Posts tagged brain
Articles and news from the latest research reports.
Dementia: The Self-Portraits of William Utermohlen
About the art work: When he learned in 1995 that he had Alzheimer’s disease, William Utermohlen, an American artist living in London, immediately began work on an ambitious series of self-portraits. The artist pursued this project over an eight-year period, adapting his style to the growing limitations of his perception and motor skills and creating images that powerfully documented his experience of his illness. The resulting body of work serves as a unique artistic, medical, and personal record of one man’s struggle with dementia.
Full Article: The Dementia Plague
What number is halfway between 1 and 9? Is it 5 — or 3?
Ask adults from the industrialized world what number is halfway between 1 and 9, and most will say 5. But pose the same question to small children, or people living in some traditional societies, and they’re likely to answer 3.
Cognitive scientists theorize that that’s because it’s actually more natural for humans to think logarithmically than linearly: 30 is 1, and 32 is 9, so logarithmically, the number halfway between them is 31, or 3. Neural circuits seem to bear out that theory. For instance, psychological experiments suggest that multiplying the intensity of some sensory stimuli causes a linear increase in perceived intensity.
In a paper that appeared online last week in the Journal of Mathematical Psychology, researchers from MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) use the techniques of information theory to demonstrate that, given certain assumptions about the natural environment and the way neural systems work, representing information logarithmically rather than linearly reduces the risk of error.
Caffeinated Coffee Linked to Loss of Vision
Consumption of caffeinated coffee is associated with an increased risk of developing exfoliation glaucoma, the leading cause of secondary glaucoma worldwide, according to a new study led by Dr Louis Pasquale of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Chewing Ability Linked to Reduced Dementia Risk
The population is aging, and the older we become the more likely it is that we risk deterioration of our cognitive functions, such as memory, decision-making and problem solving. Research indicates several possible contributors to these changes, with several studies demonstrating an association between not having teeth and loss of cognitive function and a higher risk of dementia.
One reason for this could be that few or no teeth makes chewing difficult, which leads to a reduction in the blood flow to the brain. However, to date there has been no direct investigation into the significance of chewing ability in a national representative sample of elderly people.
Now a team comprised of researchers from the Department of Dental Medicine and the Aging Research Center (ARC) at Karolinska Institutet and from Karlstad University in Sweden have looked at tooth loss, chewing ability and cognitive function in a random nationwide sample of 557 people aged 77 or older. They found that those who had difficulty chewing hard food such as apples had a significantly higher risk of developing cognitive impairments. This correlation remained even when controlling for sex, age, education and mental health problems, variables that are often reported to impact on cognition. Whether chewing ability was sustained with natural teeth or dentures also had no bearing on the effect.
The results are published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society (JAGS).
A molecular scissor related to Alzheimer’s Disease
An international research team led by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and researchers from Kiel University revealed the atomic-level structure of the human peptidase enzyme meprin ß (beta). The enzyme is related to inflammation, cancer and Alzheimer’s Disease and is involved in cellular proliferation and differentiation. The knowledge of the enzyme structure will allow for the development of a new medication type different from those known up to now. The study was published in the current issue of the journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences”.
“Now that we know how meprin ß looks, how it works and how it relates to diseases, we can search for substances that stop its enzyme activities when they become harmful”, explains Xavier Gomis-Rüth, researcher at the Molecular Biology Institute of Barcelona, who led the project. Meprin ß is an enzyme that is anchored in the outer wall of cells. Its normal function in the human metabolism is to cut off certain proteins, e.g. growth factors, that are also anchored in the cell wall. In this way meprin ß releases protein fragments into the environment surrounding the cells – a natural and normal process, as long as it occurs at a certain intensity. However, under specific circumstances, meprin ß may function abnormally, and, for example, releases too many protein fragments. The protein pieces than overdo their natural task in the cell surroundings, causing disorder in the human body. Such disorder typically occurs when inflammation, cancer or Alzheimer’s Disease get started.
NYU researchers find electricity in biological clock
Biologists from New York University have uncovered new ways our biological clock’s neurons use electrical activity to help keep behavioral rhythms in order. The findings, which appear in the journal Current Biology, also point to fresh directions for exploring sleep disorders and related afflictions.
“This process helps explain how our biological clocks keep such amazingly good time,” said Justin Blau, an associate professor of biology at NYU and one of the study’s authors.
Blau added that the findings may offer new pathways for exploring treatments to sleep disorders because the research highlights the parts of our biological clock that “may be particularly responsive to treatment or changes at different times of the day.”
Head injury turns man into musical savant
Less than six years ago, Derek Amato had only mediocre guitar skills. But after suffering a concussion – and never having a lesson – he became a piano-playing sensation.
Researchers have discovered a way to generate new human neurons from another type of adult cell found in our brains. The discovery, reported in the October 5th issue of Cell Stem Cell, a Cell Press publication, is one step toward cell-based therapies for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
Yale scientists explain how ketamine vanquishes depression within hours
Many chronically depressed and treatment-resistant patients experience immediate relief from symptoms after taking small amounts of the drug ketamine. For a decade, scientists have been trying to explain the observation first made at Yale University.
Today, current evidence suggests that the pediatric anesthetic helps regenerate synaptic connections between brain cells damaged by stress and depression, according to a review of scientific research written by Yale School of Medicine researchers and published in the Oct. 5 issue of the journal Science.
Ketamine works on an entirely different type of neurotransmitter system than current antidepressants, which can take months to improve symptoms of depression and do not work at all for one out of every three patients. Understanding how ketamine works in the brain could lead to the development of an entirely new class of antidepressants, offering relief for tens of millions of people suffering from chronic depression.
“The rapid therapeutic response of ketamine in treatment-resistant patients is the biggest breakthrough in depression research in a half century,” said Ronald Duman, the Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Psychiatry and Professor of Neurobiology.