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neuroplasticity

·December 14, 2010·4 min read

Feeling Robotic Arms Improves Brain Machine Interfaces

Proprioception feedback of a robotic arm helped improve the performance of monkeys using brain machine interfaces to control a computer cursor. When the monkeys were fit with exoskeletons that provided arm movements synchronized with the cursor movement, control of the cursor improved by 40%.

Electrophysiology Featured Neuroscience

·December 9, 2010·3 min read

Acetylcholine and SK Channels Involved in Learning and Memory

New research on learning describes the interaction between acetlycholine receptors and SK channels and their involvement in learning and memory. These findings could lead to new research targeting acetylcholine and SK channels to help cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia as well as help understand learning and memory better.

Brain Cancer Featured Genetics Neuroscience

·November 15, 2010·2 min read

Zif Protein Controls Brain Stem Cells

Zif proteins have been found to control whether a brain stem cell differentiates into a neuron or renews as a brain stem cell. There are Zif related proteins in humans that may be targeted by new treatments for brain cancer and other diseases.

Electrophysiology Featured Neuroscience

·November 2, 2010·2 min read

Single N-type Calcium Channel May Enable Neurotransmitter Release

Computational neuroscience research provides new information on the N-type calcium channel and synaptic transmission. The computational neuroscience model investigated shows that a single open N-type calcium channel's current may be sufficient to enable neurotransmitter release.

Electrophysiology Featured Neuroscience

·October 27, 2010·5 min read

Human Thought Can Voluntarily Control Neurons in Brain

Neuroscience research involving epileptic patients with brain electrodes surgically implanted in their medial temporal lobes shows that patients learned to consciously control individual neurons deep in the brain with thoughts.

Featured Neurology Neuroscience

·October 26, 2010·3 min read

Blind People Process Touch Faster

Recent visual neuroscience research provides evidence that blind people process the sense of touch faster than people with normal vision. The research also found that each blind person's tactile perception time was nearly equal to their average speed of their finger moving from one Braille character to the next.

Genetics Neuroscience

·October 18, 2010·2 min read

Neurobiologists Genetically Engineer Mice to Smell Light

Neurobiologists have genetically engineered mice to smell light. This optogenetics research provides a better understanding of the neural basis of...

Featured Neurology

·September 27, 2010·3 min read

Changing Right Handers To Left Handers

Neuroscientists at UC Berkeley have discovered that stimulation of a certain area of the brain can cause a change in which hand a person favors to perform a task. Using transcranial magnetic stimulation on right handed test subjects, researchers discovered that stimulating the posterior parietal cortex on the left side caused an increase in the use of the left hand. Researchers suggested this finding might be useful in discovering methods to help patients overcome learned limb disuse.

Featured Neurology

·September 22, 2010·3 min read

Can Career Choices Influence Dementia?

Correlating data from 588 patients diagnosed with frontotemporal lobe degeneration (FTLD), researchers found that subjects with professions which related highly for verbal skills had greater tissue loss on the right hand side of the brain. By contrast, those whose professions required less aptitude for verbal skills, for example flight engineers, had more tissue damage to the left hand side of the brain.

Featured Neurology Neuroscience

·August 18, 2010·3 min read

Older Corpus Collosum Crosstalk Slows Response Times

This research shows that the loss of connections in the corpus collosum could be partly responsible for slower response times seen in older animals and humans due to too much crosstalk and confusion between the brain hemispheres.

Neurology Neuroscience

·August 15, 2010·2 min read