http://www.physorg.com/ en-us Physorg.com internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. (PhysOrg.com) -- Tiny insects could be as intelligent as much bigger animals, despite only having a brain the size of a pinhead, say scientists at Queen Mary, University of London. http://www.physorg.com/news177692594.html Biology Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:03:52 EST news177692594 (AP) -- Powerful scans are letting doctors watch just how the brain changes in veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and concussion-like brain injuries - signature damage of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. http://www.physorg.com/news177009585.html Medicine & Health Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:40:03 EST news177009585 Common experience tells us that particular scents of childhood can leave quite an impression, for better or for worse. Now, researchers reporting the results of a brain imaging study online on November 5th in Current Biology show that first scents really do enjoy a "privileged" status in the brain. http://www.physorg.com/news176649240.html Medicine & Health Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:16:45 EST news176649240 After exposure to extreme life stresses, what distinguishes the individuals who do and do not develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)? A new study, published in the October 1st issue of Biological Psychiatry, suggests that it has something to do with the way that we control the activity of the prefrontal cortex, a brain region thought to orchestrate our thoughts and actions. http://www.physorg.com/news175425974.html Medicine & Health Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:30:01 EST news175425974 Researchers have discovered that a primitive region of the brain responsible for sensorimotor control also has an important role in regulating emotional responses to threatening situations. This region appears to work in concert with another structure called the amygdala to regulate social and emotional behavior. http://www.physorg.com/news175348250.html Medicine & Health Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:00:02 EST news175348250 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers have found that the process of believing or disbelieving a statement, whether religious or not, seems to be governed by the same areas in the brain. http://www.physorg.com/news173634551.html Medicine & Health Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:50:07 EST news173634551 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists may have discovered a way to glean information about stored memories by tracking patterns of eye movements, even when an individual is unable (or perhaps even unwilling) to report what they remember. The research, published by Cell Press in the September 10th issue of the journal Neuron, provides compelling insight into the relationship between activity in the hippocampus, eye movements, and both conscious and unconscious memory. http://www.physorg.com/news171723086.html Medicine & Health Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:51:45 EST news171723086 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at MIT`s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have found that rats use a mental instant replay of their actions to help them decide what to do next, shedding new light on how animals and humans learn and remember. http://www.physorg.com/news170515991.html Medicine & Health Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:33:35 EST news170515991 New research shows that childhood adversity is associated with diminished neural activity in brain regions implicated in the anticipation of possible rewards. http://www.physorg.com/news166903502.html Medicine & Health Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:05:28 EST news166903502 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists at Duke University and the University of North Carolina have devised a chemical technique that promises to allow neuroscientists to discover the function of any population of neurons in an animal brain, and provide clues to treating and preventing brain disease. http://www.physorg.com/news166882069.html Medicine & Health Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:08:13 EST news166882069 the ability to think about the minds and mental states of others -is essential for human beings. In the last decade, a group of regions has been discovered in the human brain that are specifically used for social cognition. A new study in the July/August 2009 issue of the journal Child Development investigates these brain regions for the first time in human children. The study has implications for children with autism. http://www.physorg.com/news166867075.html Medicine & Health Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:30:01 EST news166867075 (PhysOrg.com) -- The human brain can adapt to changing demands even in adulthood, but MIT neuroscientists have now found evidence of it changing with unsuspected speed. Their findings suggest that the brain has a network of silent connections that underlie its plasticity. http://www.physorg.com/news166811731.html Medicine & Health Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:36:01 EST news166811731 A drug similar to one used in clinical trials for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis has been found to rescue memory in mice exhibiting Alzheimer's symptoms. http://www.physorg.com/news166795943.html Medicine & Health Tue, 14 Jul 2009 13:30:02 EST news166795943 A new study of the cognitive processes involved with honesty suggests that truthfulness depends more on absence of temptation than active resistance to temptation. http://www.physorg.com/news166726861.html Medicine & Health Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:01:29 EST news166726861 The latest work to 'turn off the taps' in the brain and stop a chemical being released in excess amounts - which can lead to Parkinson's Disease - will be presented at The British Pharmacological Society's Summer Meeting in Edinburgh today (Wednesday, 8 July 2009). http://www.physorg.com/news166251940.html Medicine & Health Wed, 08 Jul 2009 06:20:02 EST news166251940 (PhysOrg.com) -- Human beings constantly make inferences about other people's state of mind, usually without even realizing they are doing it. Cognitive scientists call this ability "theory of mind," and until recently, not much has been known about the brain mechanisms underlying it. http://www.physorg.com/news165505015.html Medicine & Health Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:37:23 EST news165505015 In an attempt to investigate why some brains are more intelligent than others, researchers have found that efficient wiring between different brain regions is associated with a higher IQ. This understanding could potentially lead to the development of drugs that could improve IQ by improving the brain's network efficiency. http://www.physorg.com/news163824097.html Medicine & Health Wed, 10 Jun 2009 04:10:01 EST news163824097 Mice lacking the fat hormone leptin or the ability to respond to it become morbidly obese and severely diabetic -not to mention downright sluggish. Now, a new study in the June Cell Metabolism shows that blood sugar control in those animals can be completely restored by returning leptin sensitivity to a single class of neurons in the brain, which account for only a small fraction of those that normally carry the hormone receptors. http://www.physorg.com/news163164889.html Biology Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:36:37 EST news163164889 (PhysOrg.com) -- Just as our world buzzes with distractions -- from phone calls to e-mails to tweets -- the neurons in our brain are bombarded with messages. Research has shown that when we pay attention, some of these neurons begin firing in unison, like a chorus rising above the noise. Now, a study in the May 29 issue of Science reveals the likely brain center that serves as the conductor of this neural chorus. http://www.physorg.com/news162739756.html Medicine & Health Thu, 28 May 2009 14:29:38 EST news162739756 A recent study finds that the antidepressant effects of drugs like Prozac involve both neurogenesis-dependent and -independent mechanisms, a finding that may lead to development of better treatments for depression and anxiety. The research, published by Cell Press in the May 28th issue of the journal Neuron, utilizes a new experimental mouse model of depression/anxiety that is the first to permit simultaneous examination of multiple effects of antidepressant treatment in the same animal. http://www.physorg.com/news162647379.html Medicine & Health Wed, 27 May 2009 12:52:33 EST news162647379 Neuroscientists feel they are much closer to an accepted unified theory about how the brain processes speech and language, according to a scientist at Georgetown University Medical Center who first laid the concepts a decade ago and who has now published a review article confirming the theory. http://www.physorg.com/news162562862.html Medicine & Health Tue, 26 May 2009 13:23:16 EST news162562862 (PhysOrg.com) -- In the developing fetus, cell growth follows a very specific schedule. In the eye's retina, for example, cones -- which help distinguish color during the day -- develop before the more light-sensitive rods -- which are needed for night vision. http://www.physorg.com/news162057067.html Biology Wed, 20 May 2009 16:51:42 EST news162057067 Scientists at the University of Rochester have discovered that the hormone estrogen plays a pivotal role in how the brain processes sounds. http://www.physorg.com/news160765483.html Medicine & Health Tue, 05 May 2009 18:05:07 EST news160765483 Researchers seeking to understand the causes of a rare genetic lysosomal storage disease, Sanfilippo syndrome type B, were surprised to find protein aggregates, known as neurofibrillary tangles, that are usually seen in Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia, according to a study published May 4 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://www.physorg.com/news160676472.html Medicine & Health Mon, 04 May 2009 17:22:00 EST news160676472 When you're on a diet, deciding to skip your favorite calorie-laden foods and eat something healthier takes a whole lot of self-control--an ability that seems to come easier to some of us than others. Now, scientists from the California Institute of Technology have uncovered differences in the brains of people who are able to exercise self-control versus those who find it almost impossible. http://www.physorg.com/news160320079.html Medicine & Health Thu, 30 Apr 2009 14:23:04 EST news160320079 The hippocampus, a key brain region for memory and learning, codes the degree of uncertainty of potential reward situations. This fundamental role has just been demonstrated by Giovanna Vanni-Mercier and her colleagues at the Centre de neuroscience cognitive (CNRS / Université Lyon 1), working with the medical epileptology team from the Neurological Hospital in Lyon. Their work, published on 22 April 2009 in Journal of Neuroscience, sheds new light on the way the brain extracts and processes information about the environment. http://www.physorg.com/news160295679.html Medicine & Health Thu, 30 Apr 2009 07:34:53 EST news160295679 In the first neuroimaging study to examine motor execution in children with autism, researchers at the Kennedy Krieger Institute have uncovered important new insight into the neurological basis of autism. The study, published online in the journal Brain's April 23 Brain Advanced Access, compared the brain activity of children with high functioning autism and their typically developing peers while performing a simple motor task -- tapping their fingers in sequence. http://www.physorg.com/news160235365.html Medicine & Health Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:50:12 EST news160235365 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at McGill University have found for the first time that novelty seeking personality types enjoy a stronger `placebo response,` or pain relief caused by the administration of a sham treatment, than people with reserved personalities. The study hypothesizes that the anticipation of pain relief, in this case triggered by the administration of a placebo, is a special case of reward anticipation. Since dopamine is a key neurotransmitter in reward processing, personality traits linked to dopamine, such as novelty seeking, were studied. http://www.physorg.com/news159724374.html Medicine & Health Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:53:52 EST news159724374 Although fractions are thought to be a difficult mathematical concept to learn, the adult brain encodes them automatically without conscious thought, according to new research in the April 8 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. The study shows that cells in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and the prefrontal cortex - brain regions important for processing whole numbers - are tuned to respond to particular fractions. The findings suggest that adults have an intuitive understanding of fractions and may aid in the development of new teaching techniques. http://www.physorg.com/news158345849.html Medicine & Health Tue, 07 Apr 2009 17:57:52 EST news158345849 Scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have proposed a sweeping new theory of autism that suggests that the brains of people with autism are structurally normal but dysregulated, meaning symptoms of the disorder might be reversible. http://www.physorg.com/news157813985.html Medicine & Health Wed, 01 Apr 2009 14:13:29 EST news157813985