Neuroscience

Older adults who took music lessons as children but hadn't actively played an instrument in decades have faster brain responses to sounds than those who never played an instrument, according to a study appearing in the Journal of Neuroscience.  As people grow older, they often experience changes in the brain that compromise hearing. For instance, the brains of older adults show a slower response to fast-changing sounds, which is important for interpreting speech. However, previous studies show such age-related declines are not inevitable: recent studies of musicians suggest lifelong…

A research study headed by Victoria Leavitt, Ph.D. and James Sumowski, Ph.D., of Kessler Foundation, provides the first evidence for beneficial effects of aerobic exercise. Hippocampal atrophy seen in MS is linked to the memory deficits that affect approximately 50% of individuals with MS. Despite the prevalence of this disabling symptom, there are no effective pharmacological or behavioral treatments.  The study's participants were two MS patients with memory deficits who were randomized to non-aerobic (stretching) and aerobic (stationary cycling) conditions. Baseline and follow-up…

Cognitive fatigue - fatigue resulting from mental work rather than from physical labor - occurs in patients suffering from multiple sclerosis (MS) also.  A recent study investigated the neural correlates of cognitive fatigue in multiple sclerosis utilizing three neuroimaging approaches: functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which allows researchers to look at where in the brain activation is associated with a task or an experience; diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), which allows researchers to look at the health of the brain's white matter; and voxel-based morphometry (VBM), which…

A brain imaging study says that babies can learn lullabies while still in utero. The paper focused on 24 women during the final trimester of their pregnancies. Half of the women played the melody of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to their babies five days a week for the final stages of their pregnancies.  The brains of the babies who heard the melody while in the womb reacted more strongly to the familiar melody both immediately and four months after birth when compared with the control group. The authors conclude that fetuses can recognize and remember sounds from the outside world well…

The largest international genetics collaboration focusing on Alzheimer's has identified 11 new regions of the genome that contribute to late-onset of the disease, doubling the number of potential genetics-based therapeutic targets to investigate.   In 2011, the world's four largest research consortia on the genetics of Alzheimer's disease joined efforts to discover and map the genes that contribute to Alzheimer's, forming the International Genomics of Alzheimer's Project (IGAP). The team collected genetic information from 25,500 Alzheimer's disease patients and 49,038 controls from 15…

3K3A-APC, an experimental drug, appears to reduce brain damage and eliminate brain hemorrhaging in older stroke-afflicted mice and stroke-afflicted rats with co-morbid conditions such as hypertension, according to a new study. The paper finds that 3K3A-APC may be used as a therapy for stroke in humans, either alone or in combination with the FDA-approved clot-busting drug therapy tPA (tissue plasminogen activator). Clinical trials to test the drug's efficacy in people experiencing acute ischemic stroke are expected to begin recruiting patients in the U.S. in 2014. The researchers from USC,…

Reading this article while someone else read a piece in People means your brain has already been shaped differently than that of the other person. Each experience sends us off on divergent branches, so imaging of brain areas used for understanding language in native Japanese speakers won't reshape how we learn. but it show find that pitch-accent in words pronounced in standard Japanese activates different brain hemispheres depending on whether the listener speaks standard Japanese or one of the regional dialects. The paper in Brain and Language examined if speakers of a non-standard dialect…

A study in mice has found that the space between brain cells may increase during sleep, allowing the brain to flush out toxins that build up during waking hours.  Get a good night's sleep - it may literally clear your mind. For centuries, scientists and philosophers alike have wondered why people sleep and how it affects the brain. It has been determined that sleep is important for storing memories and the researchers in the new paper found that sleep may be also be the period when the brain cleanses itself of toxic molecules.   Their results show that during sleep a plumbing…

Worrisome news for retired American football players.  Though former players in a new preliminary study were not diagnosed with any neurological condition, brain imaging tests revealed unusual activity that correlated with how many times they had left the field with a head injury during their careers - profound abnormalities, the authors note. Previous research has determined that former American football players experience higher rates of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease but the new results suggest that players also face a risk of subtle…

Schizophrenia patients often suffer from a breakdown of organized thought, accompanied by delusions or hallucinations - neuroscientists have observed the neural activity that appears to produce this disordered thinking and found that mice lacking the brain protein calcineurin have hyperactive brain-wave oscillations in the hippocampus while resting, and are unable to mentally replay a route they have just run, as normal mice do. Mutations in the gene for calcineurin have previously been found in some schizophrenia patients. Ten years ago, MIT researchers led by Susumu Tonegawa, the Picower…