Neuroscience

An article published electronically in the scientific journal Acta Paediatrica describes how heart rate and sleep in boys are affected by violent video games. Researchers from Stockholm University, Uppsala University and Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have worked together with this study. In the study, boys (12-15) were asked to play two different video games at home in the evening. The boys’ heart rate was registered, among other parameters. It turned out that the heart rate variability was affected to a higher degree when the boys were playing games focusing on violence compared with games…

One of the hallmarks of the brain of an individual with Alzheimer disease is the accumulation of amyloid-beta peptide (A-beta), something that is believed to be toxic to many brain cells (specifically neurons) and to therefore contribute to the underlying cause of disease. Berislav Zlokovic and colleagues, at the University of Rochester Medical School, have now generated data in mice that mechanistically links a genetic risk factor for Alzheimer disease with accumulation of A-beta in the brain. Individuals carrying one form of the APOE gene, APOE4, have a greater risk of developing Alzheimer…

Researchers at the UC Davis M.I.N.D. Institute have found that infants later diagnosed with autism exhibited unusual exploration of objects long before being diagnosed. Studying a group of children at high risk for developing autism, the researchers found that those eventually diagnosed with the disorder were more likely to spin, repetitively rotate, stare at and look out of the corners of their eyes at simple objects, including a baby bottle and a rattle, as early as 12 months of age. These findings could help pediatricians diagnose and treat autism earlier, reducing some of the social and…

A study in rats shows that exposure to a high-fat diet during pregnancy produces permanent changes in the offspring's brain that lead to overeating and obesity early in life, according to new research by Rockefeller University scientists. This surprising finding, reported in the Nov. 12 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, provides a key step toward understanding mechanisms of fetal programming involving the production of new brain cells that may help explain the increased prevalence of childhood obesity during the last 30 years. "We've shown that short-term exposure to a high-fat diet in…

Researchers have taken the first critical steps in unraveling the mysteries of brain aneurysms, the often fatal rupturing of blood vessels that afflicts 500,000 people worldwide each year. An international team — led by Murat Gunel, professor of neurosurgery and neurobiology, and Richard Lifton, Sterling Professor and chair of genetics, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator — scanned the genomes of more than 2,000 individuals suffering from intracranial aneurysms along with 8,000 healthy subjects. They discovered three chromosome segments, or loci, where common genetic variations…

By the time you feel sleepy, parts of your brain are actually already asleep, according to a new theoretical paper by sleep scientists at Washington State University.   Contrary to conventional wisdom, they  say there’s no 'control center' in your brain that dictates when it’s time for you to drift off to dreamland. Instead, sleep creeps up on you as independent groups of brain cells become fatigued and switch into a sleep state even while you are still (mostly) awake. Eventually, a threshold number of groups switch and you doze off. Lead author James Krueger said the view of sleep…

Our DNA determines a lot about who we are and how we play with others, but recent studies of social animals (birds and bees, among others) show that the interaction between genes and behavior is more of a two-way street than many of us realize.  It's not a new idea but the new studies give it more credibility, says  University of Illinois entomology and neuroscience professor Gene Robinson, lead author of a review on the subject this week in Science. Stanford University biology professor Russell Fernald and Illinois cell and developmental biology and neuroscience professor David…

Three million Americans suffer from stuttering.  It afflicts  5% of all children and most eventually overcome it but childhood suffering from stuttering can be traumatic, producing educational, social, and occupational disadvantages.   Bruce Willis, Marilyn Monroe and Carly Simon all suffered from stuttering  as children and it can affect children of all ages but boys are three times more likely to stutter than girls. New research from a large-scale international project is providing new insight into the disability. Prof. Ehud Yairi, a long-term Visiting Professor at…

A Harvard-based study led by Drs. Gottfried Schlaug and Ellen Winner and published in PLoS ONE  has found that children who study a musical instrument for at least three years outperform children with no instrumental training on tests measuring verbal ability and visual pattern completion, skills not normally associated with music, along with tests of auditory discrimination and finger dexterity, which are traditionally skills honed by the study of a musical instrument.  41 eight- to eleven-year-olds who had studied either piano or a string instrument for a minimum of three years…

It seems that our brain can correct speech errors in the same way that it controls other forms of behavior, say Niels Schiller and Lesya Ganushchak, Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) researchers in Leiden who made this discovery while studying how the brain reacts to verbal errors. This research can contribute to improvements in the treatment of people who have problems with speaking or in understanding language.  Our brain is fairly good at preventing mistakes in speech but things slip through. US President George W. Bush, for example, made the mistake of referring…