Tag: Neuroscience

Anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS), a synthetic version of the male sex hormone testosterone, are sometimes used as a medical treatment for hormone imbalance. But the vast majority of AAS is used to enhance athletic performance or build muscle because when paired with strength training. AAS use increases muscle mass and strength, and its use is known

The ongoing pandemic has had a significant and alarming trend of increased alcohol use and abuse – especially among younger adults, males and those who have lost their jobs – according to a new study by University of Arizona Health Sciences researchers. Research led by William "Scott" Killgore, PhD, professor of psychiatry in the UArizona

Fear, anxiety, worry, lack of motivation and difficulty concentrating— students cite all sorts of reasons for opposing distance learning. But are these excuses or real concerns? What does science say? At the beginning of the pandemic, when universities and CEGEPs, Québec’s junior colleges, were putting in place scenarios to continue teaching at a distance, students

It sounds like science fiction: controlling electronic devices with brain waves. But researchers have developed a new type of electroencephalogram (EEG) electrode that can do just that, without the sticky gel required for conventional electrodes. Even better, the devices work through a full head of hair. The researchers report the flexible electrodes, which could someday

Scientists are batting a thousand in a project to reconstruct the mouse brain’s wiring diagram. Researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus have now carefully unraveled a tangle of more than 1,000 neurons, tracing each cell’s branching route across the brain to pinpoint where it goes and to which cells it connects.

A new paper in The Economic Journal, published by Oxford University Press, finds that female executives decrease the wage-gap for women at the top of a firm while widening it at the bottom. This study also finds that the lack of women at the executive level has a negative impact on firm performance, especially in

A combination of chemotherapy drugs during brain cancer surgery using a biodegradable paste, leads to long-term survival, researchers at the University of Nottingham have discovered. In a new study published in Clinical Cancer Research, scientists found a significant survival benefit in rat models with brain tumours when a combination of two chemotherapy drugs, (etoposide and

The disability burden for people with multiple sclerosis (MS) can vary significantly depending on whether they have a relapsing/remitting form of the disease, where they experience periods of clinical remission, or a progressive form, where they have continued neurological deterioration without clinical remission. Effective therapies exist for managing relapsing/remitting MS, but treatment for progressive MS

Prozac®, the trade name for the drug fluoxetine, was introduced to the U.S. market for the treatment of depression in 1988. Thirty years later, scientists still don’t know exactly how the medication exerts its mood-lifting effects. Now, researchers report that, in addition to the drug’s known action on serotonin receptors, fluoxetine could rearrange nerve fibers

New findings out of the University of Tübingen show that, on top of its benefits for metabolism, mood, and general health, exercise also improves brain function. In recent studies, researchers learned that obese and overweight individuals are prone to insulin resistance in the brain, where it provides information about current nutritional status, as well as

Boredom is a common human experience. But how people cope with or handle being bored is important for mental health. “Everybody experiences boredom,” said Sammy Perone, Washington State University assistant professor in the Department of Human Development. “But some people experience it a lot, which is unhealthy. So, we wanted to look at how to

Pathogenic fungal spores capitalize on host immune cells to escape the lung and gain access to the brain to cause fatal disease in mice, according to a study published June 27 in the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens by Christina Hull of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and colleagues. These insights into the interactions between pathogenic fungal

Increased glucose, transformed into energy, could give people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, improved mobility and a longer life, according to new findings by a University of Arizona-led research team. Physicians have long known that people with ALS experience changes in their metabolism that often lead to rapid weight loss in a process called

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI in Villigen, Switzerland, have for the first time elucidated the structure of important enzymes in human cells that alter essential building blocks of the cellular cytoskeleton. This reveals the missing part of a cycle that regulates the build-up or breakdown of supporting elements of the cell. The enzymes

Sortilin, which is a protein expressed on the surface of nerve cells, plays a crucial role in pain development in laboratory mice — and in all likelihood in humans as well. This is the main conclusion of the study ‘Sortilin gates neurotensin and BDNF signalling to control peripheral neuropathic pain’, which has just been published

Researchers at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech Carilion have revealed how a genetic message to produce healthy heart tissue is altered in the body during stress and aging to contribute to sudden cardiac death. The discovery published in today’s (Tuesday, May 28) Cell Reports centers on communication between heart cells and allows

Dysfunctional neurons in the hippocampus of adult female mice modeling dementia can be repaired and reconnected to distant parts of the brain, reports a new study published in JNeurosci. The similarity between the mouse model and the human condition underscores the therapeutic potential of targeting these cells in dementia patients. The hippocampus generates new brain

Scientists might have found an early detection method for some forms of dementia, according to new research by the University of Arizona and the University of Toronto’s Baycrest Health Sciences Centre. According to the study published in the journal Neuropsychologia last month, patients with a rare neurodegenerative brain disorder called Primary Progressive Aphasia, or PPA,

Humans use imagination a lot, whether it be thinking about what’s for dinner later tonight or trying to imagine what someone else on the other side of the world may be experiencing after reading the news. As situations become farther away from reality and more distal, imagining a situation becomes more difficult. The limits to

The brain consists of a large collection of interconnected neurons. How complex patterns of neuronal cells grow into functioning circuits during development has fascinated researchers for decades. A team of scientists at VIB and KU Leuven has now uncovered a new signaling mechanism in fruit flies that specifies the formation of neuronal circuits in the