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Brain smells what it expects rather than what it sniffs

In the moments before you "stop and smell the roses," it's likely your brain is already preparing your sensory system for that familiar floral smell. New research from Northwestern Medicine offers strong evidence that the brain uses predictive coding to generate "predictive templates" of specific smells -- setting up a mental expectation of a scent before it hits your nostrils.

7 Oct 2011

Orexigen presents data from Contrave trial at 29th Annual Scientific Meeting of The Obesity Society

Orexigen Therapeutics, Inc., today announced that Contrave (naltrexone SR/bupropion SR) data will be presented in one oral and multiple poster presentations at the 29th Annual Scientific Meeting of The Obesity Society on October 3, 2011 in Orlando, FL.

4 Oct 2011

Scientists discover mechanism behind MRI-induced vertigo

A team of researchers says it has discovered why so many people undergoing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), especially in newer high-strength machines, get vertigo, or the dizzy sensation of free-falling, while inside or when coming out of the tunnel-like machine.

23 Sep 2011

Stanford Hospital & Clinics inaugurates new Brain Tumor Center

Today, Stanford Hospital & Clinics inaugurates its new Brain Tumor Center, framing its considerable corps of top-notch specialists into a treatment team driven by expertise, experience and compassion.

22 Sep 2011

The obese can’t help but eat: Study

A new study suggests that brains of people who are obese may be wired differently for impulse control, such as resisting a doughnut when their blood sugar levels drop, compared with people who are not obese.

20 Sep 2011

Novel analysis of MRI scans reveals distinct features of autistic brain

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital have used a novel method for analyzing brain-scan data to distinguish children with autism from typically developing children.

3 Sep 2011

Age-related declines in hearing may accelerate brain atrophy

A new study by researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania shows that declines in hearing ability may accelerate gray mater atrophy in auditory areas of the brain and increase the listening effort necessary for older adults to successfully comprehend speech.

31 Aug 2011

Researchers to unravel how brain makes everyday prognostications

Every day we make thousands of tiny predictions - when the bus will arrive, who is knocking on the door, whether the dropped glass will break. Now, in one of the first studies of its kind, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis are beginning to unravel the process by which the brain makes these everyday prognostications.

18 Aug 2011

Patients with MTBI exhibit abnormal functional connectivity in the thalamus

A new study has found that patients with mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) exhibit abnormal functional connectivity in the thalamus, a centrally located relay station for transmitting information throughout the brain.

26 Jul 2011

Drugs targeting specific brain region could help people with schizophrenia manage daily life, study shows

A new study has identified the neural mechanism that hinders reward identification and decision-making in people suffering from schizophrenia, highlighting the need for more effective drug therapies to help people with the disease manage their daily lives.

25 Jul 2011

Researchers identify biomarker for familial risk of autism

Siblings of people with autism show a similar pattern of brain activity to that seen in people with autism when looking at emotional facial expressions. The University of Cambridge researchers identified the reduced activity in a part of the brain associated with empathy and argue it may be a 'biomarker' for a familial risk of autism.

13 Jul 2011

Gut hormone reduces willingness to pay for non-food items

Research to be presented at the upcoming annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the foremost society for research into all aspects of eating and drinking behavior, suggests that ghrelin, a naturally occurring gut hormone, increases our willingness to pay for food, while simultaneously decreasing our willingness to pay for non-food items.

12 Jul 2011

Study reveals unique pattern of brain activity when false memories are formed

How easy is it to falsify memory? New research at the Weizmann Institute shows that a bit of social pressure may be all that is needed. The study, which appears Friday in Science, reveals a unique pattern of brain activity when false memories are formed - one that hints at a surprising connection between our social selves and memory.

1 Jul 2011

GUMC neuroscientists: Speech perception must have evolved from animals

Neuroscientists at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) have defined, for the first time, three different processing stages that a human brain needs to identify sounds such as speech - and discovered that they are the same as ones identified in non-human primates.

23 Jun 2011

Groundbreaking study identifies neural system responsible for facial recognition

Each time you see a person that you know, your brain rapidly and seemingly effortlessly recognizes that person by his or her face.

1 Jun 2011

Functional MRI acquired during speech stimulation predicts children with autism

Functional magnetic resonance imaging may provide an early and objective indicator of autism, according to researchers at Columbia University in New York City, who used the technique to document language impairment in autistic children.

31 May 2011

Patients with body dysmorphic disorder have less brain activity in visual processing

People suffering from body dysmorphic disorder, or BDD - a severe mental illness characterized by debilitating misperceptions that one appears disfigured and ugly - process visual information abnormally, even when looking at inanimate objects, according to a new UCLA study.

27 May 2011

Research experts to speak at brain tumor educational conference

Patients, families and caregivers are invited to attend an educational conference covering many aspects of brain tumors May 14 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

5 May 2011

Pediatric urology research papers published in two Elsevier journals

The first World Congress of Pediatric Urology was held in San Francisco in May 2010, bringing together the largest and most successful international congregation of pediatric urologists ever assembled. As part of a collaborative effort, The Journal of Urology and the Journal of Pediatric Urology have together published the landmark papers presented at this meeting.

2 May 2011

Mindfulness meditation may help make decisions rationally rather than emotionally

If a friend or relative won $100 and then offered you a few dollars, would you accept this windfall? The logical answer would seem to be, sure, why not? "But human decision making does not always appear rational," said Read Montague, professor of physics at Virginia Tech and director of the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute.

21 Apr 2011