone helps animals to recognise others by their smell.
Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have shown that the hormone vasopressin helps the brain differentiate between familiar and new scents.
The study, published in the journal Nature, suggests that when the hormone fails to function, animals are unable to recognise other individuals from their scent.
The ability to recognise others by smell is crucial in helping animals to establish strong bonds with other animals.
NEW YORK (February 24, 2010) – An international research team led by Columbia University Medical Center successfully used mouse embryonic stem cells to replace diseased retinal cells and restore sight in a mouse model of retinitis pigmentosa. This strategy could potentially become a new treatment for retinitis pigmentosa, a leading cause of blindness that affects approximately one in 3,000 to 4,000 people, or 1.5 million people worldwide. The study appears online ahead of print in the journal Transplantation (March 27, 2010 print issue).
CORVALLIS, Ore. –With a changing climate there's a good chance that forest fires in the Pacific Northwest will become larger and more frequent – and according to one expert speaking today at a professional conference, that's just fine.
The human brain excels at using past experiences to make predictions about the future. However, the world around us is constantly changing, and new events often violate our logical expectations. "We know these unexpected events are more likely to be remembered than predictable events, but the underlying neural mechanisms for these effects remain unclear," says lead researcher, Dr. Nikolai Axmacher, from the University of Bonn in Germany.
A paralyzed patient implanted with a brain-computer interface device has allowed scientists to determine the relationship between brain waves and attention.
Characteristic activity patterns known as beta and delta oscillations have been observed in various regions of the brain since the early 20th century, and have been theoretically associated with attention. The unique opportunity to record directly from a human subject's motor cortex allowed University of Chicago researchers to investigate this relationship more thoroughly than ever before.
A study in the March edition of the American Journal of Psychiatry senior-authored by Jerome C. Wakefield, a professor at the Silver School of Social Work at New York University with Mark Schmitz of Temple University and Judith Baer of Rutgers University, empirically challenges the effectiveness of psychiatrists' official diagnostic manual in preventing mistaken, false-positive diagnoses of depression.
Clot-busting treatment should be considered for patients last seen healthy within a few hours before having a stroke, according to research presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2010.
A Canadian study analyzed outcomes of clot-busting drugs given to patients based on when they were last seen in their usual state of health ("time last seen normal") compared to patients who had someone witness the start of their stroke symptoms.
(PHILADELPHIA) – When stroke strikes, choking off blood supply to the brain, every minute counts: Nearly 2 million neurons die each minute a stroke is left untreated, making it a race to recognize symptoms so that lifesaving "clot-busting" drugs can be administered.
As a result of improved imaging technology, pancreatic cysts are increasingly diagnosed in asymptomatic individuals who undergo scans for other reasons. And while most of these cysts follow a benign course, a small but significant number are either malignant at the time of diagnosis or have the potential to develop into pancreatic cancer during a patient's lifetime.
Montreal, February 24, 2010 – People can reduce their sensitivity to pain by thickening their brain, according to a new study published in a special issue of the American Psychological Association journal, Emotion. Researchers from the Université de Montréal made their discovery by comparing the grey matter thickness of Zen meditators and non-meditators. They found evidence that practicing the centuries-old discipline of Zen can reinforce a central brain region (anterior cingulate) that regulates pain.
Nearly four in 10 transient ischemic attack (TIA) and minor ischemic stroke patients may experience mental impairment, according to a study presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2010.
DALLAS – Feb. 23, 2010 – When a gene implicated in human autism is disabled in mice, the rodents show learning problems and obsessive, repetitive behaviors, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found.
The researchers also report that a drug affecting a specific type of nerve function reduced the obsessive behavior in the animals, suggesting a potential way to treat repetitive behaviors in humans. The findings appear in the Feb. 24 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.
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Older patients hospitalized for acute care or a critical illness are more likely to experience cognitive decline compared to older adults who are not hospitalized, according to a study in the February 24 issue of JAMA.