Many brain researchers cannot see the forest for the trees. When they use electrodes to record the activity patterns of individual neurons, the patterns often appear chaotic and difficult to interpret. "But when you zoom out from looking at individual cells, and observe a large number of neurons instead, their global activity is very informative," says Mattia Rigotti, a scientist at Columbia University and New York University who is supported by the SNSF and the Janggen-Pöhn-Stiftung.
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When the brain's primary "learning center" is damaged, complex new neural circuits arise to compensate for the lost function, say life scientists from UCLA and Australia who have pinpointed the regions of the brain involved in creating those alternate pathways - often far from the damaged site.
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In our interaction with our environment we constantly refer to past experiences stored as memories to guide behavioral decisions. But how memories are formed, stored and then retrieved to assist decision-making remains a mystery.
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Scientists have known for some time that exercise induces neurogenesis in a specific brain region, the hippocampus. However, until this study, the underlying mechanism was not fully understood.
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and physicians continue to document that some patients experience fuzzy thinking and memory loss while taking statins, a class of global top-selling cholesterol-lowering drugs.
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A large, multi-institutional research team involved in the NIH Epigenome Roadmap Project has published a sweeping analysis in the current issue of the journal Cell of how genes are turned on and off to direct early human development.
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How does San Francisco Giants slugger Pablo Sandoval swat a 95 mph fastball, or tennis icon Venus Williams see the oncoming ball, let alone return her sister Serena's 120 mph serves? For the first time, vision scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have pinpointed how the brain tracks fast-moving objects.
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Environment moulds behaviour - and not just that of people in society, but also at the microscopic level. This is because, for their function, neurons are dependent on the cell environment, the so-termed extracellular matrix.
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Leaving the house in the morning may seem simple, but with every move we make, our brains are working feverishly to create maps of the outside world that allow us to navigate and to remember where we are.
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A debilitating mental illness, schizophrenia can be difficult to diagnose. Because physiological evidence confirming the disease can only be gathered from the brain during an autopsy, mental health professionals have had to rely on a battery of psychological evaluations to diagnose their patients.
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A team of American and Italian neuroscientists has identified a cellular change in the brain that accompanies obesity. The findings could explain the body's tendency to maintain undesirable weight levels, rather than an ideal weight, and identify possible targets for pharmacological efforts to address obesity.
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Avanir Pharmaceuticals, Inc. today announced that the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use of the European Medicines Agency has adopted a positive opinion for NUEDEXTA (dextromethorphan hydrobromide and quinidine sulfate), recommending NUEDEXTA be approved for the treatment of pseudobulbar affect, irrespective of neurologic cause.
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Despite decades of research, relatively little is known about the identity of RNA molecules that are transported as part of the molecular process underpinning learning and memory.
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Neuralstem, Inc. announced that it has received approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to begin dosing the third and final cohort of patients in its ongoing Phase Ib to test the safety of NSI-189 in the treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD).
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A protein known to be a key player in the development of Parkinson's disease is able to enter and harm cells in the same way that viruses do, according to a Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine study.
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During fetal development of the mammalian brain, the cerebral cortex undergoes a marked expansion in surface area in some species, which is accommodated by folding of the tissue in species with most expanded neuron numbers and surface area. Researchers have now identified a key regulator of this crucial process.
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Melatonin injections delayed symptom onset and reduced mortality in a mouse model of the neurodegenerative condition amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
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Isis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced the initiation of a Phase 2 study of ISIS-SMNRx in infants with spinal muscular atrophy. SMA is a severe and rare genetic neuromuscular disease characterized by muscle atrophy and weakness and is the most common genetic cause of infant mortality.
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For the first time, human embryonic stem cells have been transformed into nerve cells that helped mice regain the ability to learn and remember.
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A bizarre twist on the usual way proteins are made may explain mysterious symptoms in the grandparents of some children with mental disabilities.
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