Latest Brain Stories

MAPLE GROVE, Minn., April 25, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Upsher-Smith Laboratories, Inc. (Upsher-Smith), in partnership with The Epilepsy Foundation of Minnesota (EFMN), today announced that the Pleschourt family from Dundas, Minnesota was awarded sponsorship to attend The Epilepsy Foundation's National Walk for Epilepsy(®) in Washington, D.C. on April 20, 2013. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130425/NY01600) Mark and Melissa Pleschourt's 13-year-old daughter, Taylor, was...

MAPLE GROVE, Minn., April 25, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Upsher-Smith Laboratories, Inc. (Upsher-Smith), in partnership with The Epilepsy Foundation of New Jersey (EFNJ), today announced that the Pretz family from Brielle, New Jersey was awarded sponsorship to attend The Epilepsy Foundation's National Walk for Epilepsy(®) in Washington, D.C. on April 20, 2013. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130425/NY01596) Todd and Ellen Pretz's 17-year-old daughter, Kelly, was diagnosed...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Using deep brain stimulation (DBS) in a specific area of the brain appears to reduce caloric intake and lead to weight loss in obese mice prone to binge eating, according to new research published in the Journal of Neuroscience, the official Journal of the Society of Neuroscience. Senior author Tracy L. Bale, an associate professor of neuroscience at the University Pennsylvania's School of Veterinary Medicine's Department of...

International School of Advanced Studies (SISSA) We know the world through the sensory representations within our brain. Such "reconstruction" is performed through the electrical activation of neural cells, the code that contains the information that is constantly processed by the brain. If we wish to understand what are the rules followed by the representation of the world inside the brain we have to comprehend how electrical activation is linked to the sensory experience. For this...

University of Texas Health Science Center study suggests inflammation's role in the development of the disease Parkinson's disease (PD) is a progressive degenerative disease affecting a person's ability to coordinate and control their muscle movement. What starts out as a tremor in a finger will eventually lead to difficulty in writing and speaking, and ultimately the inability to walk without assistance. Since the 1950s research has shown that people with Parkinson's have decreased levels...

UC Berkeley study shows how we refocus to track down a human, animal or thing A contact lens on the bathroom floor, an escaped hamster in the backyard, a car key in a bed of gravel: How are we able to focus so sharply to find that proverbial needle in a haystack? Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have discovered that when we embark on a targeted search, various visual and non-visual regions of the brain mobilize to track down a person, animal or thing. That means...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have successfully transformed human embryonic stem cells into nerve cells that helped mice regain their memory and the ability to learn. Senior author Su-Chun Zhang, a professor of neuroscience and neurology at the university, said that he and his colleagues have for the first time demonstrated that human stem cells can implant themselves in the brain and heal neurological...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Samsung is joining forces with an engineering professor at the University of Texas at Dallas to work on a device which could allow you to control your smartphone or tablet computer with your brain. According to Susan Young of the MIT Technology Review, the device in question is an electroencephalography (EEG) cap which could be used to launch an application, select a specific person out of a list of contacts or a song from a...

1 in 26 Americans will Develop Epilepsy in their Lifetime WASHINGTON, April 20, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- The Epilepsy Foundation announced today that thousands of people have assembled at the Washington Monument grounds this morning for a three-mile walk in support of those who face the challenges of living with epilepsy and seizures, and to drive funding that will accelerate therapeutic advancement and grow awareness of this potentially life-threatening disease. With a pre-walk rally...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Two new studies, published this week in Science, examine the mechanisms of animal navigation using bat models. RATS AND BATS The first study is the result of collaboration between University of Maryland (UMD), College Park and Boston University (BU). The findings, based on brain rhythms in bats and rats, challenges a widely-used model – based solely on rodents – of how animals navigate their environment. The study authors...