Two pioneering researchers of brain disease among athletes in violent sports recommended Saturday that investigators conduct special autopsy tests on amateur boxer Tamerlan Tsarnaev to determine whether the Boston Marathon bombing suspect could have been affected by boxing-related brain damage. (Boston.com)

Movies of early development show that neural cells decide what fate to adopt while rapidly traveling from place to place, making it hard to see how the textbook model can be true. Megason and colleagues propose that instead of the location telling a cell what identity to adopt, the cell’s identity is fixed first and then determines the location. (Phys.org)

Children at an increased risk of autism may have abnormal structures in the placenta that can be detected at birth, a new study finds. (Scientific American)

The stem cell transplant regimen that was commonly used in the United States to treat advanced neuroblastoma in children appears to be more toxic than the equally effective regimen employed in Europe and Egypt, according to a new study to be presented at the 26th annual meeting of the American Society of Pediatric Hematology Oncology in Miami April 24-27. The U.S. regimen was associated with more acute toxicity to the kidneys and liver. (News-Medical)

Research suggests that mental illnesses lie along a spectrum — but the field’s latest diagnostic manual still splits them apart. (Nature)

Australian doctors are using radical gene therapy to help treat a rare and aggressive childhood brain cancer, offering hope to young sufferers and their families. (ABC.net)

How do you make an electronic brain prosthesis that could restore a person’s ability to form long-term memories? Recent experiments by Theodore Berger and his colleagues, including Sam Deadwyler at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and researchers at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, have begun to describe how it might be done. (MIT Technology Review)

For the first time, human embryonic stem cells have been transformed into nerve cells that helped mice regain the ability to learn and remember. A study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is the first to show that human stem cells can successfully implant themselves in the brain and then heal neurological deficits, says senior author Su-Chun Zhang, a professor of neuroscience and neurology. (Medical Xpress)

For decades, neuroscientists have been searching for an unmistakable signal of consciousness in electrical brain activity. Such a sign could determine whether minimally conscious or anesthetized adults are aware—and when consciousness begins in babies. (Wired)

Glioblastoma is the most destructive form of cancer because of its ability to migrate and plant new tumors in the brain. A new study revealed that after surgically removing these tumors, special stem cells from fat tissue were able to chase the cancer cells and track difficult regions in the brain prone to remission. (Medical Daily)

An Indiana University School of Medicine breast cancer surgeon is pursuing research that will utilize glass, gold, nanotechnology and Greek mythology hoping to vanquish breast cancer that has metastasized to the brain. (Nanowerk)

In a couple of years, we will learn something new that changes everything all over again. But what we know right now could change a child’s life. (CNN)

Specific DNA once dismissed as junk plays an important role in brain development and might be involved in several devastating neurological diseases, UC San Francisco scientists have found. (Science Daily)

Using genetic analysis, the new study suggests that certain medications may help “normalize” the activity of a number of genes involved in communication between brain cells. It is published in the current issue of Bipolar Disorders. (eScience News)

Baidu calls its lab The Institute of Deep Learning, or IDL. Much like Google and Apple and others, the company is exploring computer systems that can learn in much the same way people do. (Wired)

The visible brain has arrived — the consistency of Jell-O, as transparent and colorful as a child’s model, but vastly more useful. Scientists at Stanford University reported on Wednesday that they have made a whole mouse brain, and part of a human brain, transparent so that networks of neurons that receive and send information can be highlighted in stunning color and viewed in all their three-dimensional complexity without slicing up the organ. (New York Times)

Governments on both sides of the Atlantic are placing big new bets on the future of brain science, just as much of the pharmaceutical industry retreats from the field. (Reuters)

Deep inside your brain, a legion of stem cells lies ready to turn into new brain and nerve cells whenever and wherever you need them most. While they wait, they keep themselves in a state of perpetual readiness – poised to become any type of nerve cell you might need as your cells age or get damaged. (Medical Xpress)

UK scientists have embarked on a six-year project to map how nerve connections develop in babies’ brains while still in the womb and after birth. (BBC)

Twenty-five years after Prozac was introduced, the name has entered the cultural lexicon and helped define how people think of mental illness. (BBC)

Brain studies are  the current darling of the sciences, research capable of garnering  tens or even hundreds of millions in new funding for ambitious new projects, the kind of money that was once reserved only for big physics projects. (Scientific American)