http://phys.org/health-news/neuroscience/ en-us Phys.Org provides the latest news on neuroscience Researchers at Brown University have found that specific genetic variations can predict how persistently people will believe advice they are given, even when it is contradicted by experience. http://phys.org/news222452803.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Tue, 19 Apr 2011 17:26:54 EST news222452803 (PhysOrg.com) -- An international team of scientists has developed a way to predict how much a person can learn, based on studies at UC Santa Barbara's Brain Imaging Center. http://phys.org/news222423642.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Tue, 19 Apr 2011 09:20:55 EST news222423642 Scientists have shed new light on how older people may lose their memory with a development that could aid research into treatments for age-related memory disorders. http://phys.org/news221301879.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Wed, 06 Apr 2011 09:45:01 EST news221301879 Meditation produces powerful pain-relieving effects in the brain, according to new research published in the April 6 edition of the Journal of Neuroscience. http://phys.org/news221245410.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Tue, 05 Apr 2011 18:03:50 EST news221245410 Drugs like marijuana act on naturally occurring receptors in the brain called cannabinoid receptors. However, the mechanisms by which these drugs produce their sensory and mood altering effects within the brain are largely unknown. Research led by Steven Laviolette at The University of Western Ontario has now identified a critical brain pathway responsible for the effects of cannabinoid drugs on how the brain processes emotional information. The findings, published in The Journal of Neuroscience, also help to explain the possible link between marijuana use and schizophrenia. http://phys.org/news221245375.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Tue, 05 Apr 2011 18:03:08 EST news221245375 (PhysOrg.com) -- In a paper published in Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, Veronica Kwok, Li-Hai Tan, and their colleagues at the University of Hong Kong, conclude that the adult human brain is capable of new rapid growth when exposed to stimuli similar to what babies experience as they are learning from their environment. http://phys.org/news221214776.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Tue, 05 Apr 2011 09:33:37 EST news221214776 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University (SBU) have conducted the most comprehensive study to date of how cocaine users respond to drug-related and other emotional stimuli, making use of comparisons with a matched control group and exploring the effects of recent cocaine use and abstinence. The findings appear in a paper published online in the European Journal of Neuroscience. http://phys.org/news221138551.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Mon, 04 Apr 2011 13:40:01 EST news221138551 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from the University of Glasgow have shown that when parts of our vision are blocked, the brain steps in to fill in the blanks. http://phys.org/news221118448.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Mon, 04 Apr 2011 06:48:07 EST news221118448 Adult mice engineered to have more newborn neurons in their brain memory hub excelled at accurately discriminating between similar experiences – an ability that declines with normal aging and in some anxiety disorders. Boosting such neurogenesis in the adult hippocampus also produced antidepressant-like effects when combined with exercise, in the study funded by the National Institutes of Health. http://phys.org/news221055076.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Sun, 03 Apr 2011 13:11:48 EST news221055076 Researchers from UT Southwestern Medical Center have described for the first time how the brain's memory center repairs itself following severe trauma – a process that may explain why it is harder to bounce back after multiple head injuries. http://phys.org/news220782099.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Thu, 31 Mar 2011 09:21:54 EST news220782099 If, as Shakespeare's Juliet declared, a rose by any other name smells as sweet – to you and to me and to anyone else who sniffs it – then one might assume that our odor-sensing nerve cells are all wired in the same way. Alas, they are not, according to a new study from scientists at The Scripps Research Institute. http://phys.org/news220708868.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Wed, 30 Mar 2011 13:01:23 EST news220708868 (PhysOrg.com) -- In humans, regeneration of the peripheral nervous system after injury remains a hit-or-miss affair, while brain and spinal cord damage usually results in lifelong disabilities. http://phys.org/news220679460.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Wed, 30 Mar 2011 05:30:01 EST news220679460 (PhysOrg.com) -- In a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers are showing the potential benefit of using the stress hormone Cortisol in addition to exposure therapy to help patients overcome phobias. http://phys.org/news220623033.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Tue, 29 Mar 2011 14:00:02 EST news220623033 (PhysOrg.com) -- By combining sophisticated mathematical techniques more commonly used by spies instead of scientists with the power and versatility of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a Penn neurologist has developed a new approach for studying the inner workings of the brain. A hidden pattern is encoded in the seemingly random order of things presented to a human subject, which the brain reveals when observed with fMRI. The research is published in the journal NeuroImage. http://phys.org/news220531869.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Mon, 28 Mar 2011 11:51:34 EST news220531869 The first study to examine the activity of hundreds of individual human brain cells during seizures has found that seizures begin with extremely diverse neuronal activity, contrary to the classic view that they are characterized by massively synchronized activity. The investigation by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Brown University researchers also observed pre-seizure changes in neuronal activity both in the cells where seizures originate and in nearby cells. The report will appear in Nature Neuroscience and is receiving advance online publication. http://phys.org/news220449872.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Sun, 27 Mar 2011 13:05:03 EST news220449872 There are billions of neurons in the brain and at any given time tens of thousands of these neurons might be trying to send signals to one another. Much like a person trying to be heard by his friend across a crowded room, neurons must figure out the best way to get their message heard above the din. http://phys.org/news220272143.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Fri, 25 Mar 2011 11:43:08 EST news220272143 When a mammal explores an unfamiliar environment, ensembles of ‘place’ cells in the hippocampus fire individually, recording specific locations in a cognitive map that aid future spatial navigation of the area. Once the relationship between place cell activity and location has been established, the activity of the cells can be used to predict the animal’s location within its environment. Activity patterns in the ensembles are later ‘replayed’ during rest and sleep, and neuroscientists believe this is important for consolidating the spatial memories of the new environment. http://phys.org/news220261813.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Fri, 25 Mar 2011 09:50:03 EST news220261813 (PhysOrg.com) -- In a new study, Don Arnold and collaborators show that a microscopic motor drives axonal proteins to the right location in a neuron. http://phys.org/news220259048.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Fri, 25 Mar 2011 08:50:01 EST news220259048 Demonstrating an important milestone for the longevity and utility of implanted brain-computer interfaces, a woman with tetraplegia using the investigational BrainGate system continued to control a computer cursor accurately through neural activity alone more than 1,000 days after receiving the BrainGate implant, according to a team of physicians, scientists, and engineers developing and testing the technology at Brown University, the Providence VA Medical Center, and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Results from five consecutive days of device use surrounding her 1,000th day in the device trial appeared online March 24 in the Journal of Neural Engineering. http://phys.org/news220194402.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Thu, 24 Mar 2011 14:07:11 EST news220194402 (PhysOrg.com) -- An innate protective response that makes the brain resistant to injury from stroke can be made to last for months longer than previously documented, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report. http://phys.org/news220190145.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Thu, 24 Mar 2011 12:56:50 EST news220190145 A team of researchers has found that pursuing carefully planned goals and engaging in more automatic habits shows overlapping neurological mechanisms. Because the findings, which appear in the latest issue of the journal Neuron, show a neurological linkage between goal-directed and habitual, and perhaps damaging, behaviors, they may offer a pathway for beginning to address addiction and similar maladies. http://phys.org/news220107219.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Wed, 23 Mar 2011 13:54:00 EST news220107219 (PhysOrg.com) -- New research provides the first evidence that sensory recalibration — the brain's automatic correcting of errors in our sensory or perceptual systems — can occur instantly. http://phys.org/news220080403.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Wed, 23 Mar 2011 06:27:45 EST news220080403 (PhysOrg.com) -- A sleepless night can make us cranky and moody. But a lesser known side effect of sleep deprivation is short-term euphoria, which can potentially lead to poor judgment and addictive behavior, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley. http://phys.org/news220080247.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Wed, 23 Mar 2011 06:24:36 EST news220080247 When Geoffrey Murphy, Ph.D., talks about plastic structures, he's not talking about the same thing as Mr. McGuire in The Graduate. To Murphy, an associate professor of molecular and integrative physiology at the University of Michigan Medical School, plasticity refers to the brain's ability to change as we learn. http://phys.org/news219662829.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Fri, 18 Mar 2011 10:41:37 EST news219662829 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of researchers from the University of Montreal and McGill University have discovered a type of "cellular bilingualism" – a phenomenon that allows a single neuron to use two different methods of communication to exchange information. "Our work could facilitate the identification of mechanisms that disrupt the function of dopaminergic, serotonergic and cholinergic neurons in diseases such as schizophrenia, Parkinson's and depression," wrote Dr. Louis-Eric Trudeau of the University of Montreal's Department of Pharmacology and Dr. Salah El Mestikawy, a researcher at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute and professor at McGill's Department of Psychiatry. An overview of this discovery was published in the Nature Reviews Neuroscience journal. http://phys.org/news219650299.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Fri, 18 Mar 2011 06:58:55 EST news219650299 In a recent study, scientists from the Max Planck Florida Institute have provided one of the most comprehensive analyses to date of the detailed architecture of individual functionally characterized neurons in the cerebral cortex, the largest and most complex area of the brain, whose functions include sensory perception, motor control, and cognition. http://phys.org/news219583083.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Thu, 17 Mar 2011 12:18:24 EST news219583083 Drug abuse is probably linked to an in-built tendency to act without thinking, as shown by studies of siblings of chronic stimulant users, a leading neuroscientist will claim this week. http://phys.org/news219581950.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Thu, 17 Mar 2011 11:59:36 EST news219581950 A gene therapy called NLX-P101 dramatically reduces movement impairment in Parkinson's patients, according to results of a Phase 2 study published today in the journal Lancet Neurology. The approach introduces a gene into the brain to normalize chemical signaling. http://phys.org/news219520787.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Wed, 16 Mar 2011 19:00:16 EST news219520787 Dr. Olivier Collignon of the University of Montreal's Saint-Justine Hospital Research Centre compared the brain activity of people who can see and people who were born blind, and discovered that the part of the brain that normally works with our eyes to process vision and space perception can actually rewire itself to process sound information instead. http://phys.org/news219493752.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Wed, 16 Mar 2011 11:29:35 EST news219493752 When Professor Henry Higgins instructed Eliza Doolittle that it was "Ay not I, O not Ow, Don't say 'Rine,' say 'Rain'", he was drawing on years of experience as a professor of phonetics. But research funded by the Wellcome Trust and the European Commission suggests that Higgins's ability to differentiate expertly between similar sounds may have stemmed from birth. http://phys.org/news219428086.html Medicine & Health - Neuroscience Tue, 15 Mar 2011 17:50:01 EST news219428086