By ANAHAD O'CONNOR Morning pick-me-up? For many women, the mood-elevating effects of a cup of coffee may be more than fleeting. A new study shows that women who regularly drink coffee — the fully caffeinated kind — have a 20 percent lower risk of depression than nondrinkers. Decaf, soft drinks, chocolate, tea and other sources of caffeine did not offer the same protection against depression, possibly because of their lower levels of caffeine, the authors say. Dr. Albert Ascherio, an author of the study and professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, said it was too early to recommend that women load up on extra lattes. More research is needed, he said, and “a very high level of caffeine can increase anxiety” and insomnia, potentially reversing any mood-lifting effects. A link between caffeine intake and depression had been suspected for years. Previous research reported that the risk of suicide decreases with increasing coffee consumption. And a study of over 2,200 middle-aged men in Finland found that heavy coffee drinkers had a significantly lower risk of severe depression than men who avoided coffee, though the sample size was considered too small to be very definitive. The new study, published in the latest issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine, was larger and more rigorous, analyzing data on nearly 51,000 women taking part in the famous Nurses’ Health Study. Between 1996 and 2006, the women provided detailed information every two years on their caffeine intake, depression risk factors and overall health, including their weight, their use of hormones and their levels of exercise and smoking. Women who reported a diagnosis of depression or showed signs of it at the start of the study were excluded from the analysis. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Depression
Link ID: 15841 - Posted: 09.27.2011

Researchers have a new weapon in their arsenal to diagnose and treat traumatic brain injury (TBI) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among military service members and civilians. The National Institutes of Health Clinical Center began imaging patients last week on a first-of-its-kind, whole-body simultaneous positron emission topography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) device. The Biograph mMR offers a more complete picture of abnormal metabolic activity in a shorter time frame than separate MRI and PET scans, two tests many patients undergo. The purchase of the Biograph mMR was made possible through the Center for Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine (CNRM), a Department of Defense-funded collaboration between the NIH and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. The CNRM carries out research in TBI and PTSD that would benefit servicemen and women at Walter Reed National Navy Medical Center, near the NIH campus in Bethesda, Md. Researchers at the NIH Clinical Center will also use the Biograph mMR in studies with patients with other brain disorders, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. "This scanner combines the two most powerful imaging tools," said David Bluemke, M.D., Ph.D., director of NIH Clinical Center Radiology and Imaging Sciences. "The MRI points us to abnormalities in the body, and the PET tells us the metabolic activity of that abnormality, be it a damaged part of the brain or a tumor. This will be a major change for many patients." The new device makes patient care swifter and safer. The faster turnaround time and more comprehensive results will help diagnose patients at an earlier stage of disease, leading to better outcomes, Bluemke said.

Keyword: Brain imaging; Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 15840 - Posted: 09.27.2011

by David Robson IT IS 30,000 years ago. A man enters a narrow cave in what is now the south of France. By the flickering light of a tallow lamp, he eases his way through to the furthest chamber. On one of the stone overhangs, he sketches in charcoal a picture of the head of a bison looming above a woman's naked body. In 1933, Pablo Picasso creates a strikingly similar image, called Minotaur Assaulting Girl. That two artists, separated by 30 millennia, should produce such similar work seems astonishing. But perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised. Anatomically at least, our brains differ little from those of the people who painted the walls of the Chauvet cave all those years ago. Their art, part of the "creative explosion" of that time, is further evidence that they had brains just like ours. How did we acquire our beautiful brains? How did the savage struggle for survival produce such an extraordinary object? This is a difficult question to answer, not least because brains do not fossilise. Thanks to the latest technologies, though, we can now trace the brain's evolution in unprecedented detail, from a time before the very first nerve cells right up to the age of cave art and cubism. The story of the brain begins in the ancient oceans, long before the first animals appeared. The single-celled organisms that swam or crawled in them may not have had brains, but they did have sophisticated ways of sensing and responding to their environment. "These mechanisms are maintained right through to the evolution of mammals," says Seth Grant at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK. "That's a very deep ancestry." © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 15839 - Posted: 09.27.2011

A new study has found birds learn the art of nest-building, rather than it being just an instinctive skill. Researchers from Edinburgh, Glasgow and St Andrews Universities studied film of southern masked weavers recorded by scientists in Botswana. This colourful species was chosen because individual birds build many complex nests in a season. Dr Patrick Walsh of Edinburgh University said the study revealed "a clear role for experience". The research has been published in the Behavioural Processes journal. Individual birds varied their technique from one nest to the next and there were instances of birds building nests from left to right as well as from right to left. As birds gained more experience, they dropped blades of grass less often. "If birds built their nests according to a genetic template, you would expect all birds to build their nests the same way each time. However this was not the case," added Dr Walsh. "Southern Masked Weaver birds displayed strong variations in their approach, revealing a clear role for experience. "Even for birds, practice makes perfect." BBC © 2011

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 15838 - Posted: 09.26.2011

By Nick Bascom Even the inside of the nose can be a little cliquish. Like birds of a feather, nasal molecules that respond to pleasant smells flock together, keeping their distance from sensor molecules that pick up unpleasant smells. Sensor molecules, or receptors, appear to be organized according to the pleasantness (or unpleasantness) of the odors they sense, a new study finds. For example, locations in the nose that respond strongly to one fragrant aroma will respond strongly to other delectable smells. Patches of nasal surfaces that process putrid stenches also handle specific sorts of smells and leave the rest of the work to someone else, Noam Sobel of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel and colleagues reported online September 25 in Nature Neuroscience. The researchers inserted an electrode into 16 subjects’ noses and then showered the volunteers with six different scents. Because certain odors provoked stronger responses at different locations in the nose, the research team was able to confirm previous evidence suggesting a variegated nasal receptor surface. “We’re not the first to find that,” says Sobel. But he and his colleagues have added an important new wrinkle. “Not only are the receptors organized in patches, but the axis that best describes their organization is pleasantness.” This discovery sheds new light on a relatively poorly studied sensory organ. Compared with eyes or ears, scientists don’t know much about how the nose works. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Emotions
Link ID: 15837 - Posted: 09.26.2011

By Jennifer Welsh, LiveScience Staff Writer Cats arch their backs at the smell of a rival, and mice scurry at the scent of a fox. But how does the nose know who or what is lurking? Now scientists have identified several special receptors in the noses of animals that react to specific scents given off by others. It's these receptors that signal to the brain whether the animal needs to flee, make itself large and scary, or perhaps even woo a mate. "Animals in the wild need to be able to recognize other animals, whether they are predators, potential mates or rivals," study researcher Catherine Dulac of Harvard University told LiveScience. "Many animals rely on the sense of smell; they can distinguish one type of encounter from another one based on chemicals." Experimenting on mice, Dulac and her fellow researchers discovered that more of the animal's receptors seem to be dedicated to sniffing out predators than to detecting potential mates. When a cat or mouse senses the chemical compounds secreted by other animals, it activates a special sensor in the nose called the vomeronasal organ. This organ, which is found in many animals and consists of a set of receptors, sends a signal to the brain, which interprets the signal and takes action. (Though humans have lost this organ, research has suggested humans do react in various ways to chemical cues.) © 2011 LiveScience.com

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 15836 - Posted: 09.26.2011

UC Berkeley scientists have developed a system to capture visual activity in human brains and reconstruct it as digital video clips. Eventually, this process will allow you to record and reconstruct your own dreams on a computer screen. I just can't believe this is happening for real, but according to Professor Jack Gallant—UC Berkeley neuroscientist and coauthor of the research published today in the journal Current Biology—"this is a major leap toward reconstructing internal imagery. We are opening a window into the movies in our minds." Indeed, it's mindblowing. I'm simultaneously excited and terrified. This is how it works: They used three different subjects for the experiments—incidentally, they were part of the research team because it requires being inside a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging system for hours at a time. The subjects were exposed to two different groups of Hollywood movie trailers as the fMRI system recorded the brain's blood flow through their brains' visual cortex. The readings were fed into a computer program in which they were divided into three-dimensional pixels units called voxels (volumetric pixels). This process effectively decodes the brain signals generated by moving pictures, connecting the shape and motion information from the movies to specific brain actions. As the sessions progressed, the computer learned more and more about how the visual activity presented on the screen corresponded to the brain activity.

Keyword: Vision; Brain imaging
Link ID: 15835 - Posted: 09.24.2011

By Neil Bowdler Health reporter, BBC News Scientists in the Netherlands are using robotic legs to try to improve the movement of stroke patients. The prototype device is called the Lower-extremity Powered ExoSkeleton, or LOPES, and works by training the body and mind of a patient to recover a more natural step. The machine is also being tested on spinal injury patients who have recovered some restricted movement in their legs. It is hoped a commercial version could be made available to rehabilitation centres around the world as early as next year. Feedback mechanism LOPES has been developed by engineers at the University of Twente in Enschede in the Netherlands over several years. Designed for the rehabilitation clinic, it is not a mobile device but supports the patient as they walk on a treadmill. It can do all the walking for the patient, or it can offer targeted support in either one leg or with one element of the walking process. The machine can also detect what the patient is doing wrong. "For instance, some people cannot lift their foot up appropriately," explains Dr Edwin van Asseldonk, who is working on the project. "What this device does is it senses that the foot is not lifting properly. BBC © 2011

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 15834 - Posted: 09.24.2011

Caitlin Stier, video intern The shapes in this video seem to get distorted, but it's all in your mind. The illusion, created by Cornelia Fermüller of the University of Maryland, is an animated version of a classic effect called the Luckiesh pattern, where a shape can look skewed when surrounded by radiating lines. By making the linear pattern move, the distortion changes position. According to Fermüller, the bending is caused by imperfections in our visual system when we compute the angle between the pairs of lines. Our brain approximates the angle with a systematic error, for example an angle of 45 degrees may be over or underestimated by a degree. "Using this noisy measurement, the visual system computes wrong intersection points between the background lines and the shape, which leads to a perceived distortion," says Fermüller. Fermüller is using statistics to better understand the misinterpretation which also occurs in computer processing. The approach could explain illusions that involve basic estimation biases rather than higher level processing in the brain. You can also play around with an interactive version of the illusion here, by tweaking intersection estimates and controlling the speed and angle of the pattern. Journal reference: Vision Research, DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2003.09.038 © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 15833 - Posted: 09.24.2011

By Laura Sanders A meticulous study has failed to confirm a connection between chronic fatigue syndrome and a family of viruses that includes XMRV. Nine laboratories — including the two that originally identified a link — could not reliably detect the viruses in blood cells from patients with the mysterious and controversial condition, researchers report online September 22 in Science. In another blow, one of the labs that contributed to the original study retracted its key result because some of the samples used in the research were found to be contaminated with genetically engineered DNA from XMRV. The partial retraction also appears online September 22 in Science. Together, the new data largely exonerate the virus as a cause of chronic fatigue syndrome — a disorder with a constellation of symptoms, no known cause and no effective treatment. “The data certainly contradict the original findings,” says infectious disease specialist Michael Busch of the University of California, San Francisco and the Blood Systems Research Institute in San Francisco, who coordinated the new nine-lab study. “To me, it demonstrates that these labs have serious problems with false positive results and that those earlier data are not credible.” For some researchers, the end to the XMRV saga can’t come soon enough. “The whole scientific world pretty much knows this whole thing is hocus-pocus,” says Robert Gallo, director of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. “Basically, it’s not real.” © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 15832 - Posted: 09.24.2011

By Laura Sanders Humans live in a world of uncertainty. A shadowy figure on the sidewalk ahead could be a friend or a mugger. By flooring your car’s accelerator, you might beat the train to the intersection, or maybe not. Last week’s leftover kung pao chicken could bring another night of gustatory delight or gut agony. People’s paltry senses can’t always capture what’s real. Luckily, though, the human brain is pretty good at playing the odds. Thanks to the brain’s intuitive grasp of probabilities, it can handle imperfect information with aplomb. “Instead of trying to come up with an answer to a question, the brain tries to come up with a probability that a particular answer is correct,” says Alexandre Pouget of the University of Rochester in New York and the University of Geneva in Switzerland. The range of possible outcomes then guides the body’s actions. A probability-based brain offers a huge advantage in an uncertain world. In mere seconds, the brain can solve (or at least offer a good guess for) a problem that would take a computer an eternity to figure out — such as whether to greet the approaching stranger with pepper spray or a hug. A growing number of studies are illuminating how this certitude-eschewing approach works, and how powerful it can be. Principles of probability, researchers are finding, may guide basic visual abilities, such as estimating the tilt of lines or finding targets hidden amid distractions. Other behaviors, and even simple math, may depend on similar number crunching, some scientists think. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Attention; Emotions
Link ID: 15831 - Posted: 09.24.2011

By Susan Milius Penguins may be able to smell some feathery, waddling whiff of kinship on others of their kind. In some sniff tests, Humboldt penguins (Spheniscus humboldti) in the Brookfield Zoo outside Chicago could discriminate between the odor of birds they knew and birds they weren’t familiar with, says Jill Mateo of the University of Chicago. More intriguingly, the birds also showed evidence of an ability to distinguish between the scents of relatives and nonrelatives even if they weren’t personally familiar with the scent owners, Mateo and her colleagues report September 21 in PLoS ONE. The ability to recognize kin by smell has shown up in many other kinds of animals, including mammals, amphibians and fish. Although the new study is limited by its small size, it could be the first to show odor-based kinship recognition among birds. New evidence that a sense of smell may be important in birds also makes the study intriguing. For decades, scientists thought that most species of birds responded minimally, if at all, to odor cues. In recent years, though, researchers have uncovered more and more evidence for functionally significant sniffing, such as the odor detection of food out in the open ocean by blue petrels and some other tubenose seabirds. Odor-based kin recognition would make sense for colony-dwelling birds with lifetime monogamy such as the Humboldt penguins, which return to the same rookeries where they hatched in search of mating prospects. Birds hatched in different years by same parents could easily meet, Mateo says. “If familiarity is the only mechanism available to them, they might say, ‘Hey, I’m not related to you. Let’s have sex.” So a sniff test for kinship could come in handy. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 15830 - Posted: 09.24.2011

by Elizabeth Pennisi Biologists have long wondered why some female animals bother to play the field. With males, spreading one's sperm as far and wide as possible makes sense, as they sire more offspring that way. For the female, however, extra sex takes a toll on her body, potentially reducing her life span. Yet it doesn't expand her chances of spreading her genes around. Researchers have now shown that promiscuity in the fairer sex has its benefits. By mating multiple times, females can compensate for the downsides of inbreeding. And that's why promiscuity may evolve in small populations. When populations of many organisms are small, their members often wind up mating with kin. Such inbreeding can lead to a double dose of bad genes that result in sickly offspring and reduced fertility. Matthew Gage, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, wanted to know if promiscuous females could offset problems from inbreeding by providing more possibilities for their eggs to be fertilized by genetically suitable sperm. He and his colleagues tested this idea in the red flour beetle, a 3-millimeter-long insect pest found in flour and grains and sometimes used in laboratory studies. Gage and colleagues found that multiple mating, also called polyandry, did benefit inbred females. When allowed to mate with just one male, inbred females have 50% fewer surviving offspring than outbred counterparts that mated with nonkin. But the number of offspring is equal if the inbred females breed with five males, the team reports today in Science. The inbred females are apparently able to weed out sperm from kin that would lead to less fit offspring. If they mate with just one male, however, they don't have that option. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 15829 - Posted: 09.24.2011

Multiple sclerosis might be connected to a lack of steroids in the brain, Alberta researchers have found. MS attacks the brain and spinal cord, causing inflammation and damage that can lead to paralysis and sometimes blindness. In the September issue of the journal Brain, neurologist Dr. Chris Power of the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton and his colleagues describe a new potential avenue for treating MS. There are some drugs related to neurosteroids that are actively in clinical trials, Dr. Chris Power said.There are some drugs related to neurosteroids that are actively in clinical trials, Dr. Chris Power said. CBC The discovery centres on neurosteroids, which help brain cells to talk, grow and repair themselves. The findings open up a brain process "that we might be able to direct so that we can prevent damage and maybe even repair the damaged brain," Power said Wednesday. Brains of people who died with multiple sclerosis showed lower levels of neurosteroids, the researchers found. The team believes that by replacing neurosteroids, it might be possible to alleviate symptoms or even prompt recovery, based on the results of their test tube and mouse modeling studies. "We've actually jumped the queue a little bit because there are some drugs related to neurosteroids that are actively in clinical trials," Power said. "This certainly provides fertile ground." © CBC 2011

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 15828 - Posted: 09.22.2011

By JAMES GORMAN A five-and-a-half-inch deep-sea squid that lives a solitary life up to half a mile down in the dark waters of the Pacific Ocean is the latest addition to the hundreds of species that are known to engage in same-sex sex. Over the years, scientists have added one creature after another to the list, making it clear that although nature may abhor a vacuum, it seems to be fine with just about everything else. Male squid, for example, pay no attention to the sex of other squid. Understandably so. They live alone in the dark, males and females are hard to tell apart, and only occasionally do squids pass in the night. Far better to risk wasting a few million sperm than to miss out on a chance to reproduce. This is only one among many sorts of same-sex sexual behavior. In some insect species, males engage in traumatic insemination, which is just what it sounds like, of other males and females alike. Among mammals, bottlenose dolphins and bonobos engage in lots of different kinds of sex. Male dolphins pursue sex with males and females equally, but the females show a preference for males. Bonobos pair off in all the combinations, often. Laysan albatrosses form long-term female/female pair bonds, but for them the point is raising chicks, not sex. If one female can arrange a quick liaison with a male from another pair, the two females will tend the young. Noah might well have had two female albatrosses on the ark. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 15827 - Posted: 09.22.2011

By Laura Sanders The high-pitched ringing, squealing, hissing, clicking, roaring, buzzing or whistling in the ears that can drive tinnitus sufferers crazy may be a by-product of the brain turning up the volume to cope with subtle hearing loss, a new study suggests. The results, published in the Sept. 21 Journal of Neuroscience, may help scientists understand how the condition arises. Tinnitus is clearly a disorder of the brain, not the ear, says study coauthor Roland Schaette of the University College London Ear Institute. One convincing piece of evidence: Past attempts to cure the condition by severing the auditory nerve in desperate patients left people completely deaf to the outside world — but didn’t silence the ringing. How the brain creates the maddeningly persistent phantom noise remains a mystery. Usually, tinnitus is tied to some degree of measurable hearing loss, but not always. “We’ve known for a long time that there are people who report tinnitus whose audiograms are normal,” says auditory neuroscientist Larry Roberts of McMaster University in Canada, who wasn’t involved in the new study. “It has been a puzzle to figure out these exceptions to the rule.” Schaette and coauthor David McAlpine, also of the UCL Ear Institute, suggest that these exceptions may actually be due to “hidden hearing loss” that shirks detection in standard hearing tests. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 15826 - Posted: 09.22.2011

Heidi Ledford A widely touted — but controversial — molecular fountain of youth has come under fire yet again, with the publication of new data challenging the link between proteins called sirtuins and longer lifespan. In a paper published today in Nature1, researchers report that overexpressing a sirtuin gene in two model organisms — the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster — does not boost longevity as had been previously reported. Instead, the authors argue that the longer lifespan originally seen was the result of unrelated mutations lurking in the background of the experimental strains. Some see the results as clearing the air, and freeing the field to focus on other effects of sirtuins, such as regulating metabolism and responding to environmental stress. "The field has been overfocused on overhyped claims of longevity," says Johan Auwerx, a researcher at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, who has worked with the proteins but was not involved with the new study. "I don't think that's the main function of the sirtuins." “It's like discovering a landmine. If you walk by, a lot of other people will get blown up.” But Leonard Guarente, a sirtuin researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, who published the original C. elegans work in 20012, argues that the longevity link is real and that the new paper is just "a bump in the road". "Our data are rock solid," he says. "I stand by them, and they have been replicated in other labs." © 2011 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 15825 - Posted: 09.22.2011

by Greg Miller Two groups of scientists working independently of each other have discovered a gene mutation that causes amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Both teams found that mutations to the same gene can also cause a common type of dementia called frontotemporal dementia (FTD). The findings add to growing evidence that these two devastating disorders have more in common than meets the eye. ALS robs patients of the ability to control their bodies. The first symptoms can be subtle—a twitch, some muscle stiffness, or occasionally slurred speech—but then paralysis spreads across the body. Most patients die of respiratory failure within 5 years. FTD is a very different beast. The most common type of dementia after Alzheimer's disease, it triggers strange and inappropriate behavior, especially in social situations, as well as difficulty with decision-making, language, and other cognitive functions. Despite these differences, there are signs of overlap. Clinicians have noticed that people with one disorder sometimes have symptoms of the other, and some families seem to have more than their share of both. In 2006, researchers linked a region of chromosome 9 to both ALS and FTD. The findings suggested that a mutated gene in this region was responsible for many cases of both conditions, but scientists did not pinpoint a specific gene. The ensuing race to find the gene was "very intense," says Rosa Rademakers, a neurogeneticist at the Mayo Clinic Florida in Jacksonville, who led one of several teams that joined the pursuit. "Within the ALS and FTD fields, this was a result that everyone was waiting for." © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Alzheimers; ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease
Link ID: 15824 - Posted: 09.22.2011

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff Today is World Alzheimer’s Day, and a press release marking the occasion announced that one in eight 65-year-olds already has the disease, which causes profound memory loss over time, has no effective treatment, and is ultimately fatal. The release, from the nonprofit research advocacy group US Against Alzheimer’s , flashed a set of eight photos of famous 65-year-olds -- Diane Keaton, Stephen Spielberg, Cher, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Dolly Parton, Reggie Jackson, and Danny Glover-- and said statistically speaking, one of them has the devastating illness. Okay, none of them does (we hope), but it definitely grabs the attention. And we shouldn’t forget those younger than 65 -- like 59-year-old basketball coach Pat Summitt -- who have already been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, nor the millions of Americans in their 70s, 80s, or beyond. While advancing age, family history, and genes play a major role in determining Alzheimer’s risk, there are steps you can take to lower your chances of developing the disease. The following measures all help reduce inflammation in the body and maintain healthy blood flow in the arteries, both vital for healthy brain aging. -- Take steps to avoid diabetes. A Japanese study published this week in the journal Neurology found that 27 percent of those over age 60 who were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes developed dementia within 15 years, compared with 20 percent of those with normal blood sugar levels. Those with higher than normal blood sugar levels, or prediabetes, also had a higher risk. © 2011 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 15823 - Posted: 09.22.2011

By Leila Battison Science reporter Electrically stimulating the brain can help to speed up the process of learning, scientists have shown. Applying a small current to specific parts of the brain can increase its activity, making learning easier. Researchers from the University of Oxford have studied the changing structure of the brain in stroke patients and in healthy adults. Prof Heidi Johansen-Berg presented their findings at the British Science Festival in Bradford. The team at Oxford has been conducting research into how the structure of the brain changes in adulthood, and in particular what changes occur after a stroke. They have used an approach called functional MRI to monitor activity in the brain as stroke patients re-learn motor skills that were lost as a result of their illness. One of the major findings is that the brain is very flexible and can restructure itself, growing new connections and reassigning tasks to different areas, when damage occurs or a specific task is practised. As part of this research, they investigated the possibility of using non-invasive electric brain stimulation to improve the recovery of these motor skills; the short-term improvement in stroke patients had already been noted. BBC © 2011

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 15822 - Posted: 09.20.2011