Neuroscience

You know how your grandfather could tell a storm was coming by an ache in his knee? University of Cincinnati researchers say lightning may affect the onset of headache and migraines. Geoffrey Martin, fourth-year medical student, and his father Vincent Martin, MD, professor in the division of general internal medicine, led the study which showed that there was a 31 percent increased risk of headache and 28 percent increased risk of migraine for chronic headache sufferers on days lighting struck within 25 miles of study participant's homes. In addition, new-onset headache and migraine increased…

While many people believe they can multitask, a new paper indicates yet again that people who multitask the most, including supposedly easy things like talking on a cell phone while driving, are least capable of doing so. Since this is a psychology study, it involved putting 310 undergraduate psychology students who wanted extra credit through a series of tests and questionnaires to try and measure actual multitasking ability, perceived multitasking ability, cell phone use while driving, use of a wide array of electronic media, and personality traits such as impulsivity and sensation-seeking…

Rats socially isolated during a critical period in adolescence are more vulnerable to addiction to amphetamine and alcohol, according to a new paper. Amphetamine addiction is also harder to extinguish in the socially isolated rats. These effects persist even after the rats are reintroduced into the community of other rats. "Basically the animals become more manipulatable," said Hitoshi Morikawa, associate professor of neurobiology in the College of Natural Sciences. "They're more sensitive to reward, and once conditioned the conditioning takes longer to extinguish. We've been able to observe…

Researchers have discovered a way to stimulate the brain's natural defense mechanisms in people with Alzheimer's disease.  One of the main characteristics of Alzheimer's disease is the production in the brain of the toxic molecule amyloid beta. Microglial cells, the nervous system's defenders, are unable to eliminate this substance, which forms deposits called senile plaques.  A team has found that the molecule known as MPL (monophosphoryl lipid A) stimulates the activity of the brain's immune cells. MPL has been used extensively as a vaccine adjuvant by GlaxoSmithKline for…

One of the mechanisms involved in hearing is similar to the battery in your car. How do researchers know?  They heard it in a fruit fly love song. The auditory system of the fruit fly contains a protein that functions as a sodium/potassium pump, often called the sodium pump for short, and is highly expressed in a specialized support cell called the scolopale cell. The scolopale cell is important because it wraps around the sensory endings in the fly's ear and makes a tight extra-cellular cavity or compartment around them called the scolopale space. "You could think of these compartments…

A radiotracer has shown that researchers who used electricity on certain regions in the brain of a patient with chronic, severe facial pain led to release of an opiate-like substance that's considered one of the body's most powerful painkillers.   In their current study, researcher intravenously administered a radiotracer that reached important brain areas in a patient with trigeminal neuropathic pain (TNP), a type of chronic, severe facial pain. They applied the electrodes and electrically stimulated the skull right above the motor cortex of the patient for 20 minutes during a PET scan…

Autistic-like behaviors in laboratory mice can be partially remedied by normalizing excessive levels of protein synthesis in the brain, according to a new paper The researchers focused on the EIF4E gene, whose mutation is associated with autism. The mutation causing autism was proposed to increase levels of the eIF4E, the protein product of EIF4E, and lead to exaggerated protein synthesis. Excessive eIF4E signaling and exaggerated protein synthesis also may play a role in a range of neurological disorders, including fragile X syndrome (FXS). In their experiments, the researchers examined…

Two molecules, cholic acid and 24,25-EC, play an important role in the survival and production of nerve cells in the brain, including nerve cells that produce dopamine, according to a new study.   Receptors known as "liver X receptors", or LXR, are necessary for the production of different types of nerve cells, or neurons, in the developing ventral midbrain. One these types, the midbrain dopamine-producing neurons play an important role in a number of diseases, such as Parkinson's disease.   What was not known, however, was which molecules stimulate LXR in the midbrain, such that…

Brain imaging shows us what is happening during events and stimuli but it can't tell us much about how or why. Regardless, conclusion are often drawn and the poles of cultural debates are always jumping on the latest study to affirm their beliefs. No one will be satisfied with a new University of Oxford study which concluded that the pain relief offered by cannabis is all subjective. The researchers found that an oral tablet of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, tended to make the experience of pain more bearable, rather than actually reduce the intensity of the pain. MRI brain…

Our eyes are the window to the world, but making sense of the thousands of images that flood us each day is squarely in the purview of the brain - and now researchers say they have created the first interactive map of how the brain organizes these groupings. The result, achieved through computational models of brain imaging data collected while the subjects watched hours of movie clips, is what researchers call "a continuous semantic space." Some relationships between categories make sense (humans and animals share the same "semantic neighborhood", for example) while others such hallways and…