Catherine de Lange, reporter Start watching the video above and you may not believe that it features an ordinary (albeit oversized) chessboard. The board seems to contort inwards but that's because the corners of some of the squares are highlighted with tiny pieces of paper. Once they're blown away, a regular pattern of parallel squares is revealed. This video was created by Greg Ross, an illusion fanatic with his own YouTube page dedicated to the cause. He constructed the illusion after he was baffled by a similar trick. "The one I saw looked as if the black and white squares were warped and bulging outwards towards me. I had to actually use a ruler to prove to myself that they were parallel," he says. To re-create the brain trick, he had to figure out exactly where to place the paper dots to achieve the perception of inward distortion. Then, it took four hours to painstakingly lay out 200 hand-cut paper squares onto a custom-printed board. "Placing the squares on the pattern was one of the most tedious things I've ever done in my life," says Ross. "I had to use tweezers to maneuver them and static electricity repeatedly thwarted my efforts." If you think you know why we perceive this illusion, let us know in the comment thread below and we'll let you know what the experts say next week. (If you're wondering what the blue shape in the video is, it's Ross's hat. He forgot he was wearing it during filming but there was no way he was going to do a re-take.) © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 15099 - Posted: 03.14.2011

Scientists say they have discovered a "maintenance" protein that helps keep nerve fibres that transmit messages in the brain operating smoothly. The University of Edinburgh team says the finding could improve understanding of disorders such as epilepsy, dementia, MS and stroke. In such neurodegenerative disorders, electrical impulses from the brain are disrupted. This leads to an inability to control movement, and muscles wasting away. The brain works like an electrical circuit, sending impulses along nerve fibres in the same way that current is sent through wires. These fibres can measure up to a metre, but the area covered by the segment of nerve that controls transmission of messages is no bigger than the width of a human hair. Signal failure The scientists discovered that the protein Nfasc186 is crucial for maintaining the health and function of the segment of nerve fibres - called the axon initial segment (AIS) - that controls transmission of messages within the brain. They found that the AIS and the protein within it are important in ensuring the nerve impulse has the right properties to convey the message as it should. Professor Peter Brophy, director of the University of Edinburgh's Centre for Neuroregeneration, said: "Knowing more about how signals in the brain work will help us better understand neurodegenerative disorders and why, when these illnesses strike, the brain can no longer send signals to parts of the body." BBC © MMXI

Keyword: Epilepsy; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 15098 - Posted: 03.14.2011

An oral drug for multiple sclerosis has been approved for some MS patients in Canada. Until Thursday's announcement, drug treatment options for MS patients in this country were limited to medications taken regularly by injection or infusion. Gilenya, also called fingolimod, is a capsule taken once a day for people with the relapsing-remitting form of MS. These patients have relapses that continue to worsen in severity, disability level, or who are unable to tolerate injections. "It's a very long awaited type of medication for our patients," said Dr. Heather MacLean, a neurologist at the Ottawa Hospital who specializes in MS. Needle injections under the skin are painful and are associated with itching and lumpy skin reactions, and the weekly intramuscular medication can also cause muscle pain, noted MacLean, who has treated patients with the new drug as part of early clinical trials. From her experience, MacLean estimated that 10 to 20 per cent of relapsing-remitting MS patients currently on treatment stand to benefit from Gilenya. "It always surprises me how patients really require different modalities of treatment based on their own personal disease course and their own treatment goals. To have another available option for them, I think they'll be thrilled." Gilenya's manufacturer, Novartis, submitted clinical trial data to Health Canada to get the approval. © CBC 2011

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis
Link ID: 15097 - Posted: 03.11.2011

By JAMIE STENGLE DALLAS — Women who enjoy a daily dose of coffee may like this perk: It might lower their risk of stroke. Women in a Swedish study who drank at least a cup of coffee everyday had a 22 to 25 percent lower risk of stroke, compared to those who drank less coffee or none at all. "Coffee drinkers should rejoice," said Dr. Sharonne N. Hayes, a cardiologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. "Coffee is often made out to be potentially bad for your heart. There really hasn't been any study that convincingly said coffee is bad." "If you are drinking coffee now, you may be doing some good and you are likely not doing harm," she added. But Hayes and other doctors say the study shouldn't send non-coffee drinkers running to their local coffee shop. The study doesn't prove that coffee lowers stroke risk, only that coffee drinkers tend to have a lower stroke risk. "These sorts of epidemiological studies are compelling but they don't prove cause," said Dr. David S. Seres, director of medical nutrition at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. The findings were published online Thursday in the American Heart Association journal Stroke. Copyright 2011 The Associated Press

Keyword: Stroke; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 15096 - Posted: 03.11.2011

By CELIA WATSON SEUPEL When I got up, Mom was already awake. I could hear her rummaging in the kitchen. Through the glass doors in the living room, sunlight flared so brightly off the hillocks of snow that I had to shield my eyes. It was my birthday, and I was afraid. What if my husband had neglected to take Mom shopping for a card? Once Mom found out it was my birthday, she would be devastated that she had forgotten and had nothing to give me. Little matter that she has dementia and can’t remember what we did two hours ago. Birthdays are a big deal to Mom. Birthdays are not a big deal to me. I hate growing older. I don’t mind if Mom forgets my birthday as long as she still remembers me. That someday she might not recognize me has been my biggest fear ever since Mom got dementia. I can’t imagine anything more devastating than being forgotten by your own mother. When Mom was diagnosed with vascular dementia seven years ago, I was told she did not have Alzheimer’s disease. I hoped that meant she would never forget her family. But as Mom’s dementia progressed, I realized that I had no idea whether vascular dementia could be as bad as Alzheimer’s. I really didn’t understand the difference. Recently I decided to find out, and the answers were not very reassuring. Although vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s disease are hardly the same, with time the differences start to blur. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 15095 - Posted: 03.11.2011

Jessica Hamzelou, reporter This overlapping rainbow of connecting cells represents new insights into how mammalian brains work. The techniques used to create this three-dimensional map of a tiny chunk of mouse brain could help neuroscientists understand the connections that make up our own brains. To create this map - which shows the neurons in a piece of mouse visual cortex just 8 thousandths of a cubic millimetre in volume - Clay Reid and his colleagues at Harvard Medical School in Boston combined two imaging techniques. First, the group measured the activity of neurons in the visual cortex of a living mouse in order to spot the cells that were excited by visual information. They then killed the mouse and cut the visual cortex into 1215 slices, before using an electron microscope to capture more than 3 million images of the slices. Finally they stitched the pictures together to form this 3D image using a computer capable of handling the 30 to 40 terabytes of information. That was the relatively easy part. Next, Reid's team painstakingly traced all of the connections made by 10 of the neurons that were active in the first stage of the study. That involved tracing 240 axons and dendrites through the tangled mess created by other axons and dendrites in the 3D image. The results are already shedding light on the detailed behaviour of the brain. The team found that neurons that inhibit brain activity received input from all the excitatory neurons in the chunk. That finding offers new insight into the debate over whether these neurons receive specific or random inputs, and may inform research into conditions characterised by a lack of brain activity inhibition, such as epilepsy, says Reid. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 15094 - Posted: 03.10.2011

Brain imaging techniques to find out more about patients in a coma are being developed by University of Aberdeen scientists. The new Aberdeen Coma Science Group - believed to be the first of its kind in Scotland - hopes to provide greater insights into coma patient awareness. This would be used to help guide treatment and provide information for relatives and clinicians. North east of Scotland patients will initially assist the research. The scanning technique is called functional MRI - fMRI. Prof Christian Schwarzbauer is leading the work, which will involve patients being given fMRI scans while exposed to stimuli such as pictures, sounds, smell and touch. He said: "Thanks to advances in medical care our chances of surviving a severe accident are much higher than they used to be. "Doctors can save the lives of many patients who suffer brain injury, but, if the injury is severe, the patient may not regain consciousness and slip into a coma. "Some will regain consciousness but others will remain in a so-called vegetative state. With their eyes open and possibly even wandering, these patients appear to be awake but show no signs of awareness of themselves or their environment." BBC © MMXI

Keyword: Brain imaging; Attention
Link ID: 15093 - Posted: 03.10.2011

By PAM BELLUCK A federal panel will meet on Thursday to evaluate growing concerns about whether anesthesia in young children, used in millions of surgical procedures, can in some cases lead to cognitive problems or learning disabilities. The meeting was prompted by a growing body of research, so far primarily in animals, that suggests a correlation between anesthesia exposure and brain cell death or learning problems, said Dr. Bob Rappaport, the Food and Drug Administration’s director of the division of anesthesia and analgesia products, who wrote about the issue in Wednesday’s New England Journal of Medicine. The F.D.A. advisory panel will evaluate the research, suggest further studies and discuss whether parents whose children are facing surgery should be informed of possible cognitive or behavioral risks. “We don’t know what this means for children at this time,” Dr. Rappaport said, adding, “That’s exactly why it’s so critical that we get all of the necessary information.” In the meantime, he said, “how do we communicate what we do know at this point without causing undue concern in parents and in physicians?” Medical advances are allowing more fragile and premature infants to survive birth, often to require critical surgical procedures. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 15092 - Posted: 03.10.2011

Analysis by Marianne English To every nap lover's delight, it turns out that sleeping may play a larger role in learning than previously thought, according to a new study featured in the journal Current Biology. Researchers at the University of California-Berkeley studied 44 college-aged participants at two different times of day -- once at noon and again at 6 p.m. Half the group was allowed to take a nap from 2 p.m. to 3:40 p.m., while the rest stayed awake throughout the day. At noon and 6 p.m., researchers measured how both groups performed in facial memory tests, finger tapping memory tests and an alertness test. The "Nap" group performed significantly better at learning tasks when tested later in the day in comparison to subjects who did not take a lengthy nap. The team also measured brain activity while subjects napped using an electroencephalogram. They found that success in learning correlated with the amount of stage-2 non rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, the stage preceding deep rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. The research is unique because it points to a mechanism that may reveal sleep's importance for encoding new information -- sleep spindles, or short bursts of cell activity between areas of the brain during NREM. © 2011 Discovery Communications, LLC

Keyword: Sleep; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 15091 - Posted: 03.10.2011

Analysis by Amy Dusto For people with spinal injuries or other conditions that impair use of the arms or vocal cords -- or for the curious who just think it's cool -- the intendiX spells words based on brain waves. A skullcap along with a computer interface, the system is in development by Austrian company Guger Technologies. It was demonstrated at CeBIT, an annual worldwide digital industry event, held this year in Hanover, Germany, from March 1 to 5. To pick up brain activity, the skullcap is covered in electroencephalographic (EEG) electrodes. Unfortunately, this early model requires that the user put gel between his and her head and the EEG electrodes to function properly (though a dry version is forthcoming). The wearer stares at a computer screen, which flashes highlights over different rows in a matrix of letters and symbols set up like a keyboard on the screen. Simply by paying attention to the desired letter for a few seconds, the program can determine what the user intended to pick. According to Guger Technologies, most people become competent thought-communicators after 10 minutes of training on the system and are able to spell out five to 10 characters a minute. Designed for use by the severely handicapped in the home or with caregivers, intendiX can do more than just write out a text message. The user can also make it read the message out loud in digitized prose, print the text, or send it in email or via another electronic messaging system -- intendiX is Bluetooth-ready. The only ability needed to use the system, besides a few seconds of concentration, is eyesight. © 2011 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 15090 - Posted: 03.10.2011

By Laura Sanders With a flip of a switch, researchers can make a mouse can shed its anxious, shy demeanor. The scientists can dial mouse anxiety up or down by lighting up a very specific connection between two parts of the brain. The results, reported online March 9 in Nature, “gets us that much closer to understanding how the [anxiety] system works or how it doesn’t work in clinical cases,” says neuroscientist and psychiatrist Kerry Ressler, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Emory University in Atlanta who was not involved in the study. The results, he says, will help researchers gain a deeper understanding of circuits in the human brain important for psychiatric disorders. The new study focused on the amygdalae, a pair of structures buried deep within the brain, one on each side. These bundles of nerve cells are important for emotions, including fear, but it’s been less clear what role this brain region plays in anxiety, which unlike fear doesn’t require a specific trigger. Researchers led by neuroscientist and psychiatrist Karl Deisseroth, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Stanford University, genetically engineered light-sensitive proteins that can turn brain cells on or off in mice, a trick that forms the basis of the growing field of optogenetics (SN: 1/30/10, p. 18). But the researchers added a new twist: Instead of manipulating an entire nerve cell, which would affect all of the cell’s many fingerlike projections that carry information to other cells, the team targeted very specific parts of connections between cells. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 15089 - Posted: 03.10.2011

by Sara Reardon Most male mammals wield a penis covered with spines made of keratin, the same material that forms fingernails, to sweep out competitors' sperm and irritate a female into ovulating. You can add humans' lack of penile spines to the list of ways we are misfits among primates, along with our absence of tails and fur. Even chimpanzees, our closest relatives, have penile spines. A new study suggests that this feature disappeared due to a chunk of DNA that went missing after our evolutionary divergence from chimps. The researchers have identified another DNA deletion that may have contributed to humans' bigger brains. The question of what makes us distinctly human is hardly a new one, of course, but developmental genomicist Gill Bejerano and developmental geneticist David Kingsley, both of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, decided to look at the issue from another angle. Maybe humans don't have an advantage over chimps genetically, as we often like to think we do—maybe we've actually lost something. Bejerano and Kingsley compared the chimp genome with the human genome, looking for DNA regions that chimps had but humans did not. And rather than looking at genes, as most research in the past has done, they examined DNA regions that don't code for genes but instead regulate how nearby genes are expressed. They found 583 deletions in the human genome, and Bejerano says choosing which to study first was a tough decision. "Each region could be its own adventure," he says. They ended up choosing two: a deleted region near a gene for male hormone response and a region close to a gene involved in brain development. The Neandertal genome also lacks these regions, indicating that these deletions occurred more than half a million years ago. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Evolution; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15088 - Posted: 03.10.2011

ANNE McILROY University of Lethbridge neuroscientists are investigating whether early brain injuries can permanently alter the way genes work in the brain and predispose people to dementia as they age. Evidence suggests that brain injury early in life, including concussion, may contribute to later dementia, says neuroscientist Robert Sutherland. He and his colleagues at the Canadian Centre for Behavioral Neuroscience want to know why. The experiments, although still in laboratory animals, could help explain why some athletes who suffered repeated concussions, such as former National Hockey League player Reggie Fleming, developed a distinctive type of brain damage and symptoms similar to Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Sutherland is part of a team that includes Bryan Kolb, Robbin Gibb, Robert McDonald and Olga Kovalchuk. The researchers are looking at how brain injuries influence the chemical switching system that activates and deactivates genes in the brain, or what’s known as the epigenetics of brain injuries. Thousands of genes are active in the brain and each produces one of the proteins that are essential for memory, learning, keeping brain cells alive and working, and for repairing damage. The hypothesis is that brain injuries may trigger permanent changes to the switching system, Dr. Sutherland said. This results in either too much or too little of particular protein getting produced, which over the years can lead to problems or perhaps even changes in the architecture of the brain that might make someone more vulnerable to dementia. © Copyright 2011 The Globe and Mail Inc.

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion; Alzheimers
Link ID: 15087 - Posted: 03.10.2011

Scientists have discovered what they say are four different species of "zombie fungus" in the Brazilian rainforest, which take over the brains of their host ants, forcing them to move to a location ideally suited to the fungus before killing them. In a study published March 2 in the journal Plos ONE, researchers from Brazil, the United Kingdom and the United States say they began to investigate after noticing different types of fungus growing out of the bodies of carpenter ants. "This so-called zombie or brain-manipulating fungus alters the behaviour of the ant host, causing it to die in an exposed position, typically clinging onto and biting into the adaxial surface of shrub leaves," the authors write. The fungus then grows — usually out of the ant's head and neck region — and releases its spores. The fungus, Ophiocordyceps, was originally thought to be a single species, but the researchers determined that there were actually four species at work. "It is tempting to speculate that each species of fungus has its own ant species that it is best adapted to attack," study leader David Hughes, an entomologist at Penn State University, told National Geographic. "This potentially means thousands of zombie fungi in tropical forests across the globe await discovery," he told the magazine. "We need to ramp up sampling - especially given the perilous state of the environment." © CBC 2011

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 15086 - Posted: 03.08.2011

by Virginia Morell Elephants know when they need a helping hand—or rather, trunk. That's the conclusion of a new study that tested the cooperative skills of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) in Thailand and showed that the pachyderms understand that they will fail at a task without a partner's assistance. The ability to recognize that you sometimes need a little help from your friends is a sign of higher social cognition, psychologists say, and is rarely found in other species. Elephants now join an elite club of social cooperators: chimpanzees, hyenas, rooks, and humans. To test the elephants' cooperation skills, a team of scientists modified a classic experiment first administered to chimpanzees in the 1930s, which requires two animals work together to earn a treat. If they don't cooperate, neither gets the reward. For the elephants, the researchers used a sliding table with a single rope threaded around it. Two bowls of corn were attached to the table, but the elephants could reach them only by pulling two ends of the rope simultaneously. Working with mahout—Asian elephant trainers—trained elephants at the Thai Elephant Conservation Center in Lampang, the researchers first taught individual animals to pull the rope with their trunks. The 12 elephants were then divided into six pairs, and each pair was released to walk to their waiting ropes. If one animal pulled the rope before the other, the rope would slip out, leaving the table—and treats—in place. "That taught them to pull together," says Joshua Plotnik, a postdoc in experimental psychology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom and the lead author of the study, which appears online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Intelligence; Evolution
Link ID: 15085 - Posted: 03.08.2011

By Bill Briggs All these years, I thought it was because I was white. And straight. And old. Sure, I’ll get my freak on if I hear “Disco Inferno,” or when Mary J. is in the spot. (Told you I was old. And let me add: Don’t need no hateration.) But my steps aren’t smooth. Those beats and my body never truly connect -- despite what the cocktails tell me. On the dance floor, I'm the male Elaine from "Seinfeld," all kicks, thumbs and no rhythm. Turns out, it’s all in my head, not my hips or feet. A study, released today by researchers at the University of Oxford in England, claims a tiny messenger in the brain is partly to blame for those among us who struggle to grasp the latest dance moves. This is all about GABA (short for gamma-aminobutyric acid). Again: not Gaga, GABA. A naturally occurring chemical, GABA is a bit like the brain’s traffic cop. Nerve cells in the brain are constantly firing and “talking” to each other. GABA helps keep all that chatter from getting out of control. “Our research suggests that an important first step in learning that new skill is a decrease in GABA levels in the motor cortex,” explained Dr. Charlotte Stagg, a junior research fellow at Oxford and at John Radcliffe Hospital. Her study was published online in the journal Current Biology. © 2011 msnbc.com

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 15084 - Posted: 03.08.2011

By Neil Bowdler Science reporter, BBC News Scientists say they have found a mechanism which may explain why a poor diet during pregnancy can increase the risk of offspring developing diabetes in later life. They say rat studies indicate an imbalanced diet in the mother can lead to the "silencing" of a gene linked to insulin production in the child. The Cambridge study is in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Experts said it showed a healthy diet was important during pregnancy. Silent gene Scientists already suspect that a poor diet during pregnancy can result in health problems such as diabetes for the offspring in later life. What the researchers at the University of Cambridge have come up with is a possible explanation. They believe an imbalanced diet in the expectant mother can compromise the long-term functioning of a gene in the child. The gene, called Hnf4a, is thought to play a role in the development of the pancreas and in insulin production. Because of the difficulties of testing the theory on pregnant women, they fed rats a protein-deficient diet and found higher rates of type 2 diabetes in the offspring, as expected. What they also found in the offspring was that this Hnf4a gene appeared to be "silenced" or "switched off" as the rats aged. The researchers suggest this may both cause diabetes, and can be linked back to the maternal diet. BBC © MMXI

Keyword: Obesity; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 15083 - Posted: 03.08.2011

By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS Every morning, Kay Brown engages in a ritual similar to a heroin addict’s, or a diabetic’s: she sticks herself with a syringe. Only hers contains hCG, a pregnancy hormone. Ms. Brown, 35, is not taking hCG to help her bear a child. She believes that by combining the hormone injections with a 500-calorie-a-day diet, she will achieve a kind of weight-loss nirvana: losing fat in all the right places without feeling tired or hungry. “I had a friend who did it before her wedding,” Ms. Brown said. “She looks great.” Women like Ms. Brown are streaming into doctors’ offices and weight-loss clinics all over the country, paying upward of $1,000 a month for a consultation, a supply of the hormone and the syringes needed to deliver it. More than 50 years after a doctor at a Roman clinic began promoting hCG as a dieting aid, it is as popular as ever, even though there is scant evidence that it makes any difference. The regimen combines daily injections with a near-starvation diet, and patients, mostly women, are often enticed by promises that they can lose about a pound a day without feeling hungry. Perhaps even more seductively, they are frequently told that the hCG will prompt their bodies to carry away and metabolize fat that has been stored where they least want it — in their upper arms, bellies and thighs. In response to inquiries stirred up by the diet’s popularity, the Food and Drug Administration warned in January that “homeopathic” forms of hCG, like lozenges and sprays, sold over the Internet and in some health food stores, are fraudulent and illegal if they claim weight-loss powers. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 15082 - Posted: 03.08.2011

By RONI CARYN RABIN A leisurely four-course dinner at a fine restaurant can take two hours to eat, while meals eaten at home are usually over in 30 minutes. Does one leave you more satisfied — and less likely to snack afterward — than the other? Researchers in the Netherlands set out to see whether, all other things being equal — meaning people ate the exact same quantities of the exact same food — the speed of consumption had an effect on diners’ feelings of satiety and hunger and on the chemical signals, or hormones, that are involved in appetite regulation. The researchers also wanted to see how the pace of the meal affected postprandial snacking. Though people said they felt more sated and less hungry after a staggered meal that lasted two hours with breaks between courses and didn’t really want to eat more afterward, the experience didn’t change their snacking behavior, said Sofie G. Lemmens, a postdoctoral fellow at Maastricht University in the Netherlands who was the lead author of the paper, published in the March issue of The Journal of Nutrition. Two and a half hours after the beginning of the meal, when the diners were offered an array of traditional Dutch tea treats like apple cake, chocolate-covered marshmallows, peanuts, chips and waffles, they ate almost as much as they did two and a half hours after a meal that they had consumed in 30 minutes. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 15081 - Posted: 03.08.2011

By Deborah Kotz Dianne Sanborn admits that “it didn’t make any sense’’ to take a sugar pill to relieve the severe constipation, abdominal pain, and bloating — attributed to irritable bowel syndrome — that she’d suffered from since college. But eager to try anything, the 64-year-old entered a clinical trial last spring at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where she was told to take placebo caplets twice a day for three weeks. “Before I took each pill, I had to tell myself that it was going to make me feel better, but I was very skeptical,’’ says the 64-year-old former nurse practitioner who had to quit her job 13 years ago because of her medical problems. “I certainly knew placebos could work but only if you didn’t know it was a placebo.’’ When her symptoms dissipated three days after she started taking the placebos, however, she became a believer. So did many of the other 36 volunteers who were randomly assigned placebos along with any of their usual treatments in the December study published in the journal PLoS ONE. Nearly 60 percent of them reported an improvement in their irritable bowel symptoms compared to 35 percent of the 43 volunteers who weren’t given placebos but were just told to continue their standard therapy. Other research had already demonstrated that sham treatments could dull pain, alleviate depression, and even quell Parkinson’s tremors. But this study was the first to show that placebos have power even when patients know they’re taking them. And now placebo researchers are gearing up to figure out ways to move side-effect-free sugar pills into mainstream clinical practice — that’s the goal of a placebo-studies program that Harvard Medical School is launching in July with 30 faculty members. “We’d like to eventually see placebo treatments become a full partner in medical care along with active medications, procedures, and surgery,’’ says PLoS ONE study author Dr. Ted Kaptchuk, who will head the program. © 2011 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Stress
Link ID: 15080 - Posted: 03.08.2011