April 14, 2017
Mohenjo
Breaking News, Medical
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Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have made significant progress in the search for new treatments for Parkinson’s disease. By manipulating the gene expression of non-neuronal cells in the brain, they were able to produce new dopamine neurons. The study, performed on mice and human cells, is published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Biotechnology.
By reprogramming cells in the brain the scientists were able to revert motor symptoms in a mouse model of Parkinson’s disease and reproduce the cellular function and responses in human brain cells in the laboratory. The key to this discovery lies in the conversion of brain cells into a subset of nerve cells called dopamine neurons.
Dopamine neurons degenerate and die in the brains of people suffering from Parkinson’s disease. The research team showed that they can convert non-neuronal so called glial cells in the brains of mice into new dopamine neurons, in essence, creating new neurons.
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Dopamine neurons degenerate and die in the brains of people suffering from Parkinson’s disease. Credit: iStock
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March 1, 2017
Mohenjo
Human Interest, Medical
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Even infants can have conversations with mom or dad. Their turn just tends to involve a smile or some gibberish instead of words. That’s a key lesson from programs that are coaching parents to talk more with their babies—and recording their attempts.
At issue is how to bridge the infamous “word gap,” the fact that affluent children hear far more words before they start school than low-income kids. New research suggests intervening early can at least boost the words at-risk tots hear, and maybe influence some school-readiness factors.
One program in Providence, Rhode Island, straps “word pedometers” onto tots to record how many words a day they hear from family or caregivers—not TV. Another in New York City records video of parents practicing conversation strategies with babies too young to even say “Da-da.”
“Parents say: ‘Wow, look what I did there. I made a sound and my child smiled at me,” said Dr. Alan Mendelsohn of New York University. “The power in that is really something.”
The research was presented Friday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston.
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In this Jan. 11, 2016 photo, caseworker Stephanie Taveras, left, reads a book with 20-month-old Gracey Niebla, right, at the child’s home in Providence, R.I. The city is in the third year of its effort to boost language skills for children
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February 22, 2017
Mohenjo
Breaking News, Human Interest, Medical
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New imaging techniques enable exploration of the brain in much more detail than ever before, opening the door to greater understanding of neurological problems and possibly new treatments, researchers say.
Showcased this week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting, the research and innovations are the product of three US scientists involved in a project launched by former president Barack Obama in 2013 to unlock the inner workings of the brain.
Obama’s Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative promised a multidisciplinary approach, with a budget of $434 million for 2017, aimed at unlocking the mysteries of the brain and treating diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and schizophrenia.
One of the technologies developed as part of the initiative, called Scape, enables scientists to see brain structures at a microscopic level.
Scape permits the three-dimensional observation of individual neurons in the brain of a fruit fly as the insect is in flight, searching for food or suddenly afraid for its life, said Elisabeth Hillman, professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia University.
“You can see actually flashing green as the brain is telling the body to move,” she told the conference.
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Obama’s Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative promised a multidisciplinary approach, with a budget of $434 million for 2017, aimed at unlocking the mysteries of the brain
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February 5, 2017
Mohenjo
Human Interest, Medical
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A trio of researchers from China and the U.S. has conducted a study that offers possible evidence of a way to improve self-control—by consistently engaging in self-control acts. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Jianxin Wang, Yulei Rao and Daniel Houser describe experiments they carried out with volunteers meant to test the idea that people could improve their willpower regarding one activity by periodically engaging in another.
Most people have a reasonably clear idea of how good they are at resisting temptations—some are able to have a single beer at a bar before heading home, for example, while others cannot seem to resist having many. In this new effort, the researchers have designed an experiment to find out if practicing impulse control might make people better at it.
The experiment consisted of enlisting two types of volunteers to serve as measures—those who were tolerant of alcohol and those who were not. Those who were tolerant were considered the norm, while those who were intolerant were the kind of people who find themselves wobbling around after just one drink. Prior research has shown that people who are intolerant often find themselves saying no when offered a drink because of the known repercussions—thus, because of their nature, they have had to practice a form of self-control on a fairly regular basis.
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Credit: CC0 Public Domain
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