Why do some people fret over the most trivial matters while others remain calm in the face of calamity? Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have identified two different chinks in our brain circuitry that explain why some of us ar…
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Exposure to nicotine during pregnancy leads to a decrease in adult stem cells and a change in synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus of the offspring, according to new research from the University of Alabama at Birmingham presen…
BELMONT, MA — Researchers at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital and the University of Utah have developed the best biologically based test for autism to date. The test was able to detect the disorder in individuals with high-functioning autism with…
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital investigators have identified key components of a signaling pathway that controls the departure of neurons from the brain niche where they form and allows these cells to start migrating to their final dest…
SAN DIEGO — New human and animal studies released today uncover the extensive brain wiring used in communication and provide new insights into how the brain processes and produces language, accents, and sounds. The research also explores the brai…
Using newly developed imaging techniques, neuroscientists for the first time have “unfolded” the brain’s sea-horse-shaped hippocampus to reveal how dynamic activity within the brain structure’s complex architecture orchestrates memory formation. Details appear in the Jan. 24 edition of the peer-reviewed journal Science. The researchers used extremely high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and software developed at UCLA’s Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center to study blood flow within the hippocampus as 10 human volunteers learned to associate names with faces.
Medical researchers have successfully reversed the progression of Parkinson’s disease in rats through the use of gene therapy. By adding a gene for a single enzyme, they were able to reprogram brain circuits and halt the deterioration of dopamine-producing brain cells, one of the key problems in the disease. The lack of dopamine is what leads the the tell-tale shaking and muscle twitches of Parkinson’s patients.