People who suffer from anxiety tend to interpret ambiguous situations, situations that could potentially be dangerous but not necessarily so, as threatening. Researchers from the Mouse Biology Unit of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Italy have now uncovered the neural basis for such anxiety behaviour in mice. They state that a receptor for the messenger serotonin and a neural circuit involving a brain region called the hippocampus play crucial roles in mediating fear responses in ambiguous situations.
Brain
A team of scientists from the University of Rochester Medical Center show that a key inflammatory regulator, a known villain when it comes to parsing out damage after a stroke and other brain injuries, seems to do the opposite in Alzheimer’s disease, protecting the brain and helping get rid of clumps of material known as plaques that are a hallmark of the disease.
A drug described by some people as a “genius pill” for enhancing cognitive function provided relief to a small group of Rochester breast cancer survivors who were coping with a side effect known as “chemo-brain,” according to a University of Rochester Medical Center study.
A team of biomedical engineers has developed a computer model that makes use of more or less predictable “guesstimates” of human muscle movements to explain how the brain draws on both what it recently learned and what it’s known for some time to anticipate what it needs to develop new motor skills.
The engineers exploited the fact that all people show similar “probable” learning patterns and use them to develop and fine tune new movements, whether babies trying to walk or stroke patients re-connecting brain-body muscle links.
It happens in school, at work, physically, verbally, even by email and text — now researchers at The University of Nottingham say there’s no escape in the virtual world.
Researchers are examining the worrying appearance of bullying in the virtual world. Citizens (avatars) of Second Life say targets are likely to be individuals who are new to the virtual world.
Rats paralyzed due to loss of blood flow to the spine returned to near normal ambulatory function six weeks after receiving grafts of human spinal stem cells (hSSCs), researchers from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine report.
The simple notion of copying the body’s own natural "waste disposal" chemistry to mop up potentially toxic nitrogen has saved an estimated 80 percent of patients with urea cycle disorders --- most of them children – according to a report in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine summarizing a quarter century of experience with the treatment.
Mule deer are giving new meaning to watching out for other mothers' kids. Whitetail deer, not so much.
Children are able to solve approximate addition or subtraction problems involving large numbers even before they have been taught arithmetic, according to a study conducted at Harvard University, by researchers from the University of Nottingham and Harvard.
Scientists have identified the receptor in cells of the peripheral nervous system that is most responsible for the body's ability to sense cold.
The findings reveal one of the key mechanisms by which the body detects temperature sensation. But in so doing it also illuminates a mechanism that mediates how the body experiences intense stimuli – temperature, in this case – that can cause pain.
Menthol and TRPM8
You might think it's something from the movie "Total Recall" but instead researchers are using brain "pacemakers" to regulate diseased signals in the brains of Parkinson's disease patients.
These devices are FDA-approved and in use in 30,000 patients but still not well understood.
A new experiment has shown that it's possible to store multiple rudimentary memories in an artificial culture of live neurons. The ability to record information in a manmade network of neurons is a step toward a cyborg-like integration of living material into memory chips. The advance also may help neurologists to understand how our brains learn and store information.
Inhaling oxygen is only the first step in a long journey through the nooks and crannies of the body. The oxygen is then transported via the blood to all cells in the body. The same goes for nourishment from food we eat. Inside the cell, the oxygen and nourishment are transformed into energy and carbon dioxide, which we breathe out. In a new dissertation from Stockholm University in Sweden, Kristina Faxén has mapped how so-called cell breathing takes place.
A project which is using robots to help children with developmental or cognitive impairments to interact more effectively has just started at the University of Hertfordshire.
A natural compound found in blueberries, tea, grapes, and cocoa enhances memory in mice, according to newly published research. This effect increased further when mice also exercised regularly.
"This finding is an important advance because it identifies a single natural chemical with memory-enhancing effects, suggesting that it may be possible to optimize brain function by combining exercise and dietary supplementation," says Mark Mattson, PhD, at the National Institute on Aging.