Health News

Effects of deep brain stimulation in patients with Parkinson’s disease: Improved effects on motor function and fewer side effects possible

Researchers from Charité — Universitätsmedizin Berlin have studied motor and cognitive effects of deep brain stimulation in patients with Parkinson’s disease. Their results show that the adverse cognitive effects of deep brain stimulation are linked to a different neural pathway than that responsible for the treatment’s desired motor effects. This finding will help optimize treatments […]

Health News

Traumatic brain injury recovery via petri dish: Synchronized brain-like activity created, recorded and influenced by electrical stimulation

Researchers in the University of Georgia’s Regenerative Bioscience Center have succeeded in reproducing the effects of traumatic brain injury and stimulating recovery in neuron cells grown in a petri dish. This makes them the first known scientific team in the country to do so using stem cell-derived neurons. The procedure, detailed in a new paper […]

Health News

Men and women show surprising differences in seeing motion

Researchers reporting in the journal Current Biology on August 16 have found an unexpected difference between men and women. On average, their studies show, men pick up on visual motion significantly faster than women do. Individuals representing both sexes are good at reporting whether black and white bars on a screen are moving to the […]

Health News

How people use, and lose, preexisting biases to make decisions

From love and politics to health and finances, humans can sometimes make decisions that appear irrational, or dictated by an existing bias or belief. But a new study from Columbia University neuroscientists uncovers a surprisingly rational feature of the human brain: A previously held bias can be set aside so that the brain can apply […]

Health News

How the brain biases beliefs: Proposed neural circuit may underlie motivation to cling to desirable notions about the future

People’s motivation to cling to desirable notions about future outlooks results from interactions between prefrontal cortex regions, according to a human neuroimaging study published in JNeurosci. Bojana Kuzmanovic and colleagues uncovered circuits in the brain that support belief updating by asking participants to estimate their own and a peer’s likelihood of experiencing an adverse life […]

Health News

Brain iron levels may predict multiple sclerosis disabilities

A new, highly accurate MRI technique can monitor iron levels in the brains of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients and help identify those at a higher risk for developing physical disability, according to a study published in the journal Radiology. MS is a disease that attacks three critical components of the central nervous system: the neurons […]