Category: Neuroscience

Nystagmus is a condition of involuntary eye movement, acquired in infancy or later in life, that may result in reduced or limited vision. Due to the involuntary movement of the eye, it is often called “dancing eyes”. When the head rotates about any axis, distant visual images are sustained by rotating eyes in the opposite…

Evidence of ferritin in the neuromelanin granules in Parkinson’s disease affected brain cells has been observed for the first time. A team of researchers from the University of Bochum working under the auspices of Prof. Katrin Marcus and in close collaboration with colleagues in Munich and Würzburg made the finding. Neurons that produce the neurotransmitter…

Using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) researchers have now pinpointed where and how the brain processes 3-D motion. Surprisingly, findings published in Nature Neuroscience online July 7, 20091, reveal that 3-D motion processing occurs in an area in the brain, located just behind the left and right ears, long thought to only be responsible for…

In mammalian brain anatomy, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is the cerebral cortex which covers the front part of the frontal lobe. The PFC contains Brodmann areas 9, 10, 11, 12, 46, and 47. Many authors have indicated an integral link between a person’s personality and the functions of the prefrontal cortex. This brain region has…

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor, also known as BDNF, is a protein that, in humans, is encoded by the BDNF gene. BDNF is a member of the neurotrophin family of growth factors, which are related to the canonical nerve growth factor. Neurotrophic factors are found in the brain and the periphery. BDNF acts on certain neurons of…

A new study from MIT in the March 4 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience explains some of the neural mechanism involved in the brain remapping seen in macular degeneration. Macular degeneration affects just 1.75 million people in the United States. Macular degeneration is the most prevalent form of adult blindness. Patients lose vision progressively…

Glutamate is an amino acid, one of the twenty amino acids used to construct proteins, and as a consequence is found in high concentration in every part of the body. In the nervous system it plays a special additional role as a neurotransmitter: a chemical that nerve cells use to send signals to other cells.…

When looking to figure out how your body is burning calories, you need to determine the minimum amount it needs to keep your heart beating, your lungs breathing, your body temperature normal, and so on – when you are doing absolutely nothing! This is known as your resting or basal metabolic rate (your BMR). It’s…

Night terrors, also known as sleep terrors, sleep terror disorder, pavor nocturnus and DSM-IV AXIS I: 307.46 are a sleep disorder. Another sleep disorder known as Hallucinatory sleep paralysis (HSP) is often mistaken for night terrors because it has some similarities to night terrors. Night terrors can run in families. They are not dangerous but…