Science News from 2012

Awake Mental Replay of Past Experiences Critical for Learning

Press Release • May 03, 2012
Awake mental replay of past experiences is essential for making informed choices, suggests a study in rats. Without it, the animals’ memory-based decision-making faltered, say scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Agent Reduces Autism-like Behaviors in Mice

Press Release • April 25, 2012
Autism-like behaviors in mice have been reduced, using an experimental agent being tested in patients for a related disorder.

Spontaneous Gene Glitches Linked to Autism Risk with Older Dads

Press Release • April 04, 2012
A trio of new studies have found that sequence changes in parts of genes that code for proteins play a significant role in autism spectrum disorders (ASDs).

Pattern Recognition Technology May Help Predict Future Mental Illness in Teens

Science Update • April 02, 2012
Computer programs that automatically spot patterns in data may help predict a person’s risk for future mental disorders.

Brain Wiring a No-Brainer?

Press Release • March 29, 2012
Researcher Van Wedeen MD and colleagues report new evidence of the brain’s elegant simplicity March 30, 2012 in the journal Science. New high resolution scans reveal an astonishingly simple 3D grid structure.

Friendly-to-a-Fault, Yet Tense: Personality Traits Traced in Brain

Press Release • March 19, 2012
NIH scientists have used three different types of brain imaging to pinpoint a circuit hub buried deep in the front center of the brain in people with Williams syndrome, a rare genetic disorder characterized by overly gregarious yet anxious behavior.

Possible Causes of Sudden Onset OCD in Kids Broadened

Press Release • March 19, 2012
The syndrome, Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome (PANS), includes children and teens that suddenly develop on-again/off-again OCD symptoms or abnormal eating behaviors, along with other psychiatric symptoms – without any known cause. An immune-based treatment study is underway at NIH.

Computer-Based Treatment Eases Anxiety Symptoms in Children

Science Update • March 13, 2012
Results from a small clinical trial suggest that it might be possible, using computer-based training, to help children with anxiety shift their attention away from threat.

Linked Brain Centers Mature in Sync

Science Update • March 13, 2012
Brain imaging is providing a new picture of how functionally connected parts of the brain develop in sync.

NIH-funded study defines treatment window for HIV-positive children infected at birth

Press Release • March 07, 2012
HIV-positive children older than 1 year who were treated after showing moderate HIV-related symptoms did not experience greater cognitive or behavior problems compared to peers treated when signs of their infection were still mild, according to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Gene Regulator in Brain’s Executive Hub Tracked Across Lifespan – NIH study

Press Release • February 02, 2012
For the first time, scientists have tracked the activity, across the lifespan, of an environmentally responsive regulatory mechanism that turns genes on and off in the brain’s executive hub. Among key findings of the study by National Institutes of Health scientists: genes implicated in schizophrenia and autism turn out to be members of a select club of genes in which regulatory activity peaks during an environmentally-sensitive critical period in development.

Ethnic Disparities Persist in Depression Diagnosis and Treatment Among Older Americans

Science Update • January 26, 2012
Older racial and ethnic minorities living in the community are less likely to be diagnosed with depression than their white counterparts, but are also less likely to get treated, according to a recent NIMH-funded analysis published online ahead of print December 15, 2011, in the American Journal of Public Health.

Atypical Antipsychotic More Effective than Older Drugs in Treating Childhood Mania, but Side Effects Can Be Serious

Science Update • January 11, 2012
The antipsychotic medication risperidone is more effective for initial treatment of mania in children diagnosed with bipolar disorder compared to other mood stabilizing medications, but it carries the potential for serious metabolic side effects, according to an NIMH-funded study published online ahead of print January 2, 2012, in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Turning on Dormant Gene May Hold Key for Correcting a Neurodevelopmental Defect

Science Update • January 05, 2012
Scientists working in cell culture and in mice have been able to correct the loss of gene activity underlying a rare but severe developmental disorder by turning on a gene that is normally silenced in brain cells.