Publishing in Neuron, the team reveal the interplay of brain chemicals which help us pay attention in work funded by the Wellcome Trust and BBSRC. By changing the way neurons respond to external stimuli we improve our perceptual abilities. While these changes can affect the strength of a neuronal response, they can also affect the fidelity of that response. Lead author Alex Thiele, Professor of Visual Neuroscience explains: "When you communicate with others, you can make yourself better heard by speaking louder or by speaking more clearly. Neurons appear to do similar ...

An image, captured at 11:06 a.m. EDT on May 22, 2013, from the ESA/NASA Solar Heliospheric Observatory shows the conjunction of two coronal mass ejections streaming away from the sun. This image is what's known as a coronagraph, in which the light of the sun is blocked in order to make its dimmer atmosphere, the corona, visible. The M7-class flare was also associated with a coronal mass ejection or CME, another solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of particles into space. While this CME was not Earth-directed, it has combined with an earlier CME, and the flank ...

MADISON, Wis. – In an age when microbial pathogens are growing increasingly resistant to the conventional antibiotics used to tamp down infection, a team of Wisconsin scientists has synthesized a potent new class of compounds capable of curbing the bacteria that cause staph infections. Writing online in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, a group led by University of Wisconsin-Madison chemistry Professor Helen Blackwell describes agents that effectively interfere with the "quorum sensing" behavior of Staphylococcus aureus, a bacterium at the root of a host of ...

The first symptoms of major depression may be behavioral, but the common mental illness is based in biology — and not limited to the brain. In recent years some studies have linked major, long-term depression with life-threatening chronic disease and with earlier death, even after lifestyle risk factors have been taken into account. Now a research team led by Owen Wolkowitz, MD, professor of psychiatry at UC San Francisco, has found that within cells of the immune system, activity of an enzyme called telomerase is greater, on average, in untreated individuals with major ...

MADISON, Wis. – Until now, little was scientifically known about the human potential to cultivate compassion — the emotional state of caring for people who are suffering in a way that motivates altruistic behavior. A new study by researchers at the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center of the University of Wisconsin–Madison shows that adults can be trained to be more compassionate. The report, recently published online in the journal Psychological Science, is the first to investigate whether training adults in compassion can result in greater altruistic ...

"Neisseria meningitidis is an important human pathogen that can cause rapidly progressing, life threatening meningitis and meningococcal sepsis in humans," Professor Jennings said. "Until now we have not known how it attaches to the human host. It has been a long-standing mystery how it attaches to the airway to colonise" People can be carriers of the bug and not get any symptoms, while some people progress to invasive disease. To understand why, we need to know the detail of how the bacterium colonises the airway. Now that the pathway has been identified we can study ...

Nearly two-thirds of patients with high-risk neuroblastoma —a common tumor that forms in the nerve cells of children—cannot be cured using tumor-killing cancer drugs. A study published by Cell Press in the May 23 issue of Chemistry & Biology reveals a new genomic approach to screen for compounds that could inhibit tumor growth by causing cancer cells to differentiate, or convert from immature cells to more specialized cell types. Using this screening method, the researchers identified a compound that causes neuroblastoma cells to differentiate, uncovering a promising new ...

VIDEO: People with high IQ scores aren't just more intelligent. They also process sensory information differently, according to a study reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on May 23. The... Click here for more information. People with high IQ scores aren't just more intelligent. They also process sensory information differently, according to a study reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on May 23. The findings show that the brains of people with ...

White tigers today are only seen in zoos, but they belong in nature, say researchers reporting new evidence about what makes those tigers white. Their spectacular white coats are produced by a single change in a known pigment gene, according to the study, appearing on May 23 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. "The white tiger represents part of the natural genetic diversity of the tiger that is worth conserving, but is now seen only in captivity," says Shu-Jin Luo of China's Peking University. Luo, Xiao Xu, Ruiqiang Li, and their colleagues advocate a proper ...

Gaucher disease causes debilitating and sometimes fatal neurodegeneration in early childhood. Recent studies have uncovered a link between the mutations responsible for Gaucher disease and an increased risk of developing Parkinson's disease later in life. New research published online on May 23 in the Cell Press journal Cell Metabolism indicates that the neurodegeneration found in Gaucher disease stems from defects in processes that break down and remove unwanted material from cells. This defective trash removal in cells can lead to the toxic build-up of proteins found ...

Plants can't swat a bug or run away from one, but that doesn't mean that plants can't fight back. Plants have evolved unique and sophisticated immune systems to defend themselves against insects and pathogens. Plant hormones called jasmonates play an important role in this defense, but jasmonates have been found to also be important for plant growth. Now, researchers reporting in the May 23 issue of the Cell Press journal Molecular Cell have discovered a gene in the jasmonate pathway that controls plant defenses but does not play a detectable role in plant development. ...

Toronto, May 23 2013 - New techniques in imaging of brain activity developed by Jean Gotman, from McGill University's Montreal Neurological Institute, and his colleagues lead to improved treatment of patients suffering from epilepsy. The combination of electroencephalogram (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) leads to more precise localization of the areas generating epileptic seizures, giving neurosurgeons a better understanding of the optimal ways of intervention, if appropriate. These results were presented at the 2013 Canadian Neuroscience Meeting, ...

Studying the networks of connections in the brains of people affected by schizophrenia, bipolar disease or depression has allowed Dr. Peter Williamson, from Western University, to gain a better understanding of the biological basis of these important diseases. Dr. Williamson and colleagues have shown that different networks, found specifically in humans, are disrupted in different psychiatric diseases. These results were presented at the 2013 Canadian Neuroscience Meeting, the annual meeting of the Canadian Association for Neuroscience - Association Canadienne des Neurosciences ...

VIDEO: Researchers at the University of Rochester have found that a simple visual task can predict IQ. In the study, individuals watched video clips of black and white bars moving across... Click here for more information. A brief visual task can predict IQ, according to a new study. This surprisingly simple exercise measures the brain's unconscious ability to filter out visual movement. The study shows that individuals whose brains are better at automatically suppressing ...

PHILADELPHIA — Frequent heartburn was positively associated with cancers of the throat and vocal cord among nonsmokers and nondrinkers, and the use of antacids, but not prescription medications, had a protective effect, according to data published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. "Previous studies examining gastric reflux and cancers of the head and neck have generated mixed results," said Scott M. Langevin, Ph.D., postdoctoral research fellow at Brown University in Providence, R.I. "Most of those ...

Madrid, 23 May 2013.- CNIC researchers have discovered that the daily clearance of neutrophils from the body stimulates the release of hematopoietic stem cells from the bone marrow into the bloodstream, according to a report published today in the journal Cell. Neutrophils are leukocytes (white blood cells) that defend the body against attack from bacteria and other disease organisms. To perform their function, these cells release toxic substances when they come into contact with microorganisms. However, release of these substances in the wrong place by damaged neutrophils ...

With this new view of a spectacular stellar nursery ESO is celebrating 15 years of the Very Large Telescope — the world's most advanced optical instrument. This picture reveals thick clumps of dust silhouetted against the pink glowing gas cloud known to astronomers as IC 2944. These opaque blobs resemble drops of ink floating in a strawberry cocktail, their whimsical shapes sculpted by powerful radiation coming from the nearby brilliant young stars. This new picture celebrates an important anniversary for the Very Large Telescope - it is fifteen years since the first ...

LA JOLLA, CA – May 23, 2013 – Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have devised a powerful new technique for finding antibodies that have a desired biological effect. Antibodies, which can bind to billions of distinct targets, are already used in many of the world's best-selling medicines, diagnostics and laboratory reagents. The newly reported technique should greatly speed the process of discovering such products. "For the first time, we have a selection method whose power matches the vast diversity of the antibody repertoire," said Richard A. Lerner, ...

Tomatoes, said to be the world's most popular fruit, can be made both better-tasting and longer-lasting thanks to UK research with purple GM varieties. "Working with GM tomatoes that are different to normal fruit only by the addition of a specific compound, allows us to pinpoint exactly how to breed in valuable traits," said Professor Cathie Martin from the John Innes Centre. The research could also lead to GM varieties with better flavour, health and shelf life characteristics because even higher levels of the compounds can be achieved. In research to be published ...

Tempe, Ariz. — An amazing glow-in-the-dark cockroach, a harp-shaped carnivorous sponge and the smallest vertebrate on Earth are just three of the newly discovered top 10 species selected by the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University. A global committee of taxonomists — scientists responsible for species exploration and classification — announced its list of top 10 species from 2012 today, May 23. The announcement, now in its sixth year, coincides with the anniversary of the birth of Carolus Linnaeus — the 18th century Swedish botanist ...

LA JOLLA, CA---Scientists have uncovered a survival mechanism that occurs in breast cells that have just turned premalignant-cells on the cusp between normalcy and cancers-which may lead to new methods of stopping tumors. In their Molecular Cell study, the Salk Institute researchers report that a protein known as transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β), considered a tumor suppressor in early cancer development, can actually promote cancer once a cell drifts into a pre-cancerous state. The discovery-a surprise to the investigators-raises the tantalizing possibility ...

A University of British Columbia engineer and a team of U.S. researchers have made a breakthrough utilizing spray-on technology that could revolutionize the way optical lenses are made and used. Kenneth Chau, an assistant professor in the School of Engineering at UBC's Okanagan campus, is a key investigator among colleagues at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Maryland. Their work – the development of a flat lens – is published in the May 23 issue of the journal Nature. Nearly all lenses – whether in an eye, a camera, or a microscope – are presently ...

A discovery made in fish could aid research into motor neuron disease. Scientists have found that a key hormone allows young zebrafish to develop and replace their motor neurons – a kind of nerve cell found in the spinal cord. The discovery may aid efforts to create neurons from stem cells in the lab, and support further research into a disorder for which there is still no cure. In humans, motor neurons control important muscle activities such as speaking, walking and breathing. When these cells stop working, it causes difficulties in motor functions and leads ...

22 May 2013, Paris, France: The Lotus Valve, a second-generation transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) device, was successfully implanted in all of the first 60 patients in results from REPRISE II reported at EuroPCR 2013, which showed good device performance and low mortality at 30 days. "First generation TAVI devices provide significant clinical benefit, but there are opportunities for improvement," explained lead author Ian Meredith, Director of MonashHeart, Southern Health and Professor of Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. He suggested that ...

Research teams from UW-Milwaukee and the University of York investigating the properties of ultra-thin films of new materials are helping bring quantum computing one step closer to reality. An on-going collaboration between physicists from York and the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, USA, is focusing on understanding, tailoring and tuning the electronic properties of topological insulators (TI) - new materials with surfaces that host a quantum state of matter – at the nanoscale. Understanding the properties of thin films of the new materials and integrating them with ...