Brain

Lung cancer patients whose tumor has spread to the brain could be spared radiotherapy

PATIENTS with non-small cell lung cancer which has spread to the brain could be spared whole brain radiotherapy as it makes little or no difference to how long they survive and their quality of life, according to a Cancer Research UK-funded clinical trial published today (Sunday) in The Lancet*.

Around 45,500 people are diagnosed with lung cancer in the UK every year and an estimated 85 per cent of cases are non-small cell lung cancer. Up to 30 per cent of patients with non-small cell lung cancer have the disease spread to the brain.

Study links autism severity to genetics, ultrasound

For children with autism and a class of genetic disorders, exposure to diagnostic ultrasound in the first trimester of pregnancy is linked to increased autism severity, according to a study by researchers at UW Medicine, UW Bothell and Seattle Children's Research Institute.

Genetic intersection of neurodevelopmental disorders and shared medical conditions

Researchers at the Institute for the Developing Mind at Children's Hospital Los Angeles have analyzed current gene-disease findings to understand why people with neurodevelopmental and mental illness often have physical disorders.

Their study, published online in Frontiers in Psychiatry, may reframe how clinicians and scientists approach the treatment and study of neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) beyond a single diagnosis.

Memory for future wearable electronics

Last March, the artificial intelligence (AI) program AlphaGo beat Korean Go champion LEE Se-Dol at the Asian board game. "The game was quite tight, but AlphaGo used 1200 CPUs and 56,000 watts per hour, while Lee used only 20 watts. If a hardware that mimics the human brain structure is developed, we can operate artificial intelligence with less power," points out Professor YU Woo Jong.

EEG recordings prove learning foreign languages can sharpen our minds

Scientists from the Higher School of Economics (HSE) together with colleagues from the University of Helsinki have discovered that learning foreign languages enhances the our brain's elasticity and its ability to code information. The more foreign languages we learn, the more effectively our brain reacts and processes the data accumulated in the course of learning.

Babies chew on subtle social, cultural cues at mealtime

ITHACA, N.Y. - At the dinner table, babies do a lot more than play with their sippy cups, new research suggests.

Babies pay close attention to what food is being eaten around them - and especially who is eating it - according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study adds evidence to a growing body of research suggesting even very young children think in sophisticated ways about subtle social cues.

'Materials that compute' advances as Pitt engineers demonstrate pattern recognition

PITTSBURGH (September 2, 2016) ... The potential to develop "materials that compute" has taken another leap at the University of Pittsburgh's Swanson School of Engineering, where researchers for the first time have demonstrated that the material can be designed to recognize simple patterns. This responsive, hybrid material, powered by its own chemical reactions, could one day be integrated into clothing and used to monitor the human body, or developed as a skin for "squishy" robots.

Bloodthirsty brains

In a new research collaboration between the University of Witwatersrand and the University of Adelaide, previously held views on the evolutionary development of the human brain are being challenged. The findings of their studies, published today inthe Royal Society Open Science*, unseats previous theories thatthe progression of human intelligence is simply related to the increase in size of the brain.

Multiple sclerosis misdiagnosis shows need for improved education of clinicians

A number of common conditions are mistaken for multiple sclerosis (MS), a disabling central nervous system disease, say researchers at four academic medical centers across the U.S. in a study published online today in the journal Neurology.

New role of adenosine in the regulation of REM sleep discovered

The regulation and function of sleep is one of the biggest black boxes of today's brain science. A new paper published online on August 2 in the journal Brain Structure & Function finds that rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is suppressed by adenosine acting on a specific subtype of adenosine receptors, the A2A receptors, in the olfactory bulb. The study was conducted by researchers at Fudan University's School of Basic Medical Sciences in the Department of Pharmacology and the University of Tsukuba's International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine (WPI-IIIS).

Making memories stronger and more precise during aging

When it comes to the billions of neurons in your brain, what you see at birth is what get -- except in the hippocampus. Buried deep underneath the folds of the cerebral cortex, neural stem cells in the hippocampus continue to generate new neurons, inciting a struggle between new and old as the new attempts to gain a foothold in memory-forming center of the brain.

Brain

Lung cancer patients whose tumor has spread to the brain could be spared radiotherapy

Study links autism severity to genetics, ultrasound

Genetic intersection of neurodevelopmental disorders and shared medical conditions

Memory for future wearable electronics

EEG recordings prove learning foreign languages can sharpen our minds

Babies chew on subtle social, cultural cues at mealtime

'Materials that compute' advances as Pitt engineers demonstrate pattern recognition

Bloodthirsty brains

Multiple sclerosis misdiagnosis shows need for improved education of clinicians

New role of adenosine in the regulation of REM sleep discovered

Making memories stronger and more precise during aging

Rotten egg gas could help protect diabetics from heart complications

Parental psychiatric disease linked with elevated risks of attempted suicide and violent offending during adulthood

When silencing phantom noises is a matter of science

Strain differences in Zika infection gene patterns