by Lauren Hitchings Our brain's ability to rapidly interpret and analyse new information may lie in the musical hum of our brainwaves. We continuously take in information about the world but establishing new neural connections and pathways – the process thought to underlie memory formation – is too slow to account for our ability to learn rapidly. Evan Antzoulatos and Earl Miller at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology decided to see if brainwaves – the surges of electricity produced by individual neurons firing en masse – play a role. They used EEG to observe patterns of electrical activity in the brains of monkeys as they taught the animals to categorise patterns of dots into two distinct groups. At first, they memorised which dots went where, but as the task became harder, they shifted to learning the rules that defined the categories. Humming brainwaves The researchers found that, initially, brainwaves of different frequencies were being produced independently by the prefrontal cortex and the striatum – two brain regions involved in learning. But as the monkeys made sense of the game, the waves began to synchronise and "hum" at the same frequency – with each category of dots having its own frequency. Miller says the synchronised brainwaves indicate the formation of a communication circuit between the two brain regions. He believes this happens before anatomical changes in brain connections take place, giving our minds time to think through various options when presented with new information before the right one gets laid down as a memory. Otherwise, the process is too time-consuming to account for the flexibility and speed of the human mind, says Miller. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 19746 - Posted: 06.19.2014

Migraines have been diagnosed in about eight per cent of Canadians, a quarter or more of whom say the severe headaches impact day-to-day life such as getting a good night’s sleep or driving, Statistics Canada says. The federal agency on Wednesday released its first report on the prevalence of migraine, saying an estimated 2.7 million Canadians, or 8.3 per cent, reported they had been diagnosed with the severe headaches in 2010-2011. Chronic migraines are frequent, severe, pulsating headaches accompanied by nausea, vomiting, and sensitivity to light and sound. "I think the key finding that was quite interesting was the impact of migraine," said report author Pamela Ramage-Morin, a senior analyst in Ottawa. "For three-quarters to say that it had an impact on their getting a good night sleep, over half said it prevented them from driving on some occasions, even people feeling left out of things because of their condition. There's some social isolation that could be occurring. It may be limiting on people's education and employment opportunities. That can have a long-term effect." The sleep findings are important given lack of sleep can impact other aspects of life, Ramage-Morin said, noting how the effects can extend beyond the individual to the larger community. For both men and women surveyed, migraines were most common at ages 30 to 49, a group represents 12 per cent of the population and the prime working years. © CBC 2014

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 19745 - Posted: 06.19.2014

by Laura Sanders Some brain cells need a jolt of stress to snap to attention. Cells called astroglia help regulate blood flow, provide energy to nearby cells and even influence messages’ movement between nerve cells. Now, scientists report June 18 in Neuron that astroglia can be roused by the stress molecule norepinephrine, an awakening that may help the entire brain jump into action. As mice were forced to walk on a treadmill, an activity that makes them alert, astroglia in several parts of their brains underwent changes in calcium levels, a sign of activity, neuroscientist Dwight Bergles of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and colleagues found. Norepinephrine, which acts as a fight-or-flight hormone in the body and a neural messenger in the brain, seemed to cause the cell activity boost. When researchers depleted norepinephrine, treadmill walking no longer activated astroglia. It’s not clear whether astroglia in all parts of the brain heed this wake-up call, nor is it clear whether this activation influences behavior. Norepinephrine might help shift brain cells, both neurons and astroglia, into a state of heightened vigilance, the authors write. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013.

Keyword: Stress; Glia
Link ID: 19744 - Posted: 06.19.2014

By PAM BELLUCK Cindy Wachenheim was someone people didn’t think they had to worry about. She was a levelheaded lawyer working for the State Supreme Court, a favorite aunt who got down on the floor to play with her nieces and nephews, and, finally, in her 40s, the mother she had long dreamed of becoming. But when her baby was a few months old, she became obsessed with the idea that she had caused him irrevocable brain damage. Nothing could shake her from that certainty, not even repeated assurances from doctors that he was normal. “I love him so much, but it’s obviously a terrible kind of love,” she agonized in a 13-page handwritten note. “It’s a love where I can’t bear knowing he is going to suffer physically and mentally/emotionally for much of his life.” Ms. Wachenheim’s story provides a wrenching case study of one woman’s experience with maternal mental illness in its most extreme and rare form. It also illuminates some of the surprising research findings that are redefining the scientific understanding of such disorders: that they often develop later than expected and include symptoms not just of depression, but of psychiatric illnesses. Now these mood disorders, long hidden in shame and fear, are coming out of the shadows. Many women have been afraid to admit to terrifying visions or deadened emotions, believing they should be flush with maternal joy or fearing their babies would be taken from them. But now, advocacy groups on maternal mental illness are springing up, and some mothers are blogging about their experiences with remarkable candor. A dozen states have passed laws encouraging screening, education and treatment. And celebrities, including Brooke Shields, Gwyneth Paltrow and Courteney Cox, have disclosed their postpartum depression. © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 19743 - Posted: 06.17.2014

by Bethany Brookshire When a cartoon character gets an idea, you know it. A lightbulb goes on over Wile E. Coyote’s head, or a ding sounds as Goofy puts two and two together. While the lightbulb and sound effects are the stuff of cartoons, scientists can, in a way, watch learning in action. In a new study, a learning task in rats was linked to increases in activity patterns in groups of brain cells. The results might help scientists pin down what learning looks like at the nerve cell level, and give us a clue about how memories are made. Different areas of the brain communicate with each other, transferring information from one area to another for processing and interpretation. Brain cell meets brain cell at connections called synapses. But to transfer information between areas often takes more than one neuron firing a lonely signal. It takes cortical oscillations — networks of brain cells sending electrical signals in concert — over and over again for a message to transmit from one brain area to another. Changes in electrical fields increase the probability that neurons in a population will fire. These cortical oscillations are like a large crowd chanting. Not all voices may be yelling at once, some people may be ahead or behind, some may even be whispering, but you still hear an overwhelming “USA! USA!” Cortical oscillations can occur within a single brain area, or they can extend from one area to another. “The oscillation tells you what the other brain area is likely to ‘see’ when it gets that input,” explains Leslie Kay, a neuroscientist at the University of Chicago. Once the receiving area ‘sees’ the incoming oscillation, it may synchronize its own population firing, joining in the chant. “A synchronized pattern of oscillations in two separate brain regions serves to communicate between the two regions,” says Kei Igarashi, a neuroscientist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 19742 - Posted: 06.17.2014

By Michelle Roberts Health editor, BBC News online Scientists say they have devised a helmet that can quickly determine whether a patient has had a stroke. It could speed diagnosis and treatment of stroke to boost chances of recovery, the scientists say. The wearable cap bounces microwaves off the brain to determine whether there has been a bleed or clot deep inside. The Swedish scientists who made the device plan to give it to ambulance crews to test after successful results in early studies with 45 patients. When a person has a stroke, doctors must work quickly to limit any brain damage. If it takes more than four hours to get to hospital and start treatment, parts of their brain tissue may already be dying. But to give the best treatment, doctors first need to find out if the stroke is caused by a leaky blood vessel or one blocked by a clot. A computerised tomography (CT) scan will show this, but it can take some time to organise one for a patient, even if they have been admitted as an emergency to a hospital that has one of these scanners. Any delay in this "golden hour" of treatment opportunity could hamper recovery. To speed up the process, researchers in Sweden, from Chalmers University of Technology, Sahlgrenska Academy and Sahlgrenska University Hospital, have come up with a mobile device that could be used on the way to hospital. The helmet uses microwave signals - the same as the ones emitted by microwave ovens and mobile phones but much weaker - to build a picture of what is going on throughout the brain. BBC © 2014

Keyword: Stroke; Brain imaging
Link ID: 19741 - Posted: 06.17.2014

A selfie video that a 49-year-old Toronto-area woman took to show numbness and slurred speech she was experiencing helped doctors to diagnose her as having a mini-stroke, after she had earlier been given a diagnosis of stress. When Stacey Yepes’s face originally froze and she had trouble speaking in April, she remembered the signs of stroke from public service announcements. After the symptoms subsided, she went to a local emergency room, but the tests were clear and she was given tips on how to manage stress. The numbing sensation happened again as she left the hospital. When the left side of her body went numb while driving two days later, she pulled over, grabbed her smartphone and hit record. "The sensation is happening again," the Thornhill, Ont., woman says at the beginning of the video posted on YouTube by Toronto’s University Health Network. "It’s all tingling on left side," as she points to her lower lip, trying to smile. Yepes remembers that doctors said to breathe in and out and to try to manage stress, and she says she's trying. "I don’t know why this is happening to me." About a minute later, she shows that it’s hard to lift up her hand. "I think it was just to show somebody, because I knew it was not stress-related," she said in an interview. "And I thought if I could show somebody what was happening, they would have a better understanding." After going to Mount Sinai Hospital in downtown Toronto, Yepes was referred to Toronto Western Hospital’s stroke centre. © CBC 2014

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 19740 - Posted: 06.17.2014

By Denali Tietjen Caffeine isn’t healthy, but that’s no news. The withdrawal headaches, jitteriness and dehydration kind of gave that one way. What is news, however, is that starting at puberty, it’s worse for boys than girls. Girls and boys have the same cardiovascular reactions to caffeine in childhood, but begin to react differently in adolescence, finds a new study conducted by researchers from The University of Buffalo. In the double-blind study published in the June issue of Pediatrics, researchers examined the cardiovascular reactions of 52 pre-pubescent (ages eight to nine) and 49 post-pubescent (ages 15 to 17) children to varying levels of caffeine. Participants consumed either the placebo, 1 mg/kg or 2 mg/kg caffeinated sodas, and then had their heart rates and blood pressures taken. The results found that pre-pubescent children had the same reaction to caffeine regardless of gender, while post-pubescent boys had much stronger cardiovascular reactions to caffeine than girls. The study also examined post-pubescent girls’ reactions to caffeine at various phases of their menstrual cycles. At different stages of the cycle, the girls metabolized caffeine differently. “We found differences in responses to caffeine across the menstrual cycle in post-pubertal girls, with decreases in heart rate that were greater in the mid-luteal phase and blood pressure increases that were greater in the mid-follicular phase of the menstrual cycle,” Dr. Jennifer Temple, one of the researchers who conducted the study said in a University at Buffalo press release announcing the study.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 19739 - Posted: 06.17.2014

By Adam Brimelow Health Correspondent, BBC News Researchers from Oxford University say they've made a breakthrough in developing smart glasses for people with severe sight loss. The glasses enhance images of nearby people and objects on to the lenses, providing a much clearer sense of surroundings. They have allowed some people to see their guide dogs for the first time. The Royal National Institute of Blind People says they could be "incredibly important". Lyn Oliver has a progressive eye disease which means she has very limited vision. Now 70, she was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa in her early twenties. She can spot movement but describes her sight as "smudged and splattered". Her guide dog Jess helps her find her way around - avoiding most obstacles and hazards - but can't convey other information about her surroundings. Lyn is one of nearly two million people in the UK with a sight problem which seriously affects their daily lives. Most though have at least some residual sight. Researchers at Oxford University have developed a way to enhance this - using smart glasses. They are fitted with a specially adapted 3D camera. retinitis pigmentosa Dark spots across the retina (back of the eye) correspond with the extent of vision loss in retinitis pigmentosa The images are processed by computer and projected in real-time on to the lenses - so people and objects nearby become bright and clearly defined. 'More independent' Lyn Oliver has tried some of the early prototypes, but the latest model marks a key stage in the project, offering greater clarity and detail than ever before. Dr Stephen Hicks, from the University of Oxford, who has led the project, says they are now ready to be taken from the research setting to be used in the home. BBC © 2014

Keyword: Vision; Robotics
Link ID: 19738 - Posted: 06.17.2014

by Tania Lombrozo Science doesn't just further technology and help us predict and control our environment. It also changes the way we understand ourselves and our place in the natural world. This understanding can and a sense of . But it can also be , especially when it calls into question our basic assumptions about the kinds of creatures we are and the universe we inhabit. Current developments in neuroscience seem to be triggering precisely this jumble of reactions: wonder alongside disquiet, hope alongside alarm. A recent at Salon.com, for example, promises an explanation for "how neuroscience could save addicts from relapse," while an by Nathan Greenslit at The Atlantic, published less than a week later, raises worries that neuroscience is being used to reinforce racist drug policy. Obama's hails "," but with it comes the need to rapidly work out the of what we're learning about the brain and about ourselves. We're ; but we're not always sure what to make of it. In at the journal Psychological Science, psychologists Azim Shariff, Joshua Greene and six of their colleagues bring these heady issues down to earth by considering whether learning about neuroscience can influence judgments in a real-world situation: deciding how someone who commits a crime should be punished. The motivating intuition is this: to hold someone responsible for her actions, she must have acted with free will. ©2014 NPR

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 19737 - Posted: 06.17.2014

As the popularity of soccer grows among children, doctors and researchers say the dangers of concussions need to be taken more seriously in the sport. When researchers at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto reviewed the evidence on concussions and heading in soccer this winter, they found a higher incidence of concussions among females than males playing the world's most popular sport. Doctors warn that heading — purposely using the head to control and hit the ball — is a unique aspect of the beautiful game that needs more attention. Heading the ball isn’t necessarily going to cause an overt concussion with symptoms, but the accumulation of those impacts over time could cause difficulties with thinking, concentration and memory, said study author Monica Maher, a graduate student at the University of Toronto, and a former soccer goalkeeper. Maher doesn't want people to stop playing soccer or stop heading the ball. She does suggest limits on head exposure in younger children and padding on goal posts to prevent injury to the youngest players. ​Dr. David Robinson, a sports medicine physician at McMaster University in Hamilton, sees 10 to 15 concussions a week, including many related to soccer. "It's not a stretch to think that these chronic subconcussive blows may be softening the brain, injuring the brain over time," Robinson said. He calls it a step forward that balls are becoming lighter for young people. He reminds parents and coaches that if a concussion is suspected, it's best to remove an athlete from play. As for the differences in injury rates between males and females, Maher pointed to a few potential explanations: © CBC 2014

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 19736 - Posted: 06.16.2014

By MARIA KONNIKOVA THE absurdity of having had to ask for an extension to write this article isn’t lost on me: It is, after all, a piece on time and poverty, or, rather, time poverty — about what happens when we find ourselves working against the clock to finish something. In the case of someone who isn’t otherwise poor, poverty of time is an unpleasant inconvenience. But for someone whose lack of time is just one of many pressing concerns, the effects compound quickly. We make a mistake when we look at poverty as simply a question of financial constraint. Take what happened with my request for an extension. It was granted, and the immediate time pressure was relieved. But even though I met the new deadline (barely), I’m still struggling to dig myself out from the rest of the work that accumulated in the meantime. New deadlines that are about to whoosh by, a growing list of ignored errands, a rent check and insurance payment that I just realized I haven’t mailed. And no sign of that promised light at the end of the tunnel. My experience is the time equivalent of a high-interest loan cycle, except instead of money, I borrow time. But this kind of borrowing comes with an interest rate of its own: By focusing on one immediate deadline, I neglect not only future deadlines but the mundane tasks of daily life that would normally take up next to no time or mental energy. It’s the same type of problem poor people encounter every day, multiple times: The demands of the moment override the demands of the future, making that future harder to reach. When we think of poverty, we tend to think about money in isolation: How much does she earn? Is that above or below the poverty line? But the financial part of the equation may not be the single most important factor. “The biggest mistake we make about scarcity,” Sendhil Mullainathan, an economist at Harvard who is a co-author of the book “Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much,” tells me, “is we view it as a physical phenomenon. It’s not.” © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Attention; Stress
Link ID: 19735 - Posted: 06.16.2014

By Brian Palmer Maureen Dowd, a 62-year-old Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist for the New York Times, had a bad marijuana trip earlier this year. As part of her research into the legalization of recreational cannabis in Colorado, she ate a few too many bites of a pot-infused candy bar, entered a “hallucinatory state,” and spent eight paranoid hours curled up on her hotel room bed. Dowd used the experience as a jumping-off point to discuss the risks of overdosing on edible marijuana, which has become a major issue in pot-friendly states. It’s also possible, however, that Dowd just doesn’t handle cannabis very well. While pot mellows most people out, everyone has heard of someone who barricaded himself or herself in a dorm room after a few bongs hits in college. (Or maybe that someone is you.) Why do people react so differently to the same drug? The question itself may be something of a fallacy. Cannabis is not a single drug—it contains dozens of compounds, and they appear to have varying, and sometimes opposing, effects on the brain. Tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, and cannabidiol, or CBD, have been the subject of some intriguing research. In 2010, researchers showed that pretreating people with a dose of CBD can protect against the less pleasant effects of THC, such as paranoia. In a similar 2012 study, participants took pills that contained only one of the two chemicals, rather than the combination that you receive in cannabis. The subjects who took THC pills were more likely to suffer paranoia and delusion than those who took CBD. The researchers went one step further to investigate which specific cognitive effects of THC are likely to lead to paranoia and other symptoms of psychosis. After taking either THC or CBD, participants watched a series of arrows appear on a screen and responded by indicating which direction the arrows were pointing. Most of the arrows pointed directly left or right, but occasionally a tilted arrow appeared. (Researchers called the tilted arrows “oddballs.”) Subjects who took the CBD had a heightened brain activity response to the oddballs. That’s the way a nondrugged person typically reacts—repetitions of the same stimulus don’t interest us, but a sudden change grabs our attention. The THC-takers had an abnormal response: They found the left and right arrows, which constituted the overwhelming majority of the images, more noteworthy than the oddballs. © 2014 The Slate Group LLC

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Attention
Link ID: 19734 - Posted: 06.16.2014

By JAMES GORMAN Crazed commuters, fretful parents and overwrought executives are not the only ones to suffer from anxiety — or to benefit from medication for it. The simple crayfish has officially entered the age of anxiety, too. This presumably was already clear to crayfish, which have been around for more than 200 million years and, what with predatory fish — and more recently, étouffée — have long had reasons to worry. But now scientists from France have documented behavior in crayfish that fits the pattern of a certain type of anxiety in human beings and other animals. Although the internal life of crayfish is still unknown, the findings, reported on Thursday in the journal Science, suggest that the external hallmarks of anxiety have been around for a very long time — and far down the food chain. Beyond that, a precursor of Valium changed the behavior back to normal. That does not mean that the crayfish are ready for the therapist’s couch, but it does reinforce the sometimes surprising connections humans have with other living things. Humans share genes with yeast as well as apes, the brains of flies can yield insights into the brains of humans, and even a tiny roundworm has mating behaviors that depend on a molecule very similar to a human hormone. The response to a threat or danger that the scientists found in crayfish had been documented before in other animals, like mice, but not in invertebrates like insects and crustaceans. Researchers including Pascal Fossat and Daniel Cattaert at the University of Bordeaux reported that after crayfish were exposed to electric shocks, they would not venture out of comfortable dark areas in an elaborate aquarium into scarier (for a crayfish) brightly lit areas. © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stress; Emotions
Link ID: 19733 - Posted: 06.14.2014

Jennifer Couzin-Frankel What if you could trick your body into thinking you were racing on a treadmill—and burning off calories at a rapid clip—while simply walking down the street? Changing our rate of energy expenditure is still far into the future, but work in mice explores how this might happen. Two teams of scientists suggest that activating immune cells in fat can convert the tissue from a type of fat that stores energy to one that burns it, opening up potential new therapies for obesity and diabetes. There are two types of fat in humans: white adipose tissue, which makes up nearly all the fat in adults, and brown adipose tissue, which is found in babies but disappears as they age. Brown fat protects against the cold (it’s also common in animals that hibernate), and researchers have found that mice exposed to cold show a temporary “browning” of some of their white fat. The same effect occurred in preliminary studies of people, where the browning—which creates a tissue known as beige fat—helps generate heat and burn calories. But cold is “the only stimulus we know that can increase beige fat mass or brown fat mass,” says Ajay Chawla, a physiologist at the University of California (UC), San Francisco. He wanted to better understand how cold caused this change in the tissue and whether there was a way to mimic cold and induce browning some other way. A few years ago, Chawla’s group had reported that cold exposure activated macrophages, a type of immune cell, in white adipose tissue. To further untangle what was going on, Chawla, his postdoc Yifu Qiu, and their colleagues used mice that lacked interleukin-4 (IL-4) and interleukin-13, proteins that help activate macrophages. When they exposed these mice to the cold, the animals developed far fewer beige fat cells than did normal animals, suggesting that macrophages were key to browning of white fat. © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 19732 - Posted: 06.14.2014

by Clare Wilson People who begin antidepressant treatment must face a gruelling wait of several weeks before they find out whether or not the drug will work for them. A new take on the causes of depression could lead to a blood test predicting who will be helped by medication – taking the guess work out of prescribing. "A test would be a major advance as at the moment millions of people are treated with antidepressants that won't have any effect," says Gustavo Turecki of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, who led the study. The research centres on miRNAs, small molecules that have an important role in turning genes on and off in different parts of the body. MiRNAs have already been implicated in several brain disorders. In the latest study, Turecki and his colleagues measured the levels of about 1000 miRNAs in the brains of people who had committed suicide. These were compared to levels in brains of people who had died from other causes. A molecule called miRNA-1202 was the most altered, being present at significantly lower levels in the brains of people who died from suicide. Crucially, this molecule seems to damp down the activity of a gene involved in glutamate signalling in the brain. That's significant because recent research has highlighted the importance of glutamate signalling in depression. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 19731 - Posted: 06.14.2014

By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN PHILADELPHIA — Clambering upward in dim violet light, stepping from one glass platform to another, you trigger flashes of light and polyps of sound. You climb through protective tubes of metallic mesh as you make your way through a maze of pathways. You are an electrical signal coursing through a neural network. You are immersed in the human brain. Well, almost. Here at the Franklin Institute, you’re at least supposed to get that impression. You pass through this realm (the climbing is optional) as part of “Your Brain” — the largest permanent exhibition at this venerable institution, and one of its best. That show, along with two other exhibitions, opens on Saturday in the new $41 million, 53,000-square-foot Nicholas and Athena Karabots Pavilion. This annex — designed by Saylor Gregg Architects, with an outer facade draped in a “shimmer wall” of hinged aluminum panels created by the artist Ned Kahn — expands the institution’s display space, educational facilities and convention possibilities. It also completes a transformation that began decades ago, turning one of the oldest hands-on science museums in the United States (as the Franklin puts it) into a contemporary science center, which typically combines aspects of a school, community center, amusement park, emporium, theater, international museum and interactive science lab — while also combining, as do many such institutions, those elements’ strengths and weaknesses. That brain immersion gallery gives a sense of this genre’s approach. It is designed more for amusement, effect and social interaction (cherished science center goals) than understanding. So I climb, but I’m not convinced. I hardly feel like part of a network of dendrites and axons as I weave through these pathways. I try, though, to imagine these tubes of psychedelically illuminated mesh filled with dozens of chattering children leaping around. That might offer a better inkling of the unpredictable, raucous complexity of the human brain. © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 19730 - Posted: 06.14.2014

In a new study, scientists at the National Institutes of Health took a molecular-level journey into microtubules, the hollow cylinders inside brain cells that act as skeletons and internal highways. They watched how a protein called tubulin acetyltransferase (TAT) labels the inside of microtubules. The results, published in Cell, answer long-standing questions about how TAT tagging works and offer clues as to why it is important for brain health. Microtubules are constantly tagged by proteins in the cell to designate them for specialized functions, in the same way that roads are labeled for fast or slow traffic or for maintenance. TAT coats specific locations inside the microtubules with a chemical called an acetyl group. How the various labels are added to the cellular microtubule network remains a mystery. Recent findings suggested that problems with tagging microtubules may lead to some forms of cancer and nervous system disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease, and have been linked to a rare blinding disorder and Joubert Syndrome, an uncommon brain development disorder. “This is the first time anyone has been able to peer inside microtubules and catch TAT in action,” said Antonina Roll-Mecak, Ph.D., an investigator at the NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), Bethesda, Maryland, and the leader of the study. Microtubules are found in all of the body’s cells. They are assembled like building blocks, using a protein called tubulin. Microtubules are constructed first by aligning tubulin building blocks into long strings. Then the strings align themselves side by side to form a sheet. Eventually the sheet grows wide enough that it closes up into a cylinder. TAT then bonds an acetyl group to alpha tubulin, a subunit of the tubulin protein.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 19729 - Posted: 06.14.2014

By J. DAVID GOODMAN and ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS Amid the weeknight bustle of a Walmart parking lot in Centereach, N.Y., a young woman in a pickup truck had lost consciousness and was turning blue. Her companion called 911. Possible drug overdose; come fast. A Suffolk County police officer, Matthew Siesto, who had been patrolling the lot, was the first to arrive. Needles were visible in the center console; the woman was breathing irregularly, and her pupils had narrowed to pinpoints. It seemed clear, Officer Siesto recalled of the October 2012 episode, that the woman had overdosed on heroin. He went back to his squad car and retrieved a small kit of naloxone, an anti-overdose medication he had only recently been trained to use in such circumstances. He prepared the dose, placed the atomizer in her nostril and sprayed. “Within a minute,” the officer said, “she came back.” Once the exclusive purview of paramedics and emergency room doctors, administering lifesaving medication to drug users in the throes of an overdose is quickly becoming an everyday part of police work amid a national epidemic of heroin and opioid pill abuse. On Wednesday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo committed state money to get naloxone into the hands of emergency medical workers across New York, saying the heroin epidemic in the state was worse than that seen in the 1970s, and the problem is growing. Last month, the New York police commissioner, William J. Bratton, announced that the city’s entire patrol force would soon be trained and equipped with naloxone. “Officers like it because it puts them in a lifesaving opportunity,” Mr. Bratton said, suggesting that beat officers would carry it on their belts. © 2014 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 19728 - Posted: 06.14.2014

—By Indre Viskontas and Chris Mooney We've all been mesmerized by them—those beautiful brain scan images that make us feel like we're on the cutting edge of scientifically decoding how we think. But as soon as one neuroscience study purports to show which brain region lights up when we are enjoying Coca-Cola, or looking at cute puppies, or thinking we have souls, some other expert claims that "it's just a correlation," and you wonder whether researchers will ever get it right. Sam Kean But there's another approach to understanding how our minds work. In his new book, The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons, Sam Kean tells the story of a handful of patients whose unique brains—rendered that way by surgical procedures, rare diseases, and unfortunate, freak accidents—taught us much more than any set of colorful scans. Kean recounts some of their unforgettable stories on the latest episode of the Inquiring Minds podcast. "As I was reading these [case studies] I said, 'That's baloney! There's no way that can possibly be true,'" Kean remembers, referring to one particularly surprising case in which a woman's brain injury left her unable to recognize and distinguish between different kinds of animals. "But then I looked into it, and I realized that, not only is it true, it actually reveals some important things about how the brain works." Here are five patients, from Kean's book, whose stories transformed neuroscience: 1. The man who could not imagine the future: Kent Cochrane (KC), pictured below, was a '70s wild child, playing in a rock band, getting into bar fights, and zooming around Toronto on his motorcycle. But in 1981, a motorcycle accident left him without two critical brain structures. Both of his hippocampi, the parts of the brain that allow us to form new long-term memories for facts and events in our lives, were lost. That's quite different from other amnesiacs, whose damage is either restricted to only one brain hemisphere, or includes large portions of regions outside of the hippocampus. Copyright ©2014 Mother Jones

Keyword: Attention; Language
Link ID: 19727 - Posted: 06.14.2014