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Clearer understanding of how neurons give rise to motor behaviors

When the eye tracks a bird's flight across the sky, the visual experience is normally smooth, without interruption. But underlying this behavior is a complex coordination of neurons that has remained mysterious to scientists. Now, UCSF researchers have broken ground in understanding how the brain generates this tracking motion, a finding that offers a window, they say, into how neurons orchestrate all of the body's movements.

24 Apr 2008

New discovery on how memory is stored

Researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine are the first to show that the location of protein-destroying "machines" in nerve cells in the brain may play an important role in how memories are formed - a finding with potential implications for treating Alzheimer's and other brain diseases. The research is published in the current issue of Learning & Memory.

23 Apr 2008

New insights into how the brain processes social, economic reward

Researchers have mapped the brain regions that process social standing and money rewards, yielding new insights that they said will aid understanding of the basis of social behaviors.

23 Apr 2008

Functional magnetic resonance imaging reveals brain circuitry associated with social status

Human imaging studies have for the first time identified brain circuitry associated with social status, according to researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) of the National Institutes of Health.

23 Apr 2008

Major step forward in understanding how memory works

Our ability to remember the objects, places and people within our environment is essential for everyday life, although the importance of this is only fully appreciated when recognition memory beings to fail, as in Alzheimer's disease.

23 Apr 2008

Pin1 is beneficial in Alzheimer's disease, detrimental to some forms of dementia

The most common form of dementia, Alzheimer's disease, and a relatively rare hereditary form of dementia, frontotemporal dementia with parkinsonism-17, share a common pathology: Both are the result of an overaccumulation of tau proteins, which form tangled lesions in the brain's neurons and eventually lead to the collapse of the brain cells responsible for memory.

22 Apr 2008

Chronic inflammation triggers cell fusions that could protect neurons

Chronic inflammation triggers bone marrow-derived blood cells to travel to the brain and fuse with a certain type of neuron up to 100 times more frequently than previously believed, according to a new study from the Stanford University School of Medicine.

20 Apr 2008

Constraint induced therapy causes increase in gray matter

A rehabilitation therapy developed by a UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) neuroscientist produces changes in the structure of the brain, the first evidence of actual brain remodeling resulting from a rehabilitation therapy.

17 Apr 2008

Huperzine A for Alzheimer's disease

Existing evidence suggests that patients with Alzheimer’s disease who have taken Huperzine A have improved general cognitive function, global clinical status, functional performance and reduced behavioural disturbance compared to patients taking placebos.

17 Apr 2008

New drug for melanoma riluzole shows promise

Rutgers Professor Suzie Chen has found that riluzole, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved drug used to treat Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS), slows the growth of melanoma, the most aggressive form of malignant skin cancer.

16 Apr 2008

New insight into the pathogenesis of neurodegeneration in Ataxia telangiectasia

An upcoming paper from Dr. David Wassarman (University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health) in the May 1 issue of G&D lends new insight into the pathogenesis of neurodegeneration in Ataxia telangiectasia.

15 Apr 2008

Elevated levels of antioxidant urate may slow Parkinson's progression

Naturally elevated levels of the antioxidant urate may slow the progression of Parkinson's disease in men. Researchers from the MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease (MGH-MIND) and Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) examined data from an earlier study and found that, among recently diagnosed Parkinson's patients, those with the highest urate levels had a significantly slower rate of disease progression during the two-year study period.

15 Apr 2008

Brain study may lead to improved epilepsy treatments

Using a rodent model of epilepsy, researchers found one of the body's own neurotransmitters released during seizures, glutamate, turns on a signaling pathway in the brain that increases production of a protein that could reduce medication entry into the brain.

15 Apr 2008

Blood urate levels associated with the progression of Parkinson's disease

Higher blood levels of the compound urate, a salt derived from uric acid that is associated with gout, may be associated with a slower progression of Parkinson's disease, according to an article posted online today that will appear in the June 2008 print issue of Archives of Neurology.

15 Apr 2008