Nearly half of patients with heart failure (HF) have problems with memory and other aspects of cognitive functioning, reports a new study published by Elsevier, in the February issue of Journal of Cardiac Failure.

A new study from the Abramson Cancer Center and Department of Psychiatry in the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine shows that smokers who carry a particular version of a gene for an enzyme that regulates dopamine in the brain may suffer from concentration problems and other cognitive deficits when abstaining from nicotine – a problem that puts them at risk for relapse during attempts to quit smoking.

Scientists at the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease (GIND) and the University of California have found that complete or partial removal of an enzyme that regulates fatty acid levels improves cognitive deficits in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease (AD).

A special protein can be injected into the body to reverse learning problems in mice that have an animal version of Alzheimer’s disease, Saint Louis University researchers have found.

For some cancer patients, side effects impacting cognition don't end with the last dose of chemotherapy.

Previous brain-imaging studies have suggested cognitive deficits in alcoholic patients. New findings indicate that alcoholic patients show emotional processing deficits as well.

Autistic children are doubly stigmatized. On the one hand, they are often dismissed as “low functioning” or mentally retarded, especially if they have poor speaking skills as many do. Yet when autistics do show exceptional abilities—uncanny visual discrimination and memory for detail, for example—their flashes of brilliance are marginalized as aberrations, mere symptoms of their higher order cognitive deficit.

A critical step in brain development is governed by endogenous cannabinoids, 'the brain's own marijuana'. Studies conducted at Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet, with participation of scientists from Europe and the United States, are now published in Science and show that these endogenous molecules regulate how certain nerve cells recognize each other and form connections.

Yale School of Medicine and University of Crete School of Medicine researchers report in Cell April 20 the first evidence of a molecular mechanism that dynamically alters the strength of higher brain network connections.