Visual

Genetic Variation Visualization - From EMBL

"Because up to 75 percent of breast cancerpatients have an abnormality in a specific cell signaling pathway,drugs that target different molecules along that pathway may beespecially effective for treating the disease, says a researcher fromThe University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center." A clearer picture is now emergingabout the importance of the phosphatidylinositol 3 kinase...

Carnegie Mellon scientists develop tool that uses MRI to visualize gene expression in living animals

In a first, Carnegie Mellon University scientists have "programmed" cells to make their own contrast agents, enabling unprecedented high-resolution, deep-tissue imaging of gene expression. The results, appearing in the April issue of Nature Medicine, hold considerable promise for conducting preclinical studies in the emerging field of molecular therapeutics and for monitoring the delivery of ther...

Rhesus monkeys can assess the visual perspective of others when competing for food

Researchers Jonathan Flombaum and Dr. Laurie Santos, both from Yale University, have found that rhesus monkeys consider whether a competitor can or cannot see them when trying to steal food. Working with semi-free-ranging rhesus monkeys on the island of Cayo Santiago in Puerto Rico, Flombaum and Santos set up a food competition game: Lone monkeys were approached by two human "competitors....

Brains response to visual stimuli helps us to focus on what we should see, rather than all there is to see

Delving ever deeper into the intricate architecture of the brain, researchers at The Salk Institute have now described how two different types of nerve cells, called neurons, work together in tiny sub-networks to pass on just the right amount and the right kind of sensory information. Their study, published online by Nature Neuroscience, depicts how specific types of inhibitory neurons in...

Research Permits First-Ever Visualization of Psychological Stress in the Human Brain

Using a novel application of an fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) technique, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have, for the first time, visualized the effects of everyday psychological stress in a healthy human brain. Their work, performed at Penn's Center for Functional Neuroimaging, provides a neuro-imaging marker of psychological stress -- whic...

A new window into structural plasticity in the adult visual cortex

Neuroscientists have known for decades that the adult brain can reorganize neural pathways in response to new experiences, for example, by changing the firing pattern and responses of neurons. But it has remained an open question whether structural changes accompany this functional plasticity. In a new study published in the open-access journal PLoS Biology, Wei-Chung Allen Lee and colleagues rep...

Infants can organise visual information at just four months

Research investigating attention in infancy has revealed that, at just four months old, babies are able to organise visual information in at least three different ways, according to brightness, shape, and how close the visual elements are together (proximity). These new findings mean that very young infants are much more capable of organising their visual world than psychologists had previously t...

Movement of chromosome in nucleus visualized

The cell is understood to be highly organized, with specialized areas for different functions and molecular motors shuttling components around. Researchers from the University of Illinois' Chicago and Urbana-Champaign campuses now offer the first imaging evidence from live cells of ongoing organization and transport within the cell nucleus. Genes that are active are located mainly in the...

U of MN researchers develop way to visualize synchronized interactions of nerve cells in the brain

Researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School and the Brain Sciences Center at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center have discovered a new way to assess how brain networks act together. Work funded by the MIND Institute (New Mexico) led Apostolos P. Georgopoulos, M.D., Ph.D., professor of neuroscience, neurology, and psychiatry, and collaborators to a novel way to assess the dyna...

Biologists visualize protein interaction that may initiate viral infection

Biologists at Purdue University have taken a "snapshot" of a Velcro-like protein on a cell's surface just after it attached to the dengue virus, a linkup thought to initiate the early stages of infection. During the earliest stages o...

New GI technologies improve internal organ visualization

As visualization technologies like ultrasound continue to improve in quality and safety, researchers are making the most of the opportunity to access new areas of internal organs that have not previously been examined without open surgery. In a group of studies presented today during Digestive Disease Week® 2006 (DDW), endoscopic procedures are demonstrating significant improvements in the quali...

Hard-wiring the fruit fly's visual system

Both vertebrate and fruit fly have so-called visual maps in the brain that represent the world they see. These visual maps consist of millions of nerve cell contacts that need to be wired correctly during development in order for the adult animal to see normally. It is generally thought that the complexity of visual maps, like other brain regions, cannot only be genetically programmed but require...

Transplanted photoreceptor precursor cells restore visual function in mice with retinal degeneration

Scientists have successfully transplanted light-sensing cells called photoreceptors directly into the eyes of mice and restored their visual function. The achievement is based on a novel technology in which the cells are introduced at a particular stage in their development. It was carried out at the London Institute of Ophthalmology using a novel approach developed at the University of...

Wired for sound: How the brain senses visual illusions

In a study that could help reveal how illusions are produced in the brain's visual cortex, researchers at the UCSD School of Medicine have found new evidence of rapid integration of auditory and visual sensations in the brain. Their findings, which provide new insight into neural mechanisms by which visual perception can be altered by concurrent auditory events, will be published online in the A...