BALTIMORE—Deep in the brain, buried in the hippocampus and subventricular zone, reside adult neural stem cells, cells that retain the ability to become other types of neural cells and could serve as possible treatments for ailments ranging from vision impairment to Parkinson's to spinal cord injuries. Doctors, scientists and patients, however, are understandably hesitant to go digging around for them, their location being "a great deterrent," Sally Temple, founder of the New York Neural Stem Cell Institute, said at the 2009 World Stem Cell Summit here on Wednesday.

Researchers, therefore, are anxious to uncover other, more accessible neural stem cell candidates. Temple and her team have turned their sights to the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), a layer of tissue at the base of the retina that comes into being within 30 to 50 days of conception, before many other parts of the neural system differentiate. Cells from this area of the eye can be easily harvested from retinal fluid that is usually discarded during retinal surgery, she explained.

Continue Reading >

Paying bills or counting change may seem like basic life skills to most, but for those who are about to slip into older-age dementia, the tasks can become increasingly difficult. And as fiscal functionality begins to fail, Alzheimer's disease might be less than a year away, a new study suggests.

"Impairments in financial skills and judgments are often the first functional changes demonstrated by patients with incipient dementia," wrote the authors of the paper, which was published online today in Neurology. 

Although the relationship between money management skills and dementia has been established for some time, the researchers' focus on declining skills as an early indicator showed that once these abilities start to slip, the diagnosable disease is likely not far behind.

Continue Reading >

The ethics of enhanced interrogation techniques, detailed in a series of White House memos earlier this year, have come under growing fire in Washington and around the world. And the effectiveness of these practices—including sleep deprivation and waterboarding—have drawn increasing scrutiny in the scientific community.

A new review paper, published online today in Trends in Cognitive Science, investigates whether such intense approaches, labeled as torture by some, might be counterproductive to obtaining accurate information from suspects.

The use of coercive interrogation "is based on the assumption that subjects will be motivated to reveal veridical information to end interrogation, and that extreme stress, shock and anxiety do not impact memory," Shane O'Mara, a professor at the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience in Dublin and the paper's lead author, said in a prepared statement. "However, this model of the impact of extreme stress on memory and the brain is utterly unsupported by scientific evidence."

Continue Reading >

From polite petitions to fierce fires, activists opposed to animal research have made their position clear in the U.S. and abroad for many years. But now, medical researchers are being encouraged to press on—and speak out.

Two new commentaries, published online today in The Journal of Neuroscience, highlight recent threats that have befallen some researchers who perform research on animals. "We have seen our cars and homes firebombed or flooded, and we have received letters packed with poisoned razors and death threats via e-mail and voicemail," Dario Ringach of the David Geffen School of Medicine and J. David Jentsch of the University of California, Los Angeles, (U.C.L.A.) wrote in one of the papers.

Continue Reading >

Archeologists have uncovered a veritable tangle of ancient flax fibers in a cave in the Republic of Georgia. The find consists of tiny bits of flax fibers that had been spun—and in some cases dyed—by upper Paleolithic hunters who occupied the cave intermittently beginning some 32,000 years ago.

"They might have used this fiber to create parts of clothing, ropes, or baskets—for items that were mainly used for domestic activity," Ofer Bar-Yosef, a professor of prehistoric archeology at Harvard University and co-author of a paper on the find, said in a prepared statement.

The researchers confirmed that cave's inhabitants were engaged in textile processing by also uncovering remnants of beetles, moths and fungal spores that have been linked to the presence of clothes and other hand-made items.

Continue Reading >

When hackers want to break into a computer system, they often attempt to reverse engineer the operating software to better understand how it works (and, of course, its vulnerabilities). While researchers have for years taken a similar approach to better understanding parts of our gray matter, neuroscientists now say that within a decade it will be possible to create a digital model that replicates all functions of the human brain.

Though the brain has trillions of synapses, billions of neurons, millions of proteins, and thousands of genes, scientists have already begun to build detailed models of the mouse, rat, cat, primate and human brain, says Henry Markram, director of neuroscience and technology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, where he founded the Brain Mind Institute (BMI) in 2002. One of the keys to furthering this work is cooperation among scientists who are gathering together fragments of information collected over the past century about the how the brain works.

Continue Reading >

In the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Joel and Clementine's relationship ends so sourly that the couple elects to have their mutual memories swept away via a non-surgical procedure called "targeted memory erasure." No such tool actually exists. Even the most intense therapies can't completely erase troubling or fearful memories in adults. Yet, if two young rats fall in and out of love—or, more likely, have a close encounter with a subway car—permanent memory erasure may actually be possible, previous research has suggested. So, what happens in a growing rodent brain to cause this change?

A new study on mice uncovers some answers that could someday offer a potent target for eliminating the recurrence of bad memories in humans, especially known to those who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Continue Reading >

To promote the common good, should helpers be rewarded, or should free riders be punished? Although the bulk of previous research has fingered punishment as the best enforcer, a new study published online today in Science found that rewards are more effective.

"Groups that used rewards got significantly higher payoffs than groups that punished," David Rand, a lead study author and postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University's Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, said in a Science podcast.

He and his team used a classic public goods game to study how groups of volunteers encouraged the best outcome for the most people. In a series of monetary interactions, individuals decided how much money to contribute to a common pot, and they could then decide whether to reward good contributors or punish bad—both of which would entail spending money.

Continue Reading >

Music is known to induce terror and tears, as well as inspire dance. Even basic human speech itself is laced with emotional direction: a musical pattern of long drawn out sounds versus short brief ones can be the difference between calming and exciting a child. Might it then be possible for a composer to manipulate an audience's emotions with some carefully chosen notes?

That was the question posed by David Teie, a composer and cellist in the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C.. Little did he know that the query would lead him to write shrilly monkey music, and open a new door into animal communication and the evolutionary roots of human speech.

Continue Reading >

Physicians and psychologists played a larger role in the use of torture in interrogation of terrorism suspects than previously asserted, according to a report released yesterday by the nonprofit organization Physicians for Human Rights (PHR).

"Health professionals were involved at every stage in the development, implementation and legitimization of this torture program," the report's authors wrote.

The paper, based on an analysis of the Inspector General's August 24 report into the treatment of detainees after 9/11, describes interrogation techniques beyond those that had been addressed before, including hooding, confinement in a box, mock execution and liquid diets. The so-called enhanced interrogation techniques "represent clear violations of well-established medical ethics governing the behavior of health professionals," the PHR authors note. 

Continue Reading >