Category Health/Medical

This illustration shows how klotho treatment in mice rapidly improved learning and memory of a hidden platform in a water maze. Credit: Leon et al.

Mice treated with klotho do better on tests of memory and motor skills. In a study that augurs well for the therapeutic potential of klotho – a life-extending protein hormone that a minority of people naturally produce at high levels – scientists at UC San Francisco have found that administering a fragment of the klotho protein to young, aging or impaired mice rapidly improves their cognitive and physical performance.

While previous studies had revealed associations between elevated klotho levels and better cognition, that research had been done with mice genetically engineered to continuously produce high klotho levels and in people carrying g...

Example images for a control participant, a deletion carrier, and a duplication carrier. In the sagittal image of the deletion carrier, the thick corpus callosum, dens and craniocervical abnormality, and cerebellar ectopia are shown. For the duplication carrier, the sagittal image shows the thin corpus callosum and the axial image shows the increased ventricle size and decreased white matter volume.
Credit: Radiological Society of North America

In the first major study of its kind, researchers using MRI have identified structural abnormalities in the brains of people with one of the most common genetic causes of autism...

Overexpressed Arc in the visual cortex. Credit: Elissa Pastuzyn

Like much of the rest of the body, the brain loses flexibility with age, impacting the ability to learn, remember, and adapt. Now, scientists at University of Utah Health report they can rejuvenate the plasticity of the mouse brain, specifically in the visual cortex, increasing its ability to change in response to experience. “It’s exciting because it suggests that by just manipulating one gene in adult brains, we can boost brain plasticity,” says Jason Shepherd, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy at University of Utah Health.

“This has implications for potentially reducing normal cognitive decline with aging, or boosting recovery from brain injury after stroke or traumatic brain injury,” he says...

 For the first time, scientists have conducted thermonuclear measurements of nuclear reaction cross-sections under extreme conditions like those of stellar interiors.

For the first time, scientists have conducted thermonuclear measurements of nuclear reaction cross-sections under extreme conditions like those of stellar interiors.

Most of the nuclear reactions that drive the nucleosynthesis of the elements in our universe occur in very extreme stellar plasma conditions. This intense environment found in the deep interiors of stars has made it nearly impossible for scientists to perform nuclear measurements in these conditions – until now...