Category: Brain Development

Weekly Neuroscience Update

1 Comment

 

brain-white-matter-child-fitness (1)

The team used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI, also called diffusion MRI) to look at five white-matter tracts in the brains of the 24 participants. This method analyzes water diffusion into tissues. For white matter, less water diffusion means the tissue is more fibrous and compact, both desirable traits. This image shows an MRI of white matter in the human brain. The image is for illustrative purposes only, and is not connected to the research. Credit Kubicki et al.

A new study of 9 and 10-year-olds finds that those who are more aerobically fit have more fibrous and compact white-matter tracts in the brain than their peers who are less fit. “White matter” describes the bundles of axons that carry nerve signals from one brain region to another. More compact white matter is associated with faster and more efficient nerve activity. The team reports its findings in the open-access journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

In a new study published in The Journal of Neuroscience, researchers report that the amygdala — a part of the brain associated with decision making, memory and emotion — plays a part in telling us who to trust almost instantly.

The latest research on sports concussions in teens has been the focus of recent study.

Depression is known to be a common symptom of Parkinson’s disease, but remains untreated for many patients, according to a new study.

Following another person’s gaze can reveal a wealth of information critical to social interactions and also to safety. Gaze following typically emerges in infancy, and new research looking at preterm infants suggests that its visual experience, not maturational age, that underlies this critical ability.

fMRI scans reveal brain differences in risk-taking teens

Children and adolescents with autism have a surplus of synapses in the brain, and this excess is due to a slowdown in a normal brain “pruning” process during development, according to a study by neuroscientists at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC).

While much attention has focused on the link between violent video game playing and aggression among youths, a new study finds significantly increased signs of depression among preteens with high daily exposure to violent video games.

An imaging study of chronic users of codeine-containing cough syrups (CCS) has found deficits in specific regions of brain white matter and associates these changes with increased impulsivity in CCS users.

New treatments for multiple sclerosis (MS) using common anti-psychotic agents have been discovered by Victoria University of Wellington researchers.

People with schizophrenia struggle to turn goals into actions because brain structures governing desire and emotion are less active and fail to pass goal-directed messages to cortical regions affecting human decision-making, new research reveals.

Inside The Developing Brain: Clues To Schizophrenia and Autism

Leave a comment
Images of the developing fetal brain show connections among brain regions. Allen Institute for Brain Science and Bruce Fischl, Massachusetts General Hospital

Images of the developing fetal brain show connections among brain regions.
Allen Institute for Brain Science and Bruce Fischl, Massachusetts General Hospital

A high-resolution map of the human brain in utero is providing hints about the origins of brain disorders including schizophrenia and autism.

The map shows where genes are turned on and off throughout the entire brain at about the midpoint of pregnancy, a time when critical structures are taking shape. The human brain is often called the most complex object in the universe. Yet its basic architecture is created in just nine months, when it grows from a single cell to more than 80 billion cells organized in a way that will eventually let us think and feel and remember.

Having a map like this is important because many psychiatric and behavioral problems appear to begin before birth, even though they may not manifest until teenage years or even the early 20s.

The resulting map, which is available to anyone who wants to use it, has already led to at least two important findings. The first is that many genes that are associated with brain disorders are turned on early in development, which suggests that these disorders may have their origin from these very early time points.

And the map tells researchers who study these disorders where in the brain they should be looking for signs of trouble. For example, the map shows that genes associated with autism appear to be acting on a specific type of brain cell in a part of the brain called the neocortex. That suggests we should be looking at this particular type of cell in the neocortex, and furthermore that we should probably be looking very early in the prenatal stages for the origin of autism.

Source: NPR

Weekly Neuroscience Update

Leave a comment
neuronal-heat-maps-in-brain

Scientists at CSHL have developed a new mathematical model that makes predictions about where different types are neurons are located throughout the brain. Here are “heat maps” of the brain, made using the mathematical model to predict the distribution of different neurons. Each row represents one neuronal type, and different sections of the brain are shown in each column. Color indicates the likelihood of a particular neuronal type appearing in that area of the brain (white, most likely; black, least). Credit Mitra et al.

A new mathematical model uses gene expression data to predict where neurons are located throughout the brain.

Researchers have studied the acquisition and development of language in babies on the basis of the temporary coordination of gestures and speech. The results are the first in showing how and when they acquire the pattern of coordination between the two elements which allows them to communicate very early on.

The problems people with autism have with memory formation, higher-level thinking and social interactions may be partially attributable to the activity of receptors inside brain cells, researchers have learned.

A new study documents the brain activity underlying our strong tendency to infer a structure of context and rules when learning new tasks (even when a structure isn’t valid). The findings, which revealed individual differences, shows how we try to apply task knowledge to similar situations and could inform future research on learning disabilities.

Researchers have discovered impaired neuronal activity in the parts of the brain associated with anticipatory functioning among occasional 18- to 24-year-old users of stimulant drugs, such as cocaine, amphetamines and prescription drugs such as Adderall.

Why do some teenagers start smoking or experimenting with drugs — while others don’t? In the largest imaging study of the human brain ever conducted — involving 1,896 14-year-olds — scientists have discovered a number of previously unknown networks that go a long way toward an answer.

New research shows that, contrary to what was previously assumed, suppressing unwanted memories reduces their influence on behaviour, and sheds light on how this process happens in the brain.

For our brain, animate and inanimate objects belong to different categories and any information about them is stored and processed by different networks. A study shows that there is also another category that is functionally distinct from the others, namely, the category of “social” groups.

A new technique provides a method to noninvasively measure human neural networks in order to characterize how they form.

Education significantly improves mental functioning in seniors even four decades after finishing school, shows a new study. The study shows that people who attended school for longer periods performed better in terms of cognitive functioning than those who did not.

 

Weekly Neuroscience Update

Leave a comment
Embed from Getty Images

Johns Hopkins researchers report that people with chronic insomnia show more plasticity and activity than good sleepers in the part of the brain that controls movement.

Researchers at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and Vanderbilt University have created the most detailed 3-D picture yet of a membrane protein that is linked to learning, memory, anxiety, pain and brain disorders such as schizophrenia, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and autism.

New research has revealed the dramatic effect the immune system has on the brain development of young children. The findings suggest new and better ways to prevent developmental impairment in children in developing countries, helping to free them from a cycle of poverty and disease, and to attain their full potential.

Rate of change in the thickness of the brain’s cortex is an important factor associated with a person’s change in IQ, according to a collaborative study by scientists in five countries.

Researchers have found that decision-making accuracy can be improved by postponing the onset of a decision by a mere fraction of a second. The results could further our understanding of neuropsychiatric conditions characterized by abnormalities in cognitive function and lead to new training strategies to improve decision-making in high-stake environments. The study was published in the March 5 online issue of the journal PLoS One.

A study has revealed how the fatal neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is transmitted from cell to cell, and suggests the spread of the disease could be blocked.

Research from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden suggests that the expression of the so called MYC gene is important and necessary for neurogenesis in the spinal cord. The findings are being published in the journal  EMBO Reports .

Our memories are inaccurate, more than we’d like to believe. And now a study demonstrates one reason: we apparently add current experiences onto memories.

Damage to the brain may still occur even if symptoms of traumatic brain injury are not present, scientists suggest.

The brain processes read and heard language differently. This is the key and new finding of a study published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

New Discoveries Inside The Developing Brain

2 Comments
Image shows the neocortex organised into thousands of columns of neurons. Each column has a diameter of 0.5mm and contains 10,000 neurons. The neocortex is also organised into 6 layers. In the background are other neurons making up the neocortical column.

Image shows the neocortex organised into thousands of columns of neurons. Each column has a diameter of 0.5mm and contains 10,000 neurons. The neocortex is also organised into 6 layers. In the background are other neurons making up the neocortical column.

The human brain develops with an exquisitely timed choreography marked by distinct patterns of gene activity at different stages from the womb to adulthood, report Yale researchers. The Yale team conducted a large-scale analysis of gene activity in cerebral neocortex —an area of the brain governing perception, behavior, and cognition — at different stages of development. The neocortex, Latin for “new bark,” is our third, newly human brain in terms of evolution. It is what makes possible our judgments and our knowledge of good and evil. It is also the site from which our creativity emerges and home to our sense of self.

The team found that the human brain is more like a neighbourhood, which is better defined by the community living within its borders than its buildings.“The neighborhoods get built quickly and then everything slows down and the neocortex focuses solely on developing connections, almost like an electrical grid,” said Nenad Sestan, professor of neurobiology at Yale’s Kavli Institute for Neuroscience and senior author of the study.  “Later when these regions are synchronized, the neighborhoods begin to take on distinct functional identities like Little Italy or Chinatown.”

The analysis shows the general architecture of brain regions is largely formed in the first six months after conception by a burst of genetic activity, which is distinct for specific regions of the neocortex. This rush is followed by a sort of intermission beginning in the third trimester of pregnancy. During this period, most genes that are active in specific brain regions are quieted — except for genes that spur connections between all neocortex regions. Then in late childhood and early adolescence, the genetic orchestra begins again and helps subtly shape neocortex regions that progressively perform more specialized tasks, a process that continues into adulthood.

The analysis is the first to show this “hour glass” sketch of human brain development, with a lull in genetic activity sandwiched between highly complex patterns of gene expression, said Sestan. Intriguingly, say the researchers, some of the same patterns of genetic activity that define this human “hour glass” sketch were not observed in developing monkeys, indicating that they may play a role in shaping the features specific to human brain development.

The findings emphasize the importance of the proper interplay between genes and environment in the child’s earliest years after birth when the formation of synaptic connections between brain cells becomes synchronized, which shape how brain structures will be used later in life, said Sestan. For instance, disruptions of in synchronization of synaptic connections during child’s earliest years have been implicated in autism.

Notes:

Mihovil Pletikos, Andre ́ M.M. Sousa, and Goran Sedmak of Yale are co-lead authors of the Yale study. Other Yale authors are Kyle A. Meyer, Ying Zhu, Feng Cheng, Mingfeng Li and Yuka Imamura Kawasawa.

The work was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the James S. McDonnell Foundation, and the Kavli Foundation.

Imagae Credit: IBM/EPFL Blue Brain Project

Weekly Neuroscience Update

1 Comment
Neuronal activity during exposure to various images reveals distinct spatial groupings. The red region, for example, responds well to face stimuli. Credit by Takayuki Sato/RIKEN Brain Science Institute.

Neuronal activity during exposure to various images reveals distinct spatial groupings. The red region, for example, responds well to face stimuli. Credit by Takayuki Sato/RIKEN Brain Science Institute.

A brain region that responds to a particular category of objects is found to consist of small clusters of neurons encoding visual features of these objects.

Scientists have discovered that by deactivating a major switch in the brain that is linked to learning and memory, memories become jumbled, like “hitting random notes on a keyboard,” and lose their sense of association.

Newcastle University scientists have discovered that as the brain re-organizes connections throughout our life, the process begins earlier in girls which may explain why they mature faster during the teenage years.

Learning requires constant reconfiguration of the connections between nerve cells. Two new studies now yield new insights into the molecular mechanisms that underlie the learning process.

In the first study of its kind, two researchers have used popular music to help severely brain-injured patients recall personal memories. Amee Baird and Séverine Samson outline the results and conclusions of their pioneering research in the recent issue of the journal Neuropsychological Rehabilitation.

Neuroscientists have successfully demonstrated a technique to enhance a form of self-control through a novel form of brain stimulation.

Finally this week, scientists have discovered that as the brain re-organizes connections throughout our life, the process begins earlier in girls which may explain why they mature faster during the teenage years.

Weekly Neuroscience Update

medium_3312316471

Scientists have shown that working as a piano tuner may lead to changes in the structure of the memory and navigation areas of the brain. The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, shows that these structural differences correlate with the number of years of experience a piano tuner has accumulated.

An unusual kind of circuit fine-tunes the brain’s control over movement and incoming sensory information, and without relying on conventional nerve pathways, according to a study published in the journal Neuron.

The reason we struggle to recall memories from our early childhood is down to high levels of neuron production during the first years of life, say Canadian researchers.

Researchers have identified mutations in several new genes that might be associated with the development of spontaneously occurring cases of the neurodegenerative disease known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. Also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, the progressive, fatal condition, in which the motor neurons that control movement and breathing gradually cease to function, has no cure.

The brains of people with depression show a reduced ability to adapt to their environment, a unique study shows.

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have found that a naturally occurring protein secreted only in discrete areas of the mammalian brain may act as a Valium-like brake on certain types of epileptic seizures.

photo credit: Chandra Marsono via photopin cc

Weekly Neuroscience Update

A run of poor sleep can have a potentially profound effect on the internal workings of the human body, say UK researchers.

As a bird sings, some neurons in its brain prepare to make the next sounds while others are synchronized with the current notes—a coordination of physical actions and brain activity that is needed to produce complex movements, new research at the University of Chicago shows. In an article in the current issue of Nature, neuroscientist Daniel Margoliash and colleagues show, for the first time, how the brain is organized to govern skilled performance—a finding that may lead to new ways of understanding human speech production.

Deep brain stimulation has helped people with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, and new research begins to explain why. A Dutch study appearing in the Feb. 24 online issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience found the procedure essentially restored normal function in a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens.

Researchers have identified a possible treatment window of several years for plaques in the brain that are thought to cause memory loss in diseases such as Alzheimer’s. The Mayo Clinic study is published in the Feb. 27 online issue of Neurology.

Though it’s most often associated with disorders like diabetes, Harvard researchers have shown how the signaling pathway of insulin and insulin-like peptides plays another critical role in the body – helping to regulate learning and memory.

Researchers in Scotland and Germany have discovered a molecular mechanism that shows promise for developing a cure for Huntington’s Disease (HD).

Some people do not learn from their mistakes because of the way their brain works, according to research led by an academic at Goldsmiths, University of London. The research examined what it is about the brain that defines someone as a ‘good learner’ from those who do not learn from their mistakes.

Scientists from the University of Oxford say they have discovered how the brain protects itself from damage that occurs in stroke.

A team of French researchers has discovered that the human brain is capable of distinguishing between different types of syllables as early as three months prior to full term birth. 

Inside the child’s brain

This 7 minute video was created for school children to show them how to maximise their brains potential. It is part of an innovative teaching program by Thinkology® aimed at increasing student academic performance and reducing aggressive behaviours such as bullying and other disruptive behaviours. This video has had a significant impact on increasing students self – esteem, controlling bullying and increasing academic performance.

 

Weekly Neuroscience Update

Loneliness? It’s All a State of Mind

Researchers have found that lonely people have less grey matter in a part of the brain associated with decoding eye gaze and other social cues.

While studying the sense of touch, scientists at Duke Medicine have pinpointed specific neurons that appear to regulate perception.

An international team of researchers has for the first time shown that one area of the brain, called the anterior insular cortex, is the activity center of human empathy, whereas other areas of the brain are not.

Early surgery for patients with slow-growing, low-grade glioma brain tumours may result in better survival than a wait-and-see approach, according to Norwegian research.

Books and educational toys can make a child smarter, but they also influence how the brain grows, according to new research. The findings point to a “sensitive period” early in life during which the developing brain is strongly influenced by environmental factors.

Exercising in your 70s may stop your brain from shrinking and showing the signs of ageing linked to dementia, say experts from Edinburgh University.

A patient’s genetic makeup may explain the “placebo effect,” in which people perceive that a fake treatment makes them feel better, according to a study that may help researchers design better clinical trials. Patients with a certain variation on a gene linked to release of dopamine, a brain chemical that affects emotions and sensations of pleasure and pain, were more likely to respond to a placebo version of acupuncture than patients with a different variation, a study in the journal PLoS One found.

UCLA researchers have for the first time measured the activity of a brain region known to be involved in learning, memory and Alzheimer’s disease during sleep. They discovered that this part of the brain behaves as if it’s remembering something, even under anesthesia, a finding that counters conventional theories about memory consolidation during sleep.

The brains of teenage girls with behavioural disorders are different to those of their peers, UK researchers have found. The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry study of 40 girls revealed differences in the structure of areas linked to empathy and emotions. Previous work has found similar results in boys.

There are two ways we can forget a memory that causes unpleasant sensations, be they a humiliating gaffe at some dinner party or an extremely frightening event, say researchers from the University of Cambridge in the October 17th edition of Neuron.