Nicotine metabolite may improve memory, protect against disease
...se findings don't mean people should smoke," warns neuroscientist Michael Kuhar, PhD, of Emory University. "Any benefits from the nicotine in cigarettes or other tobacco products are far outweighed by the proven harm of using those products. But pure nicotine-like compounds as medications do show promise for treati...Neurons that play truth or consequences
...ingulate," says Tomas Paus of McGill University, a neuroscientist who was not involved in the study but also investigates this part of the brain. This methodology allowed the researchers to determine whether activity in the anterior cingulate signaled that the action deviated from what the monkey had intended or si...UGA, MCG study impact of long-term use of schizophrenia drugs
...difficult to treat, says Dr. Sahebarao P. Mahadik, neuroscientist at MCG and the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Augusta. Schizophrenia affects 1 percent of people worldwide and is diagnosed at the mean age of 20. That early onset coupled with the disruptive behavior that can result from a lack of...Taking Ecstasy during pregnancy may cause brain damage, behavior problems in babies
...urotoxicity and Teratology. Jack W. Lipton, PhD, a neuroscientist at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago, demonstrated that fetal exposure in rats to the drug Ecstasy during a period analogous to the first trimester in humans causes changes in the young rat's brain chemistry and behavior. The st...Brief exposure to Mandarin can help American infants learn Chinese
...f the first year of life. University of Washington neuroscientist Patricia Kuhl reported today that 9-month-old American infants who were exposed to Mandarin Chinese for less than five hours in a laboratory setting were able to distinguish phonetic elements of that language. It is the first experimental demonstrati...UCLA professors James Heath, Gary Small named to Scientific Americans list of 50 visionaries
...y study. Gary W. Small, a distinguished physician, neuroscientist and psychiatrist, directs UCLA's Center on Aging. His research team was the first to report early brain function decline in people at genetic risk for Alzheimer's disease, as well as the first to discover a new PET scan compound that may provide defi...Rutgers researcher finds brain connections may reorganize in Parkinson's disease
...body movements," explained Mark West, a behavioral neuroscientist and professor in the department of psychology at Rutgers' Faculty of Arts and Sciences-New Brunswick. His findings are presented in the study "Dopamine depletion causes fragmented clustering of neurons in the sensorimotor striatum: Evidence of last...Researchers identify brain pathway to explain how Fenfluramine causes weight loss
...dy's senior author Joel Elmquist, D.V.M., Ph.D., a neuroscientist and endocrinologist at BIDMC and associate professor of endocrinology and medicine at Harvard Medical School. The diet drug d-FEN, which is the "fen" part of the fen-phen combination, first came on the market in 1992, and within five years, had been ...Drug targets brain circuits that drive appetite and body weight
...y's senior author, Joel Elmquist, D.V.M., Ph.D., a neuroscientist and endocrinologist at BIDMC and Associate Professor of Endocrinology and Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Using electrophysiology studies of the hypothalamus in mice, scientists found that d-FEN doubles the firing rate in the POMC neurons, an ef...Antioxidant-rich diets improve age-related declines in mental function of rats, USF/VA studies find
... in humans, Dr. Bickford said. Until then, the USF neuroscientist recommends that daily diets include a variety of richly colored fruits and vegetables the most colorful ones tend to pack the greatest antioxidant punch. She favors spinach salads for lunch and routinely snacks on blueberries and strawberries. "St...Diabetes treatment linked to increased blood pressure in animal study
...dy's senior author Joel Elmquist, D.V.M., Ph.D., a neuroscientist and endocrinologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Associate Professor of Neurology and Medicine at Harvard Medical School. "GLP-1 stimulates insulin secretion and controls feeding and drinking behavior, and also regulates neuroendocrine...Sugar on the brain: Study shows sugar dependence in rats
...ch a thing as sugar dependency really exists, said neuroscientist Bart Hoebel, who led the study. Hoebel and colleagues studied rats that were induced to binge on sugar and found that they exhibited telltale signs of withdrawal, including "the shakes" and changes in brain chemistry, when the effects of the sweets w...Cord blood cells improve rats' neurological recovery from brain injury, new study finds
... treat stroke in rats," said Michael Chopp, PhD, a neuroscientist at HFHSC and lead author of the report. This earli... A second study in Cell Transplantation , by USF neuroscientist Tanja Zigova, PhD, reported that some undifferentiated HUCB cells transplanted into the developing b...Mayo Clinic researchers discover enzyme has potential to stop multiple sclerosis tissue damage
...ease," said Isobel Scarisbrick, Ph.D., Mayo Clinic neuroscientist and lead author of this study. "Excess MSP, as is present in inflammatory central nervous system lesions such as those in MS, may promote demyelination." Dr. Scarisbrick and colleagues discovered MSP in 1997 while she was a research fellow at Mayo C...Neuroscientists searching for roots of empathy find brain regions involved in learning by imitation
...eople to care about others. The team is headed by neuroscientist Jean Decety of Frances Institut de la Sant et de la Recherche Mdicale and a visiting scientist at the University of Washingtons Center for Mind, Brain & Learning, and developmental psychologist Andrew Meltzoff, co-director of the center. This work i...Stimulating environment protects brain against damage from lead exposure
...dore Lidsky, Ph.D., a co-author of the paper and a neuroscientist at the Institute for Basic Research in Developmental Disabilities. "Despite enormous progress in eliminating sources of lead poisoning, unacceptably high numbers of children are poisoned by lead each year. Unfortunately, once a child is found to have......ine are easy to deliver, says Lloyd Greene, PhD, a neuroscientist and professor of pathology at Columbia University. Using rat nerve cells isolated from the hippocampus, a brain area involved in learning and memory, and grown in the laboratory, Chao found that adenosine was able to communicate with receptors fo...Brain imaging technology can reveal what a person is thinking about
... context," says Dr. Kathleen O'Craven, a cognitive neuroscientist who led the study at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. O'Craven is now with Toronto's Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care. In the study, six women and two men, aged 20 to 39, were put through two cognitive exercises: o...Promising new research on schizophrenia causes
Research by a prominent neuroscientist at UIC is providing new clues to the molecular origins of schizophrenia, a devastating mental illness that afflicts nearly 2.5 million Americans. Erminio Costa, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and scientific director of UIC's Psychiatric...Novel neurotransmitter overturns laws of biology, offers potential for stroke treatment
... the National Academy of Sciences, the team led by neuroscientist Solomon H. Snyder, M.D., has also pinpointed the neurotransmitter's source -- itself a biologically unusual enzyme -- whose novelty as a drug target "could put researchers on a royal road to stroke treatment." The neurotransmitter is an amino acid ...