Newsline — Friday, September 26, 2014 9:00
Researchers Develop New Method to Measure Cerebral Blood Flow
Study Provides Clues on How Humans Focus Attention
Thursday, September 25, 2014 13:00
In a recent study published in the journal Neuron, researchers from Johns Hopkins University revealed some answers about how the brain makes decisions regarding where to focus its attention based on studying barn owls. Barn owls have acute hearing and sharp focus, making them good research cases for exploring spatial attention. Using a visual projector and a pair of specialized earphones, the owls were presented with a series of computer-controlled images of dots and noise bursts. Electrodes were also inserted into a portion of the owls’ brains — called the optic tectum — the key hub in the midbrain of all vertebrate animals, important for the control of spatial attention. After determining that brain cells in the tectum fired when the images and sounds appeared, the researchers then used two stimuli to measure which was more likely to dominate in the brain’s representation of the world. By using a computer model of the neurons in the tectum, researchers were able to provide an explanation for how top-down information may fine tune the ability of the brain…
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Neuroscientists Discover How the Brain Takes Aim
Thursday, September 25, 2014 9:00
A recent study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, conducted by researchers at York University, found that different regions of the brain help to visually locate objects relative to one’s own body (egocentric) and those relative to external visual landmarks (allocentric). “The current study shows how the brain encodes allocentric and egocentric space in different ways during activities that involve manual aiming,” said one of the study’s authors. “Take tennis for example, allocentric brain areas could help aim the ball toward the opponent’s weak side of play, whereas the egocentric areas would make sure your muscles return the serve in the right direction.” The participants of the study were given three different tasks to complete when viewing remembered visual targets: egocentric reach (remembering absolute target location), allocentric reach (remembering target location relative to a visual landmark) and a non-spatial control reporting the color of the target. When participants remembered egocentric target locations, areas in the upper occipital lobe encoded visual direction. In contrast, lower areas of the occipital and temporal lobes encoded object direction relative…
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Neuroimaging Technique Identified Concussion-related Disease in Living Brain
Wednesday, September 24, 2014 14:00
Published in the journal Translational Psychiatry, a case study conducted at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and at Molecular Neuroimaging found an experimental positron emission tomography (PET) tracer to be effective in diagnosing concussion-related brain disease while a person is still alive. The study results suggest that an experimental radiolabeled compound called [18 F]-T807, which is designed to latch onto a protein called tau — which accumulates in the brain with repetitive blows to the head — can be registered on a PET scanner to effectively diagnose chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). The study results also argue that the process can differentiate it from other forms of dementia while the sufferer is still alive. Until now, CTE diagnosis has only been possible by evaluating post-mortem brain tissue. To read more about this study, click here.
Brain Scans to Forecast Early Reading Difficulties
Wednesday, September 24, 2014 9:58
In a recent study published in Psychological Science, University of California, San Francisco researchers have used brain scans to predict how young children learn to read, giving clinicians a possible tool to spot children with dyslexia and other reading difficulties before they experience reading challenges. During the study, researchers examined brain scans of 38 kindergarteners as they were learning to read formally at school, and tracked their white matter development until third grade. The brain’s white matter is essential for perceiving, thinking and learning. The results of the study showed that the development course of the children’s white matter volume predicted the kindergarteners’ abilities to read. “Early identification and interventions are extremely important in children with dyslexia as well as most neurodevelopmental disorders,” said the study’s senior author. “Accumulation of research evidence such as ours may one day help us identify kids who might be at risk for dyslexia, rather than waiting for children to become poor readers and experience failure.” To read more about this study, click here.
Brain Inflammation Dramatically Disrupts Memory Retrieval Networks
Tuesday, September 23, 2014 16:30
Brain inflammation can rapidly disrupt the ability to retrieve complex memories of similar but distinct experiences, according to a recent study in The Journal of Neuroscience. The report specifically identifies how cytokines impair communication among neurons in the hippocampus. The findings offer insight into why cognitive deficits occur in people undergoing chemotherapy and those with autoimmune or neurodegenerative diseases. Moreover, since cytokines are elevated in the brain in each of these conditions, the work suggests potential therapeutic targets to alleviate memory problems in these patients. In the animal study, researchers found that increased cytokine levels in the hippocampus only affected complex discrimination memory, while a simpler form of memory processed by the hippocampus was not altered by brain inflammation. Their findings suggest that cytokines impaired recall by disrupting the function of these specific neuron circuits in the hippocampus. “Our research provides the first link among immune system activation, altered neural circuit function and impaired discrimination memory,” said John Guzowski, the James L. McGaugh Chair in the Neurobiology of Learning & Memory at University of California…
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Study Examines Impact of Violent Media on the Brain
Tuesday, September 23, 2014 9:00
A recent study published in PLOS One found that each person’s reaction to violent images depends on that individual’s brain circuitry, and on how aggressive they were initially. The study, led by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the NIH Intramural Program, featured brain scans that revealed that both watching and not watching violent images caused different brain activity in people with different aggression levels. A group of 54 men were split by the research team into two groups — one with individuals possessing aggressive traits and a second group without these tendencies. The participants’ brains were then scanned as they watched a succession of violent scenes on day one, emotional, but non-violent scenes on day two, and nothing on day three. The scans measured the subjects’ brain metabolic activity; participants also had their blood pressure taken every five minutes, and were asked how they were feeling at 15-minute intervals. The aggressive subjects described feeling more inspired and determined and less upset or nervous than non-aggressive participants when watching violent (day…
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Brain Structure Could Predict Risky Behavior
Monday, September 22, 2014 14:01
Researchers at Yale School of Medicine have found that the volume of the parietal cortex in the brain could predict where people fall on the risk-taking spectrum. With findings published in a recent issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, the research team reports that those with larger volume in a particular part of the parietal cortex were willing to take more risks than those with less volume in this part of the brain. Study participants included young adult men and women from the northeastern United States. Participants made a series of choices between monetary lotteries that varied in their degree of risk, and the research team conducted standard anatomical MRI brain scans. “Based on our findings, we could, in principle, use millions of existing medical brains scans to assess risk attitudes in populations,” said Ifat Levy, assistant professor in comparative medicine and neurobiology at Yale School of Medicine. “It could also help us explain differences in risk attitudes based in part on structural brain differences.” But Levy cautions that the results do not speak to…
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New Device to Control Seizures Proving Effective for First Patient
Monday, September 22, 2014 9:00
Thirty days after neurologists from the University of Alabama at Birmingham implanted a neurotransmitter inside a young woman’s brain to control her seizures, she is reporting dramatic improvement. After suffering from seizures for 10 years, she became the first patient in the Southeast to receive the new device since its approval by the FDA last year. “It is designed to record a patient’s specific brain activity and recognize patterns that are associated with seizures,” said the university’s associate professor in the department of neurosurgery. “The RNS system then delivers stimulation in order to help modulate and control the seizures.” Prior to receiving the RNS system, the patient experienced multiple semi-partial seizures every day, lasting anywhere from 10 seconds to more than a minute, causing her to lose all ability to function. The RNS system is meant for patients who have severe seizures but do not respond to medications and are not candidates for surgery due to the location of their seizure onset in a sensitive part of the brain. It is also only meant for patients…
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Scientists Identify New Protein in Neurological Disorder
Friday, September 19, 2014 13:00
Kansas State University and the University of Pittsburgh co-led a study that focused on a mutated protein associated with early onset torsion dystonia (EOTD), the most severe type of dystonia, which typically affects adolescents before the age of 20. Dystonia causes involuntary and sustained muscle contractions that can lead to paralysis and abnormal postures. Researchers built the study on a decade-old discovery that patients with EOTD typically have a mutated gene that encodes the protein TorsionA. “TorsionA is a protein that all people have in their bodies,” said one of the study’s authors. “It appears to perform an important role in the nervous system, but currently nobody knows what that role is. There also is no understanding of the link between the mutation and dystonia.” In order to study protein expression in a living organism, researchers used years — one of the simplest living systems. The yeast was engineered to produce the human protein TorsionA. Observations revealed that a second protein — named BiP — helps process the TorsionA protein and maintain its active form….
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