Oxytocin has been the focus of intense research around autism spectrum disorder (ASD) due to the hormone’s reported positive effects on anxiety, empathy, social interaction, and maternal behavior. ASD is characterized by early onset of behavioral and cognitive alterations, and by low plasma levels of oxytocin. The enzyme CD38 was recently demonstrated to be critical to the regulation of oxytocin secretion. An animal study published in The FASEB Journal sought to explore whether a deficit in CD38 expression would lead to functional modifications of the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which is involved in…
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New brain research challenges our understanding of sleep
An international study headed by researchers from Aarhus University has for the first time uncovered the large-scale brain patterns and networks in the brain which control sleep, providing knowledge which in the future may can in the long term help the many Danes large proportion of people who experience problems sleeping. We spend approximately. one-third of our life asleep and our sleep has fascinated researchers for many years. Research from the Centrer for Music in the Brain at Aarhus University and the University of Oxford has now revealed, in unprecedented…
Read MoreDepression in 20s linked to memory loss in 50s
A new large-scale longitudinal study carried out by University of Sussex psychologists has found a clear link between episodes of depression and anxiety experienced by adults in their twenties, thirties and forties, with a decrease in memory function by the time they are in their fifties. The study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, is the first of its kind to look at the relationship between depressive symptoms experienced across three decades of early-mid adulthood and a decline in cognitive function in midlife. The Sussex psychologists analysed data from the…
Read MoreBlue Brain solves a century-old neuroscience problem
New research explains how the shapes of neurons can be classified using mathematical methods from the field of algebraic topology. Neuroscientists can now start building a formal catalogue for all the types of cells in the brain. Onto this catalogue of cells, they can systematically map the function and role in disease of each type of neuron in the brain. “For nearly 100 years, scientists have been trying to name cells. They have been describing them in the same way that Darwin described animals and trees. Now the Blue Brain…
Read MoreBrain region discovered that only processes spoken, not written words
Patients in a new Northwestern Medicine study were able to comprehend words that were written but not said aloud. They could write the names of things they saw but not verbalize them. Even though these patients could hear and speak perfectly fine, a disease had crept into a portion of their brain that kept them from processing auditory words while still allowing them to process visual ones. Patients in the study had primary progressive aphasia (PPA), a rare type of dementia that destroys language and currently has no treatment. The…
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