TS-Si Science Access
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Bloomington, IN, USA. An international team of researchers has created the first complete high-resolution map of how millions of neural fibers in the human cerebral cortex — the outer layer of the brain responsible for higher level thinking — connect and communicate. They have identified a single network core, or hub, that integrates both brain hemispheres.
The map shows a core of brain regions with highly interconnected structures (the brain "connectome"). The groundbreaking w... |
July 1th, 2008
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Edinburgh, UK. New research into the brain puts us one step closer to understanding it's evolutionary origins and basic design principles. The findings suggest that size alone does not dictate brain power. The evolution of sophisticated molecular processing of nerve impulses allowed the development of animals with increasingly complex behaviors.
The study shows that two waves of increased sophistication in the structure of nerve junctions could have been the force that allowed complex b... |
June 30th, 2008
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Washington, DC, USA. Science shows that the human brain and central nervous system form before the remaining portions of our overall body plan. This is a central insight and the province of developmental biology, particularly embryology, which deals with the development of organs and other anatomical structures from the point of conception.
While many questions remain to be answered, scientists have accumulated a great deal of knowledge on the sequence of human development following con... |
June 29th, 2008
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Washington, DC, USA. A gene located on a chromosome other than the sex chromosomes is autosomal. We inherit two copies: one each from our biological mother and father. Generally, both are functional, but in a small subset one copy is turned off. One gene copy was marked, or imprinted, in either egg or sperm.
The standard human genome contains 46 chromosomes: 23 from the mother and 23 from the father. The general human pattern consists of two copies of every gene (excluding som... |
June 24th, 2008
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Baltimore, MD, USA. Patterns abound in nature: butterfly wings, seashell spirals, zebras stripes. Human genitals. These are all examples of patterns in nature. Pattern formation is a puzzle for both biologists and mathematicians. How does a single fertilized egg yield such delicate designs? How does a pattern emerge out of no pattern?
Using computer models and live cells, researchers at Johns Hopkins University have discovered a specific pattern that can direct cell movement a... |
June 21th, 2008
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Uppsala, Sweden. New research identifies hundreds of biological differences between the sexes when it comes to gene expression in the cerebral cortex of humans and other primates. New findings show that some of these differences arose a very long time ago and have been preserved throughout primate evolution.
There are fundamental questions for neuroscience regarding the relative contribution of genetics versus environment to behavioral differences between the sexes. Examples of the... |
June 20th, 2008
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Stockholm, Sweden. Research into the origins and activation of sexual orientation have become more rigorous with the advent of neuro-based tools and quantitative measurements. Such efforts surpass social studies that depend on everyday observation but ignore the underlying neurobiological mechanisms that underlie the observed behavior.
There are no known causal connections between Harry Benjamin Syndrome (HBS) and sexual orientation, but many social studies are based on an unproven... |
June 17th, 2008
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Vancouver, BC, CAN. Entering the world, we reach out to our environment, with a brain map of essential pathways for exploration. But what really goes on between our brains, eyes and appendages? And how do we process the information necessary to connect with our most immediate environment, ourselves?
“It is still a mystery, really,” says Pai, computer science professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC). "No one has ever completely mapped out the processes at the l... |
June 16th, 2008
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Mysuru, Karnataka, India. Technologies that measure and analyze human physical and behavioral characteristics are big when machines have to figure out who you are on behalf of their human creators. There is ample precedent: we all cope with encountering new people and try to understand who you are, really.
The emerging field of biometrics typically analyzes physical and behavioral characteristics. The physical can include DNA databases, facial patterns, fingerprints, hand measure... |
June 12th, 2008
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 | Nottingham, UK. For an organism to develop and function, the individual cells must exchange information, or communicate, with each other. Is it possible to learn their language and actually talk to the cells? Yes. In cell biology, a vesicle is a small, membrane-bounded sac. Vesicles store, transport, or digest cellular products and waste. They are a basic tool of the cell for organizing metabolism, transport, enzyme storage, as well as being chemical reaction chambers.
Scie... |
June 6th, 2008
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 | Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Sharing our experiences depends on our ability to visualize and describe the contents of our memories. Prediction of future actions by ourselves and others is founded on our here-and-now processing of images and language. The recognition of words and their combination into new patterns is fundamental to communication. Scientists now have a computer model that reveals how the brain represents meaning and predicts brain activation patterns for thousands of concrete nouns.
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June 4th, 2008
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| Durham, NC, USA. Little things that go awry in the brain can have large consequences. What if we could insert tiny electrodes (nanotubes) into neural cells? And how could we get them there? We may be a step closer to answers with the emergence of maneuverable microrobots measured in the mere billionths-of-a-meter. Scientists at Duke University craft microscopic robots that assemble into self-organized structures to maneuver as separate entities without any obvious guidance.
Each microro... |
June 3th, 2008
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 | Rehovot, Israel. Women refer to the smell of testosterone; this is an especially common occurence for HBS females following transition. Men generally catch a female's biological scent of estrogen before turning their attention to other womanly aspects. But how do we know the difference? Is the smell of almonds closer to that of roses or bananas? Scientists have answered that question (roses) by showing that smells can be mapped and the relative distance between various odors determined.
&nbs... |
June 1th, 2008
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 | Worcester, MA, USA. A new technique that improves the ability of scientists to target individual genes for inactivation has broad potential implications for basic science research and treatment. Two scientific teams working with zebrafish — commonly used as a model organism in biomedical research — to develop a method to create and deliver a tailor-made “restriction enzyme” that inactivates a specific gene in the embryo.
“The best way to figure out what a gene does in an organism is ... |
May 29th, 2008
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 | Boston, MA, USA. A stem cell can simply remain a stem cell or adopt a specialized identity and contribute to the construction of the organs and other features that omprise the human bofy. The conventional view in biology emphasizes the existence of instructions that direct a cell's linear progress along prescribed signaling pathways. A less simplistic idea argues for the collective behavior of multiple genes in a network.
Ultimately, cell differentiation has just a few endpoints, sim... |
May 27th, 2008
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