Inhibiting an enzyme in the brains of newborns suffering from oxygen and blood flow deprivation stops a type of brain damage that is a leading cause of cerebral palsy, mental retardation and death, according to researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.

Reporting their results in the Journal of Neuroscience, the scientists show blocking the brain enzyme, tissue-type plasminogen activator (tPA), prevents progressive brain damage triggered by the lack of oxygen and blood supply. The experimental pre-clinical treatment involved putting a naturally occurring substance called plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) into the brains of newborn rats, said Chia-Yi Kuan, M.D. PhD, senior investigator on the study and a researcher in the divisions of Developmental Biology and Neurology at Cincinnati Children's.

A new study found that alcohol consumption during pregnancy and small body size at birth predict poorer sleep and higher risk of sleep disturbances in 8-year-old children born at term. Findings are clinically significant, as poor sleep and sleep disturbances in children are associated with obesity, depressive symptoms, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and poor neurobehavioral functioning.

A new study by psychologists at the University at Buffalo and the F. W. Olin College of Engineering finds that in the aftermath of national trauma, the ability to make sense out of what happened has implications for individual well-being and that the kinds of stories people tell about the incident predict very different psychological outcomes for them.

The study, "The Political is Personal: Narrating 9/11 and Psychological Well-Being," is by Jonathan M. Adler, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology at Olin, and Michael J. Poulin, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology at UB.

"Understanding the stories people tell about national events provides a unique opportunity to understand how individual well-being is linked to the state of the society," Poulin explains.

The study is published in the August issue of Journal of Personality.

New research has uncovered an early disruption in the process of memory formation in older humans who exhibit some early brain changes associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD) but show little or no memory impairment. The work, published in the July 30th issue of the journal Neuron, sheds light on the role of amyloid protein in memory impairment and may lead to development of strategies for predicting and treating cognitive decline in individuals who are at-risk for AD.

Amyloid ?-protein plays a major pathogenic role in AD, a devastating neurodegenerative disorder characterized by progressive cognitive impairment and memory loss. In fact, one of the primary characteristics of AD is the accumulation and deposition of neuron-damaging clumps of amyloid protein. Previous studies have led to the suggestion that amyloid deposition begins many years prior to the onset of clinical symptoms. However, the exact link between amyloid deposition and memory impairment has not been clearly demonstrated in humans.

What if you could test your risk for Alzheimer's disease much like your cholesterol levels — through a simple blood test?

UCLA scientists have discovered a way to measure the amount of amyloid beta that is being absorbed by immune cells in the blood. Amyloid beta forms the plaques considered the hallmark of Alzheimer's disease, and if the immune system isn't adequately clearing amyloid beta, it may indicate Alzheimer's risk, according to the researchers.

MP Biomedicals LLC, a global life sciences and diagnostics company dedicated to Alzheimer's disease research, has received an exclusive, worldwide license to commercialize the UCLA technology and create a diagnostic blood test for public use to screen for Alzheimer's risk.

Similarities in brain activity during lucid dreaming and psychosis suggest that dream therapy may be useful in psychiatric treatment, a European Science Foundation (ESF) workshop has found. This is strengthened by the potential evolutionary relationship between dreams and psychosis.

Lucid dreaming – when you are aware you are dreaming – is a hybrid state between sleeping and being awake. It creates distinct patterns of electrical activity in the brain that have similarities to the patterns made by psychotic conditions such as schizophrenia. Confirming links between lucid dreaming and psychotic conditions offers potential for new therapeutic routes based on how healthy dreaming differs from the unstable states associated with neurological and psychiatric disorders.

It would make sense that teenage mothers have a lot of psychological stress in their lives, but a new study shows that the distress comes before the pregnancy, not because of it.

“Psychological distress does not appear to be caused by teen childbearing, nor does it cause teen childbearing, except apparently among girls from poor households,” said Stefanie Mollborn, Ph.D., an assistant professor of sociology at the Institute of Behavioral Science of the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The study, published in the September issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, used data from two large long-term U.S. surveys that followed thousands of teen girls and women. Participants responded to items on symptoms associated with depression, such as how often they found things that did not usually bother them to be bothersome, how easily they could shake off feeling blue or whether they had trouble concentrating. The researchers did not use the term “depression,” which is a clinical diagnosis.

Schizophrenia is a severely debilitating psychiatric disease that is thought to have its roots in the development of the nervous system; however, major breakthroughs linking its genetics to diagnosis, prognosis and treatment are still unrealized. Jill Morris, PhD assistant professor of Pediatrics at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine and a researcher in the Human Molecular Genetics Program of Children's Memorial Research Center studies a gene that is involved in susceptibility to schizophrenia, Disc1 (Disrupted-In-Schizophrenia 1).

 Moral-ethical and political beliefs colour the way people read opinion questions. This ‘colouring’ process takes place well before people become aware of their answers to such questions. This phenomenon was recently discovered through brain measurements conducted by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and the universities of Amsterdam and Utrecht. The results of their research will be published in the scientific journal Psychological Science .

The researchers based their questions on existing political programmes from a range of parties. Questions focused on issues such as euthanasia, abortion, sperm donation, the legal sale of marihuana, gay marriage and women’s emancipation. Researchers had participants read sentences such as ‘I find euthanasia an acceptable practice’ or ‘I think the growing emancipation of women is a negative trend’. The researchers found that evaluative words such as ‘acceptable’ or ‘negative’ triggered an almost immediate response in the brain. The response differed depending on the participants’ views on the issue in question.

A chimp's attention is captured by faces more effectively than by bananas. A series of experiments suggests that the apes are wired to respond to faces in a similar manner to humans.

Masaki Tomonaga and Tomoko Imura from the Primate Research Institute at Kyoto University, Japan, tested the effects of a series of different images on chimps' reaction times. Tomonaga said, "It is well known that faces are processed in a different manner from other types of complex visual stimuli. Recent studies of face perception in humans clarified that faces represent special stimuli with regard to visuospatial attention as well. That is, they are able to capture our attention. We've shown that chimps share this tendency to notice and pay attention to faces in preference to other objects."