By Laura Sanders Of the 100,000 nerve cells in the fruit fly brain, two have a special role in memory. Positioned on the front of the brain, one on each side, this duo of nerve cells (shown in pink) churns out proteins that are essential for fruit flies to form, store and retrieve long-term memories, Chun-Chao Chen of National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan and colleagues report in the Feb. 10 Science. When the researchers prevented these two nerve cells from making proteins after a training session, the flies’ ability to remember an odor diminished. Surprisingly, these two large nerve cells, called the dorsal-anterior-lateral neurons, reside outside brain regions that are typically thought of as the fruit fly’s memory centers — L-shaped structures called the mushroom bodies (shown in green). © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 16377 - Posted: 02.14.2012

By Mark Fischetti Love, Explained: The Science of Romance Sex, speed dating, monogamy--for Valentine's Day, we look at the science behind the mating game » February 13, 2012 A dozen brain regions, working together, create feelings of passionate love. Stephanie Ortigue of Syracuse University and her colleagues worldwide compared MRI studies of people who indicated they were either in love or were experiencing maternal or unconditional love. The comparison revealed a "passion network"—the red regions shown here at various angles. The network releases neurotransmitters and other chemicals in the brain and blood that create the sensations of attraction, arousal, pleasure…and obsession. © 2012 Scientific American,

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Brain imaging
Link ID: 16376 - Posted: 02.14.2012

By Carolyn Butler, This Valentine’s Day, as our collective thoughts shift to tender cards, heart-shaped chocolates, overpriced bouquets and other extravagant gestures of love, I can’t help but wonder what really attracts us to one mate over another. Is it hot sex? Fairy-tale romance? Destiny? Or are we merely at the beck and call of our hormones and brain circuitry? Online dating sites trumpet their knack at identifying “chemistry,” but it turns out that basic biology may play at least as strong a role in love as do socialization, environment, fate and other factors. “We like to feel independent and free of the brain systems that regulate the mating habits and regimens of animals, but the fact is that we’re not,” says neuroendocrinologist Tom Sherman, an associate professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine. “The latest research indicates that some of our very complex behaviors — like love, courtship and pair bonding — are still regulated, to some degree, by a fairly simple set of neurochemicals.” Indeed, researchers have now identified three brain systems that are at work in mating and reproduction: lust, which is primarily mediated by the sex hormone testosterone; romantic love, which is primarily mediated by dopamine, a neurotransmitter that drives the brain’s reward and pleasure centers, and is characterized by craving and focused attention for just one person at a time; and attachment, which is primarily mediated by the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin and is associated with the bonding and security you often feel with a long-term partner. © 1996-2012 The Washington Post

Keyword: Emotions; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 16375 - Posted: 02.14.2012

By Adam Hadhazy Love might be in the air on Valentine's Day, metaphorically speaking. But scientists have long debated whether love—or, at least, sexual attraction—is literally in the air, in the form of chemicals called pheromones. Creatures from mice to moths send out these chemical signals to entice mates. And if advertisements about pheromone-laden fragrances are to be believed, one might conclude that humans also exchange molecular come-hithers. Still, after decades of research, the story in humans is not quite so clear. Rather than positing that single, pheromone-esque compounds strike us like Cupid's arrow, investigators now suggest that a suite of chemicals emitted from our bodies subliminally sways potential partnerings. Smell, it seems, plays an underappreciated role in romance and other human affairs. "We've just started to understand that there is communication below the level of consciousness," says Bettina Pause, a psychologist at Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf (H.H.U.), who has been studying pheromones and human social olfaction for 15 years. "My guess is that a lot of our communication is influenced by chemosignals." Animals, plants and even bacteria produce pheromones. These precise cocktails of compounds trigger various reactions in fellow members of a species—not all of which are sexual. Pheromonal messages can range from the competitive, such as the "stink fights" of male lemurs, to the collaborative, such as ants laying down chemical trails to food sources. © 2012 Scientific American,

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 16374 - Posted: 02.14.2012

By Jeanna Bryner Managing editor Give a male garter snake a taste of estrogen and watch out, as the hormone turns these lads into the sexiest thing on the block, attracting dozens of other males eager to mate. The finding, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, has implications for understanding the environmental impact of compounds that mimic the effect of estrogen, found in some chemicals and pesticides. Estrogen, the researchers found, is key to a female's release of pheromones and thus, reproduction. Here's how it works: For the red-sided garter snake, picking up a mate takes but a second and a flick of the tongue. When a male detects a possible mate nearby, he licks the female with a quick flick of his tongue. Researchers say that the chemical cues exuded by the females, called pheromones, are so strong that it takes but an instant for the male to determine the other snake's species, sex, population, reproduction condition, size and age. In fact, the males are totally dependent on these pheromones for snake reproduction. Every spring, tens of thousands of these garter snakes emerge from their limestone caves north of Manitoba, Canada, for mating. Intense competition ensues, as males swarm (and tongue) female snakes in an effort to be the first to mate with her. The frenzy appears as twisting balls of snakes called mating balls. © 2012 msnbc.com

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 16373 - Posted: 02.14.2012

By Tina Hesman Saey On February 2, groundhog weatherman Punxsutawney Phil roused from hibernation to predict six more weeks of winter. Scientists may snicker at people who think they can learn about the arrival of spring from a furry rodent, but researchers aren’t laughing when it comes to learning about human health from animals that check out for the winter. Understanding how hibernators, including ground squirrels, marmots and bears, survive their long winter’s naps may one day offer solutions for problems such as heart disease, osteoporosis and muscular dystrophy. Despite appearances, hibernation is not the same as going to sleep for a long time. It is extreme living by any measure. For about half the year, hibernating animals stay in their dens or burrows in a state of suspended animation, waking up every now and again to go to the bathroom. Most hibernators eat or drink nothing, living solely off the fat they built up before winter began. To make fat stores last, animals lower their metabolism and body temperatures. Black bear body temperatures drop to about 33º Celsius (about 91º Fahrenheit), but the bodies of most small mammal hibernators, such as ground squirrels and woodchucks, plunge to nearly freezing. Some Arctic ground squirrels hold steady at subzero temperatures. For all these animals, heartbeats and breathing nearly cease. These are feats of physiological daring that non-hibernators, including humans, could never survive. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 16372 - Posted: 02.14.2012

by Andy Coghlan THE once paralysed limb began to twitch just minutes after the operation. It was an early sign that the rat was on a fast track to recovery that would see it up and running within weeks. The rodent is one of more than 200 to have undergone a new surgical procedure for nerve repair that provides faster - and better - results in animals than existing techniques. The crucial question is: can it work as well in humans with the sorts of injuries that the real world inflicts upon us? "In animal models, the results are better than any current techniques used for nerve repair," says Wesley Thayer of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, a member of the team behind the new procedure. So far, Thayer and team leader George Bittner of the University of Texas at Austin have used the new technique to treat rats after severing their sciatic nerve, which mediates leg movement and feeling. With plans afoot to begin clinical trials and work also under way to see if the procedure can heal spinal cord injuries in rats, nerve specialists are cautiously optimistic that Bittner and Thayer are on to something. When a nerve is severed through injury, surgeons must suture the two stumps together as quickly as possible. Yet even under controlled lab conditions, Bittner's tests in rats suggest that these conventional sutures restore little more than 30 per cent of previous mobility, even three months after surgery. His new technique helps to restore twice that, in as little as two weeks. The secret, he says, is to prevent the body lending a helping hand. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Regeneration
Link ID: 16371 - Posted: 02.11.2012

Caitlin Stier, video intern You may want to get your rulers out: although this oversized chessboard seems to slant when animated, its rows and columns are always perfectly parallel. The animation, developed by Sinji Nonaka, tricks your brain when alternating rows are shifted horizontally or vertically, skewing the grid pattern. The unusual effect was discovered by a member of vision researcher Richard Gregory's team as he looked at the brick tiling of a Bristol café in the 1970s. Gregory was inspired to recreate the design for a party organised by the BBC TV programme Tomorrow's World. But during the process he made a key discovery: the illusion was dependent on the shade of the mortar between the rows. To test the effect, Gregory worked with Priscilla Heard, now at the University of the West of England, to develop a customisable version of the wall using reflective surfaces, adjustable lights and moving tiles. By varying the brightness of the mortar, they found that it had to fall in between the contrast of the black and white tiles for the effect to occur. A thinner lining also produced steeper slopes. But in addition to the brightness of gaps between rows, the offset of the chessboard is also responsible for the effect. The shift causes like-shaded squares to overlap which affects the perceived brightness of the tiny space in between. The gap appears to be lighter for two dark squares and darker where white ones meet, causing a striation that's processed by our brain as a single line indicating slope. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 16370 - Posted: 02.11.2012

Smoking marijuana a couple of hours before you drive almost doubles your chances of having a serious car crash, say Canadian researchers. The study led by Associate Professor Mark Asbridge from Dalhousie University in Halifax, is the first to review of data from drivers who had been treated for serious injuries or died in car accidents. "To our knowledge this meta-analysis is the first to examine the association between acute cannabis use and the risk of motor vehicle collisions in real life," the researchers write in the latest issue of the British Medical Journal. The researchers reviewed nine observational studies with a total sample of 49,411 accident victims. To rule out the effects of alcohol or other drugs the researchers calculated the odds for cases where cannabis — but no alcohol or other drugs — was detected in blood test or the driver had reported smoking three hours before crash. They found that smoking cannabis three hours before driving nearly doubled a driver's risk of having a motor vehicle accident. But the level of tetrahydrocannabionol (THC) — the active compound in marijauna — in the blood that leads to impairment is unclear as most of the studies just measured for the presence of THC in the blood. © CBC 2012

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 16369 - Posted: 02.11.2012

By Nathan Seppa Twice-a-week tai chi lessons can help people with Parkinson’s disease maintain their footing and lessen the risk of falls, a new study finds. Training in the Chinese martial art seems to improve ankle stability, posture control and walking ability in these patients. Tai chi includes exercises and posture changes by which the body flows slowly from one position into another, with heightened awareness of balance, coordination and weight shifting. “We’re hoping that physical therapy will pick up some of these movements” for Parkinson’s patients, says study coauthor Fuzhong Li, a behavioral researcher at the Oregon Research Institute in Eugene. “They are very easy to incorporate into PT sessions.” The study appears in the Feb. 9 New England Journal of Medicine. Parkinson’s disease gradually destroys brain cells that produce dopamine, a neurotransmitter essential for delivering brain signals that control muscle movement. People with the disease risk falling every day as they struggle to maintain balance in walking and performing common tasks. Many Parkinson’s patients improve with medication or brain surgery (SN: 9/2/2006, p. 149). But those benefits have limits. “Surgical treatment and drugs make a person more mobile but don’t improve the ability to control balance,” says Lee Dibble, a physical therapist and Parkinson’s researcher at the University of Utah. The new report suggests that tai chi and to some extent resistance training do aid balance and limit falls. “You really need an intervention like this to improve and maintain function,” Dibble says. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 16368 - Posted: 02.11.2012

By Gary Stix A nearly 13-year-old skin cancer drug rapidly alleviates molecular signs of Alzheimer's disease and improves brain function, according to the results of a new mouse study being hailed as extremely promising. Early-stage human clinical trials could begin within months. In the study, published online February 9 by Science, researchers from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and colleagues used mice genetically engineered to exhibit some of the symptoms of Alzheimer's. Most notably, the mice produced amyloid beta peptides—toxic protein fragments that gum up neurons and lead to cell death—and showed signs of forgetfulness. The Case Western team, led by Gary Landreth, decided to try the drug bexarotene (Targretin), approved in 1999 for cutaneous T cell lymphomas. The team chose this drug because of its long experience working with proteins in the nucleus of brain cells that can induce biochemical processes that affect amyloid beta. Landreth and his colleagues fed bexarotene to the demented mice, and with just a single dose it lowered the most toxic form of the amyloid beta peptide by 25 percent within six hours, an effect that lasted for up to three days. Mice that were cognitively impaired by the amyloid buildup resumed normal behaviors after 72 hours: They began to crinkle toilet paper placed nearby to make nests, a skill lost as amyloid increased in their brains. © 2012 Scientific American,

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 16367 - Posted: 02.11.2012

By Laura Sanders In one of science’s most iconic moments, Isaac Newton’s eye caught the red glint of an apple as it plunged toward the ground. He heard the leaves rustle in the light breeze and felt the warmth of the tea he was drinking at the time. These sensory inputs streamed into his brain, where they met his vast stores of knowledge, his internal musings, his peculiar brand of curiosity and perhaps even a fond recollection of escaping the ground’s hold while climbing a tree as a boy. All at once, sights, sounds, emotions and memories converged to form a whole, rich experience in the garden that day. It was this fortuitous experience — perfectly ripe for a big idea — that (legend has it) caused Newton to wonder why the apple fell not sideways or even upward, but straight down. Inspiration struck, ushering in a new understanding of gravity. Newton gets the glory for figuring out that the same mysterious force pulls planets toward the sun and apples toward Earth, but how he did it hinges on an even deeper mystery: How his brain created a single, seamless experience from a chaotic flux of internal and external messages. And that mystery isn’t confined to brains like Newton’s. In all conscious people, the brain somehow gives meaning to the external environment, allowing for thought, self-reflection and discovery. “It’s not that conscious experience is one little interesting phenomenon,” says neuroscientist Ralph Adolphs of Caltech. “It’s literally the whole world.” © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Consciousness; Attention
Link ID: 16366 - Posted: 02.11.2012

Christian Keysers Every time my 18-month-old daughter sees me using a tool, she tries to copy me. She steals my pen to write, and excitedly brushes the few teeth she has when I brush mine. Such a capacity for connecting with and learning from other minds also manifests itself in the empathy we feel with other people's emotions, and in our ability to understand others' goals and help them. Through that ability, we can create and manage the complex social world that is arguably the key to our species' dominance. Ten years ago, human minds were thought to be unique in their ability to connect. But as The Primate Mind shows, there has been a revolution in our understanding. This collection of essays, the result of a 2009 conference organized by primatologist Frans de Waal and ethologist Pier Francesco Ferrari, presents an authoritative, surprising and enriching picture of our monkey and ape cousins. We now know that they have remarkably sophisticated social minds, and that their poor performance in social tasks set by humans was more a result of researchers asking the wrong questions than deficiencies in their experimental subjects. For example, a chapter by psychologists April Ruiz and Laurie Santos explores whether non-human primates can monitor where others are looking and use that information in their own decision-making — a test of whether the animal understands what another perceives. Primatologists first tested this by seeing whether monkeys followed an experimenter's gaze to find a box containing food. The animals performed unexpectedly poorly. But changing the task from cooperation to competition unleashed the primates' true potential: macaques readily stole food from humans who looked away, but refrained from doing so when watched. Placing the task in a setting more relevant to macaque social life, which is less cooperative than our own, emphasized the continuity between our social mind and that of our primate ancestors. © 2012 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Evolution; Attention
Link ID: 16365 - Posted: 02.11.2012

By ANNIE MURPHY PAUL THE word “dyslexia” evokes painful struggles with reading, and indeed this learning disability causes much difficulty for the estimated 15 percent of Americans affected by it. Since the phenomenon of “word blindness” was first documented more than a century ago, scientists have searched for the causes of dyslexia, and for therapies to treat it. In recent years, however, dyslexia research has taken a surprising turn: identifying the ways in which people with dyslexia have skills that are superior to those of typical readers. The latest findings on dyslexia are leading to a new way of looking at the condition: not just as an impediment, but as an advantage, especially in certain artistic and scientific fields. Dyslexia is a complex disorder, and there is much that is still not understood about it. But a series of ingenious experiments have shown that many people with dyslexia possess distinctive perceptual abilities. For example, scientists have produced a growing body of evidence that people with the condition have sharper peripheral vision than others. Gadi Geiger and Jerome Lettvin, cognitive scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, used a mechanical shutter, called a tachistoscope, to briefly flash a row of letters extending from the center of a subject’s field of vision out to its perimeter. Typical readers identified the letters in the middle of the row with greater accuracy. Those with dyslexia triumphed, however, when asked to identify letters located in the row’s outer reaches. Mr. Geiger and Mr. Lettvin’s findings, which have been confirmed in several subsequent studies, provide a striking demonstration of the fact that the brain separately processes information that streams from the central and the peripheral areas of the visual field. Moreover, these capacities appear to trade off: if you’re adept at focusing on details located in the center of the visual field, which is key to reading, you’re likely to be less proficient at recognizing features and patterns in the broad regions of the periphery. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Dyslexia; Attention
Link ID: 16364 - Posted: 02.11.2012

by Gisela Telis The right turn of phrase can activate the brain's sensory centers, a new study suggests. Researchers have found that textural metaphors—phrases such as "soft-hearted"—turn on a part of the brain that's important to the sense of touch. The result may help resolve a long-standing controversy over how the brain understands metaphors and may offer scientists a new way to study how different brain regions communicate. Scientists have disagreed for decades about how the brain processes metaphors, those figures of speech that liken one thing to another without using "like" or "as." One camp claims that when we hear a metaphor—a friend tells us she's had a rough day—we understand the expression only because we've heard it so many times. The brain learns that "rough" means both "abrasive" and "bad," this camp says, and it toggles from one definition to the other. The other camp claims the brain calls on sensory experiences, such as what roughness feels like, to comprehend the metaphor. Researchers from both camps have scanned the brain for signs of sensory activity triggered by metaphors, but these past studies, which tested a variety of metaphors without targeting specific senses or regions of the brain, have come up dry. Neurologist Krish Sathian of Emory University in Atlanta wondered whether using metaphors specific to only one of the senses might be a better strategy. He and his colleagues settled on touch and asked seven college students to distinguish between different textures while their brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging. This enabled them to map the brain regions each subject used to feel and classify textures. Then they scanned the subjects' brains again as they listened to a torrent of textural metaphors and their literal counterparts: "he is wet behind the ears" versus "he is naïve," for example, or "it was a hairy situation" versus "it was a precarious situation." © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Language; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 16363 - Posted: 02.09.2012

By Sarah Estes Graham and Jesse Graham Disability advocates were seeing red after two elderly women with medical conditions were allegedly strip-searched by TSA agents at New York’s JFK airport last December. You’d have to have a pretty thick skin not to empathize with an elderly, wheelchair-bound woman having her colostomy bag frisked. But the notion of one passenger being an unlikely terrorist also belies a discomfiting flipside: another passenger being a more likely candidate. For the last few decades, social scientists have been teasing out the mental and physiological systems involved in profiling and social bias. Taken at face value, the biases look like simple prejudice, like assuming that black people are criminals, or that people from the Middle East are terrorists. But research on social cognition is revealing much more subtle and unconscious mechanisms behind these social biases. Case in point: objects can ‘grab’ properties from nearby objects, in a phenomenon scientists call illusory conjunction. For instance, a red circle next to a white triangle might make the triangle seem red. This same effect can also apply to social targets: a neutral face can ‘grab’ the emotion of the angry person next to it, causing the neutral person to be remembered as angry. In a recent paper published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, researchers at Arizona State demonstrated that male faces are more likely than female faces to “grab” the anger from an adjacent face, while female faces are more likely to “grab” happiness. Using both photos of actual people and artificial images morphed to appear angry or happy, the scientists presented students with side-by-side images of faces (either male or female, happy or angry), along with two numbers they had to add in order to distract their conscious minds. © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 16362 - Posted: 02.09.2012

by Zoë Corbyn A tarsier could be screaming its head off and you would never know it. Uniquely among primates, some of the diminutive mammal's calls are made up of pure ultrasound. Marissa Ramsier of Humboldt State University in California and her colleagues were puzzled to sometimes hear no sound when Philippine tarsiers (Tarsius syrichta) opened their mouths as if to call. Placing 35 wild animals in front of an ultrasound detector revealed that what they assumed to be yawns were high-pitched screams beyond the range of human hearing. While some primates can emit and respond to calls with ultrasonic components, none are known to use only ultrasonic frequencies in a call. The dominant frequency of the Philippine tarsier's ultrasonic call was 70 kilohertz, amongst the highest recorded for any terrestrial mammal. They can hear up to 91 kHz, well beyond the 20 kHz limit of human hearing. Whales, dolphins, domestic cats and some bats and rodents are the only other mammals known to communicate in this way. Having the equivalent of a private communication channel could help tarsiers warn others of predators such as lizards, snakes and birds which can't detect such frequencies, says Ramsier. Eavesdropping on insects could also help them locate their prey. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Hearing; Animal Communication
Link ID: 16361 - Posted: 02.09.2012

by Helen Fields Scientists have long wondered whether propeller and engine noises from big ships stress whales out. Now, thanks to a poop-sniffing dog and an accidental experiment born of a national tragedy, they may finally have their answer. Baleen whales use low-frequency sounds to communicate in the ocean. "They're in an environment where there's not a lot of light; they're underwater. They can't rely on eyesight like we do," says veterinarian Roz Rolland of the New England Aquarium in Boston. Some studies have found that whales alter their behavior and vocalizations when noise increases, and it stands to reason, she says, that noise pollution would hinder their ability to communicate and cause them stress. But because scientists can't control the amount of noise in the sea, that's been very hard to prove. Researchers couldn't stop traffic, but the September 2001 terrorist attacks did. At the time, Rolland was collecting feces of right whales in the Bay of Fundy in Canada so she could try to develop pregnancy tests and other ways to study the animals' reproduction. Animals break up their hormones and get rid of the leftovers in their poop, so feces can show whether an animal is pregnant and reveal its levels of stress. Blood samples would do the same, but feces are much easier to collect. In the first few days after the terrorist attacks, ship traffic in the region decreased dramatically. "There was nobody else there. It was like being on the primal ocean," Rolland says. The whales seem to have noticed the difference, too. The levels of stress hormones in their feces went down, suggesting that ship noise places whales chronically under strain. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Hearing; Stress
Link ID: 16360 - Posted: 02.09.2012

by Anil Ananthaswamy GOVERNMENT spooks want cyborg insects to snoop on their enemies. Biologists want to tap into the nervous systems of insects to understand how they fly. A probe that can be implanted into moths to control their flight could help satisfy both parties. One day, it could even help rehabilitate people who have had strokes. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been running a programme to develop machine-insect interfaces for years but electrodes implanted to stimulate the brains or wing muscles of insects were not precise enough. Now Joel Voldman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and colleagues have designed a unique, flexible neural probe that can be attached directly to an insect's ventral nerve cord (VNC), which, along with the brain, makes up the central nervous system in insects. Another reason previous attempts have not been entirely successful was because the impedance of the electrodes did not match that of the insect's tissue. This probe is made of a polyimide polymer coated with gold and carbon nanotubes, and its impedance is much closer to that of nerve tissue. One end of the probe is a ring that clamps around the VNC. The inside of the ring has five electrodes which stimulate distinct nerve bundles within the VNC. Attached to the probe is a wireless stimulator, which contains a radio receiver, as well as a battery and a device to generate electrical pulses. The team implanted the device in the abdomen of a tobacco hawkmoth (Manduca sexta). As it weighs less than half a gram, it is easy for the moth to carry. "Their wingspan is the width of your hand," says Voldman. "These are big guys." © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 16359 - Posted: 02.09.2012

By BENEDICT CAREY Scientists have for the first time improved memory by applying direct electrical stimulation to a key area in the brain as it learns its way around a new environment. The study included delivery of electrical currents to the entorhinal cortex of the brain. The stimulation, delivered through electrodes inserted into the brains of epilepsy patients being prepared for surgery, sharply improved performance on a virtual driving game that tests spatial memory, the neural mapping ability that allows people to navigate a new city without a GPS. Experts said that the new study, appearing Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine, was tantalizing but not yet conclusive, because the number of patients tested — six — was small, and the biological effects of electrical stimulation are still poorly understood. But it comes at a time of growing excitement in the study of memory and its disorders; only last week, researchers reported strong evidence that damage associated with Alzheimer’s disease spreads through the brain — beginning in the same area targeted in the new study. “People should run to replicate this study, because the implications are incredibly exciting, both for understanding the mechanism for encoding new memories, and ultimately for the treatment of neurological diseases” like dementias, said Michael J. Kahana, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the research. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 16358 - Posted: 02.09.2012