Higher levels of cell chatter boost amyloid beta in the brain regions that Alzheimer’s hits first, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report. Amyloid beta is the main ingredient of the plaque lesions that are a hallmark of Alzheimer’s. ...

A new study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden shows that the brain has built-in mechanisms that trigger an automatic reaction to someone who refuses to share. The reaction derives from the amygdala, an older part of the brain. The subjects' sense of justice was challenged in a two-player money-based fairness game, while their brain activity was registered by an magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. W ...

When a group of gamblers gather around a roulette table, individual players are likely to have different reasons for betting on certain numbers. Some may play a "lucky" number that has given them positive results in the past — a strategy called reinforcement learning. Others may check out the recent history of winning colors or numbers to try and decipher a pattern. Betting on the belief that a certain outc ...

Ecstasy – the illegal "rave" drug that produces feelings of euphoria and emotional warmth – has been in the news recently as a potential therapeutic. Clinical trials are testing Ecstasy in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). But headlines like one in Time magazine's health section in February – "Ecstasy as therapy: have some of its negative effects been overblown?" – concern Ronald Cowan ...

Scientists using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) observed that the brains of children with autism spectrum disorder are larger than those without autism, but this difference appears related to increased rates of brain growth before 2 years of age, according to a report in the May issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. ...

Teen brains rely on early-maturing brain structures that process fear differently than adult brains according to an NIMH-funded study. As a result, teens may have more difficulty than adults in differentiating between danger and safety, leading to more pervasive stress and anxiety. The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ...

Our own social status influences the way our brains respond to others of higher or lower rank, according to a new study reported online on April 28 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. People of higher subjective socioeconomic status show greater brain activity in response to other high-ranked individuals, while those with lower status have a greater response to other low-status individuals. ...

A new study uses creative engineering to unravel brain mechanisms associated with one of the most fundamental subjective human feelings: self-consciousness. The research, published by Cell Press in the April 28 issue of the journal Neuron, identifies a brain region called the temporo-parietal junction as being critical for the feeling of being an entity localized at a particular position in space and for pe ...

A study, completed by researchers from Trinity College and the Research Institute for a Tobacco Free Society, Dublin, Ireland, compares former smokers to current smokers, and obtains insight into how to quit smoking might be discovered by studying the brains of those who have successfully managed to do so. ...

The positive effects of mindfulness meditation on pain and working memory may result from an improved ability to regulate a crucial brain wave called the alpha rhythm. This rhythm is thought to "turn down the volume" on distracting information, which suggests that a key value of meditation may be helping the brain deal with an often-overstimulating world. Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH ...