| by Isaac Saul Multi-step puzzles can be difficult for humans, but what if I told you there was a bird that could solve them on its own? In this BBC special, Dr. Alex Taylor has set up an eight-step puzzle to try and stump one of the smartest crows he's seen in captivity. They describe the puzzle as "one of the most complex tests of the animal mind ever." This isn't the first time crows' intelligence has been tested, either. Along with being problem solvers, these animals have an eerie tendency towards complex human-like memory skills. Through several different studies, we've learned that crows can recognize faces, communicate details of an event to each other and even avoid places they recognize as dangerous. This bird, dubbed "007" for its crafty mind, flies into the caged puzzle and spends only seconds analyzing the puzzle before getting down to business. Despite the puzzle's difficulty, the bird only seems to be stumped momentarily. At the end of the puzzle is a food reward, but how he gets there is what will really blow your mind. © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc

Keyword: Intelligence; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 19219 - Posted: 02.08.2014

By Joel Achenbach, The death last Sunday of Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman at age 46 focused media attention on the nationwide surge in heroin use and overdoses. But the very real heroin epidemic is framed by an even more dramatic increase since the beginning of the century in overdoses from pharmaceutical drugs known as opioids. These are, in effect, tandem epidemics — an addiction crisis driven by the powerful effects on the human brain of drugs derived from morphine. Prescription opioids are killing Americans at more than five times the rate that heroin is, according to the most recent numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These drugs are sold under such familiar brand names as OxyContin, Vicodin and Percocet and can be found in medicine cabinets in every precinct of American society. They’re also sold illicitly on the street or crushed and laced into heroin. There have been numerous efforts by law enforcement agencies to crack down on “pill mills” that dispense massive amounts of the pharmaceuticals, as well as regulations aimed at preventing users from “doctor shopping” to find someone who will write a prescription. Those efforts have had the unintended effect, officials say, of driving some people to heroin in recent years as their pill supply dries up. © 1996-2014 The Washington Post

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 19218 - Posted: 02.08.2014

Dinsa Sachan Could being visually impaired have had a role in the musical genius of Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles? A study provides some clues by showing that adult mice kept in the dark quickly develop sharper hearing and become better at distinguishing pitch and frequency. The improvements were correlated with adaptations in the brain — such as strengthening of connections between neurons — that normally happen only early in life. For their study, published today in Neuron1, Hey-Kyoung Lee, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and her collaborators selected two sets of healthy adult mice. They kept the first group in a darkened environment for a week, while the other was exposed to natural light. The team used electrodes to measure activity in neurons in the animals' primary auditory cortex — the part of the brain that processes what a sound is, how loud it is and where it comes from. The researchers played sounds of different frequencies and intensities to the mice, and watched how their brain cells reacted. The results “showed that neurons in visually deprived animals can 'hear' much softer sounds” than in control animals, says Lee. “They also have much finer discrimination ability as far as identifying pitch goes.” Previous studies have found that changes in the auditory cortex take a long time, and that people who become blind early in life adapt better than those who lose their sight later. The team's findings, however, show that some modifications can occur rapidly in the adult brain, she says. “Moreover,” she adds, “the changes in the auditory cortex were achieved by changes in the strength of synaptic connections. These were believed to be unchangeable in adults.” © 2014 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Hearing; Vision
Link ID: 19217 - Posted: 02.06.2014

|By Carl Erik Fisher After 22 years of failed treatments, including rehabilitation, psychotherapy and an array of psychiatric medications, a middle-aged Dutch man decided to take an extraordinary step to fight his heroin addiction. He underwent an experimental brain surgery called deep brain stimulation (DBS). At the University of Amsterdam, researchers bored small holes in his skull and guided two long, thin probes deep into his head. The ends of the probes were lined with small electrodes, which were positioned in his nucleus accumbens, a brain area near the base of the skull that is associated with addiction. The scientists ran the connecting wires under his scalp, behind his ear and down to a battery pack sewn under the skin of his chest. Once turned on, the electrodes began delivering constant electrical pulses, much like a pacemaker, with the goal of altering the brain circuits thought to be causing his drug cravings. At first the stimulation intensified his desire for heroin, and he almost doubled his drug intake. But after the researchers adjusted the pulses, the cravings diminished, and he drastically cut down his heroin use. Neurosurgeries are now being pursued for a variety of mental illnesses. Initially developed in the 1980s to treat movement disorders, including Parkinson's disease, DBS is today used to treat depression, dementia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, substance abuse and even obesity. Despite several success stories, many of these new ventures have attracted critics, and some skeptics have even called for an outright halt to this research. © 2014 Scientific American

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Parkinsons
Link ID: 19216 - Posted: 02.06.2014

by Douglas Heaven We have the world at our fingertips. A sense of touch can sometimes be as important as sight, helping us to avoid crushing delicate objects or ensuring that we hold on firmly when carrying hot cups of coffee. Now, for the first time, a person who lost his left hand has had a near-natural sense of touch restored thanks to a prosthesis. "I didn't realise it was possible," says Dennis Aabo Sørensen, who is so far the only person to have been fitted with the new prosthesis. "The feeling is very close to the sensation you get when you touch things with your normal hand." To restore Sørensen's sense of touch, Silvestro Micera at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne and his colleagues implanted tiny electrodes inside the ulnar and median nerve bundles in Sørensen's upper arm. Between them, the ulnar nerve – which runs down to the little finger and ring finger – and the median nerve – which runs down to the index and middle fingers – carry sensations from most of the hand, including the palm. The team then connected the electrodes to pressure sensors on the fingertips and palm of a robotic prosthetic hand via cables running down the outside of Sørensen's arm. When he used the hand to grasp an object, electrical signals from the pressure pads were fired directly into the nerves, providing him with a sense of touch. Getting to grips The electrical signals were calibrated so that Sørensen could feel a range of sensation, from the slightest touch to firm pressure just below his pain threshold, depending on the strength of his grip. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Robotics
Link ID: 19215 - Posted: 02.06.2014

By Matt McGrath Environment correspondent, BBC News Successful professional cyclists are seen as more handsome than their struggling colleagues, according to new research. Women rated facial attractiveness among riders in the 2012 Tour de France, won by Britain's Sir Bradley Wiggins. The top 10% of performers were rated on average as 25% better looking than the laggards. The scientists conclude that humans have evolved to recognise athletic performance in faces. The research has been published in the Royal Society journal, Biology Letters. Some biologists argue that evolution has shaped women to select mates on the basis that they would either make good fathers or would pass on good genes. Healthy, physically fit men would on average be seen as more attractive by women. A number of other studies in recent years have suggested that women have a sophisticated radar for athletic performance, rating those with greater sporting skill as more attractive. This new work, though, set out to test if the same applied to more inherent physical qualities such as stamina and endurance. Cycle of life Dr Erik Postma, from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Zurich, asked people to rate the attractiveness of 80 professional cyclists from the 2012 Tour de France. The cyclists were all of a similar physical stature, were tanned and around the same age. BBC © 2014

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 19214 - Posted: 02.06.2014

By Deborah Kotz / Globe Staff Public health officials, politicians, and smoking researchers cheered the Wednesday announcement from CVS Caremark that they will stop selling cigarettes and other tobacco products at CVS pharmacy stores by October. President Obama, a former smoker, said CVS is setting a “powerful example” and that will help public health efforts to reduce smoking-related deaths and illnesses. The American Public Health Association called it a “historic decision,” and the American Association of Cancer Research called it a “visionary move.” Dozens of other anti-smoking organizations and medical organizations—whose physicians treat the lung cancer, emphysema, and heart disease caused by smoking—proferred their approval and hope that other big chain pharmacies would follow suit. “CVS made a very compelling argument today that if you’re in the business of healthcare, you shouldn’t be in the business of selling tobacco products,” said Vince Willmore, spokesperson for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. “We’ll be taking that argument to every store with a pharmacy to make sure this is a catalyst for them.” Whether the CVS decision will result in fewer smokers remains unknown, said Margaret Reid, who directs tobacco control efforts at the Boston Public Health Commission, but added that it will certainly make tobacco products less readily available to smokers. When Boston implemented a ban on tobacco sales in pharmacies five years ago, it resulted in 85 fewer tobacco retailers in the city—about a 10 percent drop in the number of places permitted to sell cigarettes, cigars, and chewing tobacco. © 2014 Boston Globe Media Partners, LLC

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 19213 - Posted: 02.06.2014

By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News Changing the way people think about and deal with schizophrenia could be as effective as drugs, say researchers. Cognitive behavioural therapy is an officially recommended treatment, but is available to less than 10% of patients in the UK with schizophrenia. A study published in the Lancet indicates CBT could help the many who refuse antipsychotic medication. Experts say larger trials are needed. About four-in-10 patients benefit from taking antipsychotic medication. But the drugs do not work for the majority and they cause side-effects such as type 2 diabetes and weight gain. Up to half of patients with schizophrenia end up not taking the drugs. The study looked at cognitive behaviour therapy in 74 people. The therapy works by identifying an individual patient's problem - such as hearing voices, paranoid thinking or no longer going out of the house - and developing techniques to deal with them. Prof Tony Morrison, director of the psychosis research unit at Greater Manchester West Mental Health Foundation Trust, said: "We found cognitive behavioural therapy did reduce symptoms and it also improved personal and social function and we demonstrated very comprehensively it is a safe and effective therapy." It worked in 46% of patients, approximately the same as for antipsychotics - although a head-to-head study directly comparing the two therapies has not been made. Douglas Turkington, professor of psychiatry at Newcastle University, said: "One of our most interesting findings was that when given the option, most patients were agreeable to trying cognitive therapy." BBC © 2014

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 19212 - Posted: 02.06.2014

Posted by Maria Konnikova On a typical workday morning, if you’re like most people, you don’t wake up naturally. Instead, the ring of an alarm clock probably jerks you out of sleep. Depending on when you went to bed, what day of the week it is, and how deeply you were sleeping, you may not understand where you are, or why there’s an infernal chiming sound. Then you throw out your arm and hit the snooze button, silencing the noise for at least a few moments. Just another couple of minutes, you think. Then maybe a few minutes more. It may seem like you’re giving yourself a few extra minutes to collect your thoughts. But what you’re actually doing is making the wake-up process more difficult and drawn out. If you manage to drift off again, you are likely plunging your brain back into the beginning of the sleep cycle, which is the worst point to be woken up—and the harder we feel it is for us to wake up, the worse we think we’ve slept. (Ian Parker wrote about the development of a new drug for insomnia in the magazine last week.) One of the consequences of waking up suddenly, and too early, is a phenomenon called sleep inertia. First given a name in 1976, sleep inertia refers to that period between waking and being fully awake when you feel groggy. The more abruptly you are awakened, the more severe the sleep inertia. While we may feel that we wake up quickly enough, transitioning easily between sleep mode and awake mode, the process is in reality far more gradual. Our brain-stem arousal systems (the parts of the brain responsible for basic physiological functioning) are activated almost instantly. But our cortical regions, especially the prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain involved in decision-making and self-control), take longer to come on board. © 2013 Condé Nast.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 19211 - Posted: 02.06.2014

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR There are many well established risk factors for cardiovascular death, but researchers may have found one more: slower reaction time. In the late 1980s and early ’90s, researchers measured the reaction times of 5,134 adults ages 20 to 59, having them press a button as quickly as possible after a light flashed on a computer screen. Then they followed them to see how many would still be alive after 15 years. The study is in the January issue of PLOS One. Unsurprisingly, men, smokers, heavy drinkers and the physically inactive were more likely to die. But after controlling for these and other factors, they found that those with slower reaction times were 25 percent more likely to die of any cause, and 36 percent more likely to die of cardiovascular disease, than those with faster reactions. Reaction time made no difference in cancer mortality. The reasons for the connection are unclear, but the lead author, Gareth Hagger-Johnson, a senior research associate at University College London, said it may reflect problems with the brain or nervous system. He stressed, though, that “a single test of reaction time is not going to tell you when you’re going to die. There’s a link at a population level. We didn’t look at individual people.” © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 19210 - Posted: 02.06.2014

|By Geoffrey Giller Working memory—our ability to store pieces of information temporarily—is crucial both for everyday activities like dialing a phone number as well as for more taxing tasks like arithmetic and accurate note-taking. The strength of working memory is often measured with cognitive tests, such as repeating lists of numbers in reverse order or recalling sequences of dots on a screen. For children, performance on working memory assessments is considered a strong predictor for future academic performance. Yet cognitive tests can fail to identify children whose brain development is lagging in subtle ways that may lead to future deficits in working memory and, thus, in learning. Doctors give the tests periodically and plot the results along a development curve, much like a child’s height and weight. By the time these tests reveal that a child’s working memory is below average, however, it may be too late to do much about it. But in a new study, published January 29 in The Journal of Neuroscience, scientists demonstrated that they could predict the future working memory of children and adolescents by examining brain scans from two different types of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), instead of looking only at cognitive tests. Henrik Ullman, a PhD student at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and the lead author on the paper, says that this was the first study attempting to use MRI scans to predict future working memory capacity. “We were pretty surprised when we found what we actually found,” Ullman says. © 2014 Scientific American,

Keyword: Alzheimers; Brain imaging
Link ID: 19209 - Posted: 02.05.2014

by Andy Coghlan If you flinch where others merely frown, you might want to take a look at your lifestyle. That's because environmental factors may have retuned your genes to make you more sensitive to pain. "We know that stressful life events such as diet, smoking, drinking and exposure to pollution all have effects on your genes, but we didn't know if they specifically affected pain genes," says Tim Spector of King's College London. Now, a study of identical twins suggests they do. It seems that epigenetic changes – environmentally triggered chemical alterations that affect how active your genes are – can dial your pain threshold up or down. This implies that genetic tweaks of this kind, such as the addition of one or more methyl groups to a gene, may account for some differences in how our senses operate. Spector and his colleagues assessed the ability of hundreds of pairs of twins to withstand the heat of a laser on their skin, a standard pain test. They selected 25 pairs who showed the greatest difference in the highest temperature they could bear. Since identical twins have the same genes, any variation in pain sensitivity can be attributed to epigenetic differences. Pain thermostat The researchers screened the twins' DNA for differences in methylation levels across 10 million gene regions. They found a significant difference in nine genes, most of which then turned out to have been previously implicated in pain-sensitivity in animal experiments. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Epigenetics
Link ID: 19208 - Posted: 02.05.2014

One thing marijuana isn’t known to do is improve your memory. But there’s another reason why scientists believe it could fight Alzheimer’s disease. Gary Wenk, PhD, professor of neuroscience, immunology and medical genetics at Ohio State University, has studied how to combat brain inflammation for over 25 years. His research has led him to a class of compounds known as cannabinoids, which includes many of the common ingredients in marijuana. He says, throughout all of his research, cannabinoids have been the only class of drugs he’s found to work. What’s more, he believes early intervention may be the best way of fighting Alzheimer’s. Dr. Wenk doesn’t see cannabinoids – or anything else – as a cure. But he took the time to discuss with us how marijuana might prevent the disorder from developing. Q: What’s so important about brain inflammation? Over the past few years, there’s been a focus on inflammation in the brain as causing a lot more than Alzheimer’s. We now know it plays a role in ALS, Parkinson’s disease, AIDS, dementia, multiple sclerosis, autism, schizophrenia, etc. We’re beginning to see that inflammation in the brain, if it lasts too long, can be quite detrimental. And if you do anything, such as smoke a bunch of marijuana in your 20s and 30s, you may wipe out all of the inflammation in your brain and then things start over again. And you simply die of old age before inflammation becomes an issue for you. © 2013-2014 All rights reserved

Keyword: Alzheimers; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 19207 - Posted: 02.05.2014

By Ariana Eunjung Cha, The National Institutes of Health is undertaking an ambitious collaboration with private industry in an attempt to speed up the search for treatments for some of the world’s most devastating diseases — Alzheimer’s, type 2 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. The pilot projects announced Tuesday will involve the sharing of not only scientists but also of data, blood samples and tissue specimens among 10 rival companies, the federal government and several nonprofit groups and research foundations. The companies that have signed up to participate include most of the large drug makers, which in the past had resisted calls to share detailed data and samples from experiments, preferring to instead use the information to gain lucrative patents. The agreement with NIH represents a major break from how they used to do business. The competing pharmaceutical companies have said they will hold off launching commercial ventures based on discoveries from the partnership until after the data has been made publicly available. The idea behind the collaboration is similar to that of the “open source” movement among some computer scientists who believe that sharing their code with anyone who wants it is the best way to innovate. The first group of projects, which will last three to five years, will involve an investment of more than $230 million from industry participants including Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, Merck, Pfizer, Sanofi and Takeda, as well as a few smaller biotech companies. © 1996-2014 The Washington Post

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 19206 - Posted: 02.05.2014

Karen Weintraub, Every time you pull up a memory – say of your first kiss – your mind reinterprets it for the present day, new research suggests. If you're in the middle of an ugly divorce, for example, you might recall it differently than if you're happily married and life is going well. This makes your memory quite unlike the video camera you may imagine it to be. But new research in the Journal of Neuroscience suggests it's very effective for helping us adapt to our environments, said co-author Joel Voss, a researcher at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. Voss' findings build on others and may also explain why we can be thoroughly convinced that something happened when it didn't, and why eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. The new research also suggests that memory problems like those seen in Alzheimer's could involve a "freezing" of these memories — an inability to adapt the memory to the present, Voss said. Our memories are thus less a snapshot of the past, than "a record of our current view on the past," said Donna Rose Addis, a researcher and associate professor at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, who was not involved in the research. Using brain scans of 17 healthy volunteers as they were taught new data and recalled previously learned information, Voss and his colleagues were able to show for the first time precisely when and where new information gets implanted into existing memories.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 19205 - Posted: 02.05.2014

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS This winter’s frigid temperatures could be having one desirable side effect. They may be revving up your metabolism. Shivering in the cold sparks a series of biochemical reactions deep within the body that alters fat cells and bolsters metabolism, much as formal exercise does, according to a fascinating series of new experiments. The findings intimate that exercise and shivering are related in ways not previously suspected. For the new study, which was published Tuesday in Cell Metabolism, scientists affiliated with several branches of the National Institutes of Health recruited 10 healthy adult men and women and invited them to the lab on three separate occasions. There, the researchers drew blood and obtained small samples of muscle and fat cells. During one lab visit, the volunteers completed a short but very intense session of stationary bicycling, riding as hard as they could until they were exhausted. Then, on another day, they rode the bike at a gentle, easily sustained pace for an hour. Throughout these workouts, the laboratory temperature was maintained at a moderate 65 degrees or so. On their final visit, though, the researchers had each volunteer lie in bed, lightly clad, for 30 minutes as the lab’s temperature dropped from about 75 to a chilly 53 degrees. Monitors were placed on their skin to measure skin and muscle reactions, and by the end of the session, the volunteers were noticeably shivering. After each session, the scientists gathered more blood and other samples and started checking for changes. In particular, they wanted to see what was happening with the volunteers’ white and brown fat. © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 19204 - Posted: 02.05.2014

By JAMES GORMAN Males’ aggression toward each other is an old story throughout the animal kingdom. It’s not that females aren’t aggressive, but in many species, male-on-male battles are more common. Take fruit flies. “The males are more aggressive than females,” said David J. Anderson, a California Institute of Technology neuroscientist who knows their tussles well. Dr. Anderson runs a kind of fight club for fruit flies in his lab at Caltech, with the goal of understanding the deep evolutionary roots of very fundamental behaviors. Dr. Anderson, Kenta Asahina and a group of their colleagues recently identified one gene and a tiny group of neurons, sometimes as few as three, present only in the brains of male fruit flies, that can control aggression. The gene is also found in mammals, and has also been associated with aggression in some mammalian species, perhaps even in humans, although that is not clear. The discovery, reported in the journal Cell last month, does not tell the whole story of fly aggression. Some fighting is inextricably linked to food and mating, while the mechanism the scientists found is not. But it is a striking indication of how brain structure and chemistry work together, as well as a reminder that as different as humans and flies are, they are not always very far apart. The painstaking process of discovery, recounted step by step in the paper, gives a glimpse of modern brain research and the lengths to which scientists must go if they want to get down to the level of how neurons control behavior. “They did a huge amount of experiments,” said Ulrike Heberlein at the Janelia Farm research campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dr. Heberlein also studies fly behavior and recently demonstrated another human-fly connection, showing that jilted male flies will turn to drink. © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 19203 - Posted: 02.04.2014

By BENEDICT CAREY BETHESDA, Md. — The police arrived at the house just after breakfast, dressed in full riot gear, and set up a perimeter at the front and back. Not long after, animal rights marchers began filling the street: scores of people, young and old, yelling accusations of murder and abuse, invoking Hitler, as neighbors stepped out onto their porches and stared. It was 1997, in Decatur, Ga. The demonstrators had clashed with the police that week, at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at nearby Emory University, but this time, they were paying a personal call — on the house of the center’s director, inside with his wife and two teenage children. “I think it affected the three of them more than it did me, honestly,” said Dr. Thomas R. Insel, shaking his head at the memory. “But the university insisted on moving all of us to a safe place for a few days, to an ‘undisclosed location.’ “I’ll say this. I learned that if you’re going to take a stand, you’re going to make some people really angry — so you’d better believe in what you’re doing, and believe it completely.” For the past 11 years, Dr. Insel, a 62-year-old brain scientist, has run an equally contentious but far more influential outfit: the National Institute of Mental Health, the world’s leading backer of behavioral health research. The job comes with risk as well as power. Patient groups and scientists continually question the agency’s priorities, and politicians occasionally snipe at its decisions. Two previous directors resigned in the wake of inflammatory statements (one on marijuana laws, one comparing urban neighborhoods to jungles), and another stepped down after repeatedly objecting to White House decisions. © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Animal Rights
Link ID: 19202 - Posted: 02.04.2014

About two-thirds of people are left with ringing in their ears after a night out at a club, gig or pub, a poll suggests. Campaign group Action on Hearing Loss said the poll of 1,000 adults also showed a third would ignore the "safe level" on their music players. The group warns that people doing either increase the risk of tinnitus. DJ Paul Oakenfold urged people to wear ear defenders to gigs and to "turn down the volume". Half of those surveyed said they listened to music for between one and six hours a day - up to a third of their waking day - perhaps in the background at work or on their MP3 player on their way to and from work or studies. But one in five would not do anything differently to take any care of their hearing. Action on Hearing Loss warned that one in 10 people across the UK is affected by tinnitus every day, ranging from a "light buzzing" to a "constant roar" in the ears and head. It can affect everything from the ability to concentrate at work to getting to sleep at night. The poll also found that one in 10 people does not know what tinnitus is, with 3% thinking it was "big ears" and 4% a "repetitive strain injury". It has created an audio version of what tinnitus sounds like in order to raise awareness. Paul Breckell, chief executive of Action on Hearing Loss, said: "Listening to loud music for a long time can trigger tinnitus and is an indication of damaged hearing. BBC © 2014

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 19201 - Posted: 02.04.2014

By JEFF Z. KLEIN Hockey players who sustained concussions during a recent season experienced acute microstructural changes in their brains, according to a series of studies published in the Journal of Neurosurgery on Tuesday. “We’ve seen evidence of chronic injuries later in life from head trauma, and now we’ve seen this in current players,” said Dr. Paul Echlin, an Ontario sports concussion specialist who conducted the study in collaboration with Dr. Martha Shenton of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and researchers from Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital and Western University of Canada. The researchers said these were the first studies in which an independent medical team used magnetic resonance imaging analysis before, during and after a season to measure the effects of concussions on athletes. Forty-five male and female Canadian university hockey players were observed by independent physicians during the 2011-12 season. All 45 players were given M.R.I. scans before and after the season. The 11 who received a concussion diagnosis during the season were given additional scans within 72 hours, two weeks and two months of the incident. The scans found microscopic white matter and inflammatory changes in the brains of individuals who had sustained a clinically diagnosed concussion during the period of the study. Additional analysis found that players who sustained a concussion during the study period or reported a history of concussions showed significant differences in their brains’ white matter microstructure compared with players who did not sustain a concussion, or who reported no history of concussions. © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 19200 - Posted: 02.04.2014