Neuroscience News

Romeo et al suggest talking with children from early age could promote language skills regardless of socioeconomic status. Image credit: Sasin Tipchai.

Study: Adult-Child Conversations Strengthen Language Regions of Developing Brain

Aug 22, 2018 by News Staff

Children who are regularly engaged in conversation by adults may have stronger connections between Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas — brain regions...

Poor sleep triggers loneliness and social rejection. Image credit: Patrica J. Joslin.

Study: Lack of Sleep Leads to Social Withdrawal and Loneliness

Aug 17, 2018 by News Staff

A new study, published in the journal Nature Communications, has demonstrated that sleep-deprived individuals feel lonelier and less inclined to engage...

Dr. Dunn and Dr. Smaers report a positive correlation between vocal repertoire size and the relative size of cortical association areas in non-human primates. Image credit: Herbert Aust.

Primate Study Offers Important Insight into Evolution of Human Speech

Aug 14, 2018 by News Staff

A new study published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience has found a link between vocal repertoire and relative size of key regions of the brain. Dr....

In an experiment examining how monkeys respond to sound, Caruso et al found that a single neuron can encode information from two different sounds by switching between the signal associated with one sound and the signal associated with the other sound. Image credit: Irfan Ullah.

Individual Neurons Can Carry Multiple Signals at a Time, Neuroscientists Find

Aug 7, 2018 by News Staff

A team of researchers from Duke and Rockefeller Universities has found that individual neurons can encode information about multiple stimuli simultaneously,...

The fruit fly brain contains roughly 100,000 neurons, which can now be traced in detail using a dataset that includes roughly 21 million images Zheng et al traced the paths of neurons (colored threads) that reach out to the mushroom body, a region involved in memory and learning. Image credit: Zheng et al, doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.06.019.

Fruit Fly Brain Imaged at Synaptic Resolution

Jul 23, 2018 by News Staff

A team of neuroscientists at Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus has taken detailed pictures of the whole brain of an adult female...

Abnormal accumulations of a protein called tau can collect inside neurons, forming tangled threads and eventually harming the synaptic connection between neurons. Image credit: National Institute on Aging / National Institutes of Health.

Neuroscientists Find Alzheimer’s ‘Big Bang’

Jul 18, 2018 by News Staff

A team of researchers from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, the University of Delaware and Washington University in St. Louis has discovered...

Three scans (from the front, side and above) of two different brains (pictured on the left and on the right) belonging to twins; the furrows and ridges are different in each person. Image credit: Lutz Jäncke, University of Zurich.

Our Brains are as Unique as Our Fingerprints, Neuroscientists Say

Jul 13, 2018 by News Staff

Every individual has a unique brain anatomy, according to new research from the University of Zurich in Switzerland; and this uniqueness is the result...

Gutiérrez-Ibáñez et al found that SpM is greatly enlarged in parrots. Image credit: Edmond Lafoto.

Researchers Identify Brain Circuit Responsible for Cognition in Parrots

Jul 5, 2018 by News Staff

A group of neuroscientists from the Universities of Lethbridge and Alberta, both in Canada, has identified a neural circuit that may underlay intelligence...

Gelbard-Sagiv et al studied the activity of human single neurons in the medial temporal and frontal lobes while patients were engaged in binocular rivalry. Image credit: John Hain.

New Study Brings Neuroscientists One Step Closer to Understanding Consciousness

Jun 18, 2018 by News Staff

Consciousness is everything people experience, from the taste of chocolate to the pain of a migraine. But the origin and nature of consciousness have puzzled...

This illustration depicts a 3D computer-generated image of a group of Escherichia coli. Image credit: James Archer / CDC.

Bacterial Infection Induces Delirium in Healthy, Aging Rats, Study Says

May 30, 2018 by News Staff

Activation of the immune system by the Escherichia coli infection may temporarily disrupt formation of long-term memories in older rats by reducing levels...

Novel drugs could one day protect astronauts on deep-space missions from dangerous cosmic radiation. Image credit: Jonny Lindner.

New Drug Prevents Memory Impairment in Mice Exposed to Simulated Deep Space Radiation

May 23, 2018 by News Staff

A team of neuroscientists from the University of California, San Francisco, and Loma Linda University has identified the first potential treatment for...

Panoz-Brown et al show that rats remember a stream of multiple episodes and the order in which they occur by engaging hippocampal-dependent episodic memory replay; rats remember the order of events using episodic memory replay and that replay is part of long-term memory, resistant to interference, and hippocampal dependent. The discovery could help advance the development of new drugs to treat Alzheimer’s disease. Image credit: Panoz-Brown et al, doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2018.04.006.

Non-Human Animals Can Mentally Replay Past Events: Study

May 15, 2018 by News Staff

A team of Indiana University researchers has reported the first evidence that non-human animals (rats) can replay a stream of multiple episodic memories....

According to Jung et al, risk tolerance was positively associated with functional connectivity between amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex and negatively associated with structural connectivity between these regions. Image credit: University of Pennsylvania.

Risk Tolerance Linked to Two Brain Regions

Apr 6, 2018 by News Staff

A new study published in the journal Neuron links willingness to take risks to brain structure and function, specifically the amygdala and the prefrontal...

Parkinson’s disease. Image credit: Blausen Gallery 2014 / Wikiversity Journal of Medicine, doi: 10.15347/wjm/2014.010.

Gene Mutation Associated with Parkinson’s Initiates Disease Outside of Brain

Mar 22, 2018 by News Staff

A mutation in the leucine rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) gene — the most common cause of inherited Parkinson’s disease — alters cells circulating...

Memory content could be reliably decoded during sleep spindle increase. Image credit: Kai Kalhh.

Study: Memory Content Could Be Decoded from Brain Waves during Sleep

Mar 9, 2018 by News Staff

Recently acquired information is thought to be ‘reactivated’ in the sleeping brain. Sleep spindles — the short bursts of activity in the brain...

Young neurons (green) decrease in the human hippocampus across the lifespan, vs more mature neurons (red). Image credit: Sorrells et al.

Neurogenesis in Human Hippocampus Ends in Childhood, Neuroscientists Say

Mar 8, 2018 by News Staff

An international team of neuroscientists has shown that in the hippocampus — a brain region important for learning and memory and one of the key...

Light-controlled neuron activation using optogenetics allows modulation of specific circuits but is invasive and requires genetic engineering. Researchers from the University of Chicago have developed a silicon-based nanowire that allows light modulation of neurons without genetic engineering, paving the way for optical control of neural activity to other neurological models. Image credit: Gerry Shaw / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Scientists Develop Nanowiring for Optical Control of Neuron Activation

Feb 23, 2018 by Zvi Cramer

Researchers have designed silicon nanowires that allow modulation neuronal activity using light, allowing manipulation of specific neural circuits without...

African grass rats (Arvicanthis niloticus) exposed to dim lights (DLD) for four weeks experienced, on average, a 30% decrease in the number of ‘dendritic spine’ connections in their brains, which are the tiny protrusions near the solid green line, a dendrite. These rats performed poorly on a maze-like task. Rats exposed to bright light (BLD), on the other hand, had many more of the dendritic connections and showed superior performance on the task. Image credit: Michigan State University.

Dim Light Makes Us Dumber, New Study Suggests

Feb 7, 2018 by News Staff

According to a new study published in the journal Hippocampus, spending too much time in dimly-lit environment may change the brain’s structure and hurt...

Parkinson et al show evidence for neural homophily -- neural responses when viewing audiovisual movies are exceptionally similar among friends, and that similarity decreases with increasing distance in a real-world social network. Image credit: Parkinson et al, doi: 10.1038/s41467-017-02722-7.

On the Same Wavelength: New Study Illustrates How Similar Neural Responses Predict Friendship

Feb 2, 2018 by News Staff

According to a study published in the January 30 issue of the journal Nature Communications, we are exceptionally similar to our friends in how we perceive...