Weekly Neuroscience Update

Brain scans show a correlation between how well participants could make a connection between a new word and a sound, and the gray matter volume in the hippocampus and cerebellum. (Credit: Photo/Qinghua He)

A combination of brain scans and reading tests has revealed that several regions in the brain are responsible for allowing humans to read. The findings open up the possibility that individuals who have difficulty reading may only need additional training for specific parts of the brain — targeted therapies that could more directly address their individual weaknesses.

Children with Asperger’s syndrome show patterns of brain connectivity distinct from those of children with autism, according to a new study. 

Scientists have discovered that the brain circuits we engage when we think about social matters, such as considering other people’s views, or moral issues, inhibit the circuits that we use when we think about inanimate, analytical things, such as working on a physics problem or making sure the numbers add up when we balance our budget. And they say, the same happens the other way around: the analytic brain network inhibits the social network.

Using direct human brain recordings, a research team has identified a new type of cell in the brain that helps people to keep track of their relative location while navigating an unfamiliar environment.

A collaborative team of researchers has uncovered evidence that a specific genetic alteration appears to contribute to disorders of brain development, including schizophrenia. They also found that schizophrenia shares a common biological pathway with Fragile X mental syndrome, a disorder associated with both intellectual impairment and autism.
A team of researchers has identified 18 new genes responsible for driving glioblastoma multiforme, the most common—and most aggressive—form of brain cancer in adults. The study was published August 5, 2013, in Nature Genetics.

Johns Hopkins biophysicists have discovered that full activation of a protein ensemble essential for communication between nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord requires a lot of organized back-and-forth motion of some of the ensemble’s segments. Their research, they say, may reveal multiple sites within the protein ensemble that could be used as drug targets to normalize its activity in such neurological disorders as epilepsy, schizophrenia, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.

A sleepless night makes us more likely to reach for doughnuts or pizza than for whole grains and leafy green vegetables, suggests a new study from UC Berkeley that examines the brain regions that control food choices. The findings shed new light on the link between poor sleep and obesity

OK, Glass: I Can’t Walk, So Help Me Explore

Watch how Alex Blaszczuk,  paralyzed from the chest down and unable to use her hands since a car accident in 2011, uses Google Glass to explore her world.

Google is paying close attention to how people like Van Sant and Blaszczuk are using Glass. At Georgia Tech, the company is working on two projects aimed at finding Glass applications for those with muscular dystrophy and Parkinson’s disease. A collaborative effort between researchers at Carnergie Mellon University and the University of Rochester focuses on using Glass to help the blind.

So while Glass may still be widely viewed as a status symbol, the future of the device may have a much deeper humanitarian impact than we envisioned by clearing a path for the disabled.

Source: Mashable

How Brains Learn To See


Pawan Sinha details his groundbreaking research into how the brain’s visual system develops. Sinha and his team provide free vision-restoring treatment to children born blind, and then study how their brains learn to interpret visual data. The work offers insights into neuroscience, engineering and even autism.

Weekly Neuroscience Update

FASD impacts brain development throughout childhood and adolescence not just at birth

Highlighted areas are some of the white matter tracts the research group studied. Credit: U of A

Medical researchers at the University of Alberta recently published findings showing that brain development is delayed throughout childhood and adolescence for people born with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD).

Whenever we have to acquire new knowledge under stress, the brain deploys unconscious rather than conscious learning processes. Neuroscientists at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum have discovered that this switch from conscious to unconscious learning systems is triggered by the intact function of mineralocorticoid receptors.

Researchers have reverse-engineered the outlines of a disrupted prenatal gene network in schizophrenia, by tracing spontaneous mutations to where and when they likely cause damage in the brain. Some people with the brain disorder may suffer from impaired birth of new neurons, or neurogenesis, in the front of their brain during prenatal development, suggests the study.

Autism is marked by several core features — impairments in social functioning, difficulty communicating, and a restriction of interests. Though researchers have attempted to pinpoint factors that might account for all three of these characteristics, the underlying causes are still unclear. Now, a new study suggests that two key attentional abilities — moving attention fluidly and orienting to social information — can be checked off the list, as neither seems to account for the diversity of symptoms we find in people with autism.

Anemia, or low levels of red blood cells, may increase the risk of dementia, according to a study published in the July 31, 2013, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology

Physicists and neuroscientists from The University of Nottingham and University of Birmingham have unlocked one of the mysteries of the human brain, thanks to new research using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG). The work will enable neuroscientists to map a kind of brain function that up to now could not be studied, allowing a more accurate exploration of how both healthy and diseased brains work.

Death Of Broadcasting Legend Colm Murray

Colm Murray

Colm Murray

I am saddened to hear of the death last night of  the hugely popular RTÉ Sport broadcaster Colm Murray,  who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease three years ago.

In a moving documentary MND – The Inside Track, aired last year on RTE television, the broadcaster said that he wanted to do something “positive”, despite his personal struggle. His doctor, Trinity and Beaumont Professor Orla Hardiman, hailed him for his willingness “to be of service”, and to help find a future cure by partaking in medical trials. “Colm could easily have laid down to the disease and become a victim but he instead became a champion,” she said.

While he admitted at the time that he did not expect to be cured, Colm Murray said that it was his most “fervent wish that the coming years will see giant steps forward in the battle to find a cure”.

“It gives me something to hope for. It’s a faint glimmer of light at the end of a very dark tunnel.”

What is Motor Neurone Disease?

One in 50,000 people will develop the terminal disease, which attacks the central nervous system, and ultimately destroys all muscular function, but what exactly is this disease?

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)*,  also known as Motor Neuron Disease,  targets the nerves controlling the muscles of movement including postural muscles eventually disabling those nerves controlling chest breathing. Interestingly nerves regulating the senses, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling are not affected. Cognition is not affected – dementia is rare.

Incidence

ALS occurs in 2-5 people per 100,000 with slightly more males affected than females. The origin is still a mystery however elite sportsmen and women are disproportionally affected.

The podcast below gives an excellent in-dept explanation of ALS.

http://neuroscene.com/?p=204

*Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis 

A = lack of:   Myo = muscle; Trophic = nourishment;

Lateral = location in the spinal cord;   Sclerosis = scarring.

Neural Simulations Hint at the Origin of Brain Waves

For almost a century, scientists have been studying brain waves to learn about mental health and the way we think. Yet the way billions of interconnected neurons work together to produce brain waves remains unknown. Now, scientists from EPFL’s Blue Brain Project in Switzerland, at the core of the European Human Brain Project, and the Allen Institute for Brain Science in the United States, show in the July 24th edition of the journal Neuron how a complex computer model is providing a new tool to solve the mystery.

Weekly Neuroscience Update

A novel screening method makes it easier to diagnose and treat children with autism

A child with autism discovers how to evoke the onscreen video he likes best. Credit: Rutgers Sensory-Motor Integration Lab

Researchers have developed a new screening method to diagnose autism, which unlike current methods does not rely on subjective criteria. These results are published in a series of studies in the open-access journal Frontiers in Neuroscience.

Going to bed at different times every night throughout early childhood seems to curb children’s brain power, according to a large, long term study.

A computational vision scientist at the University of South Australia has just published new research describing a key advance in our understanding of how the brain perceives the physical world.

Oxytocin has long been known as the warm, fuzzy hormone that promotes feelings of love, social bonding and well-being. It’s even being tested as an anti-anxiety drug. But new research shows oxytocin also can cause emotional pain, an entirely new, darker identity for the hormone.

Ultrasound waves sent to specific brain regions can alter a person’s mood, according to a new study published in the journal Brain Stimulation.

A gene related to neural tube defects in dogs has for the first time been identified by researchers.

UCLA chemists and molecular biologists have for the first time used a “structure-based” approach to drug design to identify compounds with the potential to delay or treat Alzheimer’s disease, and possibly Parkinson’s, Lou Gehrig’s disease and other degenerative disorders.

BrainGate : Thought Control Of Robotic Arms

A trial is evaluating an investigational device called the BrainGate neural interface system. This is a type of brain-computer interface (BCI) intended to put robotics and other assistive technology under the brain’s control. By imagining the movement of their own arms, two paralyzed individuals were able to use the BrainGate to make complex reach-and-grasp movements with robotic arms.