Antibiotics can lead to fungal infection because of disruption to the gut’s immune system
Patients prescribed antibiotics in hospital are more likely to get fungal infections because of disruption to the immune system in the gut, according to a new study from the University of Birmingham and National Institutes of Health. Using immune-boosting drugs alongside the antibiotics could reduce the health risks from these complex infections say the researchers. […]
Video games can boost children’s intelligence: study
Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have studied how the screen habits of U.S. children correlates with how their cognitive abilities develop over time. They found that the children who spent an above-average time playing video games increased their intelligence more than the average, while TV watching or social media had neither a positive nor […]
How sleep helps to process emotions
Researchers at the Department of Neurology of the University of Bern and University Hospital Bern identified how the brain triages emotions during dream sleep to consolidate the storage of positive emotions while dampening the consolidation of negative ones. The work expands the importance of sleep in mental health and offers the way to new therapeutic […]
Mitochondrial respiratory chain sustains inflammation
Northwestern Medicine investigators recently discovered that the mitochondrial respiratory chain—a series of protein complexes essential for a cellular respiration and energy production—is necessary for the activation of another protein complex linked to inflammation and the progression of chronic diseases, according to a study published in Nature Immunology. “Our study revealed that inhibition of mitochondrial respiratory […]
Giving an old mouse cerebrospinal fluid from a young mouse improves its memory
An international team of researchers has found that injecting older mice with cerebrospinal fluid from younger mice can lead to an improvement in memory. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes a technique to remove small amounts of cerebrospinal fluid from young mice and inject it into the brain of an […]
Strange dreams might help your brain learn better
A new study by researchers from the University of Bern, Switzerland suggests that dreams—especially those that simultaneously appear realistic, but, upon a closer look, bizarre—help our brain learn and extract generic concepts from previous experiences. The study, carried out within the Human Brain Project and published in eLife, offers a new theory on the significance […]
When unconscious, the brain is anything but ‘silent’
The cerebral cortex is thought to be the seat of conscious processing in the brain. Rather than being inactivated, specific cells in the cortex show higher spontaneous activity during general anesthesia than when awake, and this activity is synchronized across those cortical cells. Improving our understanding of the neuronal mechanisms of general anesthesia could lead […]
Hope for acne sufferers as dermatologists identify possible link between key nutrient and skin condition
Dermatologists in Germany have identified what could be a crucial link between acne and a deficit of omega-3 fatty acids. The findings, released during the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology (EADV) Spring Symposium, could offer new opportunities for managing a condition estimated to affect nearly 23 million people in Europe. The team behind the […]
Genetic study confirms sarin nerve gas as cause of Gulf War illness
For three decades, scientists have debated the underlying cause of Gulf War illness (GWI), a collection of unexplained and chronic symptoms affecting veterans of the Persian Gulf War. Now researchers led by Robert Haley, M.D., Professor of Internal Medicine and Director of the Division of Epidemiology at UT Southwestern, have solved the mystery, showing through […]