the "Jennifer Aniston Neuron"

"Electrical stimulation of subjects' brains is found to accelerate learning in military and civilian subjects, although researchers are yet wary of drawing larger conclusions about the mechanism"

"British scientists have identified a gene responsible for regulating chronic pain, called HCN2, and say their discovery should help drug researchers in their search for more effective, targeted pain-killing medicines.

Scientists from Cambridge University said that if drugs could be designed to block the protein produced by the gene, they could treat a type of pain known as neuropathic pain, which is linked to nerve damage and often very difficult to control with currently available drugs..."

Using sophisticated imaging equipment they have constructed a 3-D movie of the brain as it changes while an anaesthetic drug takes effect.

Brian Pollard, Professor of Anaesthesia at Manchester Medical School, will tell the European Anaesthesiology Congress in Amsterdam today (Saturday) that the real-time 3-D images seemed to show that losing consciousness involves a change in electrical activity deep within the brain, changing the activity of certain groups of nerve cells (neurons) and hindering communication between different parts of the brain.

He said the findings appear to support a hypothesis put forward by Professor Susan Greenfield, of the University of Oxford, about the nature of consciousness itself. Prof Greenfield suggests consciousness is formed by different groups of brain cells (neural assemblies), which work efficiently together, or not, depending on the available sensory stimulations, and that consciousness is not an all-or-none state but more like a dimmer switch, changing according to growth, mood or drugs. When someone is anaesthetised it appears that small neural assemblies either work less well together or inhibit communication with other neural assemblies.

Professor Pollard, whose team is based at Manchester Royal Infirmary, said: “Our findings suggest that unconsciousness may be the increase of inhibitory assemblies across the brain’s cortex. These findings lend support to Greenfield’s hypothesis of neural assemblies forming consciousness.”

, the active ingredient of curcuminoids -- a natural substance found in turmeric root -- that may help boost the immune system in clearing amyloid beta, a peptide that forms the plaques found in Alzheimer's disease. Using blood samples from Alzheimer's disease patients, researchers found that bisdemethoxycurcumin boosted immune cells called macrophages to clear amyloid beta.

Curry derivative preserves brain health after stroke: curumin-based hybrid drug is neurotrophic and neuroprotective

Rats given access to high-fat foods showed some of the same characteristics as animals hooked on cocaine or heroin--and found it hard to quit even when given electric shocks

Researchers find a larger amygdala is linked to a larger social circle #brain (via @DanielPink)

Useful perspective: "Bring back boredom." Early part of the article not as good as the later. #education #neuroscience

Array tomography

SCHIZOPHRENIA

"A structure in the brain in which we unconsciously define who we are 'would warm Freud's heart,' says Dr. Raichle"...
the 'default mode network'

Claudia Hammond investigates the latest research into the working of the five year old brain, and asks whether the latest developments in neuroscience might have an application in the classroom.

In a new study, to be published online Sept. 16 in the journal Current Biology, researchers from UC Berkeley's Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and School of Optometry found that study participants showed significantly greater benefits from practice on a task that involved discriminating directions of motion after they took donepezil, sold under the brand name Aricept, compared with a placebo.

The Human Connectome Project - v. cool: data, workflows, derived data and visualizations available "to freely download"

Bowlby wld have loved this amazing Nature feature on behav epigenetics & scepticism of traditional molecular biologists:

Brain builder 101: a comprehensive stuctural and anatomical atlas of the human brain

Peeling Away Theories on Gender and the Brain

Charlemagne: "to have a second language is to have a second soul" Great piece on language via @jamesoreilly #neuroscience

Freeze or run? Not that simple: Scientists discover neural switch that controls fear
...the amygdala in the news

"The earliest days of computational neuroscience. Wonderfully geeky, great photo." [though apparently there were no women in those days]

Scientists successfully use human induced pluripotent stem cells to treat Parkinson's in rodents

Mammal brains are highly interconnected networks, rather than straight chains of signals, new research sugge..

Rescuing fruit flies from Alzheimer's disease

Scicurious's fun and fiesty neuroscience blog can now be found here:

Genes and pesticide exposure interact to increase men's risk for Parkinson's disease

Alzheimer’s brain protein may provide target for treating mental retardation

LindaStone: Most read from @theEconomist: A common parasite is correlated with schizophrenia http://econ.st/9xoObX

...RT @guardianscience: Autism story tracker. Updates and commentary on genetics paper in Nature

Pseudocolored maximal projection overlay of several confocal images of cultured mouse hippocampal neurons fluorescently labeled with antibodies against microtubule-associated protein (MAP2) (green) and against synapsins (yellow).

In general, the pH of our brain is carefully regulated. A large increase or decrease in brain acidity can seriously disrupt brain functioning. This new study indicates that pH can sometimes rise and fall in synapses, the points of communication between individual neurons in the brain. Some synapses include specialized proteins that "sense" acidity. These proteins (called "'acid-sensing ion channels", or ASICs) stimulate neurons when increased acid is detected.

The Iowa study shows that genetically modified mice lacking these acid-sensing proteins have a greatly reduced capacity to show either instinctive or learned fear. When the researchers restored the ASIC gene only in the amygdala of these genetically modified mice, they observed a normalization of fear behaviors. So their studies suggest that the ability to detect changes in synaptic pH in the amygdala is essential for normal fear behavior.

Interesting Science Careers post on working in social neuroscience. via @J_Cacioppo

apparently mary poppins was right