Estrogen has a significant role in overall brain health and cognitive function. That’s why so many studies focused on the prevention of cognitive decline consider the effect of reduced estrogen levels during the menopause transition. A new study suggests a cognitive benefit from a longer reproductive window complemented with hormone therapy. Because women comprise two-thirds…

A new clinical practice guideline establishing recommendations for the use of behavioral and psychological treatments for chronic insomnia disorder in adults has been published. The guideline includes one strong recommendation — which is one that clinicians should follow under most circumstances — for the use of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. CBT-I combines one or…

Researchers examined whether there is an association between arthritis and social isolation, and have identified the disease’s contribution to social isolation. People who have arthritis often have other health issues which may increase their risk of becoming socially isolated. These include anxiety and depression, being afraid to move around (because arthritis makes moving painful), physical…

Concussion can be hard to diagnose and track. It doesn’t show up on routine brain scans, and there is no definitive diagnostic test. New research could lead to urine ‘biomarkers’ that could be used to diagnose concussion and monitor recovery. Using proteomics, researchers compared urine samples from college athletes with and without concussion. Two proteins…

Brain metastases can only develop if cancer cells exit the capillaries and enter into the brain tissue. To facilitate this step, cancer cells influence blood clotting, as scientists have now been able to show in mice. The cancer cells actively promote the formation of clots, which helps them to arrest in the brain capillaries and…

Using novel imaging technologies, researchers produce first whole-brain atlas at single-cell resolution, revealing how alcohol addiction and abstinence remodel neural physiology and function in mice. The findings, published in the January 14, 2020 online issue of PNAS, also identified several previously unsuspected regions of the brain relevant to alcohol consumption, providing new research targets for…

Domestic violence survivors commonly suffer repeated blows to the head and strangulation, trauma that has lasting effects that should be widely recognized by advocates, health care providers, law enforcement and others who are in a position to help, according to the authors of a new study. In the first community-based study of its kind, researchers…

Interactions of two voltage-gated calcium channels and a pump enable separate control of exocytosis and endocytosis at chemical synapses. Professor Carsten Duch and Professor Martin Heine and their respective research groups at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) are investigating how the release and recycling of synaptic vesicles are coordinated. «Exocytosis and endocytosis rates at chemical…

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) and other injuries to blood vessels in the brain, like stroke, are a leading cause of long-term disability or death. Researchers have found a possible explanation for why some patients recover much more poorly from brain injury if they later become infected. Making use of a mouse model for mild TBI…

Pain distribution as reported on a body map, on its own, can be used to assign patients to distinct subgroups that are associated with differences in pain intensity, pain quality, pain impact and clinically-relevant three-month outcomes, according to a new study. In clinical practice, the bodily distribution of chronic pain is often used in conjunction…