By Rachel E. Gross “By being a guy’s best first move … Axe is designed to keep guys a step ahead in the dating game,” boasts Unilever, the company that sells Axe products. Of course, if you don’t happen to be a gullible 13-year-old boy, you probably don’t believe that body spray or deodorant is a magic elixir with the power to turn nice girls naughty. But what if it were possible to change a person’s mood with just a scent? The idea may not be that far-fetched, according to a new study in the journal Psychological Science—reporting work that was funded by Unilever. The study found that it might be possible to subconsciously trigger a state of happiness using the scent of—deep breath now—human sweat. People send all kinds of secret messages through their secretions. When smelling chemicals in male sweat, women become more alert, and they can even tell whether that sweat was made by a guy who was particularly turned on. (Cautions the New York Times: “No man should imagine that based on these conclusions he can improve his sex life by refraining from bathing.”) But until now, most sweat studies have focused on sexual arousal or negative emotions like fear. For obvious reasons, these emotions are crucial to survival and evolutionary success. If your friend spots a puma, it may be helpful for you to be able to sniff out instant cues to be on the alert or flee for cover. Being able to transmit positive emotions may also have a profound social impact, says Gün Semin, a psychologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and lead researcher on the study. After all, “the pursuit of happiness is not an individual enterprise,” as he and his fellow researchers write rather eloquently in the new study. So Semin’s team decided to test whether people could communicate happiness via sweat.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Emotions
Link ID: 20863 - Posted: 04.30.2015

Scott Hensley When patients brought to the ER have uncontrolled blood pressure, neglected asthma or diabetes that hasn't been dealt with, doctors often start treatment right then and there. But what happens when the patient turns out to be addicted to opioids, such as oxycodone or heroin? In case of an overdose, the medical team can take action to rescue the patient. The underlying addiction is something else, though. Like asthma or diabetes, opioid addiction is a chronic condition. Could starting treatment for addiction in the ER get someone on right road faster? Doctors at Yale University thought it was possible. "You can normalize this chronic disease like any other chronic disease," says Dr. Gail D'Onofrio, chief of emergency medicine at Yale's med school. A kit with naloxone, also known by its brand name Narcan, is displayed at the South Jersey AIDS Alliance in Atlantic City. Naloxone counters an overdose with heroin or certain prescription painkillers by blocking the receptors these opioids bind to in the brain. She and her colleagues at Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut tested whether prescribing medicine to ease withdrawal symptoms in combination with a brief counseling intervention and a focused referral for help would improve the chances a person would get into addiction treatment. It worked pretty well, according to results of a study published Tuesday in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association. © 2015 NPR

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 20862 - Posted: 04.30.2015

Children who were often bullied by their peers may experience more anxiety and depression than children who were abused by adults, a finding that U.S. and British researchers say highlights an "imbalance" in school services to tackle bullying. Researchers followed the mental health of more than 4,000 children in Avon, south west England from birth to age 18 and 1,400 others in North Carolina from age nine up to age 26 through parent questionnaires and clinical interviews. In the Avon study, maltreatment was defined as physical, emotional, or sexual abuse or "maladaptive parenting" such as hitting, shouting and hostility. Children were interviewed about the frequency of bullying, which included overt threats, physical violence and nasty names as well as social exclusion or spreading lies or rumours. The results consistently showed an increased risk of anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicidal tendencies in children who were bullied, whether or not they had a history of abuse by adults, Prof. William Copeland, a clinical psychologist at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, N.C. and his co-authors concluded in Tuesday's issue of Lancet Psychiatry. "What was a surprise was to see [the results] were as significant and pervasive as what we see for children that are physically abused, sexually abused or neglected," Copeland said. Government policies have focused almost exclusively on providing services for child abuse but much less attention and resources are devoted to bullying, the researchers said. Copeland's previous research showed long-term repercussions from bullying persist — and that includes impacts on physical health, dropping out of school and trouble with authorities. ©2015 CBC/Radio-Canada

Keyword: Stress; Depression
Link ID: 20861 - Posted: 04.29.2015

By JEFFREY ELY, ALEXANDER FRANKEL and EMIR KAMENICA IMAGINE the following situation. After a grueling day at work, you plop down in front of your TV, ready to relax. Your TiVo has recorded all of the day’s March Madness games. You’ve sequestered yourself away from any news about who won or lost. Which game to watch? Suddenly, your spouse pops in and tells you to stay away from Villanova versus Lafayette, which was a blowout, and to watch Baylor versus Georgia State, a nail-biter. Is this recommendation appreciated? Hardly. Baylor versus Georgia State was exciting because the unexpected happened: It was a back-and-forth affair in which Georgia State, the underdog, clinched the upset only in the final moments. But if you know in advance that it’s a nail-biter, you will expect the unexpected, ruining the surprise. It’s a lesson that the filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan, for one, seems to have missed. Once it’s common knowledge that your movie will have a dramatic, unexpected plot twist at the end, then your movie no longer has a dramatic, unexpected plot twist at the end. To be thrilling, you must occasionally be boring. This is one of several lessons that came out of our recent study of drama-based entertainment using the tools of information economics — the results of which were published in the Journal of Political Economy in February. When we recognize that the capacity to surprise an audience is a scarce resource (“You can’t fool all of the people all of the time”), it becomes natural to use economic theory to optimize that resource.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 20860 - Posted: 04.29.2015

Amy Coats Those split second decisions, made almost without thinking. When to put your foot on the pedal when you’re at the red light. When to check how those sausages are doing. Remembering to grab your lunch from the fridge seconds before you leave the house. Or – too often – 20 minutes after. And those carefully considered ones. Do I just finish this paragraph before I make a cup of tea? Or do I wait until the boss is clear of the kitchen? Timing, that is our perception and estimation of time, is key in determining how we behave and in the decisions we make. New findings suggest that time in the brain is relative, not absolute. This means that your brain ‘encodes’ your sense of time depending on what happens to you, and not by the second, minute or hour. And this in turn determines how you behave. Alas, you could be forgiven for feeling that the units of time common to everyone worldwide, except perhaps the odd Amazonian tribe, are pretty well ingrained. My partner and I will often make a quick bet on what time it is before we check our phone (all sigh!/rejoice! [delete as appropriate], the dwindling watch-less generation). And we’re both pretty good at getting to within 5 or 10 minutes, even if we haven’t known the exact time all day. He’s normally better at it, perhaps because he’s male? Perhaps it tends to fly/drag for me because I’m having more/less fun? Perhaps that’s another story. In the 2004 reality TV show Shattered, contestants who had been sleep-deprived for over 140 hours went head-to-head to predict when an arbitrary amount of time had passed – in this case, one minute and seven seconds. With the pressure of £100,000 prize money at stake, Dermot O’Leary grimacing nearby, a studio audience rustling in the darkness, and no cues except their ‘inner clock’, contestants were almost unbelievably close. The loser, Jonathan, was 0.4 seconds out, while Jimmy, the winner, was just one tenth of a second out. © 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 20859 - Posted: 04.29.2015

// by Jennifer Viegas Male species of a West African monkey communicate using at least these six main sounds: boom-boom, krak, krak-oo, hok, hok-oo and wak-oo. Key to the communication by the male Campbell's monkey is the suffix "oo," according to a new study, which is published in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. By adding that sound to the end of their calls, the male monkeys have created a surprisingly rich "vocabulary" that males and females of their own kind, as well as a related species of monkey, understand. The study confirms prior suspected translations of the calls. For example, "krak" means leopard, while "krak-oo" refers to other non-leopard threats, such as falling branches. "Boom-boom-krak-oo" can roughly translate to, "Watch out for that falling tree branch." "Several aspects of communication in Campbell's monkeys allow us to draw parallels with human language," lead author Camille Coye, a researcher at the University of St. Andrews, told Discovery News. For the study, she and her team broadcast actual and artificially modified male Campbell's monkey calls to 42 male and female members of a related species: Diana monkeys. The latter's vocal responses showed that they understood the calls and replied in predicted ways. They freaked out after hearing "krak," for example, and remained on alert as they do after seeing a leopard. © 2015 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 20858 - Posted: 04.29.2015

By Sid Perkins Imagine having a different accent from someone else simply because your house was farther up the same hill. For at least one species of songbird, that appears to be the case. Researchers have found that the mating songs of male mountain chickadees (Poecile gambeli, shown) differ in their duration, loudness, and the frequency ranges of individual chirps, depending in part on the elevation of their habitat in the Sierra Nevada mountains of the western United States. The songs also differed from those at similar elevations on a nearby peak. Young males of this species learn their breeding songs by listening to adult males during their first year of life, the researchers note. And because these birds don’t migrate as the seasons change, and young birds don’t settle far from where they grew up, it’s likely that the differences persist in each local group—the ornithological equivalent of having Southern drawls and Boston accents. Females may use the differences in dialect to distinguish local males from outsiders that may not be as well adapted to the neighborhood they’re trying to invade, the team reports today in Royal Society Open Science. © 2015 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 20857 - Posted: 04.29.2015

Julian Baggini is that happy thing – a philosopher who recognises that readers go glassy-eyed if presented with high-octane philosophical discourse. And yet, as his latest book, Freedom Regained: The Possibility of Free Will, makes clear, it is in all our interests to consider crucial aspects of what it means to be human. Indeed, in this increasingly complex world, maybe more so than ever. Freedom is one of the great, emotive political watchwords. The emancipation of slaves and women has inspired political movements on a grand scale. But, latterly, the concept of freedom has defected from the public realm to the personal. How responsible are we as individuals for the actions we take? To what degree are we truly autonomous agents? The argument that environmental circumstances are crucial determinates on our actions – the “Officer Krupke” argument (from the West Side Story song: “Gee, Officer Krupke, we’re very upset/We never had the love that every child ought to get”) – has for some time carried weight, not least in the defence of violent crime. Defective genes are also a common part of the artillery in the argument against the possibility of free choice. Excessive testosterone and low resting heart rates, for example, both statistically bias a person towards violence. And now neuroscience brings us the unnerving news that while even the most sane, genetically well endowed and law-abiding of us believe we make free choices, the evidence of brain scans suggests otherwise. Neuroscience reveals the seemingly novel fact that “we are not the authors of our thoughts and actions in the way people generally suppose”. I say “seemingly novel”, for it is no news that many of our apparently willed choices have unconscious determinates, which are at variance from our known wishes and desires. The whole of psychoanalysis is predicated on that principle but, as anyone who can drive a car will attest, often routine physical actions take their source from an internalised history rather than any conscious decision-making. The neural information that has made waves, however, is the fact that scans indicates the brain’s chemistry consistently determines a decision prior to our consciously making that decision. So when I deliberate over a menu and finally choose a mushroom risotto over a rare steak, my brain has anticipated this before I am aware of my choice. © 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 20856 - Posted: 04.28.2015

Scientists have raised hopes that they may be able to create a vaccine to block the progress of Parkinson’s disease. They believe new research provides evidence that an abnormal protein may trigger the condition. If the theory is correct, researchers say it might be possible to prime a person’s immune system – using a special vaccine – so it is ready to attack the rogue protein as it passes through the body. In this way, the protein would be prevented from destroying a person’s dopamine-manufacturing cells, where the disease inflicts its greatest damage. This new vision of Parkinson’s has been arousing excitement among researchers. “It has transformed the way we see Parkinson’s,” said Roger Barker, professor of clinical neurosciences at Cambridge University. Parkinson’s does not usually affect people until they are over 50. However, researchers have uncovered recent evidence that suggests it may be caused by an event occurring 10 to 20 years before its main symptoms – tremors, rigidity and slowness of movement – manifest themselves. “If you ask Parkinson’s patients if, in the past, they have experienced loss of sense of smell or suffer from disturbed sleep or have problems with their bowels, very often they reply they have,” said Barker, whose work is backed by the charity Parkinson’s UK, whose Parkinson Awareness week ends on Sunday. “Frequently these patients manifest symptoms several years before it becomes apparent they have the disease. We now believe there is a link.” © 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 20855 - Posted: 04.28.2015

By Emily Dwass In the frightening world of brain tumors, “benign” is a good word to hear. But even a nonmalignant tumor can be dangerous — especially if, as in my case, it goes undetected, becoming a stealth invader. “Anecdotally, we often hear about women who were originally misdiagnosed — sometimes for years,” said Tom Halkin, a spokesman for the patient advocacy nonprofit National Brain Tumor Society. When I developed tingling in my limbs 12 years ago, two Los Angeles neurologists diagnosed Guillain-Barré syndrome, a disorder in which the immune system attacks the nervous system. The symptoms of numbness and weakness ebbed and flowed for three years. Then one day, I couldn’t slide my right foot into a flip-flop. This got me a ride in a magnetic resonance imaging machine, which revealed a brain mass the size of a tennis ball. It was a benign meningioma, a tumor that grows in the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord. After the diagnosis, I consulted with Los Angeles surgeons. “We’re going to cut your head open like a pumpkin,” one told me. I chose someone else, who had a stellar reputation, who was compassionate, and who did not compare my skull to a squash. “You’re cured,” he said as I awoke in the operating room. Recovery took about six weeks and went smoothly, except for my right foot, which remains partly numb. I relearned to walk and to drive with my left foot, using adaptive equipment. Had my tumor been diagnosed earlier, I might have avoided a large craniotomy and permanent foot issues. “It’s critical to find these tumors when they are small, when radiosurgery is an option, rather than when they are very big or produce a lot of symptoms, at which point it’s not optimal to treat them without doing open surgery,” said Dr. Susan Pannullo, the director of neuro-oncology and neurosurgical radiosurgery at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical College. © 2015 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Movement Disorders
Link ID: 20854 - Posted: 04.28.2015

By Laura Sanders Studying the human brain requires grandiose thinking, but rarely do actual theatrical skills come into play. In her latest stint as a video star, MIT neuroscientist Nancy Kanwisher does not buzz saw her skull open to give viewers a glimpse of her brain. But she does perhaps the next best thing: She clips off her shoulder-length gray hair and shaves her head on camera. Kanwisher’s smooth, bald head then becomes a canvas for graduate student and artist Rosa Lafer-Sousa, who meticulously draws in the brain’s wrinkles — the sulci and the gyri that give rise to thoughts, memories and behaviors. All the while, Kanwisher provides a voice-over describing which areas of the brain recognize faces, process language and even think about what another person is thinking. The video is the latest in Kanwisher’s occasional online series, Nancy’s Brain Talks. Pithy, clever and cleanly produced, the more than two dozen videos she has made so far bring brain science to people who might otherwise miss out. In another neurostunt, brain-zapping technology called transcranial magnetic stimulation makes Kanwisher’s hand jump involuntarily. These demonstrations capture people’s attention more than a dry scientific paper would. “I think scientists owe it to the public to share the cool stuff we discover,” Kanwisher says. Her own lab’s discoveries focus on how the brain’s disparate parts work together to construct a mind. Some brain areas have very specific job descriptions while others are far more general. Compiling a tally of brain regions and figuring out what they do is one of the first steps toward understanding the brain. “It starts to give us a set of basic components of the mind,” Kanwisher says. “It’s like a parts list.” © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2015.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 20853 - Posted: 04.28.2015

By Linda Carroll Women may have a harder time recovering from concussion, a new study suggests. Taiwanese researchers found women were more likely than men to continue to have memory deficits nearly three months after a mild traumatic brain injury, or mTBI, according to the study published in the journal Radiology. The findings provide "evidence that women may have greater risk for developing working memory impairment after mTBI and may have longer recovery time," said study coauthor Dr. Chi-Jen Chen, a professor at Taipei Medical University Shuang-Ho Hospital. "According to our preliminary results, more aggressive management should be initiated once mTBI is diagnosed in women, including close monitoring of symptoms, more aggressive pharmacological treatments, rehabilitation, as well as longer follow-up." Chen had noticed that almost twice as many women as men were showing up in her clinic after concussions. She wondered if there might be some kind of physical difference making concussions more severe in women. To determine whether there was a real effect, she and her colleagues rounded up 30 concussed patients and 30 non-brain-injured volunteers. Each group had equal numbers of men and women. The concussed patients were scanned shortly after doing a memory test with functional MRI twice: one month after their injury and again six weeks later. The volunteers were scanned once. All the study participants took neuropsychological tests designed to measure attention span, impulsivity, and deficits in working memory.

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 20852 - Posted: 04.28.2015

|By Rebecca Harrington Kraft Macaroni & Cheese—that favorite food of kids, packaged in the nostalgic blue box—will soon be free of yellow dye. Kraft announced Monday that it will remove artificial food coloring, notably Yellow No. 5 and Yellow No. 6 dyes, from its iconic product by January 2016. Instead, the pasta will maintain its bright yellow color by using natural ingredients: paprika, turmeric and annatto (the latter of which is derived from achiote tree seeds). The company said it decided to pull the dyes in response to growing consumer pressure for more natural foods. But claims that the dyes may be linked to attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children have also risen recently, as they did years ago, putting food dyes under sharp focus once again. On its Web site Kraft says synthetic colors are not harmful, and that their motivation to remove them is because consumers want more foods with no artificial colors. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration maintains artificial food dyes are safe but some research studies have found the dyes can contribute to hyperactive behavior in children. Food dyes have been controversial since pediatrician Benjamin Feingold published findings in the 1970s that suggested a link between artificial colors and hyperactive behavior, but scientists, consumers and the government have not yet reached a consensus on the extent of this risk or the correct path to address it. After a 2007 study in the U.K. showed that artificial colors and/or the common preservative sodium benzoate increased hyperactivity in children, the European Union started requiring food labels indicating that a product contains any one of six dyes that had been investigated. The label states the product "may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children." © 2015 Scientific American

Keyword: ADHD; Neurotoxins
Link ID: 20851 - Posted: 04.28.2015

By Tina Hesman Saey People with depression have more mitochondrial DNA and shorter telomeres than nondepressed people do, an international team of researchers reports online April 23 in Current Biology. Mitochondria are organelles that produce energy for cells. Mitochondria seem to become inefficient under stress, the team found, so more mitochondria may be needed to produce enough energy. Telomeres are the DNA endcaps on chromosomes that prevent the genetic material from unraveling. Short telomeres are associated with shorter life spans. The altered DNA may reflect metabolic changes associated with depression, the researchers say. Experiments with mice showed that these DNA changes are brought on by stress or by stress hormones. Four weeks after scientists stopped stressing the mice, their mitochondrial and telomere DNA had returned to normal. Those results indicate that the molecular changes are reversible. Researchers also studied DNA from more than 11,000 people to learn whether past stress was responsible for the molecular changes seen in people with depression. Depression was associated with the DNA changes, but having a stressful life was not. For instance, people who had experienced childhood sexual abuse but were not depressed did not have statistically meaningful changes to their DNA compared with people who had no history of abuse. The findings suggest that stress can change DNA but many people can bounce back. Depressed people may have a harder time recovering from the molecular damage. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2015.

Keyword: Depression; Epigenetics
Link ID: 20850 - Posted: 04.28.2015

By Emily DeMarco Mice and rats communicate in the ultrasonic frequency range, and it’s thought that cats evolved the ability to hear those high-pitched squeaks to better hunt their prey. Now, a new study suggests that sensitivity to higher pitched sounds may cause seizures in some older cats. After receiving reports of the problem, nicknamed the “Tom and Jerry syndrome” because of how the cartoon cat is often startled by sounds, researchers surveyed cat owners and examined their pets’ medical records, looking for insight into the types and durations of seizures and the sounds that provoked them. In 96 cats, they found evidence of the syndrome they call feline audiogenic reflex seizures. The most common types of seizure-eliciting sounds included crinkling tinfoil, clanking a metal spoon on a ceramic feeding bowl, and clinking glass. The severity of the seizure ranged from brief muscle jerks to more serious episodes where the cat lost consciousness and stiffened and jerked for several minutes, the researchers report online today in the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery. Both pedigree and nonpedigree cats were susceptible, although one breed was common: Thirty of the 96 cats were Birmans (pictured). Because the seizures coincided with old age—the average age of onset was 15 years—veterinarians could miss the disorder while dealing with the felines’ other health issues, the researchers say. Minimizing exposure to the problematic sounds and preliminary, therapeutic trials with levetiracetam—an anticonvulsant medication used to control epilepsy—among a small sample of the cats seemed to help limit the occurrence of seizures. © 2015 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Epilepsy; Hearing
Link ID: 20849 - Posted: 04.28.2015

By ALAN SCHWARZ A sharp rise in visits to emergency rooms and calls to poison control centers nationwide has some health officials fearing that more potent and dangerous variations of a popular drug known as spice have reached the nation’s streets, resulting in several deaths. In the first three weeks of April, state poison control centers received about 1,000 reports of adverse reactions to spice — the street name for a family of synthetic substances that mimic the effects of marijuana — more than doubling the total from January through March, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers. The cases, which can involve spice alone or in combination with other substances, have appeared four times as often this year as in 2014, the organization said. On Thursday alone there were 172 reports, by far the most in one day this year. Health departments in Alabama, Mississippi and New York have issued alerts this month about more spice users being rushed to hospitals experiencing extreme anxiety, violent behavior and delusions, with some of the cases resulting in death. Similar increases have occurred in Arizona, Florida, New Jersey and Texas. The total number of fatalities nationwide this year is not available, health officials said. One person in Louisiana died Wednesday and two others were in intensive care, said Mark Ryan, the director of the Louisiana Poison Center. “We had one hospital in the Baton Rouge area that saw over 110 cases in February. That’s a huge spike,” Dr. Ryan said. “There’s a large amount of use going on. When one of these new ingredients — something that’s more potent and gives a bigger high — is released and gets into distribution, it can cause these more extreme effects.” © 2015 The New York Times Compan

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 20848 - Posted: 04.25.2015

by Helen Thomson Tinnitus is the debilitating sensation of a high-pitched noise without any apparent source. It can be permanent or fleeting, and affects at least 25 million people in the US alone. To understand more about the condition, William Sedley at the University of Newcastle, UK, and his colleagues took advantage of a rare opportunity to study brain activity in a man with tinnitus who was undergoing surgery for epilepsy. Surgeons placed recording electrodes in several areas of his brain to identify the source of his seizures. The man – who they knew as Bob (not his real name) – was awake during the procedure, which allowed Sedley's team to manipulate his tinnitus while recording from his brain. First they played him 30 seconds of white noise, which suppressed his tinnitus for about 10 seconds before it gradually returned. Bob was asked to rate the loudness of his tinnitus before the experiment started, as well as immediately after the white noise finished and 10 seconds later. This protocol was then repeated many times over two days. "Normally, studies compare brain activity of people with and without tinnitus using non-invasive techniques," says Sedley. "Not only are these measurements less precise, but the people with tinnitus might be concentrating on the sound, while the ones without tinnitus might be thinking about their lunch." This, he says, can make the results hard to interpret. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 20847 - Posted: 04.25.2015

Jon Hamilton The simple act of thinking can accelerate the growth of many brain tumors. That's the conclusion of a paper in Cell published Thursday that showed how activity in the cerebral cortex affected high-grade gliomas, which represent about 80 percent of all malignant brain tumors in people. "This tumor is utilizing the core function of the brain, thinking, to promote its own growth," says Michelle Monje, a researcher and neurologist at Stanford who is the paper's senior author. In theory, doctors could slow the growth of these tumors by using sedatives or other drugs to reduce mental activity, Monje says. But that's not a viable option because it wouldn't eliminate the tumor and "we don't want to stop people with brain tumors from thinking or learning or being active." Even so, the discovery suggests other ways to slow down some of the most difficult brain tumors, says Tracy Batchelor, who directs the neuro-oncology program at Massachusetts General Hospital and was not involved in the research. "We really don't have any curative treatments for high-grade gliomas," Batchelor says. The discovery of a link between tumor growth and brain activity "has opened up a window into potential therapeutic interventions," he says. The discovery came from a team of scientists who studied human glioma tumors implanted in mouse brains. The scientists used a technique called optogenetics, which uses light to control brain cells, to increase the activity of cells near the tumors. © 2015 NPR

Keyword: Glia
Link ID: 20846 - Posted: 04.25.2015

Pete Etchells Over the past few years, there seems to have been a insidious pandemic of nonsense neuroscientific claims creeping into the education system. In 2013, the Wellcome Trust commissioned a series of surveys of parents and teachers, asking about various types of educational tools or teaching methods, and the extent to which they believe they have a basis in neuroscience. Worryingly, 76% of teachers responded that they used learning styles in their teaching, and a further 19% responded that they either use, or intend to use, left brain/right brain distinctions to help inform learning methods. Both of these approaches have been thoroughly debunked, and have no place in either neuroscience or education. In October last year, I reported on another study that showed that in the intervening time, things hadn’t really improved – 91% of UK teachers in that survey believed that there were differences in the way that students think and learn, depending on which hemisphere of the brain is ‘dominant’. And despite lots of great attempts to debunk myths about the brain, they still seem to persist and take up residence as ‘commonplace’ knowledge, being passed onto children as if they are fact. When I wrote about an ATL proposal to train teachers in neuroscience – a well-intended idea, but ultimately grounded in nonsense about left brain/right brain myths – I commented at the end that we need to do more to bring teachers and neuroscientists together, to discuss whether neuroscience has a relevant role in informing the way we teach students. Now, a new initiative funded by the Wellcome Trust is aiming to just that. © 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 20845 - Posted: 04.25.2015

by Katie Collins Sarah-Jayne Blakemore is just as fascinated by the links between neuroscience and education as she is outraged by the pseudo science that often intrudes upon this territory. Neuroscience in education has really been flourishing in recent years, she says on stage at WIRED Health 2015, but some theories about neuroscience have already infiltrated schools, and not necessarily in a good way. Some products that makes claims about having a positive effect on cognition make bogus claims that may well have positive effects in the classroom, but at the same time promote completely inaccurate science. Blakemore points specifically to the Brain Gym educational model, which claims to improve memory, concentration and information retention. There are no problems with the exercises themselves, she says, but the claims made about the brain are baseless. For a start, she said, Brain Gym claims that children can push "brain buttons" on their bodies that will stimulate blood flow to the brain. Another physical exercise claimed to increase and improve connectivity between the two sides of the brain. "This makes no sense -- they are in communication anyway," says Blakemore. Teachers like Brain Gym because it does what it says and results in improvements in the classroom, but it could just as easily be placebo or novelty causing the effects. One thing Blakemore is sure of? "They're nothing to do with brain buttons or coordinating the two brain hemispheres."

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 20844 - Posted: 04.25.2015