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Home > News > Tags > neurons
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According to some researchers, experts looking for the origins of multiple sclerosis (MS) may have been looking in the wrong place all along. They argue that the terrible disease may be caused by blockages along blood vessels, which physically prevent blood from reaching the brain, thus producing all the effects that... |
27 November 2009
18:01 GMT |
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Scientists at the Interuniversity Microelectronics Center (IMEC) have recently showcased their latest innovation, a small microchip that is able to mediate communications between electrical and biological cells. The find could be of tremendous use for the field of physiology, as well as for the development of new gen... |
27 November 2009
02:26 GMT |
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The human body has evolved over millions of years to the point where it can make the best out of itself, during the healing process. As a person is recovering from an accident or an injury, such as a broken arm, its pain system becomes hyper-sensitized. This essentially means that even simple and normal actions, as w... |
17 November 2009
02:49 GMT |
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Each and every action that we perform, be it a thought or an actual movement of an arm or leg, is done via electrical impulses. These impulses travel through neurons in nerve fibers from head to toe in extremely brief periods of time, a trait that allows us to perform sudden movements, and not experience “lags&... |
28 October 2009
21:11 GMT |
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When it picks up sudden movements or sounds, the brain of most animals – including humans – needs to reach a conclusion fast, and to act on that so as to keep the body out of harm's way. A new scientific study has revealed that there are numerous neural pathways that compete for attention inside the ... |
24 October 2009
03:31 GMT |
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Whether we realize it or not, our daily lives are made possible, and so much easier, by the precise control that we have over our mundane activities, such as eating, driving a car, or playing an instrument. All of these actions require precise timing and coordination, yet the mechanisms underlying this ability are ve... |
20 October 2009
21:11 GMT |
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Experts from the University of Michigan (UM) have recently announced the development of a new type of brain implant that could have the ability to boost people's capacity of interacting with their prosthetic devices, leading to an increased quality of life. Robotic appendages could thus become a lot more control... |
15 October 2009
04:09 GMT |
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When a new brain develops, there are two key processes that determine its final architecture – proliferation and differentiation. The former refers to the actual number of cells that provides the basis for neural growth, while the latter refers to the function these materials take, in becoming a certain type of... |
5 October 2009
02:15 GMT |
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The human brain is arguably the most complex natural system in the world today. After millions of years of evolution, it grew to an impressive average size, and encompasses billions of neurons, tied together via a massive number of synaptic connections. Understanding how it functions is one of mankind's greatest... |
3 October 2009
05:53 GMT |
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Producing the neurotransmitter dopamine outside the brain is one of the main goals in medicine today, but devising setups for this, as in creating dopamine-producing neurons, has proven to be extremely difficult. Now, this goal may be one step closer to reality, thanks to a new study by experts at the Swedish medical... |
2 October 2009
18:51 GMT |
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When a child is born, the best possible way to describe what their brain looks like is chaos. Neural networks are not fully formed yet, and the general aspect is one of disarray. However, out of that chaos, highly ordered neurons begin to pop up, and eventually form centers with very specific tasks. The mechanism und... |
29 September 2009
10:11 GMT |
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Although it may sound unbelievable, many scientific achievements take place behind closed doors and beyond the knowledge of the public. Such is the case with the work of University of Reading experts Kevin Warwick and Ben Whalley, from the UK, who are currently conducting experiments on controlling robots with cluste... |
10 September 2009
09:42 GMT |
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Experts from the University of Washington have recently managed a significant breakthrough in treating paralysis, when they have created a set of circuity that allows a monkey with a temporal disability in a wrist to move it. The circuits and wires, controlled by a central unit, bypassed a nerve that had been sedated... |
1 September 2009
05:50 GMT |
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Severe disorders such as epilepsy, Parkinson's disease and perhaps even paralysis could be cured with nanoparticle-based treatments in the future. The tiny structures were recently proven to be able to assist human nervous tissue in regrowing, following accidents, and also showed a remarkable ability to carry dr... |
28 August 2009
19:41 GMT |
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For decades, doctors and researchers have used electricity to study or treat the human brain. Such investigations have led to the discovery of important centers in the cortex, such as the motor center and the pleasure one. Some treatments for conditions such as Parkinson's and even depression have been developed... |
27 August 2009
02:58 GMT |
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According to a new scientific study, people who are obese tend to have up to eight percent less brain tissue than others of average weight. The paper also reveals that the brains of obesity patients also seem to be more than 16 years older than those of leaner people the same age as theirs. The results have also main... |
26 August 2009
06:07 GMT |
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Neurodegenerative conditions are, at this point, diseases that cannot be treated, and that progress until they finally claim the lives of their victims. They include such awful disorders as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and Huntington's, whose effects on the human brain can, at this point, only be postponed... |
20 August 2009
21:51 GMT |
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Small children at times surprise their family and relatives when they are caught with an amazed or curious look in their eyes, which seems to hint at the fact that the “wheels” inside their brains are spinning full speed. Parents have known this for a long time, but now a new scientific study comes to con... |
12 August 2009
01:46 GMT |
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Experts studying the human brain have for a long time known that neurons communicate with each other through vesicles no more than a couple of hundred nanometers wide. These vessels transport neurotransmitter molecules, which, when they bind to a neuron, release a series of chemicals that are picked up by the next ne... |
6 August 2009
20:21 GMT |
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According to a new set of scientific studies, the lower portions of the human digestive tract can be artificially stimulated to produce new neurons, a find that may lead to the development of new, groundbreaking treatments for a broad range of intestinal disorders. Details of the new study, conducted on unsuspecting ... |
5 August 2009
05:42 GMT |
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A new study from experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Picower Institute for Learning and Memory shows that we may have more to learn from our successes than from our failures. The new research, conducted on monkeys, revealed that neurons in the brain involved in learning became a lot more fine-t... |
5 August 2009
03:49 GMT |
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Often labeled as one of the most ambitious projects in the world, the Blue Brain initiative was started in 2005 with the purpose of constructing an artificial brain. Through that, its creators understand constructing an accurate replica of the way our minds work that could be used in studying mental conditions in the... |
23 July 2009
08:59 GMT |
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For many years, researchers have been wondering if the human brain grows neurons once it reaches adulthood, or whether the number of brain cells we're born with is the maximum we'll ever get. Once it was established that we, indeed, grew new neurons as we got older, the debate has moved over what purpose th... |
10 July 2009
10:02 GMT |
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Despite decades of research, scientists have not yet been able to come up with efficient drugs to treat conditions of the neurons associated with the loss of myelin insulation, such as multiple sclerosis and diabetic neuropathy. One of the main difficulties in this line of research is the availability of test materia... |
24 June 2009
06:54 GMT |
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In an effort to identify exactly how quickly alcohol acts on the human brain, scientists from the Heidelberg University Hospital, led by researcher Armin Biller, placed eight men and seven women in a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine, and gave them alcohol. The participants drank from straws the equivalent of ... |
16 June 2009
05:37 GMT |
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The neurodegenerative disorder known as Huntington's disease (HD) is one of the most damaging ones out there, and there is currently no cure for it. Health experts say it's caused by mutations in the Huntingtin protein (HTT), which is generated by the Huntingtin gene, present in all humans. This gene contai... |
15 June 2009
15:51 GMT |
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The neuroscience community has over the past few years been involved in endless arguments, as to whether a technique known as deep-brain stimulation – electrodes inserted in various parts of the cortex, which have electrical current passing through them – can trigger the formation of new, functional neuro... |
30 May 2009
04:55 GMT |
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Experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Labs have attempted to control the neural activity inside the brain of a primate using lasers, for the first time in history. This type of effort is not a new one, and previous attempts of doing that focused more on flies, rodents and fish. However, the most ... |
30 April 2009
03:41 GMT |
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The question of how proteins inside the brain know exactly where to bind has had experts scratching their head since the mechanism was first discovered. There are those proteins who travel to a brain cell's axon, and those who travel to the dendrites, but how do proteins know where to differentiate, and which ro... |
27 April 2009
09:40 GMT |
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Stanford University researchers have recently demonstrated in two scientific studies, published in the journals Nature and Science, that neurons in each brain need to follow a specific pattern, in order to function at peak capacity without wearing their “user” out. Precisely tuning the oscillations of bra... |
27 April 2009
05:58 GMT |
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“Mirror” neurons are a special type of brain cells, which experts believe help people understand the actions and intentions of those they come in contact with. Their contribution to the development of personalities is, therefore, considerable, but a new research proves that they are not working alone in t... |
17 April 2009
16:01 GMT |
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Engineering living nerves thus far has seemed next to impossible to most research teams, as evidenced by the little progress recorded in this field. However, it would seem that University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (UPSM) scientists have manged to actually engineer brain nerves that can be transplanted in liv... |
20 March 2009
09:55 GMT |
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Scientists at the UT Southwestern Medical Center have discovered that brain cells in the frontal cortex can store trace amounts of memories on their own, for as long as an entire minute. The study, which will appear in the February issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, details for the first time portions of the b... |
26 January 2009
02:03 GMT |
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Recent research done in Italy and Switzerland shows that carbon nanotubes may be the best bet in the attempt to engineer an artificial brain, mostly because of their chemical and electrical properties, which closely resemble those of human neurons. The complete study was published on December 21st, in the on-line iss... |
22 December 2008
07:08 GMT |
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A new type of sensor will solve issues related to the fact that most neuron activity readers don't stay in place for very long periods of time, thus giving doctors and surgeons a hard time in reading their data and making informed decisions based on them. The newly-designed electrode features small, microscopic ... |
11 December 2008
05:45 GMT |
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Duke University researchers managed to take a giant step forward when their experiment, focused on observing exactly how vision develops in simple brains, succeeded. The team observed the changes a ferret's brain underwent after it first opened its eyes, 30 days from its birth. The way in which neurons arranged ... |
23 October 2008
04:30 GMT |
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Neural networks are artificial computational models, made up of densely interconnected adaptive processing units, known as a parallel distributed processing network, essentially a computing paradigm that is loosely modeled after cortical structures of the brain.Compared to a PC, that has only one powerful processor,... |
15 May 2007
06:35 GMT |
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