Prenatal alcohol exposure may be particularly destructive for neurotrophins, a family of peptides that influence the growth, development and functional plasticity of the fetal brain.

New research from Harvard University neuroscientists has pinpointed exactly how neural activity boosts blood flow to the brain. The finding has important implications for our understanding of common brain imaging techniques such as fMRI, which uses blood flow in the brain as a proxy for neural activity.

Devices known as brain-machine interfaces could someday be used routinely to help paralyzed patients and amputees control prosthetic limbs with just their thoughts.

Researchers from the Howard Florey Institute in Melbourne are developing new technology to create individualised brain maps that will revolutionise diagnosis of disease and enhance the accuracy of brain surgery.

Every year, one million Europeans are confronted with potentially irreparable brain or spinal cord injuries resulting from traffic accidents. Because the nerves in a damaged spinal cord cannot, or cannot fully, be repaired, the patient remains (partially) paralyzed. Now, VIB scientists connected to the K.U.Leuven have become the first to successfully develop a simple model that enables the study of injured brain tissue.

Using 3-D ultrasound technology they designed, Duke University bioengineers can compensate for the thickness and unevenness of the skull to see in real-time the arteries within the brain that most often clog up and cause strokes.

In a collaborative effort, researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have discovered that deletions or mutations within the TFAP2A gene (Activating Enhancer-Binding Protein) result in the distinctive clefting disorder Branchio-Oculo-Facial syndrome (BOFS).

Using a rodent model of epilepsy, researchers found one of the body’s own neurotransmitters released during seizures, glutamate, turns on a signaling pathway in the brain that increases production of a protein that could reduce medication entry into the brain.

Boxing is possibly less dangerous for the brain than previously feared – at least for amateurs. However, conclusive statements on the level of danger are not yet possible.

New technology at Tufts University's Center for Scientific Visualization is enabling researchers to translate the most abstract, complex scientific concepts into clearer, more precise 3-dimensional images than conventional visualization systems can create.

Two researchers from National Brain Research Center (NBRC) suggest that a common antibiotic called minocycline may prevent children from death due to Japanese encephalitis (JE), or commonly known as brain fever. Japanese Encephalitis virus is the causative agent for JE.

New research by scientists at Schepens Eye Research Institute may help explain why the anti-cancer drug Avastin, which targets a growth factor responsible for creation of new blood vessels, causes potentially fatal brain inflammation in certain patients.