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Category: neuroscience – Page 1,034

Wearing a specifically designed compression collar around the neck may prevent or reduce the devastating effects of head collisions in sports, two new studies have found.

The neck device, called a Q-Collar, is designed to press gently on the jugular vein to slow blood outflow increasing the brain’s blood volume, according to researchers from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Centre in the US.

The resulting effect of the increased blood volume helps the brain fit tighter within the skull cavity, reducing the energy absorbed by the brain during collisions, researchers said.

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WEDNESDAY, June 15, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Brain cancer patients might benefit from an implantable ultrasound device that appears to enhance chemotherapy treatment, a small study says.

Researchers from the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital in Paris and other French institutions tested the experimental device on 15 patients with recurrent glioblastoma, a particularly deadly brain cancer. When the so-called SonoCloud was activated, sound waves opened the blood-brain barrier, letting in more chemotherapy, they said.

“The walls of the blood vessels in the brain are very difficult to cross for certain molecules,” said Frederic Sottilini, CEO of Paris-based CarThera, the company developing SonoCloud.

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After axonal injury, nearby mitochondria become incapable of producing ATP, as indicated by their change in color from yellow (healthy) to green (damaged) (credit: Zhou et al., 2016)

Boosting the transport of mitochondria (cell energy suppliers) along neuronal axons enhances the ability of mouse nerve cells to repair themselves and regrow after injury or disease, researchers at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke report in The Journal of Cell Biology.

Neurons need large amounts of energy to extend their axons long distances through the body. This energy — in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) — is provided by mitochondria.

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Smart man.

Android creator Andy Rubin has several tricks up his sleeve. Rubin’s company Playground is currently tinkering with quantum computing and smartphone AI, and he believes that this combination could create a conscious intelligence that would underpin all of technology.

andy rubin

Rubin and his team of roughly fifteen engineers, who hold experience in everything from computer science to mechanical engineering, are currently working with about fifteen other companies to release new and innovative products. Playground enjoys “hatching” new companies within the company and using its vast resources. One such hatchling is a quantum computing firm that Rubin refuses to name. He thinks the company could one day commercialize quantum devices using standard manufacturing processes. Quantum computing has the potential to boost processing power.

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Now this is going to be very interesting. We will learn a lot about self control, stress, and how cultural condition definitely applies to how people handles different forms and types of stress. Cannot wait to see the results of this study. And, with the government taking these first steps may actually show hope.

China’s mental health record is tarred by social stigma and a lack of resources. While public initiatives are now seeking to rectify the issue, the country’s active startup ecosystem is also competing to fill the gaps.

According to a study published in 2011, a staggering 91.8 per cent of Chinese people with a mental health diagnosis never seek help. Part of that has to do with the shortage of trained mental health professionals in China, as well as the country’s psychiatrist-to-patient ratio, which is as low as 1.24 per 100,000 patients, compared to the global average of 4.15 per 100,000.

“The problem is huge,” says Jin Hsueh, the co-founder and CEO of KaJin Health, a Taiwanese startup that provides an online counseling service to people in Chinese-speaking communities. “There are [90] million [people with] depression in China, and very, very [few] that ever seek for help, talking to a doctor or therapist.”

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Very insightful for my deep mind/ neuro mapping friends.

If you have trouble learning a new language as an adult, maybe you can blame your genes and brain structure, a U.S. study suggested Monday.

The study by researchers at the University of Washington showed that genetic variations of the so-called COMT gene and a measure of the strength of the brain’s communications network — known as “white matter”— jointly accounted for 46 percent of the reason for why some college students performed better than others in the second language class.

“We are interested in understanding why individuals learn differently, including those who perform well and those who perform poorly,” said lead author Ping Mamiya, a research scientist at the UW’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS).

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Visual information from near and far space are processed with differing degrees of acuity.

Neuroscientists from Tübingen have discovered how our brain processes visual stimuli above and below the horizon differently. The researchers led by Dr. Ziad Hafed of the Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience (CIN) at the University of Tübingen investigated non-human primates, ascertaining that different parts of the visual field are represented asymmetrically in the superior colliculus, a brain structure central to visual perception and behavior. More neural tissue is assigned to the upper visual field than to the lower. As a result, visual stimuli above the horizon are processed sharper, stronger, and faster: our brain is wearing bifocals, so to speak.

Seeing — arguably our most important way of perceiving the world — mostly happens without conscious intent. We see much better in the center of our visual field (along the visual axis) than in the periphery. So when our brain detects an object of interest in the periphery of our visual field, it immediately initiates an eye movement so our visual axis intersects with those objects. Once an object is in our direct line of sight, we can perceive it in far more depth and detail.

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