Neuroscience

Neurogastronomy: How Brains Perceive Flavor

The upside to modern cancer treatment, like chemotherapy, is obvious; people are living more, and living longer. The downside is that some food tastes terrible.  Chemotherapy, by design, kills all fast-growing cells in the body. As cancer cells die, so do ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 19 2015 - 2:29pm

Lactate For Brain Cells Boosts Brain Energy Metabolism

In comparison to other organs, the human brain has the highest energy requirements. Nerve cells cover their high energy demand with glucose and lactate and a new report shows for the first time in the intact mouse brain evidence for an exchange of lactate ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 24 2015 - 12:36pm

A New Target For Machado Joseph Disease Treatment

Machado-Josephdisease (MJD) is a hereditary neurodegenerative disorder that destroys the brainareas involved in muscle control. Although the disease is clearly caused by a mutationin the ATXN3 gene- resulting in an abnormal ataxin-3 protein that forms toxi ...

Article - Catarina Amorim - Dec 1 2015 - 6:18pm

Direct Evidence For Synaptic Plasticity In Fruit Fly Brains

Scientists believe they have resolved a decades-long debate about how the brain is modified when an animal learns. Using newly developed tools for manipulating specific populations of neurons, the researchers have for the first time observed direct eviden ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 2 2015 - 8:40pm

Transient Schizophrenia: Cannabis Increases The Noise In Your Brain

Several studies have demonstrated that the primary active constituent of cannabis, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol induces transient psychosis-like effects in healthy subjects similar to those observed in schizophrenia. However, the mechanisms underlying the ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 4 2015 - 7:58am

Neuroscientists Can Now Read Minds

Neuroscientists have developed a new tool that lights up active conversations between neurons during a behavior or sensory experience, such as smelling a banana. The scientists accomplished their feat by focusing on three of the sensory systems in  Drosop ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 4 2015 - 10:26am

Men Do Have A Better Sense Of Direction Than Women, But Why?

Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology  aren't trying to commit a microaggression when they note it's been well established that men perform better than women on specific spatial tasks. The issue is how much of that is ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 7 2015 - 7:43am

Playing 3-D Video Games Boosts Memory Formation

Playing three-dimensional video games can boost the formation of memories, along with improving hand-eye coordination and reaction time, this finding shows the potential for novel virtual approaches to helping people who lose memory as they age or suffer ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 9 2015 - 8:00am

Brain Circuit Mechanisms Underlying Arousal Regulation

Adjusting a specific deep-brain circuit's firing frequency immediately and dramatically alters rats' forebrain activity and alertness levels,  which could eventually take deep brain stimulation to a whole new level. Deep brain stimulation may on ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 13 2015 - 8:00am

Insomniacs Sleep More Efficiently

How are insomniacs able to function well with less sleep than others? It may be a beneficial biological trait. ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 14 2015 - 1:05pm