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Kumaran D et al., The Emergence and Representation of Knowledge about Social and Nonsocial Hierarchies, 2012, Neuron, doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2012.09.035 Eine neue Studie, die in dem Journal Neuron veröffentlicht wurde, deckt auf, wie das Gehirn Informationen darüber abspeichert, wer in einer Gruppe das ‚Sagen' hat. Die Studie, die gemeinsam von Wissenschaftlern des Instituts für Kognitive Neurologie und Demenzforschung der Universität Magdeburg (IKND), des Deutschen Zentrums für Neurodegenerative Erkrankungen (DZNE, Standort Magdeburg) und der University College London (UCL) durchgeführt wurde, zeigt, dass Menschen zum Lernen von sozialen Rangfolgen einen bestimmten Teil des Gehirns brauchen. Die Größe dieses Gehirnareals sagt voraus, wie gut jemand soziale Rangfolgen lernen und einschätzen kann. Menschen und andere Primaten sind bemerkenswert gut darin, sich gegenseitig innerhalb einer sozialen Hierarchie einzuordnen. „Diese Fähigkeit ist überlebensnotwendig, weil sie hilft, Konflikte zu vermeiden und vorteilhafte Koalitionspartner zu finden. Allerdings wissen wir überraschend wenig darüber, wie das Gehirn dies steuert", sagt der Neurowissenschaftler Prof. Emrah Düzel.

New research uncovers evidence for mirror neurons in humans

ScienceDaily (July 28, 2011) - The human brain is the most complex of all organs, containing billions of neurons with their corresponding projections, all woven together in a highly complex, three-dimensional web. To date, mapping this vast network posed a practically insurmountable challenge to scientists. Now, however, a research team from the Heidelberg-based Max Planck Institute for Medical Research has developed a method for tackling the mammoth task. Using two new computer programs, KNOSSOS and RESCOP, a group of over 70 students mapped a network of more than 100 neurons -- and they did so faster and more accurately than with previous methods.

Chiu now suspects that ALS is initiated by some still unknown agent or event. Then, as nerve cells begin to sicken and die, the nervous system tries to right itself by making microglia behave like wound-healers, secreting IGF-1 and other factors in an attempt to preserve motor neurons. "If the immune system has evolved in a way to help heal motor neurons," Chiu says.

"It is rivers, roots, branches, leaves, mycelium, arteries, veins, lungs, neurons and lightning. It is in the temporal evolution of life and technology. It is both spatial and temporal, both biological and non-biological. We call this self-organizing energy-dissipating fractal 'Knowm', and it is everywhere."

The brain's visual neurons continually develop predictions of what they will perceive and then correct erroneous assumptions as they take in additional external information, according to new research done at Duke University.

For many years, neurons were thought to be alone in executing this task, and glia were consigned to a supporting role regulating a neuron's environment, helping it to grow, and even providing physical scaffolding (glia is Greek for 'glue'). In the past couple of decades, however, this picture has been changing.

Apply the electrodes... Externally modulating the brain's activity can boost its performance. The easiest way to manipulate the brain is through transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), which involves applying electrodes directly to the head to influence neuron activity with an electric current. Roi Cohen Kadosh's team at the University of Oxford showed last year that targeting tDCS at the brain's right parietal lobe can boost a person's arithmetic ability - the effects were still apparent six months after the tDCS session (newscientist.com/article/dn19679). More recently, Richard Chi and Allan Snyder at the University of Sydney, Australia, demonstrated that tDCS can improve a person's insight. The pair applied tDCS to volunteers' anterior frontal lobes - regions known to play a role in how we perceive the world - and found the participants were three times as likely as normal to complete a problem-solving task (newscientist.com/article/dn20080). Brain stimulation can also boost a person's learning abilities, according to Agnes Flöel's team at the University of Münster in Germany. Twenty minutes of tDCS to a part of the brain called the left perisylvian area was enough to speed up and improve language learning in a group of 19 volunteers (Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1162/jocn.2008.20098). Using the same technique to stimulate the brain's motor cortex, meanwhile, can enhance a person's ability to learn a movement-based skill (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0805413106).

ScienceDaily (Apr. 26, 2011) - In a paper published in the April 25 early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco and colleagues report a game-changing advance in stem cell science: the creation of long-term, self-renewing, primitive neural precursor cells from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) that can be directed to become many types of neuron without increased risk of tumor formation.

Until recently, the control of protein synthesis seemed straightforward and of little concern to most neuroscientists. However, the simple story of gene transcription into messenger RNA (mRNA) and subsequent translation into a protein has recently become considerably more complicated. Small RNA molecules have been discovered that can determine when and if the mRNA for a particular protein will be translated.