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Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists examining the intricate network of brain cells that underlie sight, thought, and psychiatric disease had a running joke in the laboratory: let’s just make everything bigger. If they could simply enlarge brain cells, they reasoned, the task of mapping the circuits would be easier. Now, they have found a way to do just that, using a technique that has shades of a 1950s science fiction movie. But instead of spawning killer ants or a 50-foot giantess, the researchers have found a controlled way to cause a tissue sample swell to roughly four and a half...

U.S. scientists have identified a molecular network of genes known to contribute to autism spectrum disorders, and they say their finding may help uncover new genes linked to these conditions. "The study of autism disorders is extremely challenging due to the large number of clinical mutations that occur in hundreds of different human genes associated with autism," study author Michael Snyder, genetics and personalized medicine professor at Stanford University, said in a news release. "We therefore wanted to see to what extent shared molecular pathways are perturbed by the diverse set of mutations linked to autism in the hope of...

Patients with chronic fatigue syndrome are accustomed to disappointment. The cause of the disorder remains unknown; it can be difficult to diagnose, and treatment options are few. Many patients are still told to seek psychiatric help. But two recent studies — one from investigators at Stanford a few weeks ago and another from a Japanese research team published earlier this year — have found that the brains of people with chronic fatigue syndrome differ from those of healthy people, strengthening the argument that serious physiological dysfunctions are at the root of the condition. Both studies were small, however, and their...

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The University of Texas at Austin is missing about 100 brains — about half of the specimens the university had in a collection of brains preserved in jars of formaldehyde. One of the missing brains is believed to have belonged to clock tower sniper Charles Whitman. "We think somebody may have taken the brains, but we don't know at all for sure," psychology Professor Tim Schallert, co-curator of the collection, told the Austin American-Statesman (http://bit.ly/11R7vym ). His co-curator, psychology Professor Lawrence Cormack, said, "It's entirely possible word got around among undergraduates and people started swiping them...

Are we on the brink of creating artificial life? Scientists digitise the brain of a WORM and place it inside a robot The OpenWorm global project is making a 'digital' worm Their project is recreating the neurons and cells in C. elegans It is the simplest organism we know of but has similarities to humans By making a digital worm the team hope to create artificial life They have implanted the digital 'mind' of the worm into a Lego machine In a video it acts and behaves just like the worm would in the real world Next year the team...

**SNIP** The amendment's author, Republican Senator Charles Grassley, argued that if Obamacare plans were good enough for the American public, they were good enough for Congress. Democrats, eager to pass the reforms, went along with it. But it soon became apparent the provision contained no language that allowed federal contributions toward their health plans that cover about 75 percent of the premium costs. This caused fears that staff would suddenly face sharply higher healthcare costs and leave federal service, causing a "brain drain" on Capitol Hill. But Wednesday's proposed rule from the OPM, the federal government's human resources agency, means...

Researchers from the Center for BrainHealth at The University of Texas at Dallas have found evidence that the effects of chronic marijuana use may depend on when a person started smoking pot and for how long. For the study, which was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Nov. 10, Francesca Filbey from the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas, and colleagues involved 48 adult marijuana users who started to use weed when they were between 14 and 30 years old. The participants smoked pot thrice a day...

Experimental mice have been telling us this for years, but pot-smoking humans didn't want to believe it could happen to them: Compared with a person who never smoked marijuana, someone who uses marijuana regularly has, on average, less gray matter in his orbital frontal cortex, a region that is a key node in the brain's reward, motivation, decision-making and addictive behaviors network. More ambiguously, in regular pot smokers, that region is better connected than it is in non-users:The flow of signal traffic is speedier to other parts of that motivation and decision-making network, including across the superhighway of "white matter"...

A cancer sufferer achieved her dream of playing in her first college basketball game on Sunday, scoring the first points of the match. Mount St Joseph freshman Lauren Hill, 19, was diagnosed last year with an inoperable brain tumor and was told she had years to live. In September, doctors had a grim update - she wouldn't make it past December - and after years as a standout high school basketball player, Hill's hopes of playing college ball were put in jeopardy.

In case anyone needed another reason to love chocolate, a new study suggests that a natural compound found in cocoa, tea and some vegetables can reverse age-related memory loss. The findings suggest that the compound increases connectivity and, subsequently, blood flow in a region of the brain critical to memory, the researchers said. Researchers said that if a person had the memory of a typical 60-year-old at the beginning of the study, after three months, on average, that person’s memory would function more like a 30- or 40-year-old’s. The researchers also cautioned that more work is needed because of the...

Brain Bath: A Clever Design Solution by Brian Thomas, M.S. * What makes sleep so mentally refreshing? University of Rochester neuroscientist Jeff Iliff addressed the crowd gathered at a September 2014 TEDMED event and explained his amazing new discoveries.1 The words he used perfectly match what one would expect while describing the works of an ingenious designer.2 Other organs rely on the lymphatic system to remove metabolic waste that builds up in the spaces outside cells, but no lymph vessels exist behind the skull. Since the brain uses a fourth of all the body’s energy, there must be some other...

The new research could help doctors to quickly identify patients who are aware despite appearing unresponsive and unable to communicate. Researchers from University of Cambridge in the UK have identified hidden networks in vegetative patients that could support consciousness, even when a patient appear to be unresponsive. There’s been a lot of interest lately into how much patients in vegetative states, such as comas, are aware of their surroundings. Recently, research involving functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning has shown that even patients who are unable to respond or move are able to carry out mental tasks, such as imagining...

Researchers conducting the largest ever study into near-death experiences have discovered that awareness may continue even after the brain has shut down, revealing more about what happens when we die. Scientists at the University of Southampton studied more than 2,000 people who suffered cardiac arrests at 15 hospitals across Britain, Austria and the United States. Around 40% of patients who survived described "awareness" during the time before their hearts were restarted, when they were clinically dead. One 57-year-old man, a social worker from Southampton, described the noise of the machines and what the medical staff were doing during this time....

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Wearable brain scanners and lasers that can turn hundreds of cells on and off were among 58 projects awarded $46 million in federal grants as part of President Obama's $100 million initiative to unlock the secrets of the human brain. Launched in 2013, the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative is designed to give scientists greater insight into how the healthy brain works and a better understanding of what systems go awry in diseases ranging from Alzheimer's to schizophrenia. "The human brain is the most complicated biological structure in the known universe. We’ve only just...

DON'T mind the gap. A woman has reached the age of 24 without anyone realising she was missing a large part of her brain. The case highlights just how adaptable the organ is. The discovery was made when the woman was admitted to the Chinese PLA General Hospital of Jinan Military Area Command in Shandong Province complaining of dizziness and nausea. She told doctors she'd had problems walking steadily for most of her life, and her mother reported that she hadn't walked until she was 7 and that her speech only became intelligible at the age of 6. Doctors did...

The paper will be published Wednesday, August 27, 2014 in the Journal of Neuroscience. ... researchers used an MRI machine and the brains of 40 people between the ages of 18 and 25. They claim that the more marijuana a person smokes, the more those two neural regions get "damaged." Dr. Hans Breiter, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, co-authored the study. He says, "Anytime you find there's a relationship to the amount of marijuana consumed and you see differences of core brain regions involved in processing of rewards, the making of...

Stimulating a particular region in the brain via non-invasive delivery of electrical current using magnetic pulses, called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, improves memory, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study. The discovery opens a new field of possibilities for treating memory impairments caused by conditions such as stroke, early-stage Alzheimer's disease, traumatic brain injury, cardiac arrest and the memory problems that occur in healthy aging. "We show for the first time that you can specifically change memory functions of the brain in adults without surgery or drugs, which have not proven effective," said senior author Joel Voss, assistant professor of medical social...

Bad memories could be reversed after scientists discovered the part of the brain which links emotions to past events Bad memories of past trauma can leave people emotionally scarred for life. But now neuroscientists believe they can erase feelings of fear or anxiety attached to stressful events, in a breakthrough which could help treat depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. Researchers at MIT, US, have discovered which brain circuits attach emotions to memories, and crucially, how to reverse the link. They managed to ‘switch off’ feelings of fear in mice which had been conditioned to feel anxious. It is likely the...

A few years ago, I worked at a web design agency as a product manager. The part of the job I loved the most was working on product with our design team and clients. Unfortunately, this was only about 10 percent of the work that I actually got to do. The majority of the time, I was trying to control the constant flow of stuff–keeping track of meeting notes, searching for files, and trying to stay up-to-date with the latest technology news.I was mentally exhausted. I’d get home feeling that I hadn’t really accomplished anything. Once I left the agency...

A new gene linked to suicide risk has been discovered, and researchers say the finding could lead to a blood test that predicts a person's risk of attempting suicide. The model correctly identified 80 percent to 96 percent of people who experienced suicidal thoughts or attempted suicide. It was more accurate among people at severe risk for suicide. If the findings are confirmed and lead to a blood test for suicide risk, such a test might be used to screen people in psychiatric emergency rooms or to determine how closely a person needs to be monitored for suicide risk, the...