News & Updates

In the largest, most comprehensive study of its kind to date, researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have shown that when stroke survivors who've lost function in one arm are given a unique, two-week rehabilitation regimen that involves restraining their functional arm, they show improvements that last for as long as one year post-treatment.

A version of a gene has been linked to autism in families that have more than one child with the disorder. Inheriting two copies of this version more than doubled a child's risk of developing an autism spectrum disorder, scientists supported by the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) have discovered.

A recent study provides evidence that autism affects the functioning of virtually the entire brain, and is not limited to the brain areas involved with social interactions, communication behaviors, and reasoning abilities, as had been previously thought. The study, conducted by scientists in a research network supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), found that autism also affects a broad array of skills and abilities, including those involved with sensory perception, movement, and memory.

Researchers have found in two studies that autism may involve a lack of connections and coordination in separate areas of the brain.

Electrical impulses foster myelination, the insulation process that speeds communication among brain cells, report researchers at two institutes of the National Institutes of Health.

The number of infants who die from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS, increases in the cold winter months, according to the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), one of the National Institutes of Health.

Mice found in a previous study to develop a Parkinson's-like deterioration when deprived of a gene for iron metabolism were also found to develop anemia and signs of a rare skin condition, according to a follow up study by researchers at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health.

A cellular enzyme appears to play a crucial role in the manufacture of a protein needed for long-term memory, according to a team of researchers led by scientists at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health.

In contrast to people who do not have autism, people with autism remember letters of the alphabet in a part of the brain that ordinarily processes shapes, according to a study from a collaborative program of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health.

Extremely low birth weight infants--the tiniest category of premature infants are much more likely to experience developmental impairments if they acquire an infection during the newborn period, according to a study by the Neonatal Research Network of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, one of the National Institutes of Health.

Infants who cry persistently in an uncontrollable manner without any obvious cause after 12 weeks of age may be at risk for lower IQ scores and poorer fine motor skills by the time they reach 5 years of age, according to researchers from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health.

From language to literature, from music to mathematics, a single protein appears central to the formation of the long-term memories needed to learn these and all other disciplines, according to a team of researchers led by scientists at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health.

Children who have problems breathing during sleep tend to score lower on tests of mental development and intelligence than do other children their age, according to two studies funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Regardless of the language they are learning to speak, young children learn vocabulary in fundamentally the same way, according to a study by researchers at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health.

The pineal gland-which regulates the cycles of sleep and waking--appears to have evolved as an indirect way to improve vision, by keeping toxic compounds away from the eye, according to a new theory by a researcher at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health.

Some of the genes that allow nerve cells and some other types of cells to send elaborate chemical messages to each other appear to have been transferred to animals or their immediate ancestors from bacteria eons ago, according to a study by researchers from the National Library of Medicine and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, both part of the National Institutes of Health.

A team of U.S. and Irish researchers has come one step closer to understanding why a high proportion of the population is genetically at risk for neural tube defects, according to a genetic study by researchers in Ireland and at two of the National Institutes of Health, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the National Human Genome Research Institute.

A team of researchers has discovered a gene for Cornelia de Lange Syndrome, a disorder consisting of mental retardation, heart defects and a number of physical abnormalities.

A brain imaging study has shown that, after they overcome their reading disability, the brains of formerly poor readers begin to function like the brains of good readers, showing increased activity in a part of the brain that recognizes words.

Newborns whose mothers drank alcohol heavily during pregnancy had damage to the nerves in the arms and legs, according to a study by researchers at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, one of the National Institutes of Health.