Tag: Brain
-
Health
Even in healthy elderly, brain systems become less coordinated
Some brain systems become less coordinated with age even in the absence of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study from Harvard University. The results help to explain why advanced…
-
Health
Researchers create colorful “Brainbow” images of the nervous system
By activating multiple fluorescent proteins in neurons, neuroscientists at Harvard University are imaging the brain and nervous system as never before, rendering their cells in a riotous spray of colors dubbed a “Brainbow.”
-
Health
Trial Turns Over New Leaf for Traditional Herb
If a painting’s worth were measured by the money it fetched, van Gogh’s famous rendering of his friend and physician Dr. Gachet would be among the most valuable in all…
-
Campus & Community
Migraine auras and heart disease linked – risks high for women
Marsha T. saw the lights of pain coming. They flashed and zigzagged before her eyes. Her visual field shrank into a tunnel. A registered nurse, she knew what was next.…
-
Health
Scientists identify switch for brain’s natural anti-oxidant defense
Scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute report they have found how the brain turns on a system designed to protect its nerve cells from toxic “free radicals,” a waste product of…
-
Campus & Community
Bad times make for more accurate memories
Pleasurable experiences are more fun to relive than negative ones, but a new study by psychologists at Harvard University reveals that memories of good times can be less accurate than those of bad times.
-
Campus & Community
Judge Baker Children’s Center welcomes a groundbreaking research project that may shed light on autism
Harvard-affiliated Judge Baker Children’s Center is launching a research project to study autism. Jerome Kagan and Nancy Snidman, director and research director, respectively, of Harvard’s Infant and Child Study Center,…
-
Arts & Culture
The first word on nouns and verbs
Since humans learned to speak, they have put their words into two basic categories, nouns and verbs. Nouns denote objects; verbs refer to actions. Dictionaries of specialized words have been added by bankers, lawyers, scientists, and clergy, but this core distinction remains.
-
Health
Meditation found to increase brain size
People who meditate grow bigger brains than those who don’t. Researchers at Harvard, Yale, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found the first evidence that meditation can alter the physical structure of our brains. Brain scans they conducted reveal that experienced meditators boasted increased thickness in parts of the brain that deal with attention…
-
Health
Long-term memory controlled by molecular pathway at synapses
Even for a fruit fly, learning and memory are important adaptive tools that facilitate survival in the environment. A fly can learn to avoid what may do it harm, such…
-
Health
Dendritic spines don’t go with the flow
Neurons receive incoming signals through synapses at hundreds of dendritic spines, the lollipop-shaped structures with thin necks and bubblelike heads that stud the surface of dendrites. Each spine serves as…
-
Health
Brain protein may play role in innate and learned fear
In a paper published in the November 2005 issue of Cell, researchers reported that the protein stathmin is essential for the fear response – both the expression of innate fear…
-
Campus & Community
Neuroscientist Buckner named professor of psychology
Randy L. Buckner, a neuroscientist noted for his innovative use of new imaging techniques to map human memory formation and retrieval, has been named professor of psychology in Harvard University’s…
-
Health
Vaccine may clear Alzheimer’s brain plaques
While there is still no consensus about the role of waxy amyloid plaques that fill the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, many in the field believe they are a root cause…
-
Health
Stroke patients with mild symptoms may still need clot- dissolving drug
“Our primary finding was that about 30 percent of those patients judged ‘too good to treat’ either died or were discharged to a rehabilitation facility,” says Eric Smith, MD, FRCPC,…
-
Health
Depression linked to previously unknown dopamine regulator
Li-Huei Tsai, Harvard Medical School (HMS) professor of pathology, HMS research fellow Sang Ki Park, and colleagues worked with mice and found a novel function for the molecule Par-4 (prostate…
-
Health
Size of brain structure could signal vulnerability to anxiety disorders
Individuals respond with physical and emotional distress to situations that recall traumatic memories. Such responses usually diminish gradually, as those situations are repeated without unpleasant occurrences; this is called “extinction…
-
Health
Gene clue to brain asymmetry revealed on right side
Although many assumed that the asymmetry-producing genes, when found, would be more highly expressed on the left side of the brain than the right, Sun Tao, Christopher A. Walsh, and…
-
Health
Left- or right-brain? Genes may tell the story
According to HHMI investigator Christopher A. Walsh, postdoctoral fellow Tao Sun, and their colleagues at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, their discovery that a gene called…
-
Health
Brain chemical serotonin involved in early embryo patterning
A study published in the May 10, 2005, Current Biology has ramifications for neuroscience, developmental genetics, evolutionary biology and, possibly, human teratology (a branch of pathology and embryology concerned with…
-
Campus & Community
Obese women two times more likely to have a stroke
A long-awaited federally funded study conducted by researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) recently announced that taking an aspirin a day helps women prevent one of the nation’s leading…
-
Campus & Community
Decoding the babel of brain cells
If brain cell messages could be separated from the “noise” of other brain activity and clearly understood, researchers would be closer to repairing damage caused by a number of nervous…
-
Campus & Community
Survey: Down syndrome diagnoses found wanting
A survey of mothers in the March issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology found that obstetricians and genetic counselors are falling short when it comes to delivering…
-
Campus & Community
Seeing seeing in action
Harvard Medical School researchers are seeing what seeing does to the brains of animals and making images that show for the first time single brain cells working together. The work,…
-
Health
First view of many neurons processing information in living brain
A Harvard Medical School (HMS) research team used a new technique to obtain the first close-up look at the neural circuits that produce vision in cats and rats. “Put simply,…
-
Health
Study finds heavy drinking linked to higher stroke risk
A study found that while light and moderate drinkers appear to be at neither greater risk nor greater advantage than abstainers when it comes to ischemic stroke, the frequency of…
-
Campus & Community
Discovering how we appreciate a loss
A committee of psychiatrists, surgeons, ethicists, and others decided that the only course left for five people with otherwise untreatable mental disorders was to cut out a certain area of…
-
Health
Keeping synapses clean may hold key to fear-conditioning
As readers of introductory psychology texts know, animals easily learn to fear a harmless stimulus, such as a tone, if that stimulus is paired with a painful one, such as…
-
Health
Smoking increases bleeding into the brain, study finds
A research team at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) found that stroke risk for women increased proportionately with the number of cigarettes smoked each day. In contrast, women who stopped…
-
Campus & Community
Breast cancers tied to brain survival
A gene produces a protein that evidently protects cancer cells in the same way it shields brain cells from damage caused by diseases like Alzheimer’s and strokes. “The same substance…