New research appearing in the May issue of Psychological Science suggests that being put in a low-power role may impair a person’s basic cognitive functioning and thus, their ability to get ahead.

Pamela Smith of Radboud University Nijmegen and colleagues Nils B. Jostmann of VU University Amsterdam, Adam Galinsky of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and Wilco W. van Dijk of VU University Amsterdam, focus on a set of cognitive processes called executive functions. Executive functions help people maintain and pursue their goals in difficult, distracting situations. The researchers found that lacking power impaired people’s ability to keep track of ever-changing information, to parse out irrelevant information, and to successfully plan ahead to achieve their goals.

Neuroscientists at Johns Hopkins have discovered that mice lacking an enzyme that contributes to Alzheimer disease exhibit a number of schizophrenia-like behaviors. The finding raises the possibility that this enzyme may participate in the development of schizophrenia and related psychiatric disorders and therefore may provide a new target for developing therapies.

The BACE1 enzyme, for beta-site amyloid precursor protein cleaving enzyme, generates the amyloid proteins that lead to Alzheimer’s disease. The research team years ago suspected that removing BACE1 might prevent Alzheimer.

“We knew at the time that in addition to amyloid precursor protein, BACE1 interacts with other proteins but we didn’t know how those interactions might affect behavior,” says Alena Savonenko, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor in neuropathology at Hopkins.

The risks of developing Alzheimer’s disease differ between the sexes, with stroke in men, and depression in women, critical factors, according to research published in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.

French researchers based their findings on almost 7000 people over the age of 65, drawn from the general population in three French cities. None had dementia, but around four out of 10 were deemed to have mildly impaired mental agility (mild cognitive impairment) at the start of the study.

Their progress was assessed two and four years later. In all, just over 6.5% of those deemed to be cognitively impaired developed dementia over the next four years. In just over half, no change was seen. Just over one in three reverted to normal levels of cognitive agility.

Research by Yale scientists shows that males and females have essentially unisex brains — at least in flies — according to a recent report in Cell designed to identify factors that are responsible for sex differences in behavior.

The researchers showed that a courting “song and dance” routine that only male flies naturally perform — one wing is lifted and wiggled to make a humming “song” — can also be triggered in female flies by artificially stimulating particular brain cells that are present in both sexes. It isn’t what you’ve got — it’s how you use it, the authors say.

“It appears there is a largely bisexual or ‘unisex brain.’ Anatomically, the differences are subtle and a few critical switches make the difference between male and female behavior,” said senior author Gero Miesenboeck, formerly of Yale University and now at the University of Oxford.

Remarkable new research into the way environmental factors affect the development of the brain has opened up the possibility that an infant’s future mental abilities and susceptibility to mental illness can be permanently altered by dietary changes in early life.

Evidence that changes in early diet can have long term effects on brain structure, verbal IQ, eyesight, appetite regulation and possibly on neurodevelopmental outcome will be presented at the international symposium on Early Nutrition Programming in Granada, Spain (23 April).

This is an area of research in which the EC is investing heavily as it offers huge potential in terms of improving the health and reducing health care costs of future generations. Neuropsychiatric disorders, such as depression, are the second most important cause of ill health in the EU after cardiovascular disease(1). The EC has already invested over €13 million in the Early Nutrition Programming Project (EARNEST) and has now committed another €6 million into the NUTRIMENTHE project (launched 22April 2008).

Is fairness simply a ruse we adopt only when we see an advantage in it for ourselves? Many psychologists have moved away from this utilitarian view, dismissing it as too simplistic, but recent advances in both cognitive science and neuroscience now allow psychologists to approach this question in some different ways, and they are getting some intriguing results.

UCLA psychologist Golnaz Tabibnia, and colleagues Ajay Satpute and Matthew Lieberman, used a psychological test called the “ultimatum game" to explore fairness and self-interest in the laboratory. In this particular version of the test, Person A has a pot of money, say $23, which they can divide in any way they want with Person B. All Person B can do is look at the offer and accept or reject it; there is no negotiation. If Person B rejects the offer, neither of them gets any money.

Married men do less of it than live-in boyfriends but they do twice as much as they did 20 years ago and now it's linked to mental health. What is this magical creation?

Housework.

Not just housework, but really any 20 minutes of physical activity, including the housework we all have to do anyway, is enough to boost mental health, reveals a large study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

A new study suggests that many children diagnosed with severe language disorders in the 1980s and 1990s would instead be diagnosed as having autism today and so the rise in the number of cases of autism may be related to changes in how it is diagnosed.

Professor Dorothy Bishop, a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, led a study which revisited 38 adults, aged between 15-31, who had been diagnosed with having developmental language disorders as children rather than being autistic.

Professor Bishop and colleagues looked at whether they now met current diagnostic criteria for autistic spectrum disorders, either through reports of their childhood behaviour or on the basis of their current behaviour. The results are published this month in the journal Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology.

‘Mother cells’ which produce the neurons affected by Parkinson’s disease have been identified by scientists, according to new research published in the journal Glia.

The new discovery could pave the way for future treatments for the disease, including the possibility of growing new neurons, and the cells which support them, in the lab. Scientists hope these could then be transplanted into patients to counteract the damage caused by Parkinson’s.

The new study focuses on dopaminergic neurons – brain cells which produce and use the chemical dopamine to communicate with surrounding neurons. The researchers found that these important neurons are created when a particular type of cell in the embryonic brain divides during the early stages of brain development in the womb.

Reshaping of the DNA scaffolding that supports and controls the expression of genes in the brain may play a major role in the alcohol withdrawal symptoms, particularly anxiety, that make it so difficult for alcoholics to stop using alcohol.

DNA can undergo changes in function without any changes in inheritance or coded sequence. These "epigenetic" changes are minor chemical modifications of chromatin -- dense bundles of DNA and proteins called histones.

"This is the first time anyone has looked for epigenetic changes related to chromatin remodeling in the brain during alcohol addiction," said Dr. Subhash C. Pandey, professor and director of neuroscience alcoholism research at the UIC College of Medicine and the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center in Chicago, the lead author of the study.