ScienceDaily: Mind & Brain News

A groundbreaking study has found the underlying cause and a potential treatment for infantile spasms -- intractable epilepsy common in babies and with limited treatment options.

A team found flaws in previous research that purported to show meditation could alter the brain's structure.

Difficult social and legal conditions are stress factors for same-sex families, but do not affect the behavior of children and young people with same-sex parents, new research suggests.

Researchers have reported new evidence that cognitive abnormalities seen in neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia may be traceable to altered activity in the thalamus during adolescence, a time window of heightened vulnerability for schizophrenia.

Most research looking at the impact of climate change on human life has focused on how extreme weather events affect economic and societal health outcomes on a broad scale. Yet climate change may also have a strong influence on fundamental daily human activities -- including a host of behavioral, psychological, and physiological outcomes that are essential to wellbeing. Investigators now report that increasing ambient temperatures negatively impact human sleep around the globe.

The study from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital presents a new understanding of how a VGIC, crucial for the communication of neurons and muscle cells, can become unresponsive.

Scientists have described a novel preclinical drug that could have the potential to combat depression, brain injury and diseases that impair cognition. The drug, which notably is brain-permeable, acts to inhibit the kinase enzyme Cdk5.

A research team has mapped out the development and genetic trajectory of previously understudied macrophages associated with the central nervous system. Among other things, the team found that meningeal macrophages are formed during gestation and develop in the same way as microglia, while perivascular macrophages develop after birth. Their new insights could pave the way for better understanding the origins and mechanisms behind leading brain-related pathologies such as Alzheimer's disease.

According to a new study, long-term insomnia symptoms can pose a risk of poorer cognitive functioning later in life. This is another reason why insomnia should be treated as early as possible.

Scientists have shown an existing drug may reduce damage after spinal cord injury, by blocking the inflammatory response in the spinal cord.