Duke University Medical Center scientists crowded around a laser-powered microscope in a darkened room to peer into the brain of an anesthetized juvenile songbird right after he heard an adult tutors' song for the first time. Specifically, they wanted to see what happened to the connections between nerve cells, or synapses, in a part of the brain where the motor commands for song are thought to originate. I ...

This has been a very busy month for new Autism research. A study of the development of autism in infants, comparing the behavior of the siblings of children diagnosed with autism to that of babies developing normally, has found that the nascent symptoms of the condition - a lack of shared eye contact, smiling, and communicative babbling - are not present at 6 months, but emerge gradually and only become app ...

Researchers investigating UK samples have found no association between the controversial xenotropic murine leukaemia virus-related virus (XMRV) and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Their study, published in BioMed Central's open access journal Retrovirology, calls into question a potential link described late last year by an American research team. Check the end of this review for a link to download a PDF of ...

Researchers at McMaster University have developed a cocktail of ingredients that forestalls major aspects of the aging process. The findings are published in the current issue of Experimental Biology and Medicine. "As we all eventually learn, ageing diminishes our mind, fades our perception of the world and compromises our physical capacity," says David Rollo, associate professor of biology at McMaster. "De ...

Advanced maternal age is linked to a significantly elevated risk of having a child with autism, regardless of the father's age, according to an exhaustive study of all births in California during the 1990s by UC Davis Health System researchers. Advanced paternal age is associated with elevated autism risk only when the father is older and the mother is under 30, the study found. Published online today in th ...

When we put an idea on the back burner, it goes into a processing area of the brain called the default-mode network. This network enables us to hold the low-priority idea in abeyance until a time when we are not busy with something else. "The default-mode network appears to be the brain's back burner for social decision making," said Peter T. Fox, M.D., director of the Research Imaging Institute at The Univ ...

In different, but similar study, researchers at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the Vall d'Hebron University Hospital for the first time have discovered anomalies in the brain's reward system related to the neural circuits of motivation and gratification. In children with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), the degree of motivation when carrying out an activity is related to the immediacy ...

Scientists have identified a gene they say is a strong candidate for involvement in premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) and other maladies associated with the natural flux in hormones during the menstrual cycle. In a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Rockefeller University researchers detail experiments in mice showing that a common human variant of the gene i ...

Children with autism would likely receive better treatment if supporters of the two major teaching methods stopped bickering over theory and focused on a combined approach, a Michigan State University psychologist argues in a new paper. For years, the behavioral and developmental camps have argued over which theory is more effective in teaching communication and other skills to preschool-aged children with ...

Type-2 diabetes, an increasingly common complication of obesity, is associated with poor impulse control. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal BioPsychoSocial Medicine suggest that neurological changes result in this inability to resist temptation, which may in turn exacerbate diabetes. Check the end of this article for a link to download the freely available original study. ...