Stimulating nerve cells with laser precision
...nerves with an electric probe while the patient is awake to ensure that the right nerve has been located. But electrical probes create a halo of electrical activity in surrounding neurons, creating a "blind spot" and other inaccurate data in the recording and analysis of the procedure, making it ted...Body's biological clock found to affect cardiac rhythm patterns in healthy adults
...the participants had a 28-hour day, about 19 hours awake and 9 hours asleep. This 28-hour sleep/wake sched...rhythms whether data were considered only from the awake period or only from the sleep period. "We are tempted to speculate that if the same circadian effect...Singers (and parents) take note: Worst songbird rehearsals precede best debuts
...ep that are similar to the patterns observed while awake birds are singing. Until now, however, there has been no direct evidence that sleep affects song learning, and if so, how. (See image) To collect the data used in the study, City College New York behavioral neuroscientists Ofer Tchernichovski and Sba...Solving sleep problems helps epileptic children
...s," Carney said. "Commonly, adults are just not as awake if they have a sleep disorder. But children who haven't taken their nap are wound up instead. Treating their sleep disorder, we think, can enable their brain to have some control over unwanted behavior." Seventy-three percent of the children studied ...Overworked brains release adenosine to slow cells, trigger sleep, UT Southwestern researchers find
... that it's this prolonged neural activity of being awake that causes adenosine levels to go up, which in turn makes a person feel drowsy. It's the brain's way of achieving a proper balance between the neural activity of waking and the need for sleep. If something goes wrong with this adenosine system, you ...Brain-mapping technique aids understanding of sleep, wakefulness
...t a type of neuron responsible for keeping animals awake receives inhibitory signals from neurons active on...o be half-asleep. You want to be either completely awake or completely asleep." Another finding from the Neuron study may help explain why once you're awake...A healthy internal clock keeps weight off
...he Clock mutant mice skipped their meals, stayed awake far into the usual rest time, and snacked often. ...he Clock mutant mice skipped their meals, stayed awake far into the usual rest time, and snacked often. The insomniac mice also were a little more sluggis...Alzheimer's cognitive decline slowed
...cedure was initially performed while patients were awake but lightly sedated, and two patients moved as the cells were being injected, resulting in bleeding in the brain. One of these patients died five week later. As a result of the bleeds, the protocol was redesigned to perform the procedure under gene...Wisconsin researchers identify sleep gene
... genes are expressed in both species when they are awake and asleep. Tononi's team also conducted EEGs on the flies and found evidence of the same electrophysiological changes occurring during sleep and wakefulness as in humans. "The electrical changes in humans look different that they do in flies becaus...How exactly does the brain control breathing?
...t persists without conscious effort whether we are awake or asleep, but the question that has intrigued many scientists for well over 100 years is what maintains this almost fail safe vital rhythm throughout life? Experimental Physiology editor Julian Paton invited two world renowned scientists Dr. Guyenet...Navigating the brain for sense of direction as paradigm for higher cognitive functions
...st recordings from medial mammillary body cells in awake animals," according to their research paper. The paper "Movement-related correlates of single cell activity in the medial mammillary nucleus of the rat during a pellet-chasing task," appears in the Journal of Neurophysiology, published by the Americ...How the brain sorts babble into auditory streams
...alternating-tone sequences in the primary cortexof awake rhesus monkeys and the perceptual build-up of auditory stream segregation measured in humans listening to similar sound sequences," concluded the researchers. In a commentary on the paper in the same issue of Neuron, Michael DeWeese and Anthony Zador...Brainstem blocks pain to protect key behaviors
...labeled "ON cells, fire in bursts when animals are awake and are inactive during slow-wave sleep. "OFF" cells, which suppress pain, are active during slow-wave sleep. Foo and Mason, who completed her post-doctoral training in Fields' laboratory, found that the pain-enhancing ON cells were inhibited and t...Losing sleep undoes the rejuvenating effects new learning has on the brain
... session, half the animals in each group were kept awake for six hours by being presented novel stimuli that kept them interested and awake. The other half were returned to their cages and allowed to sleep. After six hours, the sleep-restricted rats were allowed to sleep for the remainder of the day until ...Ritalin packs punch by elevating norepinephrine, suppressing nerve signal transmissions
...y responses in the primary somatosensory cortex of awake rats," by Philadelphia-based researchers Candice Drouin, University of Pennsylvania; Michelle Page, Thomas Jefferson University; and Barry Waterhouse, Drexel University College of Medicine appears online in the Journal of Neurophysiology, published b...Septum keeps neurons in synch, can reduce epileptic seizures by 90 percent
...chers will repeat the study using animals that are awake and mobile, though it is more difficult to record the brain's discharges in freely moving animals. Then the research can move to humans....People who must stay awake for long shifts soldiers, pilots, truckers, stude...rsity of Helsinki, first showed that when cats are awake for prolonged periods, a compound called adenosine accumulates in their brains, ultimately producing...UVA researchers find that hotel guests with colds can leave their germs behind after checkout
... people with colds were recruited to spend 5 hours awake in hotel rooms before going to bed and 2 awake hours in their rooms the next morning. The volunteers had no visitors and were asked to wash their h...News tips from the Journal of Neuroscience
... of espresso, neurons in the hypothalamus keep you awake and alert throughout the day, according to work by Takahashi et al. But the chemical is histamine, not caffeine, in this case. The authors monitored the activity of histaminergic neurons in the tuberomammillary nucleus (TMN) of mice during sleep and ......d severe Parkinson-like motor symptoms and a novel awake state with oscillations typical of slow-wave sleep. A Serine Protease Inhibitor to the Rescue Yannick Simonin, Yves Charron, Peter Sonderegger, Jean-Dominique Vassalli, and Ann C. Kato Plasminogen activators (PAs) are perhaps best known in t...