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Tag: "brains" at biology news

Production of key Alzheimer's protein monitored for first time in humans

...ch of it or because they can't clear it from their brains quickly enough? Researchers from the Alzheimer's...ication of whether the flood of Abeta in patient's brains came from an increase in the mechanisms that make the protein or a reduction in the processes that r...

Brain enzyme treatment relieves memory lapse in Alzheimer's mice

...ponsible for the "amyloid plaques" that riddle the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease, they added. ...ir ubiquitin tag. Earlier studies found that the brains of Alzheimer's disease patients show an accumulation of ubiquitin-tagged proteins, suggesting some d...

Long-term changes in experience cause neurons to sprout new long-lasting connections

...te researchers have discovered that neurons in the brains of mice sprout robust new connections when the animals are adjusting to new experiences. The new connections alter the circuitry of the brain by changing communication between neurons. The researchers said their findings aid understanding of how pro...

Autistic brain has fewer neurons for processing emotion

...s in the amygdala of nine postmortem autistic male brains and 10 age-matched male postmortem non-autistic br...e previous postmortem studies, the sample excluded brains of individuals with epilepsy or similar disorders associated with cell loss in the amygdala. Para...

Life and death in the hippocampus: what young neurons need to survive

Whether newborn nerve cells in adult brains live or die depends on whether they can muscle their way into networks occupied by mature neurons. Neuroscientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies pin-pointed the molecular survival gear required for a young neuron to successfully jump i...

Lost in thought: Brain research

...means of addressing this question ?by scanning the brains of volunteers performing various mental tasks. The results of their study, which were published recently in the journal Neuron, were unanticipated: When subjects were given outwardly-focused tasks that demanded their full attention, areas of the brai...

Bird brains shrink from exposure to contaminants

The regions in robins' brains responsible for singing and mating are shrinking w...al levels of DDT causes significant changes in the brains of songbirds. Previous studies have suggested that exposure to DDT residues affect the brain, but ...

Carnegie Mellon researchers discover key deficiencies in brains of people with autism

...t the anatomical differences that characterize the brains of people with autism are related to the way those brains process information. Previous studies have demonstrated a lower degree of synchronization among a...

Federal testing for mad cow disease a failure, law review editor says

... cows that have had their spinal cords, vertebrae, brains and bone marrow removed. But the ban was re-imposed on January 20 after a U.S. shipment was found to contain meat with banned vertebral columns still attached. It is widely believed that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is under pressure to lift ...

Gene therapy injected into the brains' of mice with Huntington's disease

...p the anatomic, cellular changes that occur in the brains of mice with Huntington's disease (HD). This is the first study to demonstrate that, using this delivery method, symptom onset might be prevented in HD mice with this treatment. Results of the study were published in the Proceedings of the National...

Snakes' virtual glasses, leopard spots and all-optical transistors

...radox could be a network of neurons in the snakes' brains –a kind of snake brain firmware - that provides im...wearing virtual corrective lenses. Because snakes' brains are small, the physicists kept their model of an image enhancing network simple. They discovered tha...

Prozac's target revealed

...oteins produced by different kinds of cells in the brains of adult mice, the researchers first defined discrete steps in the complex process, called neurogenesis, that converts unspecialized stem cells into mature, specialized neurons. Next, knowing that Prozac treatment somehow increases the number of neu...

Leptin found to control appetite and limb development in frogs

...s been found to increase cell proliferation in the brains of rats. Leptin is also found in late-stage fetal humans, mice, and sheep, and appears to be linked to birth weight, but little is known about what role it might be playing overall in fetal growth and development. Denver's study showed that ther...

Predators prefer to hunt small-brained prey

...rey such as monkeys which have exceptionally large brains and are more capable of escaping attacks. The st...he predatory bias towards it. Animals with small brains lack behavioural flexibility and are probably less capable of developing new strategies to escape pr...

Pure novelty spurs the brain

...subjects' brains. In this method--as the subject's brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging--they were shown a series of images of the same face or outdoor scene. However, the researchers randomly intermixed in this series four types of different, or "oddball," faces or scenes. One od...

Brain's 'gambling circuitry' identified

...would be higher. The fMRI imaging of the subjects' brains during the gambling task could show the researchers which areas of the brain activated during different parts of the task. In fMRI, harmless radio signals and magnetic fields are used to measure blood flow in brain regions, which reflects activity in...

Dopamine drug leads to new neurons and recovery of function in rat model of Parkinson's

...new neurons (a process called neurogenesis) in the brains of adult rats. Until now, however, no one had shown that the newly developed neurons could connect with other parts of the brain and restore function. "This is the first study to show that endogenous neurogenesis [development of new neurons from c...

Fly's courtship sheds light on the formation of innate behaviors

...ch these innate behaviours are hard-wired into our brains remains obscure. In their new work, the researchers set out to address this question using mutations that perturb the stereotypical male courtship behavior of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. The male fly, in its attempt to mate, will perform...

The brain's motivation station

...reward-related tasks as they scanned the subjects' brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging. In this technique, harmless magnetic fields and radio waves are used to detect regions of higher blood flow in the brain, which reflects higher activity. In the first task, the researchers aimed at identi...

High-tech research shows cocaine changes proteins and brain function

... the first large-scale analysis of proteins in the brains of individuals addicted to cocaine, researchers have uncovered novel proteins and mechanisms that may one day lead to new treatment options to fight addiction. The results, reported in the current issue of Molecular Psychiatry, released on-line toda...

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