By John Horgan What’s the difference between science and philosophy? Scientists address questions that can in principle be answered by means of objective, empirical investigation. Philosophers wrestle with questions that cannot be empirically resolved and hence remain matters of taste, not truth. Here is a classic philosophical question: What creatures and/or things are capable of consciousness? That is, who (and “who” is the right term, even if you’re talking about a jellyfish or sexbot) belongs to the Consciousness Club? This question animated “Animal Consciousness,” a conference I attended at New York University last month. It should have been called “Animal Consciousness?” or “Animal ‘Consciousness’” to reflect the uncertainty pervading the two-day meeting. Speakers disagreed over when and how consciousness evolved and what is required for it to occur. A nervous system? Brain? Complex responses to the environment? The ability to learn and adapt to new circumstances? And if we suspect that something is sentient, and hence capable of suffering, should we grant it rights? In my last post, I focused on the debate over whether fish can suffer. Scholars also considered the sentience of dogs, lampreys, wasps, spiders, crustaceans and other species. Speakers presented evidence that creatures quite unlike us are capable of complex cognition. Biologist Andrew Barron argued that bees, in spite of their minuscule brains, are not mindless automatons. Their capacity for learning rivals that of mammals. When harmed, bees stop eating and foraging as if they were depressed. Bees, Barron concludes, are conscious. © 2017 Scientific American

Keyword: Consciousness; Evolution
Link ID: 24394 - Posted: 12.05.2017

By KAREN WEINTRAUB In one more sign that North Atlantic right whales are struggling, a new study finds sky-high levels of stress in animals that have been caught in fishing nets. Researchers determined the stress hormone levels of more than 100 North Atlantic right whales over a 15-year period by examining their feces. Sometimes guided by sniffing dogs, researchers followed the animals, collecting waste samples that they then analyzed in their lab at the New England Aquarium. Results from the feces of 113 seemingly healthy whales helped establish a baseline of stress hormone levels, which had never before been known for the species. “We have a good idea of what normal is now,” said Rosalind Rolland, who developed the research technique and is the lead author of the study published in the journal Endangered Species Research. She then compared these baselines to hormone levels in the feces of six whales that had become entangled in fishing lines, and one that had been stranded for several days, finding that those animals were off-the-charts anxious. One whale, a young female named Bayla, showed stress levels eight times higher after she was found entangled in synthetic fishing ropes in January 2011. Several biologists trained in disentanglement couldn’t get all the gear off her, so they sedated the emaciated animal and gave her antibiotics. Two weeks later, an aerial survey team found her corpse floating at sea, possibly after being attacked by sharks, which typically leave healthy animals alone. A necropsy conducted a few days later found rope embedded in the back of Bayla’s throat, that possibly prevented her from eating. © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 24393 - Posted: 12.05.2017

Anne Churchland Decisions span a vast range of complexity. There are really simple ones: Do I want an apple or a piece of cake with my lunch? Then there are much more complicated ones: Which car should I buy, or which career should I choose? Neuroscientists like me have identified some of the individual parts of the brain that contribute to making decisions like these. Different areas process sounds, sights or pertinent prior knowledge. But understanding how these individual players work together as a team is still a challenge, not only in understanding decision-making, but for the whole field of neuroscience. Part of the reason is that until now, neuroscience has operated in a traditional science research model: Individual labs work on their own, usually focusing on one or a few brain areas. That makes it challenging for any researcher to interpret data collected by another lab, because we all have slight differences in how we run experiments. Neuroscientists who study decision-making set up all kinds of different games for animals to play, for example, and we collect data on what goes on in the brain when the animal makes a move. When everyone has a different experimental setup and methodology, we can’t determine whether the results from another lab are a clue about something interesting that’s actually going on in the brain or merely a byproduct of equipment differences. © 2010–2017, The Conversation US, Inc.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Attention
Link ID: 24392 - Posted: 12.05.2017

Allison Aubrey Nobody likes the feeling of being left out, and when it happens, we tend to describe these experiences with the same words we use to talk about the physical pain of, say, a toothache. "People say, 'Oh, that hurts,' " says Nathan DeWall, a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky. DeWall and his colleagues were curious about the crossover between physical pain and emotional pain, so they began a series of experiments several years back. In one study, they found that acetaminophen (the active ingredient in Tylenol) seemed to reduce the sting of rejection that people experienced after they were excluded from a virtual ball-tossing game. The pain pills seemed to dim activity in regions of the brain involved in processing social pain, according to brain imaging. "People knew they were getting left out [of the game], it just didn't bother them as much," DeWall explains. As part of the study, participants were given either acetaminophen or a placebo for three weeks. None of the participants knew which one they were given. Each evening, participants completed a Hurt Feelings Scale, designed as a standardized measure of emotional pain. They were asked to rank themselves on statements such as: "Today, being teased hurt my feelings." It turned out that the pain medicine reduced reports of social pain. The emotional dampening documented in these experiments is not huge, but it appears significant enough to nudge people into a less-sensitive emotional state. © 2017 npr

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Emotions
Link ID: 24391 - Posted: 12.05.2017

By JANE E. BRODY After 72 very nearsighted years, 55 of them spent wearing Coke-bottle glasses, Jane Quinn of Brooklyn, N.Y., is thrilled with how well she can see since having her cataracts removed last year. “It’s very liberating to be able to see without glasses,” Ms. Quinn told me. “My vision is terrific. I can even drive at night. I can’t wait to go snorkeling.” And I was thrilled to be able to tell her that the surgery very likely did more than improve her poor vision. According to the results of a huge new study, it may also prolong her life. The 20-year study, conducted among 74,044 women aged 65 and older, all of whom had cataracts, found a 60 percent lower risk of death among the 41,735 women who had their cataracts removed. The findings were published online in JAMA Ophthalmology in October by Dr. Anne L. Coleman and colleagues at the Stein Eye Institute of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, with Dr. Victoria L. Tseng as lead author. A cataract is a clouding and discoloration of the lens of the eye. This normally clear structure behind the iris and pupil changes shape, enabling incoming visual images to focus clearly on the retina at the back of the eye. When cataracts form, images get increasingly fuzzy, the eyes become more sensitive to glare, night vision is impaired, and color contrasts are often lost. One friend at 74 realized she needed cataract surgery when she failed to see the yellow highlighted lines in a manuscript she was reading; for her husband, then 75, it was his ophthalmologist who said “it’s time.” Cataracts typically form gradually with age, and anyone who lives long enough is likely to develop them. They are the most frequent cause of vision loss in people over 40. Common risk factors include exposure to ultraviolet radiation (i.e., sunlight), smoking, obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, prolonged use of corticosteroids, extreme nearsightedness and family history. © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Vision; Alzheimers
Link ID: 24390 - Posted: 12.05.2017

By PERRI KLASS, M.D. We can date our pregnancies by what we were told was safe that later turned out to be more problematic. My own mother often told me lovingly (and laughingly) of the understanding doctor who advised her to drink rum every night when she was pregnant with me and had trouble falling asleep. And we know that on balance, it’s a good thing that science and epidemiology march forward, with more careful and more thorough investigations of the possible effects of exposures during fetal development and their complex long-term implications. But it’s disconcerting to learn that something you did, or something you took, in all good faith, following all the best recommendations, may be part of a more complicated story. And the researchers who have been examining the possible effects of fairly extensive acetaminophen use during pregnancy are very well aware that these are complex issues to communicate to women who have been pregnant in the past, who are pregnant right now or who become pregnant in the future. Acetaminophen, found in Tylenol and many other over-the-counter products, has been the drug recommended for pregnant women with fever or pain or inflammatory conditions certainly as far back as my own pregnancies in the 1980s and ‘90s. But in recent years there have been concerns raised about possible effects of heavy use of acetaminophen on the brain of the developing fetus. A Danish epidemiological study published in 2014 found an association between prenatal acetaminophen use during pregnancy and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, especially if the acetaminophen use was more frequent. Zeyan Liew, a postdoctoral scholar in the department of epidemiology at the U.C.L.A. Fielding School of Public Health, who was the first author on the 2014 article, said it was challenging for researchers to look at effects that show up later in the child’s life. “With a lot of drug safety research in pregnancy, they only look into birth outcomes or congenital malformations,” Dr. Liew said. “It’s very difficult to conduct a longitudinal study and examine outcomes like neurobehavioral disorders.” © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ADHD; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 24389 - Posted: 12.04.2017

By Julie Hecht Dog lovers may find it obvious that dogs pick up on our emotions. Attending to our emotional expression—in our faces, behavior, or even smell—would help them live intimately by our side. "Dogs get us," we say. End of story. But what about their side of the story? If dogs attend to our emotions—particularly those we wear on our faces—how might dogs feel when they see our different emotions? An answer to this question arose almost by accident. In 2015, Corsin Müller and colleagues at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna published a study that sought to determine whether dogs can discriminate happy and angry expression in human faces, as opposed to relying on other cues (their finding: yes, dogs can get this information from our faces alone). But because of the study design, the researchers could also peer into how dogs might feel about our emotions. In the study, pet dogs saw images of happy or angry human faces on a computer screen. To get a treat, the dogs had to approach and nose-touch a particular image on the screen. These are dogs. They can do this. Nose-touch for a treat? Yes please. A fabulous dog named Michel will now demonstrate: But when viewing the angry faces, the researchers noticed something odd. Dog performance was affected by whether they saw happy or angry expressions. During the initial training, dogs seeing the angry expression took longer to learn to approach and nose-touch the image for a treat than dogs who saw the happy expression. In other words, dogs were less inclined to approach and nose-touch angry faces, even though doing so would yield a treat. "Why would I approach an angry person? That makes no sense," a dog might think. Through past experiences with people, dogs could come to view the angry expression as aversive. The researchers suggest that dogs "had to overcome their natural tendency to move away from aversive (or threatening) stimuli…" © 2017 Scientific American

Keyword: Emotions; Evolution
Link ID: 24388 - Posted: 12.04.2017

By CLYDE HABERMAN This is a season of gustatory excess, when families gather at ample tables, offices hold lavish parties, and people eat and drink till they are beyond sated. Not everyone, though. There is a grimmer corner of America. It is populated by men and, more commonly, women who shun food not because they are too poor to afford it, but because they are too troubled to desire it. The country’s obesity epidemic deservedly draws constant attention, but many have a diametrically opposite problem: They are obsessively, and perilously, thin. Some experts estimate that 30 million Americans are plagued at some point in their lives by disorders like anorexia nervosa, binge-eating and bulimia. About one-third of them are men, belying broadly held assumptions that this is almost exclusively a female concern. Many are blacks, Latinos and Asians, countering another routine belief that this is a whites-only issue. Some get better, and stay that way. Others cycle through periods of recovery and relapse. And some, roughly a third of them, remain chronically ill or die. The National Eating Disorders Association describes anorexia as having “the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness.” Retro Report, a series of video documentaries exploring the continued impact of major news stories of the past, examines how public understanding of this issue has evolved since the startling death of the singer Karen Carpenter in 1983. Her illness, anorexia, had long been familiar to medical professionals. An English doctor, William Gull, gave it its name in the 1870s, but the condition had been recognized for centuries. A few women proclaimed saints by the Roman Catholic Church are believed to have been anorexic. Although the problem was always hiding in plain sight, Ms. Carpenter’s death at 32 made everyone see it clearly. She and her brother, Richard, were the hugely popular Carpenters duo, their records selling in the tens of millions with 1970s hits like “Close to You,” “We’ve Only Just Begun” and “Rainy Days and Mondays.” © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 24387 - Posted: 12.04.2017

By Marilla Steuter-Martin, CBC News By stimulating neural pathways, a team of Quebec researchers was able in a recent experiment to influence how much a group a twenty-somethings enjoyed their favourite music. The results of the Montreal Neurological Institute study might spur feelings of mistrust or dystopian images of mass-marketing mind control. But as McGill professor Alain Dagher tells it, the chances of this kind of technology being used to win over consumers is slim to none. "We don't have an interest to use this method to help sell music," Dagher, a co-author of the study, told CBC's All in a Weekend. Instead, he's hoping the process can be adapted to serve a more noble cause: in this case as an alternative treatment for mental illnesses such as depression or addiction. Dagher and his co-authors published the study last month in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. A group of 20 subjects in their 20s listened to music selected by the researchers and rated how much they enjoyed it, how it made them feel and how likely they would be to go out and buy it. Their brain responses were also measured. ©2017 CBC/Radio-Canada.

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 24386 - Posted: 12.04.2017

By RONI CARYN RABIN A. Bell’s palsy is a temporary partial facial paralysis that occurs when the nerve controlling the facial muscles is inflamed. But identifying the underlying cause of the inflammation “is a question for the ages,” said Dr. Joseph Safdieh, a neurologist at Weill Cornell Medicine and a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology. The current prevailing theory is that Bell’s palsy develops after a viral infection activates the immune system, Dr. Safdieh said, adding that “once the immune system is activated, it goes and attacks a nerve.” The condition usually affects only one side of the face, causing asymmetry or drooping on one side (the reason for that is not known either). Some experts believe Bell’s palsy is related to the herpes simplex or common cold sore virus. But several large randomized controlled trials that compared treatment with antiviral agents and prednisolone, an oral steroid that suppresses the immune system, found the steroid to be most effective. The results reinforce the idea that the condition is caused by an immune system reaction rather than the virus itself, Dr. Safdieh said. The condition has also been associated with recent vaccinations and upper respiratory infections, “but many people are vaccinated and have upper respiratory infections and don’t develop Bell’s palsy,” Dr. Safdieh said. “The ultimate answer is ‘we don’t know,’ but that many things that activate the immune system can trigger it.” One specific cause that should be ruled out is Lyme disease, especially if Bell’s palsy develops in the summer or early fall or in children, in whom it is less common, Dr. Safdieh said. Treatment will differ if the patient has Lyme disease. © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Movement Disorders
Link ID: 24385 - Posted: 12.04.2017

By Lydia Denworth A macaque monkey sat in front of a computer. A yellow square—the target—appeared in the periphery on the left side of the screen. After a few seconds delay, a second target appeared on the right. The question was: Which target would the monkey look at first? So far so routine as neuroscience experiments go, but the next step was unusual. By non-invasively directing bursts of inaudible acoustic energy at a specific visual area of the brain, a team of scientists steered the animal’s responses. If they focused on the left side of the brain, the monkey looked to the right more often. If they focused on the right side, the monkey looked to the left more often. The results of the experiment, which were presented last week at the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting, marked the first time that focused ultrasound was safely and effectively used in a nonhuman primate to alter brain activity rather than destroy tissue. A second study, in sheep, had similar results. “The finding paves the way to noninvasive stimulation of specific brain regions in humans,” says Jan Kubanek, a neural engineer at Stanford University School of Medicine and lead author of the macaque study. The technology might ultimately be used to diagnose or treat neurological diseases and disorders like Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, addiction and depression. Other scientists are optimistic. “The idea that, with a very carefully designed dose, you could actually deliver [focused ultrasound] and stimulate the brain in the place you want and modulate a circuit rather than damage it, is a really important proof of principle,” said Helen Mayberg, MD, of Emory University School of Medicine, who was not involved with the study. © 2017 Scientific American

Keyword: Parkinsons; Depression
Link ID: 24384 - Posted: 12.01.2017

By Neuroskeptic Sometimes, scientific misconduct is so blatant as to be comical. I recently came across an example of this on Twitter. The following is an image from a paper published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry C: As pointed out on PubPeer, this image – which is supposed to be an electron microscope image of some carbon dot (CD) nanoparticles – is an obvious fake. The “dots” are identical, and have clearly been cut-and-pasted. Where one copy has been placed over the top of another, the overlap is quite visible. It would be charitable to even call this ‘scientific’ fraud. The Journal of Materials Chemistry editors said on Twitter that they are “urgently” looking into this paper; I’ve no doubt it will be retracted soon, although the fact that it was published at all raises questions about the peer-review standards of this journal. To me as a neuroscientist, cases like this from chemistry get me worried. In a field like materials chemistry, or any field in which results take the form of images or photographs (such as Western blots), low-effort fraud is easy to spot because the manipulation of an image can, at least in unsubtle cases, be easily proven from the image itself. But what of fields like psychology or neuroscience where data don’t take the form of images? Perhaps low-effort frauds occur in these fields as well, but it is much more difficult to detect them when the results are statistical rather than pictorial in nature.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 24383 - Posted: 12.01.2017

An analysis of more than 800,000 people has concluded that people who remain single for life are 42 per cent more likely to get dementia than married couples. The study also found that people who have been widowed are 20 per cent more likely to develop the condition, but that divorcees don’t have an elevated risk. Previous research has suggested that married people may have healthier lifestyles, which may help explain the findings. Another hypothesis is that married people are more socially engaged, and that this may protect against developing the condition. The stress of bereavement might be behind the increased risk in those who have been widowed. But marriage isn’t always good for the health. While men are more likely to survive a heart attack if they are married, single women recover better than those who are married. Journal reference: Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry © Copyright New Scientist Ltd.

Keyword: Alzheimers; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 24382 - Posted: 12.01.2017

A new migraine drug that can halve the length of attacks has been hailed as “the start of real change” in how the condition is treated. Erenumab, a laboratory-made antibody that blocks a neural brain pathway called CGRP, is the first drug in 20 years proven to prevent migraine attacks. Phase three trial data on nearly 1,000 patients showed that it typically cut between three and four “migraine days” per month. In half the patients treated, migraine duration was reduced at least by half. Migraines are characterised by an intense, throbbing headache, sensitivity to light and noise, nausea, vomiting, low energy, and visual disturbances. Attacks can last anything from four to 72 hours. Each year more than 8.5 million people in the UK are thought to experience migraine – more than the number affected by asthma, diabetes and epilepsy combined. The condition is linked to depression and sick days caused by migraine are estimated to cost the UK economy more than £2bn per year. The trial, called Strive, compared patients taking erenumab for six months with others given a non-active placebo dummy drug. The research revealed that by months four to six, at least a 50% reduction in mean migraine days per month was achieved for just over 43% of patients injected under the skin with 70-mg of erenumab each month, while half of patients injected with the higher dose of 140-mg had such results. However, those given a placebo also saw benefits, with 26.6% of participants in this group experiencing such a reduction. © 2017 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 24381 - Posted: 11.30.2017

By JOANNA KLEIN Chances are that’s a shy elk looking back at a bold magpie, in the photograph above. They get along, so to speak, because the elk needs grooming and the magpie is looking for dinner. But they may have never entered into this partnership if it weren’t for their particular personalities, suggests a study published Wednesday in Biology Letters. Let’s start with the elk. In Canada’s western province of Alberta, they’ve been acting strange. Some have quit migrating, opting to hang around towns with humans who protect them from predators like wolves. Others still migrate. As a doctoral student at the University of Alberta, Robert Found, now a wildlife biologist for Parks Canada, discovered over years of observing their personalities that bold elk stayed, while shy elk migrated. But he noticed something else in the process of completing his research: As elk laid down to rest at the end of the day, magpies approached. There appeared to be a pattern: elk of some personality types aggressively rejected magpies. Others didn’t. “Sometimes the magpies will walk around right on the head and the face of the elk,” Dr. Found said. Scientists define animal personality by an individual animal’s behavior. It’s predictable, but also varies from others in a group. Dr. Found created a bold-shy scale for elk, measuring how close they allowed him to get, where elk positioned themselves within the group, which elk fought other elk, which ones won, how long elk spent monitoring for predators and their willingness to approach unfamiliar objects like old tires, skis and a bike. He also noted which elk accepted magpies. To study the magpies, he attracted the birds to 20 experimental sites with peanuts on tree stumps. During more than 20 separate trials with different magpies, he judged each bird’s behavior relative to the other magpies in a trial. Like the elk, he measured flight response, social structure and willingness to approach items they hadn’t previously encountered (a bike decorated with a boa and Christmas ornaments). He also noted who landed on a faux-elk that offered dog food rather than ticks (a previous study showed magpies liked dog food as much as ticks). © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Evolution
Link ID: 24380 - Posted: 11.30.2017

Marcelo Gleiser Last week, my 13.7 co-blogger Tania Lombrozo reported on a study she developed with graduate student Sara Gottlieb on whether science can explain the human mind. As Tania wrote, this was a survey-based study asking the participants "whether they thought it was possible for science to one day fully explain various aspects of the human mind, from depth perception and memory loss to spirituality and romantic love." On average, the study found, people judged that certain mental phenomena — such as depth perception or the sense of touch — to be "much more amenable to scientific explanation than others — such as feeling pride or experiencing love at first sight." According to the participants, the dividing line separating what science can and cannot explain seems to be the perception that some mental phenomena, for example, religious devotion and complex decision-making, "involved an internal experience accessible through introspection" that distinguishes us from other animals that share with us sensorial experiences, such as seeing and hearing. As Tania remarked, these findings "don't tell us what science can or can't explain. They tell us about the beliefs about what science can and can't explain." The question, then, is: "What do people think explains the human mind, if not science?" This is an interesting point that merits further discussion. Is the mind explainable? © 2017 npr

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 24379 - Posted: 11.30.2017

By Helen Branswell, What many hope will be the final chapter in an unfortunate saga in multiple sclerosis research appears to have been written by the scientist who started the affair in the first place. Italian physician Paolo Zamboni has publicly acknowledged that a therapy he developed and dubbed “the liberation treatment” does not cure or mitigate the symptoms of MS. A randomized controlled trial—the gold standard of medical research—he and other Italian researchers conducted concluded the procedure is a “largely ineffective technique” that should not be recommended for MS patients. The trial’s result comes as no surprise to neurologists, most of whom felt Zamboni’s theory lacked plausibility from the moment news of it exploded through the MS community in 2009. Advertisement Many of those same neurologists, though, saw their relationships with their patients fractured as belief in the liberation therapy took hold in the community of patients and their families in Canada, parts of the United States, and farther afield. Doctors advising caution against a procedure that hadn’t been proved to work or even to be safe were derided as standing in the way of innovation to protect their own practices. Dr. Jock Murray, an MS expert and retired professor from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, said the history of MS is laden with incidences like the Zamboni episode—though he said this one lasted longer than most. © 2017 Scientific American,

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis
Link ID: 24378 - Posted: 11.30.2017

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR The daughters of women exposed to childhood trauma are at increased risk for serious psychiatric disorders, a new study concludes. Researchers studied 46,877 Finnish children who were evacuated to Sweden during World War II, between 1940 and 1944. They tracked the health of their 93,391 male and female offspring born from 1950 to 2010. The study, in JAMA Psychiatry, found that female children of mothers who had been evacuated to Sweden were twice as likely to be hospitalized for a psychiatric illness as their female cousins who had not been evacuated, and more than four times as likely to have depression or bipolar disorder. But there was no effect among male children, and no effect among children of either sex born to fathers who had been evacuated. The most obvious explanation would be that girls inherited their mental illness from their mothers, but the researchers controlled for parental psychiatric disorder and the finding still held. The lead author, Torsten Santavirta, an associate professor of economics at Uppsala University, said that it is possible that traumatic events cause changes in gene expression that can then be inherited, but the researchers did not have access to genetic information. “The most important takeaway is that childhood trauma can be passed on to offspring,” Dr. Santavirta said, “and the wrinkle here is that these associations are sex-specific.” © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stress; Epigenetics
Link ID: 24377 - Posted: 11.30.2017

By Shawna Williams Neurodegenerative diseases are tough nuts to crack, not just because of the inherent difficulties of sorting through what has gone awry, and why, but also due to a dearth of biomarkers that could help spot the diseases and track their progression. This inability to easily diagnose many forms of neurodegeneration means that the diseases can’t be treated early in their progression. The lack of biomarkers also hinders the certainty with which researchers running clinical trials can assess whether and how well experimental treatments of the diseases are working. A simple, noninvasive eye scan now being developed for Alzheimer’s disease (AD), however, may help address both shortcomings. AD researchers already utilize amyloid positron emission tomography (PET), in which tracers are injected into patients’ brains to make the disease’s characteristic amyloid plaques detectable by PET imaging. But the scans are very expensive, spurring the continuing hunt for biomarkers. “What we now know is that the disease essentially occurs about 20 years before a patient becomes symptomatic,” says Cedars-Sinai Medical Center neuroscientist and neurosurgeon Keith Black. “And by the time one is symptomatic, they’ve already lost a lot of their brain weight; they’ve already lost a significant number of brain cells; they’ve already lost a significant amount of connectivity.” What’s needed, he says, is a way to detect the disease early so it can be treated—with drugs, lifestyle interventions, or both—before it’s too late. © 1986-2017 The Scientist

Keyword: Alzheimers; Vision
Link ID: 24376 - Posted: 11.29.2017

Terry Gross This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Here's how my guest describes his work. He writes, (reading) I am an anesthesiologist. I erase consciousness, deny memories, steal time, immobilize the body. I alter heart rate, blood pressure and breathing, and then I reverse these effects. I eliminate pain during a procedure, and I prevent it afterwards. I care for sick people, and I have saved lives, but it's rare that I'm the actual healer. That's from the opening of Dr. Henry Jay Przybylo's new memoir, "Counting Backwards: A Doctor's Notes On Anesthesia." He specializes in pediatric anesthesiology and estimates he treats about 1,000 children a year from micropreemies (ph) to teenagers. He's dealt with benign conditions, like the removal of a skin mole, as well as potentially fatal ones, like clipping a cerebral artery aneurism and heart transplants. He's also an associate professor at the Northwestern University School of Medicine. Dr. Przybylo, welcome to FRESH AIR. Your book is called "Counting Backwards." So why do anesthesiologists ask patients to count backwards from 100? HENRY JAY PRZYBYLO: You know, I'm not sure. I searched the Internet and everything to try and find the answer to that, and the closest I can come to is that around 1940s, we came up - medicines were developed to induce anesthesia that were given through veins - IV - and they were extremely quick-acting. And I think sometime, some anesthesiologist somewhere just wanted to see how long it would take and asked the patient to start counting backwards from a hundred, realizing they never made it out of the 90s before they were anesthetized, and I think that just stuck. © 2017 npr

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 24375 - Posted: 11.29.2017