Step Forward in Effort to Regenerate Damaged Nerves

The carnage evident in disasters like car wrecks or wartime battles is oftentimes mirrored within the bodies of the people involved. A severe wound can leave blood vessels and nerves severed, bones broken, and cellular wreckage strewn throughout the body -- a debris field within the body itself.  Thriving DRG cells [Credit: University of Rochester Medical Center] It's scenes like this that neurosurgeon Jason Huang, M.D., confronts every day. Severe damage to nerves is one of the most challenging wounds to treat for Huang and colleagues. It's a type of wound suffered by people who are the victims of gunshots or stabbings, by those who have been involved in car accidents -- or by soldiers injured on the battlefield, like those whom...

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Cocaine and the Teen Brain: New Insights Into Addiction

When first exposed to cocaine, the adolescent brain launches a strong defensive reaction designed to minimize the drug's effects, Yale and other scientists have found. Now two new studies by a Yale team identify key genes that regulate this response and show that interfering with this reaction dramatically increases a mouse's sensitivity to cocaine.  The findings may help explain why risk of drug abuse and addiction increase so dramatically when cocaine use begins during teenage years.  The results were published in the Feb. 14 and Feb. 21 issues of the Journal of Neuroscience.  Researchers including those at Yale have shown that vulnerability to cocaine is much higher in adolescence, when the brain is shifting from an...

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Honeycomb structure responsible for bacteria's extraordinary sense

Cornell researchers have peered into the complex molecular network of receptors that give one-celled organisms like bacteria the ability to sense their environment and respond to chemical changes as small as 1 part in 1,000.  Honeycomb-like hexagonal lattice formed by the network of receptor molecules (pink), associated enzymes (blue) and coupling proteins (green) in motile bacteria. Such a cooperative lattice arranged across their cell membranes helps bacteria sense their environment with extreme sensitivity. Inset shows the structure of a unit cell of the lattice in detail (top left). [Credit: Crane Lab] Just as humans use five senses to navigate through surroundings, bacteria employ an intricate structure of thousands of receptor...

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Nanoparticles in Food, Vitamins Could Harm Human Health, Researchers Warn

Billions of engineered nanoparticles in foods and pharmaceuticals are ingested by humans daily, and new Cornell research warns they may be more harmful to health than previously thought.  An intestinal cell monolayer after exposure to nanoparticles, shown in green [Credit: Cornell University] A research collaboration led by Michael Shuler, the Samuel B. Eckert Professor of Chemical Engineering and the James and Marsha McCormick Chair of Biomedical Engineering, studied how large doses of polystyrene nanoparticles -- a common, FDA-approved material found in substances from food additives to vitamins -- affected how well chickens absorbed iron, an essential nutrient, into their cells.  The results were reported online Feb. 12 in...

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Smoking Zaps Healthy Bacteria In the Mouth

According to a new study, smoking causes the body to turn against its own helpful bacteria, leaving smokers more vulnerable to disease.  Despite the daily disturbance of brushing and flossing, the mouth of a healthy person contains a stable ecosystem of healthy bacteria. New research shows that the mouth of a smoker is a much more chaotic, diverse ecosystem -- and is much more susceptible to invasion by harmful bacteria.  As a group, smokers suffer from higher rates of oral diseases -- especially gum disease -- than do nonsmokers, which is a challenge for dentists, according to Purnima Kumar, assistant professor of periodontology at Ohio State University. She and her colleagues are involved in a multi-study investigation of...

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Lust makes you smarter and seven deadly sins are good for you

Good news for lovers - the seven deadly sins, including Lust, are good for you. University of Melbourne social psychologist Dr Simon Laham uses modern research to make a compelling case for the virtues of living a sinful life in his latest book The Joy of Sin: The Psychology of the Seven Deadlies (And Why They Are So Good For You).  Dr Laham argues that human behavior is more complex than simple “good” or “evil” and shows us that Pride, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Envy, Sloth and Anger are not soul-condemning offenses, but ever-present and, if indulged wisely, are largely functional human tendencies.  In particular, for lovers intent on indulging in a bit of lust this Valentine’s Day, Dr Laham reveals:  Lust can make you smarter....

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Computer programs that think like humans

Intelligence – what does it really mean? In the 1800s, it meant that you were good at memorising things, and today intelligence is measured through IQ tests where the average score for humans is 100. Researchers at the Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, have created a computer program that can score 150.  IQ tests are based on two types of problems: progressive matrices, which test the ability to see patterns in pictures, and number sequences, which test the ability to see patterns in numbers. The most common math computer programs score below 100 on IQ tests with number sequences. For Claes Strannegård, researcher at the Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory...

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What does love look like?

What does love look like? A dozen roses delivered on an ordinary weekday? Breakfast in bed? Or just a knowing glance between lovers?  While outward displays of love are fairly easy to discern, a researcher in the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences is taking a decidedly "inward" approach to documenting this most complex of human emotions.  Sandra Langeslag, an expert in biological psychology, is using brain-imaging tools such as electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify and assess the neurocognition of romantic love.  "I want to understand how the brain works when humans are attracted to one another," says Langeslag, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Laboratory...

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Right hand or left? How the brain solves a perceptual puzzle

When you see a picture of a hand, how do you know whether it's a right or left hand? This "hand laterality" problem may seem obscure, but it reveals a lot about how the brain sorts out confusing perceptions. Now, a study which will be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science, challenges the long-held consensus about how we solve this problem.  "For decades, the theory was that you use your motor imagination," says Shivakumar Viswanathan, who conducted the study with University of California Santa Barbara colleagues Courtney Fritz and Scott T. Grafton. Judging from response times, psychologists thought we imagine flipping a mental image of each of our...

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Stressed kids more likely to become obese

The more ongoing stress children are exposed to, the greater the odds they will become obese by adolescence, reports Cornell environmental psychologist Gary Evans in the journal Pediatrics (129:1).  Nine-year-old children who were chronically exposed to such stressors as poverty, crowded housing and family turmoil gain more weight and were significantly heavier by age 13 than they would have been otherwise, the study found. The reason, Evans and his co-authors suggest, is that ongoing stress makes it tougher for children to control their behavior and emotions -- or self-regulate. That, in turn, can lead to obesity by their teen years.  "These children are heavier, and they gain weight faster as they grow up. A very good predictor...

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Could brain size determine whether you are good at maintaining friendships?

Researchers are suggesting that there is a link between the number of friends you have and the size of the region of the brain – known as the orbital prefrontal cortex – that is found just above the eyes. A new study, published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, shows that this brain region is bigger in people who have a larger number of friendships.  The research was carried out as part of the British Academy Centenary ‘Lucy to Language’ project, led by Professor Robin Dunbar of the University of Oxford in a collaboration with Dr Penny Lewis at The University of Manchester, Dr Joanne Powell and Dr Marta Garcia-Finana at Liverpool University, and Professor Neil Roberts at Edinburgh University.  The study...

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Men Behaving Nicely: Selfless Acts by Men Increase When Attractive Women Are Nearby

Men put on their best behaviour when attractive ladies are close by. When the scenario is reversed however, the behaviour of women remains the same. These findings were published February 2, 2012, in the British Psychological Society's British Journal of Psychology via the Wiley Online Library.  The research, which also found that the number of kind and selfless acts by men corresponded to the attractiveness of ladies, was undertaken by Dr Wendy Iredale of Sheffield Hallam University and Mark Van Vugt of the VU University in Amsterdam and the University of Oxford.  Two experiments were undertaken. For the first, 65 men and 65 women, all of an average age of 21, anonymously played a cooperation game where they could donate money...

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Understanding how bacteria come back from the dead

Salmonella remains a serious cause of food poisoning in the UK and throughout the EU, in part due to its ability to thrive and quickly adapt to the different environments in which it can grow. New research involving a team of IFR scientists, funded by BBSRC, has taken the first detailed look at what Salmonella does when it enters a new environment, which could provide clues to finding new ways of reducing transmission through the food chain and preventing human illness.  Bacteria can multiply rapidly, potentially doubling every 20 minutes in ideal conditions. However, this exponential growth phase is preceded by a period known as lag phase, where no increase in cell number is seen. Lag phase was first described in the 19th Century,...

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Why the brain is more reluctant to function as we age

New findings, led by neuroscientists at the University of Bristol and published this week in the journal Neurobiology of Aging, reveal a novel mechanism through which the brain may become more reluctant to function as we grow older.  It is not fully understood why the brain's cognitive functions such as memory and speech decline as we age. Although work published this year suggests cognitive decline can be detectable before 50 years of age. The research, led by Professor Andy Randall and Dr Jon Brown from the University's School of Physiology and Pharmacology, identified a novel cellular mechanism underpinning changes to the activity of neurones which may underlie cognitive decline during normal healthy aging.  The brain largely...

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Scientists decode how the brain hears words

US scientists said Wednesday they have found a way to decode how the brain hears words, in what researchers described as a major step toward one day helping people communicate after paralysis or stroke.  These images courtesy of the Center for Vital Longevity, The University of Texas at Dallas, show positron emission tomography scans of the brains of healthy adults showing low (L) and high (R) levels of beta-amyloid protein. US scientists said Wednesday they have found a way to decode how the brain hears words [Credit: AFP] By placing electrodes on the brains of research subjects and then having them listen to conversations, scientists were able to analyze the sound frequencies registered and figure out which words they were hearing.  "We...

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