For the first time, a research group at Lund University in Sweden has succeeded in creating specific types of nerve cells from human skin. By reprogramming connective tissue cells, called fibroblasts, directly into nerve cells, a new field has been opened up with the potential to take research on cell transplants to the next level. The discovery represents a fundamental change in the view of the function an ...

Hundreds of small genetic variations are associated with autism spectrum disorders, including an area of DNA that may be a key to understanding why humans are social animals, according to a multi-site collaborative study led by researchers at Yale University. Published in the June 9 issue of the journal Neuron, the study reinforces the theory that autism, a disorder that develops in early childhood involvin ...

Older people who regularly exercise at a moderate to intense level may be less likely to develop the small brain lesions, sometimes referred to as “silent strokes,” that are the first sign of cerebrovascular disease, according to a new study published in the June 8, 2011, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN). ...

A clinically extensive and mathematically powerful study of 1000 families with one autistic child and one unaffected sibling has validated a controversial theory of autism's complex genetic causation. The study for the first time estimates the minimum number of locations in the human genome - 250 to 300 - where gene copy number variation (CNV) can give rise to autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It also sheds n ...

According to the American Cancer Society, more than 11.4 million Americans are currently living with cancer. While cancer treatments are plentiful, many have negative side effects. Previous studies have indicated that a significant number of patients who receive chemotherapy also experience cognitive declines, including decreases in verbal fluency and memory. Now, one University of Missouri health psycholog ...

Severe deficiency of the vitamins and minerals required for life is relatively uncommon in developed nations, but modest deficiency is very common and often not taken seriously. A new research published online in the FASEB Journal, however, may change this thinking as it examines moderate selenium and vitamin K deficiency to show how damage accumulates over time as a result of vitamin and mineral loss, lead ...

Difficulty remembering important dates and medications, and gathering paperwork, is more common in older individuals with mild cognitive impairment than in those with no cognition problems, according to a report in the June issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. According to background information in the article, mild cognitive impairment is a condition that includes som ...

A recently published paper highlights that while the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is more common in those with migraine than those without migraine irrespective of sex, the risk is greater in male migraineurs than female migraineurs. Study details are now available in Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain, published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the American Headache Society. ...

Intense distress and fear of dying, which many people experience when suffering the symptoms of a heart attack, are not only fairly common emotional responses but are also linked to biological changes that occur during the event, according to new research published online today in the European Heart Journal [1]. These changes, in turn, are associated with other biological processes during the following week ...

Medications are the mainstay of treatment for epilepsy, but for a considerable number of patients — estimated to be as many as 1 million in the U.S. — drugs do not work. These patients suffer from a type of epilepsy known as refractory or drug-resistant epilepsy, in which drugs cannot control their seizures. But at an epilepsy conference last month, Dr. Christopher DeGiorgio, a UCLA professor of neurology, ...