Brain health is a rapidly expanding field. WHO’s position paper on optimizing brain health across the life course is a technical complement to the recently-adopted Intersectoral global action plan on epilepsy and other neurological disorders 2022–2031. Many determinants are known to affect brain health at different stages of life. The …
going by how easy it has been for scientists to turn adult brain cells to blood, it will not be difficult to use a patient's own tissue and grow replacement organs. Earlier, scientists thought such radical identity swaps involved nuclear transfer, a technique that
BETWEEN our eyes, something always smells. Right, it is the nose. And till now, the nose has always taken the rear seat when it came to radical medical breakthroughs. But now, those with a nose for innovation have found a novel use for... well, the nose, US researchers say very …
On how she began her research about pollutants in the environment: My main interest has been in child neurology. I was interested in this area because a large number of children in Delhi are exposed to lead. When we have lead in low levels in the blood, that is around …
There is something surprising about the way our brain organises the components of language. Kathleen Baynes, cognitive neurologist at the University of California, Davis, USA, and her colleagues studied an epileptic patient whose brain was surgically divided to control her seizures. They found that the centres for speech and writing, …
The gym? Forget it. You can body build even without getting off that comfortable couch. Mental exercise can increase strength almost as much as regular and strenuous physical practice, British researchers announced recently. Dave Smith and his team from the Manchester Metropolitan University, uk, measured the push that 18 male …
The first concrete evidence that repetitive strain injury (RSI) is caused by damage to sensory nerves by has been reported by researchers at the University of London, UK. This study shows a quantitative sensory deficit in patients with RSI. Jane Greening and her team used a 100-hertz vibrameter to obtain …
talking, for most of us, comes naturally. But how we develop this ability for verbal communication had many experts guessing. But not any more. For the first time, scientists and geneticists are hot on the trail of a gene that shapes the development of human language. They hope that this …
A single molecule helps mice recall terrifying experiences, say European scientists. Mice that lack this protein quickly forget frightening events that normal mice can remember for days. Ricardo Brambilla and Rudiger Klein of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, bred mice with a specific memory problem by disrupting …
each visual scene that we look at is highly detailed and composed of numerous elements. Though we can usually appreciate a scene as a whole, our eyes continue to move from one element of the scene, or a "target,' to another. These movements are called saccades or saccadic movements and …
how does the brain function? What are memories? How does the brain perceive the difference between Bach and Anu Malik? How are the processes of sleep, dream, awareness, problem solving and creative thinking, and the dynamics of nerve cell assemblies that make consciousness possible, related? These are questions that have …
stroke victims will now have better chances of survival. In a pathbreaking experiment, doctors from ucla Medical Centre, California, have developed a technique that reverses the plumbing of the body's circulatory system by using veins to supply blood to oxygen-starved parts of the brain. The new approach has been tried …
alone and uncared for? Reach out to others, or you may grow up to be disturbed and dangerous individuals, who are likely to die at a young age. This is the outcome of a recent conference organised at Georgetown University by the New York Academy of Sciences. Called
A NERVOUS stroke results in the patient losing his ability to lift his foot up; he has to drag his foot along the ground for walking. Such neurological disabilities call for re-educating and exercising the impaired muscles. Keeping this in view, a research team headed by Ian Swain at the …
MUCH speculation has been devoted to the question of what determines the size of animal brains. The reason: relative brain size is the quickest rule-of-the- thumb estimator of mental capacity. However, before comparing brains of different animals, it is important to make an adjustment to the measurements. This is because …
What guides the growth of neurons, the basic cells of the nervous system, in embryonic human beings? Neurobiologists at the University of California recently identified 2 proteins that enable some 10 trillion neurons to grow at appropriate spots (The Sciences, Sept-Oct 1995). Named netrin and semaphorin, these guidance proteins work …
WHAT do you think would happen if someone were to discover, god forbid, that either of the 2 Homo sapiens sexes is biologically more gifted than other? Ever since Mary Wollstonecraft laid the foundation of feminism -- as we know it today -- late last century and right through suffragetism …
Complex Women had more activity in the cingulate gyrus, an evolutionarily recent region that controls complex expressions of emotions, such as showing anger by looks, not punches Simple Men had more activity in their temporal limbic system. This evolutionarily ancient region controls emotions linked to action, especially aggression
WOMEN • Women perform better than men on tests of perceptual speed -- in which subjects must rapidly identify matching items, such as pairing a picture with its twin in a given set of photos. • Women can remember if an object or series of objects have been displaced, or …
The human instinct and obsession to explore, and discover in all ways, shaped the world we know. Humans have visited virtually every desolate face on the face of Earth, have lifted off the planet to walk on the moon, and continue to inspect the solar system and the limitless reaches …
