In the midst of all the apparent tumult, intense emotion, and occasional reckless behavior characterizing the teenage years, the brain is, in fact, evolving and developing the neural circuits needed to keep emotions in check. Research in the June 8, 2016 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience describes how the ability to control emotions moves from one brain area to another as teens mature into adults, offering an opportunity to understand how disorders related to emotional control emerge.

“Our study opens the way for a better understanding of the neurobiology behind adolescent behavior in emotionally arousing situations,” said study author Anna Tyborowska of Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. “The findings could also have important clinical implications [as] many psychiatric disorders emerge during adolescence and are characterized by problems with emotional action control.”

Previous research links the spike in sensation-seeking and impulsive behavior during adolescence to the delayed maturation of the prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain involved in reasoning, planning, and decision-making. Study authors Inge Volman, Ivan Toni, and Karin Roelofs previously demonstrated the importance of the anterior prefrontal cortex in emotional control in adults. However, it has not been clear whether and how the delayed development of the prefrontal cortex affects emotional control during adolescence.

Brain stimulation treatments, like electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), are often effective for the treatment of depression. Like antidepressant medications, however, they typically have a delayed onset. For example, a patient may receive several weeks of regular ECT treatments before a full response is achieved.

Thus, there is an impetus to develop antidepressant treatments that act to rapidly improve mood.

Low field magnetic stimulation (LFMS) is one such potential new treatment with rapid mood-elevating effects, as reported by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Weill Cornell Medical College.

New research in humans demonstrates the potential to improve memory with a non-invasive brain stimulation technique delivered during sleep. The results, published in JNeurosci, come from a project funded by the United States Department of Defense that aims to better understand the process of memory consolidation, which could translate into improved memory function in both healthy and patient populations.

The transfer of memories from the hippocampus to the neocortex for long-term storage is thought to be enabled by synchronization of these parts of the brain during sleep. Nicholas Ketz, Praveen Pilly, and colleagues at University of New Mexico sought to enhance this natural process of overnight reactivation or neural replay to improve memory with a closed-loop transcranial alternating current stimulation system matching the phase and frequency of ongoing slow-wave oscillations during sleep.

Participants were trained and tested on a realistic visual discrimination task in which they had to detect potentially threatening hidden objects and people such as explosive devices and enemy snipers. The researchers found that when participants received stimulation during overnight visits to their sleep laboratory, they showed improved performance in detecting targets in similar but novel situations the next day compared to when they did not receive the stimulation, suggesting an integration of recent experience into a more robust and general memory. Overnight memory changes correlated with stimulation-induced neural changes, which could be used to optimize stimulation in future applications. These findings provide a method for enhancing memory consolidation without disturbing sleep.

There’s a hallmark of incurable neurodegenerative diseases – misfolded proteins that clump together to form sticky plaques or tangles called fibrils.

Now, new research has discovered that a protein normally tasked with clearing cells of molecular debris might be a common feature of a cluster of common and rare neurodegenerative diseases, including two distinct forms of dementia.

The finding was “both unexpected and surprising” and “raises many intriguing questions”, according to the team behind the study, who made 3D-reconstructions of a twisted protein they found in “copious amounts” in some brain tissue samples.

A single protein can reverse the developmental clock on adult brain cells called astrocytes, morphing them into stem-like cells that produce neurons and other cell types, UT Southwestern researchers report in a PNAS study. The findings might someday lead to a way to regenerate brain tissue after disease or injury.

“We’re showing that it may be possible to reprogram the fate of this subset of brain cells, giving them the potential to rebuild the damaged brain,” said study leader and co-corresponding author Chun-Li Zhang, Ph.D., Professor of Molecular Biology and an Investigator in the Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute.

During development, mammalian stem cells readily proliferate to produce neurons throughout the brain and cells—called glia—that help support them. Glia help maintain optimal brain function by performing essential jobs like cleaning up waste and insulating nerve fibers. However, the mature brain largely loses that stem cell capacity. Only two small regenerative zones, or niches, remain in the adult brain, Dr. Zhang explained, leaving it with extremely limited capacity to heal itself following injury or disease.