Neuroscience

Prenatal sex-based biological differences extend to genetic expression in cerebral cortices and the differences in question are probably associated with later divergences in how our brains develop, according to a new study by Uppsala University researchers Elena Jazin and Björn Reinius in Molecular Psychiatry. Professor Elena Jazin and doctoral student Björn Reinius at the Department of Physiology and Developmental Biology previously say they have demonstrated that genetic expression in the cerebral cortices of human beings and other primates exhibits certain sex-based differences. It is…

Infants can correctly identify humans as the source of speech and monkeys as the source of monkey calls even when they are as young as five months old, says a new Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) study.   While young children know that humans speak, monkeys grunt and ducks quack, it's not clear when we come to know which vocalizations each of these animals produce.  Much is known about infants' abilities to match properties of human voices to faces, such as emotion, but it is unknown whether infants are able to match vocalizations to the specific species that…

Brain activity considered to be  spontaneous 'white noise' changes after a person learns a new task, according to researchers, and the degree of change reflects how well subjects have learned to perform the task. The suggestion is that this learning-induced change in the brain's spontaneous activity may reflect  a 'memory trace' for the new skill, which makes it easier to use those parts of the brain together again when the same challenge is presented.  In addition to helping anatomical connections between different brain regions, the changes in spontaneous brain activity may…

We have all experienced the occasional “flash” of anger or anxious “episode” that seems to just appear out of nowhere. Sometimes, we even notice emotions in others before they seem aware of it themselves. This peculiar experiential feature often leaves us with the impression that emotions are automatic and mysterious events that, like non-mental events, can just happen to us.  Historically, research on emotion self-regulation has focused on the conscious, deliberate control of emotions as a bulwark against unbridled and maladaptive reactivity. More…

While inflammation often causes damage to the nerves of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients, a group of HBI researchers has been studying how neuroinflammation can instead be harnessed to repair the damage caused by this disease.Dr. V.W. Yong’s laboratory set out to test whether a drug that is used to treat MS symptoms, Copaxone or glatiramer acetate (GA), could also play a role in repairing the covering of nerves that have been damaged by MS.  “We know the drug is safely used around the world but we wanted to know if GA offered any reparative benefits,” said Claudia Silva, laboratory…

No sooner met but they looked;No sooner looked but they loved;No sooner loved but they sighed;No sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason;No sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy;And in these degrees have they made a pair of stairs to marriage;Which they will climb incontinent;Or else be incontinent before marriage. -Shakespeare, As You Like It I was under the impression that the general subject of love, in all its oblique insanity, was the subject of study and much woeful writing by poets, mostly. That is, until I came across neuroscientist Larry Young's absolutely…

Children in english-speaking, letter-driven languages are diagnosed with dyslexia more commonly than those in Asia so is it a function of our alphabet? English dyslexia consists of a 'phonological disorder',  meaning that people with the condition have trouble detecting or manipulating the sound structure of oral language, which in turn leads to problems in mapping speech sounds onto letters Chinese-speaking children get a form of dyslexia but the disorder is distinctly different, and perhaps more complicated and severe, than that of English speakers. Those differences can even be seen…

A study combining family- and population-based approaches has uncovered a single-letter change in the genetic code that is associated with autism.  The finding implicates a neuronal gene not previously tied to the disorder and more broadly, underscores a role for common DNA variation. In addition, the new research highlights two other regions of the genome, which are likely to contain rare genetic differences that may also influence autism risk. Autism is a common neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impaired social, behavioral and communication abilities. Compared to other…

This seems to be a simple enough question: what exactly constitutes the definition of ‘life’? Let us begin, at the beginning – as they say. Life, according to scientists, begins at the cellular level. Thus, life begins with the cell. But why is that? According to biologists, for life to exist, there must be all or most of the following phenomenon: homeostasis, organization (ie. being unicellular or multicellular) metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to a stimuli, and reproduction. Certainly, any cell exhibits these phenomenon, and so, the cell is classified as being ‘alive’.   Yes,…

You open your dictionary to figure out what your friend meant by 'nasute,' only to find that the definition is "A wittol, or jemadar; bannocked in an emunctory fashion." What good is this dictionary, you wonder, if it only refers me to other words I don't know? And worse still, the definitions of some of these words refer back to ‘nasute,’ the word you didn’t know in the first place! Even if your attempt to learn what 'nasute’ means is not infected by circularity, you face a quick explosion of words to look up: the words in the definition, the words in each of these definitions, and so on.…