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Hope for peace may be encouraged by enemies in Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Jewish Israelis may feel more hopeful when they hear messages of hope from Palestinians regardless of whether they are portrayed as peace activists or former militia members who had attacked Israeli military targets, according to new research published in Social Psychological and Personality Science.

However, similar hopeful messages from outside experts had no effect in instilling hope, the study found. The group's research may provide insight not only for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but for other societies embroiled in protracted intergroup conflict.

Scientists learn how young brains form lifelong memories by studying worms' food choices

Members of neuroscientist Cori Bargmann's lab spend quite a bit of their time watching worms move around. These tiny creatures, Caenorhabditis elegans, feed on soil bacteria, and their very lives depend on their ability to distinguish toxic microbes from nutritious ones. In a recent study, Bargmann and her colleagues have shown that worms in their first larval stage can learn what harmful bacterial strains smell like, and form aversions to those smells that last into adulthood.

This is what a wasp sees to learn the way home

When ground-nesting wasps leave their nests each day, they turn back toward home before flying along a series of ever-increasing arcs. While the insects gain height and distance, their attention remains focused on the nest. By reconstructing what wasps see during these learning flights, researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on February 11 say that they have new insight into how the insects find their way home.

The neuroscience of seeking company

Social animals are strongly motived to seek out the company of others, especially after periods of isolation, because their brains are wired to find it rewarding. A study in mice published February 11 in Cell now reveals a neural circuit that mediates social seeking behavior driven instead by a loneliness-like state. By shedding light on the neuroscience of isolation, the findings could help our understanding of social anxiety and autism spectrum disorders.

Why smiles (and frowns) are contagious

Smile! It makes everyone in the room feel better because they, consciously or unconsciously, are smiling with you. Growing evidence shows that an instinct for facial mimicry allows us to empathize with and even experience other people's feelings. If we can't mirror another person's face, it limits our ability to read and properly react to their expressions. A Review of this emotional mirroring appears February 11 in Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

How your brain might be secretly thwarting your New Year's resolutions

The human brain is wired to pay attention to previously pleasing things -- a finding that could help explain why it's hard to break bad habits or stick to New Year's resolutions.

In the new issue of Current Biology, Johns Hopkins University neuroscientists demonstrate for the first time that when people see something associated with a past reward, their brain flushes with dopamine -- even if they aren't expecting a reward and even if they don't realize they're paying it any attention. The results suggest we don't have as much self-control as we might think.

Memory ensembles

Memory, i.e. our ability to record, to preserve and to recall our past experiences, makes up one of the most fundamental and fascinating abilities of our brain. For over forty years, neuro-scientists have been interested in the biological mechanisms underlying the storage of the information that our brain records every day. Today, a team from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Geneva (UNIGE) demonstrates how the brain regulates the size of the neuronal ensembles that reflect the memory trace to optimize performance.

Origins of 'rage' identified in brain in male animal model

Violent, unprovoked outbursts in male mice have been linked to changes in a brain structure tied to the control of anxiety and fear, according to a report by researchers from NYU Langone Medical Center to be published in the journal Current Biology online Feb. 11, 2016.

'Grit' adds little to prediction of academic achievement

Personality characteristics - especially conscientiousness - have previously been shown to have a significant but moderate influence on academic achievement. However, a new study from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King's College London, suggests that 'grit', defined as perseverance and passion for long-term goals, adds little to the prediction of school achievement.

TSRI study reveals new link between brain and fat-burning circuit

LA JOLLA, CA -February 11, 2016 - A new study in animal models, led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), is the first to show that oxygen sensing in the brain has a role in metabolism and sensing an organism's internal state.

In a roundworm called C. elegans, cues picked up from the environment--specifically, the sensing of oxygen by the brain--determined how quickly the intestine burns fat. Surprisingly, this communication worked both ways, and fat reserves in the intestine could also influence the strength of the fat-burning signal from the nervous system.

Scripps Florida scientists identify a memory suppressor that may play a role in autism

JUPITER, FL - February 11, 2016 - Discovered only in the 1990s, microRNAs are short molecules that work within virtually all cells. Typically, each one functions as a "dimmer switch" for the expression of one or more genes, regulating a wide variety of cellular processes, including learning and memory.

Learning about struggles of famous scientists may help students succeed in science

WASHINGTON -- High school students may improve their science grades by learning about the personal struggles and failed experiments of great scientists such as Albert Einstein and Marie Curie, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

Breakable genes may promote disease and brain cell diversity

Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researchers have identified 27 genes in brain stem cells that are prone to a type of DNA damage. The fragility of those genes could explain why they are often mutated or deleted in cancers and neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia. But their tendency to break could also benefit the brain by providing a way to produce a greater diversity of neurons.

Novel neuroprotective therapy found to enhance memory

Activity-dependent neuroprotective protein (ADNP), essential for brain formation, is frequently mutated in children on the autism spectrum. In older men and women, ADNP expression in the blood is correlated with cognition and further altered in Alzheimer's disease. While the three-to-one ratio of autism in boys to girls is well known, as is the greater number of female Alzheimer's patients than male Alzheimer's patients, the reasons for these phenomena -- and the theory that men and women may have different brain constitutions -- remain in hot dispute.

New report finds illness continues to be major effect linked to Gulf War military service

WASHINGTON - Although more than $500 million in federally funded research on Persian Gulf War veterans between 1994 and 2014 has produced many findings, there has been little substantial progress in the overall understanding of the health effects, particularly Gulf War illness, resulting from military service in the war, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.