One per cent of adults and five per cent of children are unable to achieve what most of us take for granted–speaking fluently. Instead, they struggle with words, often repeating the beginning of a word, for example “G-g-g-g-g-ood morning” or get stuck with single sounds, such as “Ja” for “January” although they know exactly what...
Category: <span>Mental health</span>
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Orange light as a potential mental health treatment
The emergency psychiatric centre at St. Olavs Hospital in Trondheim, Norway, where researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology are testing the effectiveness of orange light in helping psychiatric patients. Credit: Håvard Kallestad Can orange light therapy help people who have serious mental disorders? “Emergency psychiatric care hasn’t seen much new thinking about...
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Major cause of dementia discovered
A montage of three images of single striatal neurons transfected with a disease-associated version of huntingtin, the protein that causes Huntington’s disease. Nuclei of untransfected neurons are seen in the background (blue). The neuron in …more An international team of scientists have confirmed the discovery of a major cause of dementia, with important implications for...
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Hope for autism: Optogenetics shines light on social interactions
IMAGE: FROM LEFT: HEEJAE JANG, MALAVIKA MURUGAN, ILANA WITTEN AND THEIR COLLEAGUES HAVE IDENTIFIED A NEURAL SUBSTRATE FOR SOCIAL LEARNING IN MICE, WITH POSSIBLE RELEVANCE TO DISORDERS SUCH AS AUTISM. Ilana Witten didn’t set out to study spatial learning. She thought she was investigating how mice socialize–but she discovered that in mouse brains, the social...
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Electrical Stimulation in Brain Bypasses Senses, Instructs Movement
The brain’s complex network of neurons enables us to interpret and effortlessly navigate and interact with the world around us. But when these links are damaged due to injury or stroke, critical tasks like perception and movement can be disrupted. New research is helping scientists figure out how to harness the brain’s plasticity to rewire...
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Healthy mitochondria could stop Alzheimer’s
Whole-brain hemisphere sections of Alzheimer’s mice, the model APP/PSEN1, before and after treatment with the NAD+ booster Nicotinamide riboside (NR). The beta-amyloid plaque content in the brain of the APP/PSEN1 mice (left), clearly …more Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia and neurodegeneration worldwide. A major hallmark of the disease is the accumulation...
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Glial cells, not neurons, lead the way in brain assembly
Brain formation in worms goes awry when glial cell signaling is disrupted (right). As the very first neurons come together to form the brain, they need pointers to end up in the right places. Where do these directions come from? Rockefeller scientists have discovered that they originate from an unlikely source, revealing that the cells...
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Low frequency brain stimulation improves cognition in Parkinson’s disease
A multidisciplinary neuroscience study using rare, intraoperative brain recordings suggests that low frequency stimulation of a deep brain region may be able to improve cognitive function in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). The study findings, published Nov. 28 online in the journal Brain, also hint at the broader potential of brain stimulation for treating other cognitive...
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New studies show brain impact of youth football
Examples of Default Mode Network (DMN) subcomponents of the brain examined in this study of youth football players. School-age football players with a history of concussion and high impact exposure undergo brain changes after one season of play, according to two new studies conducted at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and Wake Forest...
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Preliminary stages of dementia reduce human face memorization ability
[LEFT] Patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) have a significantly reduced ability to memorize faces in comparison to healthy controls (HCs). [RIGHT] The gaze pattern of MCI patients (yellow) is focused over a greater area of the …more A Japanese research group has revealed that elderly people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) have a particularly...