Behavioral Neuroscience – News and Features

Fast-acting ketamine by-product – may be future therapy for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s There is new hope for people suffering from depression. Researchers have identified a compound, hydroxynorketamine (HNK), that may treat symptoms of depression just as effectively and rapidly as ketamine, without the unwanted side effects associated with the psychoactive drug, according to a study in the July issue of Anesthesiology, the official medical journal of the American Society of Anesthesiologists® (ASA®).

New mouse model shows that APC regulates proteins critical for normal learning, memory, and behavior Autistic-like behaviors and decreased cognitive ability may be associated with disruption of the function of the Adenomatous Polyposis Coli (APC) gene.

In a further test of a novel theory that suggests autism is the consequence of abnormal cell communication, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report that an almost century-old drug approved for treating sleeping sickness also restores normal cellular signaling in a mouse model of autism, reversing symptoms of the neurological disorder in animals that were the human biological age equivalent of 30 years old.

Some aspects of sight are not impaired by mental overload, new research shows From animated ads on Main Street to downtown intersections packed with pedestrians, the eyes of urban drivers have much to see.

Oxford University researchers funded by Parkinson's UK have developed a simple and quick MRI technique that offers promise for early diagnosis of Parkinson's disease.

For some cigarette smokers, strategies to aid quitting work well, while for many others no method seems to work. Researchers have now identified an aspect of brain activity that helps to predict the effectiveness of a reward-based strategy as motivation to quit smoking.

While most people celebrate the start of summer on June 21, nearly 1 million Americans are facing the debilitating pain of cluster headaches due to Earth's shift towards the sun. The human biological rhythm is tied into earth's rotation, making individuals who suffer cluster from headaches encounter unrelenting head pain.

MIT study finds neurons that hum together encode new information. The human mind can rapidly absorb and analyze new information as it flits from thought to thought. These quickly changing brain states may be encoded by synchronization of brain waves across different brain regions, according to a new study from MIT neuroscientists.

Researchers in Jeffrey Friedman’s Laboratory of Molecular Genetics at The Rockefeller University have devised a way to create snapshots of gene expression in neurons based on their connections. These snapshots contain exhaustive lists of the active genes within neurons that send information to a synapse, the junction between neurons.

Brain scans differentiate adults who have recovered from childhood ADHD and those whose difficulties linger. About 11 percent of school-age children in the United States have been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).