Brain & Nervous System

Trigger For Brain Plasticity Identified

Researchers have long sought a factor that can trigger the brain’s ability to learn – and perhaps recapture the “sponge-like” quality of childhood. In the August 8 issue of the journal Cell, neuroscientists at Children’s Hospital Boston report that they’ve identified such a factor, a protein called Otx 2. Otx2 helps a key type of [...]

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Addiction To Medicine and Brain’s Reward System

Addictions to medicines and drugs are thought to develop over a relatively long period of time. The process involves both structural and functional changes in brain nerve cells that are still poorly understood. However, a single drug or alcohol dose is sufficient to generate an initial stage of addiction. Recent research conducted under the umbrella [...]

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Treadmill Therapy Rewires Brain

Treadmill exercise may help stroke survivors regain their ability to walk by rewiring parts of the brain responsible for controlling balance and motor skills to compensate for stroke damage, researchers report in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association. In a randomized, controlled study, patients with long term disability after stroke who did six months [...]

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Brain Master Switch Regulates Appetite, Reproduction

Body weight and fertility have long known to be related to each other – women who are too thin, for example, can have trouble becoming pregnant. Now, a master switch has been found in the brain of mice that controls both, and researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies say it may work the [...]

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Better diagnosis for focal epilepsy seen with 3T MRI

3T MRI is better at detecting and characterizing structural brain abnormalities in patients with focal epilepsy than 1.5T MRI, leading to a better diagnosis and safer treatment of patients, according to a recent study conducted at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, OR. “Patients with focal epilepsy have recurrent seizures that result from [...]

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The ‘satellite navigation’ in human brains

Our brains contain their own navigation system much like satellite navigation (“sat-nav”), with in-built maps, grids and compasses, neuroscientist Dr Hugo Spiers told the BA Festival of Science at the University of Liverpool today. The brain’s navigation mechanism resides in an area know as the hippocampus, which is responsible for learning and memory and famously [...]

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Genetic Link Between Immune, Nerve Systems Found

Duke University Medical Center researchers have discovered genetic links between the nervous system and the immune system in a well-studied worm, and the findings could illuminate new approaches to human therapies. For some time, researchers have theorized a direct link between the nervous and immune systems, such as stress messages that override the protective effects [...]

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Nervous System Rallies Immune System Forces Against Invading Pathogens

Researchers have discovered a communications “hot line” that lets a worm’s nervous system dial the immune system to help coordinate the response to infectious pathogens. The new research is the first to identify direct evidence that specific cells in the nervous system coordinate initial defenses against toxic bacteria. Those first responders are part of the [...]

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Researchers Find Compounds That Prevent Nerve Damage

Duke University Medical Center scientists have made a significant finding that could lead to better drugs for several degenerative diseases including Huntington’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. Compounds that block the activity of a specific enzyme prevented brain injury and greatly improved survival in fruit flies that had the same disease process found in Huntington’s disease. [...]

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Battling Back After Traumatic Brain Injury

Already this year, an estimated 1,900 Utahns have suffered life-altering brain injuries as a result of falls, car crashes, assaults, and sports-related incidents. Nearly 18%— or approximately 340—of these individuals have died as a result of their injury. According to the Utah Department of Health (UDOH), in 2006, 2,505 Utahns suffered a traumatic brain injury [...]

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Scientists Restore Movement To Paralyzed Limbs Through Artificial Brain-Muscle Connections

Researchers in a study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have demonstrated for the first time that a direct artificial connection from the brain to muscles can restore voluntary movement in monkeys whose arms have been temporarily anesthetized. The results may have promising implications for the quarter of a million Americans affected by [...]

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Emotion, Scent Create Lasting Memories In Brain

When French memoirist Marcel Proust dipped a pastry into his tea, the distinctive scent it produced suddenly opened the flood gates of his memory. In a series of experiments with sleeping mice, researchers at the Duke University Medical Center have shown that the part of the brain that processes scents is indeed a key part [...]

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