Brain News and Research

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The human brain is the center of the human nervous system and is a highly complex organ. Enclosed in the cranium, it has the same general structure as the brains of other mammals, but is over three times as large as the brain of a typical mammal with an equivalent body size.

Misaligned research, medical challenges and harsh economics thwart efforts against Alzheimer's disease

Misaligned research, medical challenges and harsh economics are thwarting efforts to slow the destructive course of Alzheimer's disease in the United States, according to a trio of nationally regarded Alzheimer's researchers writing a "Perspective" in Jan. 27 issue of the journal Neuron.

28 Jan 2011

New insight on rehabilitating brain function in addicts

People with addictions to stimulants tend to choose instant gratification or a smaller but sooner reward over a future benefit, even if the future reward is greater. Reduced value of a future reward, called "delay discounting" by neuroscientists, is the major challenge for treatment of addiction. A new study in the February 2011 (Vol. 69, Issue 3) Biological Psychiatry appears to present a strategy for increasing the value of future rewards in the minds of addicts.

28 Jan 2011

Transcranial magnetic stimulation helps rats to learn more quickly

What sounds like science fiction is actually possible: thanks to magnetic stimulation, the activity of certain brain nerve cells can be deliberately influenced. What happens in the brain in this context has been unclear up to now. Medical experts from Bochum under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Klaus Funke (Department of Neurophysiology) have now shown that various stimulus patterns changed the activity of distinct neuronal cell types.

28 Jan 2011

Prototype drug halts GVHD in mouse models of bone marrow transplantation

A prototype drug already shown to hold promise for treating autoimmune disorders like lupus, arthritis and psoriasis halts established graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) in mouse models of bone marrow transplantation, research at the University of Michigan and the University of Florida shows.

28 Jan 2011

Arena reduces workforce by 25% and provides update on lorcaserin

Arena Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced today a reduction of its US workforce of approximately 25%, or 66 employees. As a result of the workforce reduction, which Arena plans to complete around March 28, 2011, the company expects to incur restructuring charges, primarily in the first quarter of 2011, of approximately $3.8 million in connection with one-time employee termination costs.

28 Jan 2011

ALS Biopharma receives ADDF grant to develop therapeutics against Alzheimer's disease

The Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation announced today that it has awarded a grant of $195,000 to ALS Biopharma, LLC to develop therapeutics targeted at clearing toxic proteins implicated in Alzheimer's disease.

28 Jan 2011

New molecular player responsible for regulation of appetite and metabolism

A study by researchers at Mayo Clinic's campus in Florida and Washington University School of Medicine adds a new twist to the body of evidence suggesting human obesity is due in part to genetic factors. While studying hormone receptors in laboratory mice, neuroscientists identified a new molecular player responsible for the regulation of appetite and metabolism.

28 Jan 2011

Protein Erk necessary for nerve fibers to be wrapped with myelin

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have pinpointed a crucial function for a key player in the development of the nervous system. They found that this player - a protein called Erk - is necessary for nerve fibers to be wrapped with an insulating substance called myelin, which allows messages to be sent from the brain to the peripheral limbs and back again.

28 Jan 2011

Crossed eyes in adults can also be corrected

Since she was a baby, Carleen Trautz's left eye turned outward, rather than looking straight ahead, and it made her life miserable.

28 Jan 2011

Study aims to determine risk of dementia, cognitive decline in middle-aged people

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers are co-leading a national study to examine whether middle-aged people's physical health influences their risk of dementia later in life.

28 Jan 2011

UMMS, Lundbeck enter research collaboration to develop targeted therapy for HD

The University of Massachusetts Medical School and Lundbeck today announced a research collaboration aimed at further development of a targeted therapy to slow or halt the progression of Huntington's disease.

28 Jan 2011

Cognitive training may help end hijacking of imagination by drugs of abuse

The growing numbers of new cases of substance abuse disorders are perplexing. After all, the course of drug addiction so often ends badly. The negative consequences of drug abuse appear regularly on TV, from stories of celebrities behaving in socially inappropriate and self-destructive ways while intoxicated to dramatization of the rigors of drug withdrawal on "Intervention" and other reality shows.

28 Jan 2011

Showman surgeon in an ethical tangle

Dr. Charlie Teo had stirred the hornet’s nest of ethical issues by offering to allow a person to spend a day in his company, including the possibility of watching his intricate excision of brain tumors, as a prize in a charity auction held at the Concord Function Centre to raise funds for childhood cancer research. The prize fetched about $1,500.

27 Jan 2011

Gestational diabetes raises risk of diabetes and weight problems in babies: Study

The latest Australian research suggests that women who have diabetes during pregnancy – also known as gestational diabetes, are more likely to have children who will battle diabetes and weight problems through their lives. The research is published in the journal Diabetologia, now online.

27 Jan 2011

As recording technology rapidly improves, neurons give up their secrets cell by cell

Scientists at The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC), designated the "#1 Rehabilitation Hospital in America" by U.S. News & World Report since 1991, report that, thanks to improvements in technology and data analysis, our understanding of the functional principles that guide the development and operation of the brain could improve drastically in the next few years.

27 Jan 2011

'Alzheimer's has the power to bring the country to its financial knees'

Starting this year, more than 10,000 baby boomers a day will turn 65. As these baby boomers age, one of out of eight of them will develop Alzheimer's – a devastating, costly, heartbreaking disease. Increasingly for these Baby Boomers, it will no longer be their grandparents and parents who have Alzheimer's – it will be them.

27 Jan 2011

Scientists discover new mechanism neurons use to fine-tune electrical output

Scientists in the Hotchkiss Brain Institute at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Calgary, have discovered a new mechanism that nerve cells (neurons) use to fine-tune their electrical output. The exciting discovery, published this week in the prestigious journal Nature Neuroscience, provides new insights about how the activity of the nervous system is regulated at the cellular level.

27 Jan 2011

First three-dimensional projectome map of intact brain

It would be hard to understand how a city is organized without knowledge of the course of all of its streets. Scientists confront the same problem when trying to understand the functioning of the brain. In the case of vertebrates, we only have fragmentary knowledge of which nerve cells send their connections, so-called axons, into certain regions of the brain.

27 Jan 2011

Molecular mechanism in nerve fibers ensures rapid conductance of nervous system impulses

New research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine describes a key molecular mechanism in nerve fibers that ensures the rapid conductance of nervous system impulses.

27 Jan 2011

How estrogen decreases risk and delays onset and progression of Alzheimer's disease

An influential article in the journal Progress in Neurobiology provided one of the first comprehensive reviews of how estrogen potentially can protect against Alzheimer's disease and other neurological disorders.

27 Jan 2011