all brain stories

Even in healthy elderly, brain systems become less coordinated

404132862 — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:31:14 -0500

Some brain systems become less coordinated with age even in the absence of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study from Harvard University. The results help to explain why advanced age is often accompanied by a loss of mental agility, even in an otherwise healthy individual.

Researchers create colorful "Brainbow" images of the nervous system

404132862 — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 14:07:16 -0400

By activating multiple fluorescent proteins in neurons, neuroscientists at Harvard University are imaging the brain and nervous system as never before, rendering their cells in a riotous spray of colors dubbed a "Brainbow."

Steven Pinker’s ‘Ideas on the Fringe’

jake — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 11:29:15 -0400

Not long ago, Steven Pinker appeared on “The Colbert Report.” He managed to explain the functioning of the human brain to Stephen Colbert in only five words: “Brain cells fire in patterns.”

Advances in genetics can help kids learn

50443248 — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 15:34:19 -0400

Education was becoming a no-brainer, some people at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education (HGSE) complained.

Kurt Fischer and his colleagues looked at the revolution in brain scanning, genetics, and other biological technologies and decided that most teachers and students weren’t getting much benefit from them. Brain scans are now available to watch what’s going on when someone is learning — or not learning. Finding genes that are involved in leaning disabilities is a hot area. Why, they asked, aren’t the powers of such technologies helping teachers in classrooms?

Brain implants relieve Alzheimer’s damage

50443248 — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 15:53:35 -0400

Genetically engineered cells implanted in mice have cleared away toxic plaques associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

The animals were sickened with a human gene that caused them to develop, at an accelerated rate, the disease that robs millions of elderly people of their memories. After receiving the doctored cells, the brain-muddling plaques melted away. If this works in humans, old age could be a much happier time of life.

Alzheimer’s involves a protein called amyloid-beta, which makes up gooey clots or plaques that form in the brain. These toxic clumps, along with accessory tangled fibers, kill brain cells and interfere with memory and thinking. The situation has been compared to a build-up of cholesterol in coronary arteries.

New science provides compelling framework for early childhood investment

50443248 — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 17:10:00 -0400

A remarkable convergence of new knowledge about the developing brain, the human genome, and the extent to which early childhood experiences influence later learning, behavior, and health now offers policymakers an exceptional opportunity to change the life prospects of vulnerable young children, says a new report from the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University.

The report, "A Science-Based Framework for Early Childhood Policy," integrates new research findings in neuroscience with extensive evaluations of early childhood programs, and provides a highly credible, comprehensive guide for evidence-based policymaking. It was released today (Aug. 6) in Boston at a press conference at the Annual Meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Trial Turns Over New Leaf for Traditional Herb

404132862 — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 13:58:08 -0400

If a painting’s worth were measured by the money it fetched, van Gogh’s famous rendering of his friend and physician Dr. Gachet would be among the most valuable in all of art. “Portrait of Dr. Gachet”—which depicts a languid man holding a purple foxglove, the plant from which the drug digitalis is derived—was sold in 1990 for an astounding 82 million dollars. The great and famously tortured artist had his own reasons for valuing the portrait. He suffered from severe epilepsy and depended heavily on Gachet’s prescription of digitalis to treat his debilitating seizures.

The ranks of epilepsy medications have expanded considerably in the past hundred years, due mostly to the addition of pharmaceutically derived compounds.

Sex differences in brains reflect disease risks

50443248 — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 09:32:42 -0400

Women’s brains are different from men’s. That’s not news. What is news is that the differences are smaller than most people believe. They are not big enough to say that one sex is smarter or better at math than the other.

What is also news is that the small differences can be significant when it comes to memory, arousal, reasoning, and risk of some diseases. The latter include depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, drug abuse, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and heart disease.

“Brain differences, though small, help us to understand the nature of sex differences in disease, and thus will hopefully aid in devising sex-specific treatments and prevention strategies,” notes Jill Goldstein, a professor of psychiatry and medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS).

Howard Gardner's 'quintet of minds'

50443248 — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 11:54:47 -0400

It’s been more than 20 years since Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner offered up a radical idea: that humans possess multiple forms of intelligence rather than just a single type that is easily tested by linguistic and logical-mathematical parameters.

His groundbreaking “Frames of Mind” (1983) changed traditional psychological views of intelligence, and helped educators question conventional teaching and testing.

In a new book this year, Gardner — the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) — goes beyond describing cognition. He ventures into prescription.

Accelerating science with innovative computing

50443248 — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:31:17 -0400

How daunting a task is it, in an age when it is possible to visualize structures and to see them at magnifications not even dreamed of a short time ago, to produce a "wiring diagram" of the human brain?

It is an extreme challenge when one considers that the amount of information that needs to be gathered, manipulated, and analyzed is "equal to all the written materials in all the libraries in the world," Jeff Lichtman, professor of molecular and cellular biology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, explained to those attending the inaugural symposium of Harvard's new Initiative in Innovative Computing.

Sleep found to repair and reorganize the brain

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 16:53:43 -0400

Most of us do it every night but we don't know why. If you miss too many nights, it might kill you.

We know why we eat, drink, breathe, and move around, but no one can explain why we need to sleep. What does seven or eight hours of snoozing really do for us? Van Savage at the Harvard Medical School and Geoffrey West of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico believe they have found a good answer.

One favorite explanation is that sleep is for resting the body. But as Steven Strogatz, a mathematician at Cornell University wisely points out, lying still for eight hours is no substitute for this strange state in which we spend decades of our lives "immobilized, unconscious, and vulnerable."

What does it mean to have a mind? Maybe more than you think

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 12:27:35 -0400

Through an online survey of more than 2,000 people, psychologists at Harvard University have found that we perceive the minds of others along two distinct dimensions: agency, an individual's ability for self-control, morality, and planning; and experience, the capacity to feel sensations such as hunger, fear, and pain.

The findings, presented this week in the journal Science, not only overturn the traditional notion that people see mind along a single continuum, but also provide a framework for understanding many moral and legal decisions and highlight the subjective nature of perceiving mental attributes in others.

Take the online survey

Big brains better for birds

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 14:50:32 -0400

As you might guess, big-brained birds survive better in the wild than those less cerebral for their size. Scientists guessed that too, but they had to prove it to themselves.

"The supposition that large brains are associated with reduced death rates has not been tested in any group of animals," notes Tamás Székely, a visiting fellow at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology and Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology.

Big brains have their disadvantages, biologists admit. They exact a high cost from their owners in the form of development time and upkeep demands. Evolution would eliminate them if they did not provide benefits to offset that cost. The benefit is obvious when you see a large-brained red-tail hawk capture a small-brained pigeon for its lunch.

Migraine auras and heart disease linked - risks high for women

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 10:01:49 -0400

Marsha T. saw the lights of pain coming. They flashed and zigzagged before her eyes. Her visual field shrank into a tunnel. A registered nurse, she knew what was next. In about 30 minutes, a familiar sharp, pulsating pain ripped through her head. Now 48 years old, she had been suffering from migraine headaches with aura since she was a teenager.

When the intense pain subsided, she relished the relief, but knew that the headaches would be back. Some 28 million people in the United States, most of them women, suffer from such repetitive, life-spoiling pain. And if that's not bad enough, evidence is accumulating that migraines are linked to an increased risk of major cardiovascular diseases, including stroke and heart attack.

Scientists identify switch for brain's natural anti-oxidant defense

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:46:37 -0400

Scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute report they have found how the brain turns on a system designed to protect its nerve cells from toxic "free radicals," a waste product of cell metabolism that has been implicated in some degenerative brain diseases, heart attacks, strokes, cancer, and aging.

Potentially, the researchers say, it may be possible to use drugs to strengthen the anti-oxidant system in the brain as a treatment for presently incurable diseases like Parkinson's, Huntington's, Alzheimer's, and possibly other maladies.