A staggering 1 in 3 seniors dies with Alzheimer's disease or other types of dementia, says a new U.S. report that highlights the impact the mind-destroying disease is having on the rapidly aging population. Dying with Alzheimer's is not the same as dying from it. But even when dementia isn't the direct cause of death, it can be the final blow — speeding someone's decline by interfering with their care for heart disease, cancer or other serious illnesses. That's the assessment of the report released Tuesday by the Alzheimer's Association, which advocates for more research and support for families afflicted by it. "Exacerbated aging," is how Dr. Maria Carrillo, an association vice president, terms the Alzheimer's effect. "It changes any health care situation for a family." In fact, only 30 per cent of 70-year-olds who don't have Alzheimer's are expected to die before their 80th birthday. But if they do have dementia, 61 per cent are expected to die, the report found. Already, 5.2 million Americans have Alzheimer's or some other form of dementia. Those numbers will jump to 13.8 million by 2050, Tuesday's report predicts. That's slightly lower than some previous estimates. Count just the deaths directly attributed to dementia, and they're growing fast. Nearly 85,000 people died from Alzheimer's in 2011, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated in a separate report Tuesday. Those are people who had Alzheimer's listed as an underlying cause on a death certificate, perhaps because the dementia led to respiratory failure. Those numbers make Alzheimer's the sixth leading cause of death. © CBC 2013

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 17927 - Posted: 03.20.2013

Nursing home residents who take a class of sleep medications that includes Lunesta and Ambien may be at higher risk for hip fractures compared with those who do not take these nonbenzodiazepine hypnotic drugs, according to a Harvard Medical School study. The study involved more than 15,000 nursing home residents who were on average 81 years old and were documented by Medicare to have had a hip fracture between July 2007 and December 2008. Nearly 11 percent of the residents with hip fractures took these drugs. Residents who took the prescription sleep medications were 66 percent more likely to sustain a hip fracture than those who did not. The risk was greater among new users of the medications and those suffering mild to moderate mental and physical decline. Those who took the medication for less than two months were more than twice as likely to fracture their hip, the study found. Nonbenzodiazepenes have been known to alter memory, attention, and balance, which may be why there is a greater risk of physical injury when taking the medication, the researchers wrote. Based on the findings, nursing home staff should try to treat sleep problems using nondrug strategies first, such as increased daytime activity and discouraging daytime napping, according to the researchers. © 2012 NY Times Co

Keyword: Sleep; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 17926 - Posted: 03.20.2013

By ANAHAD O'CONNOR Slurred and incoherent speech is one of the classic signs of a stroke. But new research finds that another symptom may be garbled and disjointed text messages, which could provide early clues to the onset of a stroke. In Detroit, doctors encountered a 40-year-old patient who had no trouble reading, writing or understanding language. His only consistent problem was that he had lost the ability to type coherent text messages on his phone. An imaging scan showed that he had suffered a mild ischemic stroke, caused by a clot or blockage in his brain. The case represents at least the second instance of what doctors are calling “dystextia.” In December, a report in The Archives of Neurology described a 25-year-old pregnant woman whose husband grew concerned after she sent him a series of incoherent text messages. Doctors found that the woman had also been experiencing weakness in her right arm and leg, and that she had earlier had difficulty filling out an intake form at her obstetrician’s office. The case in Detroit was particularly unusual because garbled texting appeared to be the only conspicuous problem, at least initially, said Dr. Omran Kaskar, a senior neurology resident at Henry Ford Hospital who treated the patient in late 2011. “Stroke patients usually present with multiple neurologic deficits,” he said. The findings suggest that text messaging may be a unique form of language controlled by a distinct part of the brain. And because texts are time-stamped, they may potentially be useful as a way of helping doctors determine precisely when a patient’s stroke symptoms began. The patient was a businessman who had traveled to southeast Michigan one evening for a work trip. Shortly after midnight, the man sent text messages to his wife that were disjointed and nonsensical – and not because he was using shorthand. Copyright 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stroke; Language
Link ID: 17925 - Posted: 03.20.2013

By BARRY MEIER A group of 18 doctors, researchers and public health experts jointly urged the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday to take action on energy drinks to protect adolescents and children from the possible risks of consuming high amounts of caffeine. “There is evidence in the published scientific literature that the caffeine levels in energy drinks pose serious potential health risks,” the doctors and researchers wrote.In their letter to Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, the F.D.A. commissioner, the group argued that energy drink makers had failed to meet the regulatory burden placed on them to show that the ingredients used in their beverages were safe, specifically where children, adolescents and young adults are concerned. As a result, the group urged the F.D.A. to restrict caffeine content in the products and to require manufacturers to include caffeine content on product labels. A similar letter was sent to the agency by the San Francisco city attorney, Dennis J. Herrera, who is one of several public officials conducting investigations of the energy-drink industry. Energy drink makers have insisted their products are safe and that their levels of caffeine, a stimulant, are on a par with other widely consumed drinks, like coffee. The F.D.A. has said that it is safe for adults to consume about 400 milligrams of caffeine daily, though many experts say that most adults can consume 600 milligrams or more of caffeine without ill effect. A 16-ounce cup of Starbucks coffee has about 330 milligrams of caffeine, an amount about twice that of some similarly sized energy drinks. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 17924 - Posted: 03.20.2013

A compact, self-contained sensor recorded and transmitted brain activity data wirelessly for more than a year in early stage animal tests, according to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health. In addition to allowing for more natural studies of brain activity in moving subjects, this implantable device represents a potential major step toward cord-free control of advanced prosthetics that move with the power of thought. The report is in the April 2013 issue of the Journal of Neural Engineering. “For people who have sustained paralysis or limb amputation, rehabilitation can be slow and frustrating because they have to learn a new way of doing things that the rest of us do without actively thinking about it,” said Grace Peng, Ph.D., who oversees the Rehabilitation Engineering Program of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), part of NIH. “Brain-computer interfaces harness existing brain circuitry, which may offer a more intuitive rehab experience, and ultimately, a better quality of life for people who have already faced serious challenges.” Recent advances in brain-computer interfaces (BCI) have shown that it is possible for a person to control a robotic arm through implanted brain sensors linked to powerful external computers. However, such devices have relied on wired connections, which pose infection risks and restrict movement, or were wireless but had very limited computing power. Building on this line of research, David Borton, Ph.D., and Ming Yin, Ph.D., of Brown University, Providence, R.I., and colleagues surmounted several major barriers in developing their sensor. To be fully implantable within the brain, the device needed to be very small and completely sealed off to protect the delicate machinery inside the device and the even more delicate tissue surrounding it. At the same time, it had to be powerful enough to convert the brain’s subtle electrical activity into digital signals that could be used by a computer, and then boost those signals to a level that could be detected by a wireless receiver located some distance outside the body. Like all cordless machines, the device had to be rechargeable, but in the case of an implanted brain sensor, recharging must also be done wirelessly.

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 17923 - Posted: 03.20.2013

Monya Baker At first glance, it looks like an oddly shaped campfire: smoky grey shapes light up with red sparks and flashes. But the video actually represents a different sort of crackle — the activity of individual neurons across a larval fish brain. It is the first time that researchers have been able to image an entire vertebrate brain at the level of single cells. “We see the big picture without losing resolution,” says Phillipp Keller, a microscopist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Farm Research Campus in Ashburn, Virginia, who developed the system with Janelia neurobiologist Misha Ahrens. The researchers are able to record activity across the whole fish brain almost every second, detecting 80% of its 100,000 neurons. (The rest lie in hard-to-access areas, such as between the eyes; their activity is visible but cannot be pinned down to single cells.) The work is published today in Nature Methods1. “It’s phenomenal,” says Rafael Yuste, a neuroscientist at Columbia University in New York. “It is a bright star now in the literature, suggesting that it is not crazy to map every neuron in the brain of an animal.” Yuste has been leading the call for a big biology project2 that would do just that in the human brain, which contains about 85,000 times more neurons than the zebrafish brain. The resolution offered by the zebrafish study will enable researchers to understand how different regions of the brain work together, says Ahrens. With conventional techniques, imaging even 2,000 neurons at once is difficult, so researchers must pick and choose which to look at, and extrapolate. Now, he says, “you don't need to guess what is happening — you can see it”. © 2013 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 17922 - Posted: 03.19.2013

By TIM REQUARTH For months, Henry Markram and his team had been feeding data into a supercomputer, four vending-machine-size black boxes whirring quietly in the basement of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. The Blue Brain computer has 10,000 virtual neurons. The colors represent the neurons' electric voltage at a specific moment. The boxes housed thousands of microchips, each programmed to act like a brain cell. Cables carried signals from microchip to microchip, just as cells do in a real brain. In 2006, Dr. Markram flipped the switch. Blue Brain, a tangled web of nearly 10,000 virtual neurons, crackled to life. As millions of signals raced along the cables, electrical activity resembling real brain waves emerged. “That was an incredible moment,” he said, comparing the simulation to what goes on in real brain tissue. “It didn’t match perfectly, but it was pretty good. As a biologist, I was amazed.” Deciding then that simulating the entire brain on a supercomputer would be possible within his lifetime, Dr. Markram, now 50, set out to prove it. That is no small feat. The brain contains nearly 100 billion neurons organized into networks with 100 trillion total connections, all firing split-second spikes of voltage in a broth of complex biological molecules in constant flux. In 2009, Dr. Markram conceived of the Human Brain Project, a sprawling and controversial initiative of more than 150 institutions around the world that he hopes will bring scientists together to realize his dream. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain imaging; Robotics
Link ID: 17921 - Posted: 03.19.2013

By Ben Thomas In 1956, a legion of famed scientific minds descended on Dartmouth College to debate one of mankind’s most persistent questions: Is it possible to build a machine that thinks? The researchers had plenty to talk about – biologists and mathematicians had suggested since the 1940s that nerve cells probably served as binary logic gates, much like transistors in computer mainframes. Meanwhile, computer theorists like Alan Turing and Claude Shannon had been arguing for years that intelligence and learning could – at least in theory – be programmed into a machine of sufficient complexity. Within the next few decades, many researchers predicted, we’d be building machines capable of conscious thought. Fifty-odd years after that first Dartmouth Conference, our sharpest supercomputers still struggle to hold basic conversations. We’ve created software that can drive our cars and predict our purchases, but the dreams of a true artificial brain – and of a working neuron-by-neuron model of the human brain itself – look even more distant than they did in the 1950s. The more we learn about how the brain works, the more interwoven and inextricable we realize its components and processes are – and the less like a computer it seems. Take synapses, for example – the points where neurons link up and exchange information. Neuroscientists estimate that a human brain may contain about 150 trillion of them, and no two are quite identical – either to one another, or to any synapse in anyone else’s brain. On top of this complexity, every neuron in a brain is constantly learning, adapting, fine-tuning its sensitivity, tinkering with its synaptic connections – rarely wired the same way from one day to the next. In light of all this, it’s not hard to see why many scientists seriously doubt that we’ll map an entire human brain any time this century – much less engineer a digital version from scratch. © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 17920 - Posted: 03.19.2013

by Jennifer Viegas Roosters are genetically programmed to crow with the dawn, finds a new study that could also help to explain why dogs bark and cats meow. Previously it was unknown if crowing roosters were simply reacting to their environment. “‘Cock-a-doodle-doo’ symbolizes the break of dawn in many countries,” Takashi Yoshimura of Nagoya University, who worked on the study, was quoted as saying in a press release. “But it wasn’t clear whether crowing is under the control of a biological clock or is simply a response to external stimuli.” That’s because things like a car’s headlights can set a rooster off too, as anyone who has lived near these birds knows. To solve the mystery, Yoshimura and colleagues kept roosters under round-the-clock dim lighting. This didn’t deter the roosters. No matter what, they kept crowing each morning just before dawn. The researchers say this is proof that the vocalizing is entrained to a circadian rhythm. In short, the roosters are genetically programmed to crow at a certain time. At some point, the rising sun set the roosters’ internal clock, so now they crow every 24 hours. Most animals, and plants too, have such an internalized timing mechanism. That’s why we tend to eat, sleep, exercise and more at around the same times. By consciously being aware of the schedule, our body has a chance to adapt to it, so well-functioning circadian rhythms are often tied to good health. © 2013 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 17919 - Posted: 03.19.2013

By TARA PARKER-POPE The best path to a healthy weight may be a good night’s sleep. For years researchers have known that adults who sleep less than five or six hours a night are at higher risk of being overweight. Among children, sleeping less than 10 hours a night is associated with weight gain. Now a fascinating new study suggests that the link may be even more insidious than previously thought. Losing just a few hours of sleep a few nights in a row can lead to almost immediate weight gain. Sleep researchers from the University of Colorado recruited 16 healthy men and women for a two-week experiment tracking sleep, metabolism and eating habits. Nothing was left to chance: the subjects stayed in a special room that allowed researchers to track their metabolism by measuring the amount of oxygen they used and carbon dioxide they produced. Every bite of food was recorded, and strict sleep schedules were imposed. The goal was to determine how inadequate sleep over just one week — similar to what might occur when students cram for exams or when office workers stay up late to meet a looming deadline — affects a person’s weight, behavior and physiology. During the first week of the study, half the people were allowed to sleep nine hours a night while the other half stayed up until about midnight and then could sleep up to five hours. Everyone was given unlimited access to food. In the second week, the nine-hour sleepers were then restricted to five hours of sleep a night, while the sleep-deprived participants were allowed an extra four hours. Copyright 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity; Sleep
Link ID: 17918 - Posted: 03.19.2013

Coaches should pull athletes with a suspected head injury immediately until a health professional trained in concussions checks them out, according to new medical guidelines. The American Academy of Neurology updated its guidelines on Monday for evaluating and managing athletes with concussion. It’s the group's first update since 1997. Demonstration of a test with patients that have suffered concussions. It's likely that concussion risk is greater for female athletes playing soccer, according to new guidelines.Demonstration of a test with patients that have suffered concussions. It's likely that concussion risk is greater for female athletes playing soccer, according to new guidelines. (Keith Srakocic/Associated Press) "If in doubt, sit it out," said Dr. Jeffrey Kutcher with the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor and a member of the academy, in a release. "Being seen by a trained professional is extremely important after a concussion. If headaches or other symptoms return with the start of exercise, stop the activity and consult a doctor. You only get one brain; treat it well." Players should return to the rink, field or pitch slowly and only after acute signs and symptoms, such as headache, sensitivity to light and sound or changes in memory and judgment, are gone. For ice hockey, the guidelines said bodychecking is likely to increase the risk of sport-related concussion. In peewee hockey, bodychecking is likely to be a risk factor for a more severe concussion that prolongs the return to play. © CBC 2013

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 17917 - Posted: 03.19.2013

When the mind is at rest, the electrical signals by which brain cells communicate appear to travel in reverse, wiping out unimportant information in the process, but sensitizing the cells for future sensory learning, according to a study of rats conducted by researchers at the National Institutes of Health. The finding has implications not only for studies seeking to help people learn more efficiently, but also for attempts to understand and treat post-traumatic stress disorder — in which the mind has difficulty moving beyond a disturbing experience. During waking hours, electrical signals travel from dendrites — antenna-like projections at one end of the cell — through the cell body. From the cell body, they then travel the length of the axon, a single long projection at the other end of the cell. This electrical signal stimulates the release of chemicals at the end of the axon, which bind to dendrites on adjacent cells, stimulating these recipient cells to fire electrical signals, and so on. When groups of cells repeatedly fire in this way, the electrical signals increase in intensity. Dr. Bukalo and her team examined electrical signals that traveled in reverse?from the cell’s axon, to the cell body, and out its many dendrites. The reverse firing, depicted in this diagram, happens during sleep and at rest, appearing to reset the cell and priming it to learn new information. It was previously known that, during sleep, these impulses were reversed, arising from waves of electrical activity originating deep within the brain. In the current study, the researchers found that these reverse signals weakened circuits formed during waking hours, apparently so that unimportant information could be erased from the brain. But the reverse signals also appeared to prime the brain to relearn at least some of the forgotten information. If the animals encountered the same information upon awakening, the circuits re-formed much more rapidly than when they originally encountered the information.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Sleep
Link ID: 17916 - Posted: 03.19.2013

by Audrey Carlsen Plenty of us got our fill of green-colored food on St. Patrick's Day. (Green beer, anyone?) But for some people, associating taste with color is more than just a once-a-year experience. These people have synesthesia — a neurological condition in which stimulation of one sense (e.g., taste) produces experiences in a totally different sense (e.g., sight). According to researcher Sean Day, approximately one in 27 people has some form of synesthesia. We've covered this phenomenon in the past. And I'm a synesthete myself — I see letters and numbers in color, and associate sounds with shapes and textures. But only a very few people — maybe only 1 percent of synesthetes — have sensory crossovers that affect their relationship with food and drink. Jaime Smith is one of those people. He's a sommelier by trade, and he has a rare gift: He smells in colors and shapes. For Smith, who lives in Las Vegas, a white wine like Nosiola has a "beautiful aquamarine, flowy, kind of wavy color to it." Other smells also elicit three-dimensional textures and colors on what he describes as a "projector" in his mind's eye. This "added dimension," Smith says, enhances his ability to appraise and analyze wines. "I feel that I have an advantage over a lot of people, particularly in a field where you're judged on how good of a smeller you are," he says. ©2013 NPR

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Pain & Touch
Link ID: 17915 - Posted: 03.19.2013

A clinical trial test of a vein-opening procedure for multiple sclerosis suggests it does not improve symptoms, and in a few patients symptoms worsened. The small pilot study was designed to test the safety and effectiveness of using balloons to unblock veins in the neck and chest of people with MS. Dr. Paolo Zamboni, left, and Dr. Robert Zivadinov have studied whether multiple sclerosis is triggered by vascular problems and have suggested it can be treated by using angioplasty to unblock vessels.Dr. Paolo Zamboni, left, and Dr. Robert Zivadinov have studied whether multiple sclerosis is triggered by vascular problems and have suggested it can be treated by using angioplasty to unblock vessels. Chronic cerebro-spinal venous insufficiency or CCSVI is a hypothesis put forward by Italian vascular surgeon Dr. Paolo Zamboni. He suspects that narrowed neck veins create a backup of blood that can lead to lesions in the brain and inflammation. On Friday, researchers at the University of Buffalo discussed the findings of their clinical trial involving 10 MS patients in an initial safety trial of the real and fake procedures and 20 who were randomized to receive treatment or a placebo. "All the outcomes that we looked at — which had to do with clinical disease, functional status, quality of life, cognition — there was no appreciable difference between the two arms," principal investigator Dr. Adnan Siddiqui, an assistant professor of neurosurgery at the University of Buffalo, said in an interview. When the investigators reviewed the MRI data, Siddiqu said they found new activity in patients who received the balloon angioplasty treatment. © CBC 2013

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis
Link ID: 17914 - Posted: 03.18.2013

US researchers have found a link between working night shifts and the risk of ovarian cancer. A study of more than 3,000 women suggested that working overnight increased the risk of early-stage cancer by 49% compared with doing normal office hours. One possible explanation was disruption of the sleep hormone melatonin, the researchers said. But experts warned more work was needed and there might be other explanations. It does however follow an earlier association made between shift work and breast cancer. The International Agency for Cancer Research has previously identified working shift patterns that disrupt the body's natural "clock" as a probable cause of cancer. In the latest investigation, researchers looked at 1,101 women with advanced ovarian cancer, 389 with borderline or early disease and 1,832 women without the condition. Overall, a quarter with advanced cancer said they had worked night shifts, compared with a third of those with borderline disease and one in five of the control group. Analysis of the data showed a 24% increased risk of advanced cancer and 49% increased risk of early-stage disease for night workers compared with those who worked during the day. But the results were only significant for women over the age of 50, the researchers reported in Occupational and Environmental Medicine. And the risk did not seem to increase for those who had worked night shifts for the longest. BBC © 2013

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 17913 - Posted: 03.18.2013

By Darryl Fears, Ten years have gone by since one of the weirdest discoveries in the Chesapeake Bay region, on the south branch of the Potomac River — male smallmouth bass with lady parts, eggs in places where they absolutely should not be. Over that decade, wildlife biologists have probed the bay’s tributaries, slicing open fish for more necropsies than anyone can count. And one thing is clear: They still aren’t sure why between 50 and 100 percent of bass in various locations are gender-bending, switching from male to something called intersex. Biologists say studies are falling short because of a lack of data on the type and quantity of pesticides that run into the bay from farms. This complaint, along with other factors, prompted Democrats in the Maryland House and Senate to sponsor two bills in the current legislative session that would for the first time require growers to record their use of insecticides and herbicides and submit it to the state. The pesticide-reporting rule would create a treasure trove of data that scientists could draw from for studies on human and animal health, supporters say. Scientists could use it to focus research on chemical “hot spots,” the exact moment high concentrations of pesticides hit waters where vulnerable young fish are growing, said Vicki Blazer, a biologist who studies bass for the U.S. Geological Survey. But opponents say the bills have major drawbacks. They would create a financial burden for farmers, who would be forced to purchase updated equipment such as Global Positioning System devices to log pesticide applications, said Valerie Connelly, director of government relations for the Maryland Farm Bureau. © 1996-2013 The Washington Post

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 17912 - Posted: 03.18.2013

By Neuroskeptic When does sadness cease to be a normal emotional response, and become a mental disorder? Can psychiatrists ‘draw the line’ between healthy and sick moods, and if so, where? An important new study offers an answer: When does depression become a disorder? Using recurrence rates to evaluate the validity of proposed changes in major depression diagnostic thresholds (free pdf). The authors, Jerome Wakefield and Mark Schmitz of New York, made use of the ECA survey, a 1980s study of almost 20,000 American adults. Participants were surveyed twice each, approximately one year apart. On each occasion, they were asked questions about their mood, emotions, and mental health symptoms. Some people reported a history of depression at the first visit. Wakefield & Schmitz wanted to find a way of predicting which of those people were most likely to end up depressed at the time of the second interview, a year later – the recurrence rate. To do this, they examined the particular patterns of symptoms reported at the first visit. It turned out that there was a strong predictor of recurrence, which the authors call “complicated” depression. People with a history of complicated depression had a 15% chance of being depressed at follow up. Only 3.4% of those who’d had “uncomplicated” symptoms, however, were depressed a year later. Given that 1.7% of people with no depression history had become unwell by Time 2, this means that “uncomplicated” depression was almost never recurrent.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 17911 - Posted: 03.18.2013

By LAURIE EDWARDS TO the list of differences between men and women, we can add one more: the drug-dose gender gap. Doctors and researchers increasingly understand that there can be striking variations in the way men and women respond to drugs, many of which are tested almost exclusively on males. Early this year, for instance, the Food and Drug Administration announced that it was cutting in half the prescribed dose of Ambien for women, who remained drowsy for longer than men after taking the drug. Women have hormonal cycles, smaller organs, higher body fat composition — all of which are thought to play a role in how drugs affect our bodies. We also have basic differences in gene expression, which can make differences in the way we metabolize drugs. For example, men metabolize caffeine more quickly, while women metabolize certain antibiotics and anxiety medications more quickly. In some cases, drugs work less effectively depending on sex; women are less responsive to anesthesia and ibuprofen for instance. In other cases, women are at more risk for adverse — even lethal — side effects. These differences are particularly important for the millions of women living with chronic pain. An estimated 25 percent of Americans experience chronic pain, and a disproportionate number of them are women. A review published in the Journal of Pain in 2009 found that women faced a substantially greater risk of developing pain conditions. They are twice as likely to have multiple sclerosis, two to three times more likely to develop rheumatoid arthritis and four times more likely to have chronic fatigue syndrome than men. As a whole, autoimmune diseases, which often include debilitating pain, strike women three times more frequently than men. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 17910 - Posted: 03.18.2013

By Stephani Sutherland Treating the brain with magnets went mainstream a few years ago, when the technique proved successful at relieving major depression. Now the procedure, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), shows promise for another mysterious, hard-to-treat disorder: chronic pain. Until now, pain seemed out of reach for rTMS because the regions involved in pain perception lie very deep within the brain. The other disorders helped by rTMS all involve brain areas close to the skull. To treat depression, for example, a single magnetic coil directs a magnetic field at the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain's outer folds. When aimed at different areas of these outer folds, rTMS improves the motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease, staves off the damage of stroke, lessens the discomfort that follows nerve injury and treats obsessive-compulsive disorder. The magnetic field affects the electrical signaling used by neurons to communicate, but how exactly it improves symptoms is unclear—scientists suspect rTMS may redirect the activity of select cells or even entire brain circuits. To extend the technique's reach, David Yeomans, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, and his colleagues used four magnets rather than one and employed high-level math to steer the resulting complex fields. Their target was an area called the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), an area active in the experience of all types of pain, regardless of its source or nature. © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 17909 - Posted: 03.18.2013

Peter Fimrite Scientists at Stanford University have tapped into the mind of the mouse and are now circulating information about how the pesky rodents think. A team of Stanford researchers planted tiny probes inside the brains of mice to detect what were essentially mouse memories, according to a study published last month in the online edition of Nature Neuroscience. The experiment involved the insertion of a needlelike microscope into the hippocampus - a part of the brain associated with spatial and episodic memory. The microscope detected cellular activity and broadcast digital images through a cell phone camera sensor that fit like a hat over the heads of the critters as they scampered around an enclosure. "We're not really reading their minds," said the lead researcher, Mark Schnitzer, who is an associate professor of biology and applied physics at Stanford. "What is the mind of a mouse, anyway? I don't know. What we're doing is reading a spatial map in the brain. It is one little component of many, many processes that are going on inside." Over the course of a month, the scientists were able to document patterns of activity in some 700 neurons and pinpoint areas of the brain where mice store long-term information. It is important, Schnitzer said, because long-term memory is an area of the brain that researchers are struggling to understand as they attempt to develop new therapies for neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease. "Those are clearly diseases in which information storage has been impaired," Schnitzer said. "Now that we can look at the neural code for how the spatial information is stored, it opens the door directly to subsequent experiments. That's the logical next step." © 2013 Hearst Communications Inc.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 17908 - Posted: 03.18.2013