By Elizabeth Pennisi Imagine trying to train wild sea lions—without them ever seeing you. That was Peter Cook's challenge 8 years ago when he was trying to figure out whether poisonous algae were irrevocably damaging the animals’ brains. With a lot of patience and some luck, the comparative neuroscientist from Emory University in Atlanta has succeeded, and the news isn't good. Toxins from the algae mangle a key memory center, likely making it difficult for sick animals to hunt or navigate effectively, Cook and his colleagues report today. "Sea lions can be seen as sentinels of human health," says Kathi Lefebvre, a research biologist at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, Washington, who was not involved with the work. As oceans warm, toxic algae proliferate and cause so-called red tides because the water looks reddish. So "understanding these toxins in wild animals is going to become more important," she says. Red tides are produced by algae called diatoms. They make a toxin called domoic acid, which is consumed by other plankton that in turn become food for fish and other organisms. Predators such as anchovies, sardines, and other schooling fish accumulate this toxin in their bodies. So when algal populations explode, say, because of warming water, domoic acid concentrations increase in these animals to a point that they affect the sea lions that feast on them. Scientists first recognized this problem in 1998, after hundreds of sea lions were found stranded or disoriented along California's coast. Since then, researchers have studied sick and dead sea lions and documented that the toxin causes seizures and damages the brain, sometimes killing the animal. © 2015 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Neurotoxins
Link ID: 21700 - Posted: 12.15.2015

By SINDYA N. BHANOO Prairie voles are small Midwestern rodents known for monogamous behavior. But some males are also known to stray and seek out other females. A new study reports that mating preferences in the voles are linked to genetic differences, and that both monogamous and nonmonogamous males are readily found in nature. The study appears in the journal Science. Generally, animal neuroscientists believe that natural selection minimizes genetic variation. In this case, however, one mating strategy does not seem to be more successful than the other. Monogamous males stay near their nests, which ensures that female mates remain faithful. Promiscuous males have more partners, but they also lose sight of their own mates. “When you roam, your own female is free to mate with whoever she wants,” said Steven M. Phelps, a neurobiologist at the University of Texas at Austin and one of the study’s authors. The genetic differences between nonmonogramous and monogamous males affect a part of the brain important for spatial memory. Good memory may help a male keep track of his mate or keep him from returning to a hostile male’s territory. “We’ve shown for the first time that not only can brains be variable, but natural selection can keep that variability around,” Dr. Phelps said. © 2015 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 21699 - Posted: 12.14.2015

The clock is ticking for Ronald Cohn. He wants to use CRISPR gene editing to correct the genes of his friend’s 13-year-old son. The boy, Gavriel, has Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a genetic disease in which muscles degenerate. Breathing and heart problems often start by the time people with the condition are in their early twenties. Life expectancy is about 25 years. By the standards of science, the field of CRISPR gene editing is moving at a lightning fast pace. Although the technique was only invented a few years ago, it is already being used for research by thousands of labs worldwide to make extremely precise changes to DNA. A handful of people have already been treated using therapies enabled by the technology, and last week an international summit effectively endorsed the idea of gene editing embryos. It is too soon to try the technique out, but the summit concluded that basic research on embryos should be permitted, alongside a debate on how we should use the technology. But for people like Cohn, progress can’t come fast enough. Gavriel was diagnosed at age 4. He has already lost the use of his legs but still has some movement in his upper body, and uses a manual wheelchair. Cohn, a clinician at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, estimates that he has three years to develop and test a CRISPR-based treatment if he is to help Gavriel. Muscular dystrophy is caused by a faulty gene for the protein dystrophin, which holds our muscles together. Gavriel has a duplicated version of the gene. This week, Cohn’s team published a paper describing how they grew Gavriel’s cells in a dish and used CRISPR gene-editing techniques to snip out the duplication. With the duplication removed, his cells produced normal dystrophin protein. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Movement Disorders; Muscles
Link ID: 21698 - Posted: 12.14.2015

By C. CLAIBORNE RAY Q. We know that aquatic mammals communicate with one another, but what about fish? A. Fish have long been known to communicate by several silent mechanisms, but more recently researchers have found evidence that some species also use sound. It is well known that fish communicate by gesture and motion, as in the highly regimented synchronized swimming of schools of fish. Some species use electrical pulses as signals, and some use bioluminescence, like that of the firefly. Some kinds of fish also release chemicals that can be sensed by smell or taste. In 2011, a scientist in New Zealand suggested that what might be called fish vocalization has a role, at least in some ocean fish. In the widely publicized work, done for his doctoral thesis at the University of Auckland, Shahriman Ghazali recorded reef fish in the wild and in captivity, and found two dominant vocalizations, the croak and the purr, in choruses that lasted up to three hours, as well as a previously undescribed popping sound. The sounds of one species recorded in captivity — the bigeye, or Pempheris adspersa — carried 100 feet or more, and the researcher suggested it could be used to keep a group of fish together during nocturnal foraging. Another species, the bluefin gurnard, or Chelidonichthys kumu, was also very noisy, he found. “Vocalization” is a bit of a misnomer, as the sounds these fish make are produced by contracting and vibrating the swim bladder, not by using the mouth. © 2015 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Animal Communication; Hearing
Link ID: 21697 - Posted: 12.14.2015

By ALAN SCHWARZ Andrew Rios’s seizures began when he was 5 months old and only got worse. At 18 months, when an epilepsy medication resulted in violent behavior, he was prescribed the antipsychotic Risperdal, a drug typically used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in adults, and rarely used for children as young as 5 years. From Our Advertisers When Andrew screamed in his sleep and seemed to interact with people and objects that were not there, his frightened mother researched Risperdal and discovered that the drug was not approved, and had never even been studied, in children anywhere near as young as Andrew. “It was just ‘Take this, no big deal,’ like they were Tic Tacs,” said Genesis Rios, a mother of five in Rancho Dominguez, Calif. “He was just a baby.” Cases like that of Andrew Rios, in which children age 2 or younger are prescribed psychiatric medications to address alarmingly violent or withdrawn behavior, are rising rapidly, data shows. Many doctors worry that these drugs, designed for adults and only warily accepted for certain school-age youngsters, are being used to treat children still in cribs despite no published research into their effectiveness and potential health risks for children so young. Almost 20,000 prescriptions for risperidone (commonly known as Risperdal), quetiapine (Seroquel) and other antipsychotic medications were written in 2014 for children 2 and younger, a 50 percent jump from 13,000 just one year before, according to the prescription data company IMS Health. Prescriptions for the antidepressant fluoxetine (Prozac) rose 23 percent in one year for that age group, to about 83,000. The company’s data does not indicate how many children received these prescriptions (many children receive several prescriptions a year), but previous studies suggest that the number is at least 10,000. IMS Health researched the data at the request of The New York Times. © 2015 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 21696 - Posted: 12.12.2015

The road map of conscious awareness has been deciphered. Now that we know which brain pathways control whether someone is awake or unconscious, we may be able to rouse people from a vegetative or minimally conscious state. In 2007, researchers used deep brain stimulation to wake a man from a minimally conscious state. It was quite remarkable, says Jin Lee at Stanford University in California. The 38-year-old had suffered a severe brain injury in a street mugging six years earlier. Before his treatment he was unable to communicate and had no voluntary control over his limbs. When doctors stimulated his thalamus – a central hub that sends signals all around the brain – his speech and movement gradually returned. However, attempts to treat other people in a similar way have failed. The problem lies with the crudeness of the technique. “Deep brain stimulation is done without much knowledge of how it actually alters the circuits in the brain,” says Lin. The technique involves attaching electrodes to the brain and using them to stimulate the tissue beneath. Unfortunately, the electrodes can also stimulate unintended areas, which means it is hard to work out exactly what is happening in people’s brains. “There are a lot of fibres and different cells in the thalamus and working out what was going on in the brain was very difficult,” says Lin. “So we wanted to figure it out.” © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Consciousness; Brain imaging
Link ID: 21695 - Posted: 12.12.2015

By Andrea Anderson Mom's ovaries could hold clues to some autism cases, new research suggests—and this time it's not because of genetic vulnerabilities carried in her eggs. A new, large-scale study out of Sweden suggests that women with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS)—an endocrine disorder that affects 5 to 10 percent of women of childbearing age—have an increased risk of giving birth to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The Karolinska Institute's Renee Gardner, along with colleagues from Sweden and the U.S., tapped into a Swedish national population health database to look at potential ties between PCOS and ASD. As they reported online December 8 in Molecular Psychiatry, the team looked at 23,748 individuals with ASD and nearly 209,000 unaffected individuals, all born in Sweden between 1984 and 2007. Although identifying information about the individuals was removed, the researchers had access to information about their relationships to others in the database as well as documented diagnoses and use of health care services. The group found that ASD was 59 percent more prevalent in children born to women with PCOS—a relationship that was independent of PCOS complications such as increased neonatal distress or C-section delivery. This risk level is roughly comparable with that of having a father over age 50 (estimated to be 66 percent) but lower than it is in those with certain rare genetic syndromes or mutations. The authors of the analysis believe PCOS increases ASD risk in offspring to a greater extent than maternal infection, one of many factors previously implicated in autism. © 2015 Scientific American

Keyword: Autism; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 21694 - Posted: 12.12.2015

Call it the optimism fallacy. It’s widely thought that staying happy and stress-free helps keep you healthy. But a massive study on the link between mood and mortality suggests that happiness actually has no effect on death rates. Other research that has found the opposite must have been mixing up cause and effect, says epidemiologist Richard Peto of the University of Oxford. “It’s likely that being ill makes you unhappy, rather than the other way round.” The power of positive thinking has passed into folklore, helping to fuel a large self-help industry – not to mention people who like to post “inspirational” quotes on social media. Some cancer bloggers complain that common advice to “fight” their illness by staying cheerful can be unhelpful. “Forcing optimism may have its own negative consequences,” says Gayle Sulik, who writes the “Pink Ribbon Blues” blog. “The emotional work to display optimism when a person does not feel it may add to stress.” To find out if there is indeed a link, Peto’s team conducted surveys with more than 700,000 UK women. At the start, they were asked questions about their health and how happy and relaxed they felt. A year later, the questionnaire was resent to a random sample of the women. Their responses suggested that most still felt the same as they did the year before. Ten years later, after allowing for any initial disparities in health, there turned out to be no difference in death rates between those who saw their glass as half-full or half-empty. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Emotions; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 21693 - Posted: 12.12.2015

Laura Sanders You can thank your parents for your funny-looking hippocampus. Genes influence the three-dimensional shape of certain brain structures, scientists report in a paper posted online December 1 at bioRxiv.org. Showing a new way that genes help sculpt the brain opens up more ways to explore how the brain develops and operates. Earlier work linked genes to simple measurements of brain structures, such as overall volume or length. The new work goes beyond that by mathematically analyzing complex 3-D shapes and tying those shapes to a particular genetic makeup. A team led by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School analyzed MRI brain scans and genome data from 1,317 healthy young adults. Particular genetic profiles influenced the 3-D shape of structures including the hippocampus, caudate and cerebellum, the scientists found. In some brains, for instance, genes played a role in making the seahorse-shaped right hippocampus skinnier on the top and wider on the bottom. Genes also influenced whether the tail of the caudate was short or long. Quirks of brain structure shapes might play a role in disorders such as schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorder and bipolar disorder, which are known to be influenced by genes, the authors write. Citations T. Ge et al. Heritability of neuroanatomical shape. bioRxiv.org. Posted December 1, 2015. doi: 10.1101/033407. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2015

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 21692 - Posted: 12.12.2015

By Karen Weintraub Is sleep induced by a benzodiazepine counted as restorative sleep? Researchers hate to admit it, but they don’t know enough about sleep to answer this question. Their best guess, several experts said, is that sleep is sleep. Dr. John Weyl Winkelman, a sleep disorders expert at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, said if a patient asked him whether medicated sleep was restorative, “I’d say: ‘You tell me.’” There is quite a bit of evidence about the negative health consequences of insomnia, but researchers don’t know precisely what it is in the brain and body that is "restored" by sleep to aid optimal function. And it is unlikely that any specific stage of sleep is uniquely restorative, said Dr. Daniel J. Buysse, a sleep medicine expert and professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. More sleep, less interrupted sleep, and sleep at the right time of night are all likely to be important, he said. There are two types of sleep: REM, when people dream, and non-REM, which has light, medium and deep portions. Sleeping pills mainly increase the amount of medium-depth non-REM sleep, Dr. Buysse said. Medications can help people fall asleep faster and reduce nighttime wakefulness, he said, and those changes are usually considered to contribute to restorative sleep. But different people respond differently. “Do you feel more rested, more alert, more able to concentrate, less irritable on medication versus off?" Dr. Buysse said. "If all those things are true then I would say it’s more restorative. If a hypnotic drug leaves you feeling hung over or more anxious, if it causes you to order five hickory smoked turkeys on the Internet without remembering, then it’s probably not good.” © 2015 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 21691 - Posted: 12.12.2015

Sara Reardon Manipulating brain circuits with light and drugs can cause ripple effects that could muddy experimental results. In the tightly woven networks of the brain, tugging one neuronal thread can unravel numerous circuits. Because of that, the authors of a paper1 published in Nature on 9 December caution that techniques such as optogenetics — activating neurons with light to control brain circuits — and manipulation with drugs could lead researchers to jump to unwarranted conclusions. In work with rats and zebra finches, neuroscientist Bence Ölveczky of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and his team found that stimulating one part of the brain to induce certain behaviours might cause other, unrelated parts to fire simultaneously, and so make it seem as if these circuits are also involved in the behaviour. According to Ölveczky, the experiments suggest that although techniques such as optogenetics may show that a circuit can perform a function, they do not necessarily show that it normally performs that function. “I don’t want to say other studies have been wrong, but there is a danger to overinterpreting,” he says. Ölveczky and his colleagues discovered these discrepancies by chance while studying rats that they had trained to press a lever in a certain pattern. They injected a drug called muscimol, which temporarilty shuts off neurons, into a part of the motor cortex that is involved in paw movement. The animals were no longer able to perform the task, which might be taken as evidence that neurons in this brain region were necessary to its performance. © 2015 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 21690 - Posted: 12.10.2015

By Darold A. Treffert The headlines read “New study suggests autism can be outgrown”, or “outgrowing autism: a doctor’s surprise and wonder.” The stories are based on studies reporting that 7-9% of children with a documented early autistic syndrome disorder (ASD) have no symptoms of the disorder on follow-up later in childhood or adolescence. That is good news. The question is how to account for it. Is it possible to simply “outgrow” autism? Was the initial diagnosis wrong? Did some interventions work? Or might there be other explanations for this welcome news? "In an earlier column titled “Oops. When “autism” isn’t autistic disorder,” I outlined three types of hyperlexia, or precocious reading ability, which is sometimes an element of a diagnosis of ASD. Type 1 are neurotypical children who simply read way ahead of their chronological age. Listening to a 4 year old reading books to his or her nursery school classmates is a startling experience. Type 2 are children in which intense fascination with letters and numbers, along with early reading and remarkable memory represent ‘splinter skills’ as a part of autistic syndrome disorder (ASD) Type 3 are children who likewise show intense fascination and preoccupation with numbers and letters very early, along with precocious reading skills and remarkable memory. They do have “autistic-like” symptoms or behaviors but those disappear over time as the child gets older. The outcome in these children is much more positive than those with ASD to their benefit and the great relief of their parents. Following the “Oops” article I received numerous reports from parents who identified with hyperlexia 3. “You just described my child,” the puzzled, and relieved parents would write as they read the case examples in my Wisconsin Medical Journal article in December, 2011. © 2015 Scientific American

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 21689 - Posted: 12.10.2015

By Gretchen Reynolds Physical fitness may be critical for maintaining a relatively youthful and nimble brain as we age, according to a new study of brain activation patterns in older people. For most of us, our bodies begin to lose flexibility and efficiency as we enter our 40s. Running and other movements slow down and become more awkward, and something similar seems to occur within our heads. As middle age encroaches, our thinking becomes less efficient. We don’t toggle between mental tasks as nimbly as we once did or process new information with the same aplomb and clarity. Recently, neuroscientists have begun to quantify how those cognitive changes play out in our brains, to disquieting effect. In studies comparing brain activation in young people with that of people past 40, they have found notable differences, especially during mental tasks that require attention, problem solving, decision-making and other types of high-level thinking. Such thinking primarily involves activation of the brain’s prefrontal cortex. In young people, activation in the cortex during these cognitive tasks tends to be highly localized. Depending on the type of thinking, young people’s brains light up almost exclusively in either the right or left portion of the prefrontal cortex. But in older people, studies show, brain activity during the same mental tasks requires far more brainpower. They typically display activity in both hemispheres of their prefrontal cortex. In effect, they require more of their brains’ resources to complete the same tasks that young people do with less cognitive effort. Neuroscientists coined an acronym for this phenomenon: Harold, for hemispheric asymmetry reduction in older adults. Most agree that it represents a general reorganization and weakening of the brain’s function with age. © 2015 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 21688 - Posted: 12.10.2015

by Chris Samoray Every fall, blackpoll warblers fly from North America to South America in what’s the longest migration route of any warbler in the Western Hemisphere. But some of the tiny songbirds take a detour before making their epic transoceanic leap. Over 40 years of data from 22,295 birds show that blackpoll warblers (Setophaga striata) living in western North America head east for a pit stop to put on weight, giving the birds the energy stores they need to cross the Atlantic Ocean, researchers report December 9 in the Auk: Ornithological Advances. For birds that breed farther west in places like Alaska, the eastern stopover means a migration distance that’s nearly twice that of their eastern U.S. counterparts, the scientists find. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2015.

Keyword: Animal Migration
Link ID: 21687 - Posted: 12.10.2015

By Lindzi Wessel Nighttime restlessness is common among people with Alzheimer’s, and many stay awake agitated and pacing long after their family members have gone to sleep. Now, scientists may have figured out why: The disease appears to degrade a special type of eye cell that tells the brain when it’s day or night. If the discovery holds up, it might offer clinicians a new way to monitor the progression of Alzheimer’s and could lead to treatments that restore a good night’s sleep. The cells in question are known as melanopsin retinal ganglion cells. They send signals to the brain center responsible for circadian rhythms, our body’s daily clock. The cells make up 1% to 2% of the eye’s light-responsive sensors, but they play no role in vision, says lead author Chiara La Morgia, a neuroscientist at the University of Bologna in Italy. Rather, they sense light levels around us, telling us when to get sleepy and when to be alert. La Morgia and her colleagues, aware of the profound sleep problems often seen in Alzheimer’s, wondered whether the cells may stop doing their job as the disease progresses. “If you lose them, you should see dysfunction of the circadian rhythms and see disrupted sleep,” says Alfredo Sadun, neuro-opthamologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and co-author of the study. “That is the exact symptomology we see in Alzheimer’s disease.” To learn more, the researchers used dyes to mark melanopsin cells in the eyes of 30 recently deceased organ donors. They found approximately 24% fewer melanopsin cells in the eyes of people with Alzheimer’s than in the eyes of donors without the disease. © 2015 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Alzheimers; Vision
Link ID: 21686 - Posted: 12.09.2015

Ian Sample Science editor Scientists have discovered a chemical that destroys toxic plaques which build up in the brain in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Preliminary tests found that when added to drinking water, the compound cleared amyloid beta plaques from the brains of mice with Alzheimer’s-like symptoms, and restored their cognitive function to normal. The work is at a very early stage, but raises hopes for drugs that can prevent the accumulation of amyloid plaques and potentially halt the progression of the disease. Amyloid plaques are one of the first hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease and are thought to contribute to neurodegeneration by killing off brain cells. Researchers in Korea discovered the chemical, EPPS, while screening a variety of molecules for their effects on amyloid plaques. In the latest study, they added the substance to the drinking water of mice that had symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. They found that administering EPPS for a week improved how well mice performed on maze tests, and cleared amyloid plaques from the animals’ brains. “Our findings clearly support the view that aggregated amyloid-beta is the pathological culprit of Alzheimer’s disease,” said YoungSoo Kim, who led the team at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology in Seoul. The study used mice that had amyloid plaques injected into their brains. The animals suffered cognitive impairments as a result, but they did not develop the kind of widespread brain damage seen in Alzheimer’s patients which would not be reversed by removing amyloid plaques. © 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 21685 - Posted: 12.09.2015

By Michael M. Torrice, We learn from experience: It sounds like a trite sentiment posted by a friend on Facebook, but neuroscientists would agree. Our interactions with the world around us strengthen and weaken the connections between our neurons, a process that neuroscientists consider to be the cellular mechanism of learning. Now researchers report that boosting signaling of a certain receptor in the brain with a small molecule can enhance these cellular changes and improve learning in people. The findings could lead to new treatments for patients with disorders associated with deficits in learning, such as Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia. Through decades of research on how synapses change in animal brains, scientists have found that the N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) plays a critical role in strengthening synapses during learning. Compounds that increase NMDAR signaling can drive such changes and, as a result, help animals learn new tasks. Robert F. Asarnow at UCLA and colleagues wanted to test whether one such compound, d-cycloserine, would act similarly in people. But neuroscientists measure synapse changes in animals by sticking electrodes into slices of brain tissue to record electrical signals. “Obviously, we don’t do that to our friends,” Asarnow says. So his team used electroencephalography (EEG) to record electrical activity through electrodes stuck to the scalps of its subjects. The team monitored this activity as the subjects watched a certain pattern flash on a screen at high frequency for a couple minutes. Afterward, the subjects showed a spike in EEG activity in their visual cortex when they viewed the pattern at a later time. This suggested a population of neurons had wired themselves together by strengthening their synapses. © 2015 Scientific American

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 21684 - Posted: 12.09.2015

By Ariana Eunjung Cha Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder is often thought of a boy thing. In explaining the jump in cases in recent years, numerous researchers, educators and parents have theorized that perhaps boys are hardwired to be more impulsive, wiggly and less able to stay on task in the early years than their female counterparts. That may be a myth. A study published in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry on Tuesday shows a surprising 55 percent increase in prevalence of diagnoses among girls — from 4.7 percent to 7.3 percent from 2003 to 2011. The rise in cases in girls mirrors a similar but less-sharp rise in cases in boys from a prevalence of 11.8 to 16.5 percent. During the same period, the researchers found an increase in cases across all races and ethnicities but especially in Hispanic children. In all children, the prevalence increased from 8.4 percent to 12 percent. The analysis, conducted by George Washington University biostatistician Sean D. Cleary and his co-author Kevin P. Collins of Mathematica Policy Research, was based on data from the National Survey of Children's Health in which parents were asked whether they had been told by a doctor or other health care provider that their child has ADHD.

Keyword: ADHD; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 21683 - Posted: 12.09.2015

by Laura Sanders There’s only so much brainpower to go around, and when the eyes hog it all, the ears suffer. When challenged with a tough visual task, people are less likely to perceive a tone, scientists report in the Dec. 9 Journal of Neuroscience. The results help explain what parents of screen-obsessed teenagers already know. For the study, people heard a tone while searching for a letter on a computer screen. When the letter was easy to find, participants were pretty good at identifying a tone. But when the search got harder, people were less likely to report hearing the sound, a phenomenon called inattentional deafness. Neural responses to the tone were blunted when people worked on a hard visual task, but not when the visual task was easy, researchers found. By showing that a demanding visual job can siphon resources away from hearing, the results suggest that perceptual overload can jump between senses. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2015

Keyword: Attention; Hearing
Link ID: 21682 - Posted: 12.09.2015

By SINDYA N. BHANOO Moderate levels of exercise may increase the brain’s flexibility and improve learning, a new study suggests. The visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes visual information, loses the ability to “rewire” itself with age, making it more difficult for adults to recover from injuries and illness, said Claudia Lunghi, a neuroscientist at the University of Pisa and one of the study’s authors. In a study in the journal Current Biology, she and her colleagues asked 20 adults to watch a movie with one eye patched while relaxing in a chair. Later, the participants exercised on a stationary bike for 10-minute intervals while watching a movie. When one eye is patched, the visual cortex compensates for the limited input by increasing its activity level. Dr. Lunghi and her colleagues tested the imbalance in strength between the participants’ eyes after the movie — a measure of changeability in the visual cortex. © 2015 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Regeneration
Link ID: 21681 - Posted: 12.08.2015