Monthly Archives: May 2011

Lasting synaptic changes underlie attention deficits caused by nicotine exposure during adolescence Tobacco smoking and nicotine exposure during adolescence interfere with prefrontal cortex (PFC) development and result in cognitive disturbances in adult life. In adolescent smokers, PFC activity, working-memory and … Continue reading →

L-type Ca2+ channel blockers for neuroprotection in Parkinson’s Disease? Loss of dopamine neurons in the substantia nigra produces motor symptoms characteristic of Parkinson’s disease. Mitochondrial oxidative stress is widely viewed as being responsible for this loss, but why these specific … Continue reading →

Glucocorticoids enhance extinction-based psychotherapy Behavioral exposure therapy of anxiety disorders is believed to rely on fear extinction. Because glucocorticoids can promote extinction processes, the authors studied whether cortisol augmented exposure therapy in patients with phobia for heights. Adding cortisol to … Continue reading →

Exercise training in human subjects increases size of hippocampus and improves memory Erickson and coworkers show that aerobic training in older human subjects led to an increase in size of the anterior hippocampus and improvements in spatial memory. They suggest … Continue reading →

Enhancement of Consolidated Long-Term Memory by Overexpression of Protein Kinase M£a in the Neocortex. Memories are more easily disrupted than improved. Many agents can impair memories during encoding and consolidation. In contrast, the choices of potential memory enhancers are so … Continue reading →

Efficacy of exercise in reducing depressive symptoms across serotonin transporter genotypes. Rethorst and colleagues examined the antidepressant effects of 5 weeks exercise in college students. Exercise resulted in a significant reduction in depressive symptoms compared to the control (no exercise) … Continue reading →

Distortions of mind perception in psychopathology It has long been known that psychopathology can influence social perception. Gray and colleagues examined the covariation of mind perception with three subclinical syndromes-autism-spectrum disorder, schizotypy, and psychopathy. They found that each presents a … Continue reading →

Diagnosis of autism: Neural Signatures? Autism spectrum disorder is a highly prevalent neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by striking social deficits. The strong genetic component to this disorder has led researchers to use functional magnetic resonance imaging of the brain to study … Continue reading →

Deficit in switching between functional brain networks underlies the impact of multitasking on working memory in older adults. Multitasking negatively influences the retention of information over brief periods of time. This is exacerbated with normal aging. Clapp and coworkers used … Continue reading →

Clustering of mental disorders by overlapping genetic and environmental factors Kendler and colleagues describe genetic and environmental factors that underlie the significant relatedness observed among multiple axis I and axis II mental disorders. Specifically, they report that four potent genetic … Continue reading →