Latest Neurophysiology Stories

Findings Could Give Directors, Advertisers New Ways to Predict How Audiences Will Respond Visual and auditory stimuli that elicit high levels of engagement and emotional response can be linked to reliable patterns of brain activity, a team of researchers from The City College of New York and Columbia University reports. Their findings could lead to new ways for producers of films, television programs and commercials to predict what kinds of scenes their audiences will respond to....

ALPHARETTA, Ga., June 14, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Nexstim announced today that they would be featured in an upcoming episode of Health Heroes. Nexstim develops, manufactures and markets navigated brain stimulation devices for the worldwide medical community. After launching its first commercial product in 2003, Nexstim has taken the industry by storm, providing sophisticated tools for hospitals and research facilities both in the United States and internationally. This particular...

The drowsiness experienced by medical staff who have been on night duty can make their driving dangerous, French researchers have found. The first study to use simulated driving tests on medical staff returning home after a night shift showed that, under the monotonous driving conditions similar to those experienced on autoroutes (motorways or highways), it was more difficult for them to hold a straight line while driving than it was when they had not been working overnight. They also had...

After 53-years in business, the Sadler Clinic suddenly closes its doors cutting off communications with most of its patients, leaving many with no answers of who will provide their medical care. The Sadler Clinic Sleep Disorders Center's, Medical Director, faces challenges and focuses on the positive in the wake of the changes. Written by: Victoria Wright, Operations Director, Comprehensive Sleep Medicine Associates, PA. Our mission is to provide a comprehensive approach for...

Research shows mice brains are 'very wired up' at birth, and suggests experience selects which connections to keep Ask the average person the street how the brain develops, and they'll likely tell you that the brain's wiring is built as newborns first begin to experience the world. With more experience, those connections are strengthened, and new branches are built as they learn and grow. A new study conducted in a Harvard lab, however, suggests that just the opposite is true. As...

A new study finds that the ear delivers sound information to the brain in a surprisingly organized fashion The brain receives information from the ear in a surprisingly orderly fashion, according to a University at Buffalo study scheduled to appear June 6 in the Journal of Neuroscience. The research focuses on a section of the brain called the cochlear nucleus, the first way-station in the brain for information coming from the ear. In particular, the study examined tiny biological...

A Cleveland Clinic study has detected significant changes in the electroencephalogram (EEG) brain activity patterns of patients receiving chemotherapy. The study may give scientific evidence of a condition commonly referred to as "chemobrain" – the fogginess that many patients experience while on chemotherapy. Patients with chemobrain often report short-term memory problems and difficulty concentrating. "The EEG study demonstrated a higher amplitude, or more brain activity in women,...

Some neurological conditions such as multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy are associated with the inability to repair the chronic destruction of myelin sheaths that surround the core of a nerve fiber and function to speed transmission of nerve impulses. To better understand the failure to remyelinate these nerves in disorders involving loss of these sheaths, researchers at Baylor College of Medicine examined how myelin forms during development. They found that a transcription factor known...

Despite the fact that it has been vilified by some in the past, scientists are experimenting with various types of electrical brain stimulation, hoping that some day it will not only be able to treat a wide array of disorders but also enhance a person's cognitive abilities. In a June 2 article, Kerri Smith of the Observer focuses on several different varieties of such treatments, including transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), and deep...

A molecule responsible for the proper formation and function of neurons finds its way to the right place not because it is actively recruited, but because it can't go anywhere else. Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have identified a distal axonal cytoskeleton that functions as a boundary to ensure a key scaffolding protein, called ankyrinG, stays at the start of the axon near the cell body where it performs its functions of clustering sodium and potassium ion channels and...