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Medical cannabis can reduce essential tremor: Turns on overlooked cells in central nervous system

Medical cannabis can reduce essential tremor in mice. By injecting a specific synthetic cannabinoid into the spinal cord of mice suffering from essential tremor, researchers have shown that the drug can reduce involuntary shaking – as the cannabinoid a…

Difficulty learning nonsense words may indicate a child’s high risk of dyslexia

A combined brain-scanning and behavior study has explored dyslexia in 7 & 8-year-old children learning how to read. Dyslexic youngsters were shown to have different activation in the left hemisphere compared to the control group – the area of the brain…

Could leak in blood-brain barrier be cause of poor memory?

One of the keys to having a healthy brain at any age is having a healthy blood-brain barrier, a complex interface of blood vessels that run through the brain. Researchers reviewed more than 150 articles to look at what happens to the blood-brain barrie…

Babies pay attention with down payment from immature brain region

Using an approach that uses fMRI (or functional magnetic resonance imaging) to scan the brains of awake babies, a team of university psychologists show that when focusing their attention infants under a year of age recruit areas of their frontal cortex…

Parsing dopamine’s different pain sensitivity role in males, females

Males and females, generally speaking, experience and respond to pain differently, but scientists have yet to understand all the brain circuits involved in these differences. Now, new research shows how neurons use dopamine to regulate pain differently…

Animal model opens way to test Alzheimer’s disease therapies

Our knowledge of Alzheimer’s disease has grown rapidly in the past few decades but it has proven difficult to translate fundamental discoveries about the disease into new treatments. Now researchers have developed a model of the early stages of Alzheim…

The role of adult playfulness in romantic life

While play and playfulness have been studied well in children, their structure and consequences are understudied in adults. A new article highlights available research on this topic and also examines why playfulness is important in romantic relationshi…

Researchers find a better way to measure consciousness

Millions of people are administered general anesthesia each year in the United States alone, but it’s not always easy to tell whether they are actually unconscious. A small proportion of those patients regain some awareness during medical procedures, b…

Could birth control pills ease concussion symptoms in female athletes?

A new pilot study has shown when a female athlete has a concussion injury during the phase of her menstrual cycle when progesterone is highest, she feels less stress. Feeling stressed is one symptom of a concussion. Feeling less stressed is a marker of…

How pregnancy turns the stress response on its head

Researchers found two simultaneous conditions during pregnancy in response to stress that made them realize just how complex the cross-talk between mom and baby is during gestation: Immune cells in the placenta and uterus were not activated, but signif…