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June 10, 2004
Brain Degeneration, yet one more thing to look forward to
Harvard researchers have found what those of us over forty have suspected for a while - that the brain's learning and memory genes decline with age, starting in your early forties.
The researchers studied well-preserved brain tissue from 30 people, aged 26 to 106 at the time of death. The changes they found occurred in a wide variety of genes, with functions that range from regulating sleep to metabolizing fat. But most interesting was a marked decline in function among 20 genes involved in learning, memory and the plasticity, or flexibility, of brain function. As the subjects aged, these genes became damaged, reducing their effectiveness. "Some genes begin to decline much earlier than expected, as early as the early 40s," says senior author Bruce Yanker, a professor of neurology and neuroscience at Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital in Boston.
Here's the link to the full Wall St. Journal article. The link should work for a few days.
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June 5, 2004
Intestinal Worms and IBD
I love stories like this... from the New Scientist, Diet of Worms Can Cure Bowel Disease. Studies have found that regular doses of pig whipworms can drastically relieve the symptoms of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) and Chron's. Hats off to the brave volunteers for the first studies, who not knowing if this was going to work of not, intentially submitted their GI tracts to intestinal parasites.
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May 23, 2004
Ice Cream Headache
All about ice cream headaches.
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May 10, 2004
Violent Behavior - Learned or Genetic?
Caught this in Sharon Begley's column in Friday's Wall St. Journal. (click here for full article, available for a few days). Stanford University's Robert Sapolsky has observed that when the most aggressive, dominant members of a baboon clan are removed, the culture of the remaining baboons changes to become more peaceful. These changes persist even as new generations come into the clan either from birth or from other clans.
The most recent evidence of culture among animals comes from studies of olive baboons. It stands out because the learned behavior is so at odds with how badly baboons customarily behave.Baboons tend to be fierce and aggressive, and the "Forest Troop" in Kenya's Masai Mara Reserve fits the mold. Males fought over everything (grub, girls ...) and nothing. But in 1982, the aggressive males began raiding the garbage pit of a nearby tourist lodge, gorging on rotten meat. Almost half of the troop's males -- and all the aggressive ones -- died of tuberculosis, leaving, as Stanford University biologist Robert Sapolsky puts it, "a cohort of atypically unaggressive survivors."
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January 6, 2004
10 Best Photos of Mars
The above photo was released today from Nasa.
Mars is closer to earth than it has been for over 50,000 years. Here are some of the best photos of the red planet, including the controversial "face of Mars".
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October 6, 2003
Hormesis - Radiation Is Good For You?
I recently had a conversation with a retired X-Ray specialist physicist who claimed that radiation in low doses was actually good for you, citing the phenomena called "hormesis". Incredulous, I looked up hormesis in Google and sure enough, there are thousands of studies showing that all sorts of toxins at low doses, including radiation, produce a beneficial effect biologically.
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May 25, 2003
Cells that just won't die
Old news to some but new to me, much human cell research is performed on one woman's cancer cells that refuse to die. "Hela" cells, as they are known, have reproduced in the lab so much since their progenitor died in 1951 that there is much more biomass of the cells today in existance than there ever was of the woman. Apparently the cells do not contain the "death gene" that causes a cell to voluntarily die.
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May 23, 2003
Dyslexia and Brain Research
One of the outcomes of brain research over the last ten years is the linking of dyslexia to how the brain recognizes phonetic sounds. When the brain is trained to more clearly distinguish between certain sounds, reading skills improve greatly.
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May 17, 2003
New neural pathways
Small triumphs. I learned how to do a backwards crossover today in my ice skating class. What's a backwards crossover? Skating backwards in an arc generated by picking up one foot and crossing it over the other foot. No big deal, unless you are 42 and decided 3 months ago that you wanted to learn how to skate and you are as terrified as I am of falling on your tush on that cold, hard ice. The old adage is that it is much harder to learn new things, especially those requiring physical skill, the older you get. This may be true, but it is really hard if you don't even try. And the older we get, the more reluctant we are to look stupid, and the less we are willing to take risks. I've been reading lately about the latest research in brain neuroplasticity. What they've found is that the brain continues to build new neural pathways throughout our whole lives, as long as we require our brains to perform new functions such as learning a new language or a new motor skill. Every week I go to my ice skating class and every week I get just a fraction better. What I learned last week, as difficult as it was then, is much easier this week. This must come from the brain creating stronger neural connections. And although children can pick things up faster, I have found that I'm learning as fast if not faster than most of the kids in the class because of my better ability to focus my attention. Focused attention also creates new neural pathways. Go brain go.
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May 7, 2003
Baby Sign Language
The latest thing for my friends with babies is teaching their babies to communicate with sign language. Apparently this works with babies from 6 to 18 months and can really help the child tell the parent what she needs.
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