Article • Virtual Brain
Computer model simulates epileptic events
Approximately one percent of the world population are epileptic; in France alone, an estimated 600,000 people regularly experience seizures.
Brain
News • brain research
Progress Towards a Circuit Diagram of the Brain
Precise knowledge of the connections in the brain – the links between all the nerve cells – is a prerequisite for better understanding this most complex of organs. Researchers from Heidelberg University have now developed a new algorithm – a computational procedure – that can extract this connectivity pattern with far greater precision than previously possible from microscopic images of…
News • Brain Injury and Disease
Researchers Identify How Inflammation Spreads Through the Brain After Injury
Researchers have identified a new mechanism by which inflammation can spread throughout the brain after injury. This mechanism may explain the widespread and long-lasting inflammation that occurs after traumatic brain injury, and may play a role in other neurodegenerative diseases.
News • Lab Study
A protein called PERK - Treating progressive supranuclear palsy
The brain disease “progressive supranuclear palsy” (PSP) is currently incurable and its symptoms can only be eased to a very limited degree. PSP impairs eye movements, locomotion, balance control, and speech. Scientists at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have now discovered a molecular mechanism that may help in the search…
News • Stress Research
Chronic stress neurons discovered
A novel population of neurons that are only activated following chronic stress is identified. Today, stress is part of everyday life. However, when stress is chronic it can lead to distressing illnesses such as depression and anxiety disorders. In their latest study, scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich have identified a population of neurons in the hypothalamus that…
Article • Hirnübungen I
Neuro MR: What‘s new in brain tumors?
From the extremely new, but not very available, to the somewhat new, very available and highly useful, Walter Kucharczyk will cover the potentials and practicalities in advanced brain tumor imaging.
News • Neurology
Neural stem cells found in brain of epilepsy patients
Neural stem cells have been found in epileptic brain tissue - outside the regions of the brain where they normally reside. In a group of patients who underwent surgery for epilepsy, over half had stem cells where healthy individuals do not have them, according to a study from Sahlgrenska Academy.
News • During Surgery
Neurosurgeons harness 3-D technology to map brain
Cedars-Sinai neurosurgeons have begun using a high-definition imaging device to see inside the brain during surgery, allowing them to map safer pathways to reach and remove tumors.
New discovery may improve recovery after stroke
Faster and better recovery after stroke may be the result of a newly discovered treatment strategy that created new nerve synapses in the brain—a key factor for learning. A study at Sahlgrenska Academy showed improved ability to use the affected paw in mice that received the treatment.
Article • Computer intelligence
Cognition-guided surgery – a rocky road
Surgery will change – with all the challenges that developments such as Big Data create there are no two ways about it. However, how deep those changes run remains to be seen. In a rather young field of research, scientists look at the ways all components used during surgery can be interlinked. Professor Beat Müller, co-initiator of the project ‘Cognition-Guided Surgery’, explains results…
Article • Brain functions transfer
Pioneering cancer surgery
Brain cancer treatment is taking a major step ahead as Spanish surgeons pioneer a new technique that spares language and motion functions. This splendid development might even one day result in epilepsy surgery.
News • Pediatrics
Technology reveals fetal brain activity
NIBIB-funded researchers at the University of Washington have pioneered an approach to image functional activity in the brains of individual fetuses, allowing a better look at how functional networks within the brain develop. The work addresses a common problem of functional MRI; if the subject moves during the scanning, the images get distorted.
News • Neurodegenerative diseases
Brain cell ‘executioner’ identified
Despite their different triggers, the same molecular chain of events appears to be responsible for brain cell death from strokes, injuries and even such neurodegenerative diseases as Alzheimer's. Now, researchers at Johns Hopkins say they have pinpointed the protein at the end of that chain of events, one that delivers the fatal strike by carving up a cell's DNA. The find, they say, potentially…
News • memristor
First demonstration of brain-inspired device to power artificial systems
New research, led by the University of Southampton, has demonstrated that a nanoscale device, called a memristor, could be used to power artificial systems that can mimic the human brain.
News • MRI
Computer program beats physicians at brain cancer diagnoses
Computer programs have defeated humans in Jeopardy!, chess and Go. Now a program developed at Case Western Reserve University has outperformed physicians on a more serious matter.
News • For tissue engineering
Technique generates human neural stem cells
Tufts University researchers have discovered a new technique for generating rapidly-differentiating human neural stem cells for use in a variety of tissue engineering applications, including a three-dimensional model of the human brain, according to a paper published in Stem Cell Reports. The work could pave the way for experiments that engineer other innervated tissues, such as the skin and…
News • Freaky new role
Immune system controls social interaction
In a startling discovery that raises fundamental questions about human behavior, researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine have determined that the immune system directly affects – and even controls – creatures’ social behavior, such as their desire to interact with others. So could immune system problems contribute to an inability to have normal social interactions? The…
News • Neurology
How the brain improves motor control
Adaptation in reaching - gradual improvement of motor control in response to a perturbation - is a central issue in motor neuroscience.However, even the cortical origin of errors that drive adaptation has remained elusive. In a new paper Inoue, Uchimura and Kitazawa have shown that error signals encoded by motor cortical neurons drive adaptation in reaching.
News • Map
How the brain is organized
The age of exploration has long passed, but there is at least one area still largely uncharted: the human brain. Now, a detailed new map by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis lays out the landscape of the cerebral cortex – the outermost layer of the brain and the dominant structure involved in sensory perception and attention, as well as distinctly human…
News • Neurology
The aging brain's memory functions
A European study led by Umeå University Professor Lars Nyberg, has shown that the dopamine D2 receptor is linked to the long-term episodic memory, which function often reduces with age and due to dementia. This new insight can contribute to the understanding of why some but not others are affected by memory impairment.
News • From nanotechnology
A better prognostic tool for brain cancer
A new nano-fabricated platform for observing brain cancer cells provides a much more detailed look at how the cells migrate and a more accurate post-surgery prognosis for brain cancer (glioblastoma) patients.
News • Brain disorder
Using ultrasound to achieve permeability of blood vessels
CarThera, a French company based at the Brain and Spine Institute (ICM), that designs and develops innovative ultrasound-based medical devices to treat brain disorders, announces the publication on initial successes in disrupting the blood-brain barrier (BBB) with the use of ultrasound. This has been achieved in association with teams from the Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris (the Greater…
News • Neurological Disorders
Predicting the risk of post-treatment brain bleeding after stroke
In a study of stroke patients, investigators confirmed through MRI brain scans that there was an association between the extent of disruption to the brain's protective blood-brain barrier and the severity of bleeding following invasive stroke therapy. The results of the National Institutes of Health-funded study were published in Neurology.
News • CUBRIC
Unravel the mysteries of the human brain
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II has officially opened the Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC), a unique neuroimaging research hub in Wales. The facility will seek to provide unprecedented insights into the causes of neurological and psychiatric conditions such as dementia, schizophrenia and multiple sclerosis, as well as an understanding into the mechanisms of a healthy…
‘Mini-Brains’: Evidence of Zika’s toll on fetal cortex
Studying a new type of pinhead-size, lab-grown brain made with technology first suggested by three high school students, Johns Hopkins researchers have confirmed a key way in which Zika virus causes microcephaly and other damage in fetal brains: by infecting specialized stem cells that build its outer layer, the cortex.
