Exercise slows development of Alzheimer's-like brain changes in mice, new study finds
...he researchers placed each mouse in a Morris water maze to examine how fast it could learn the location of...how long it retained this information. (This water maze task involves a small pool of water with a submerged platform that the mouse must learn how to find....Researchers shed light on anxiety and alcohol intake
...t spends in the closed versus the open arms of the maze during a 5-minute testing period the greater an animal's level of anxiety, the less open-arm activity it displays. Dr. Pandey and his colleagues also found that levels of CREB, a protein involved in a variety of brain functions, were lower in certai...UCI researchers identify first compound to block progression of Alzheimer's disease
...the cortex. In the test, the mice were placed in a maze in a water tank and encouraged repeatedly to locate a hidden platform in the tank by making spatial association in the room to facilitate their search. After the platform was removed, the researchers monitored in subsequent trials how many times the ...Technology to improve learning for visually-impaired children
...'s internal layers, rhythm reproduction, a tactile maze game, virtual maracas (percussion instruments), post-its with a haptic barcode, an electric circuit browser, a haptic simon game, memory games, a haptic turtle and a haptic game of the classic first video game, pong. For example, to better teach natu......rs "placed" the subjects in different parts of the maze and analyzed activation of cerebral cortical regions as the subjects made a series of decisions to navigate their way to a specified goal. Functional MRI involves using harmless magnetic fields and radio waves to image blood flow in brain regions, wh...Mice learn tasks that may help treat human psychiatric disorders
...er said. The Garner team's mice were tested in a maze with rewards of one-quarter of a piece of sweetened cereal hidden in two-inch diameter metal bowls. The scientists varied the material inside the bowls where the cereal piece was hidden and also varied the outer texture and smell of the bowls. The ...Exercise helps sustain mental activity as we age, may prevent dementia-like illnesses
... found that aged rodents that exercised in a water maze learned and retained information about a hidden platform better than age-matched controls. Exercise also protected both young and aged animals from developing some age-related diseases as indicated by increases in certain neurochemical levels that ...High-tech spectroscopy may be used to monitor neuropsychiatric symptoms
...leagues tested cognitive performance using a water maze test, a standard test to assess spatial learning and memory in rodents. "The water maze test measures memory, learning and cognitive function. We correlated the changes in metabolites in d...Drug treatment improves learning in mice with Down syndrome symptoms, Stanford/Packard study shows
...tter able to identify novel objects and navigate a maze tasks that simulate difficulties faced by childre...e showed no preference for either object. In the maze test, mice were habituated to the long arm of a T-shaped maze and then allowed to explore. Wild-type...First clinical trial of gene therapy for childhood blindness
...o the extent that they were able to walk through a maze without difficulty; something they could not do before the treatment. As this trial is the first to treat an eye disease using administration of gene therapy vectors to human retinas, the team have carried out extensive pre-clinical testing. The purp...'Smart' mice teach scientists about learning process, brain disorders
...ce were more adept at learning to navigate a water maze and remembering that being in a certain box involv...said, when a situtation changed, such as the water maze being rearranged, the engineered mice were much faster to realize that things were different and wor...