Out of Body Experience

An out-of-body experience is defined as the experience in which a person who is awake sees his or her own body from a location outside the physical body.

OBEs have been reported in clinical conditions where brain function is compromised, such as stroke, epilepsy and drug abuse. They have also been reported in association with traumatic experiences such as car accidents. Around one in ten people claim to have had an OBE at some time in their lives.

OBEs have fascinated mankind for millennia. Their existence has raised fundamental questions about the relationship between human consciousness and the body, and has been much discussed in theology, philosophy and psychology. Although out-of-body experiences have been reported in a number of clinical conditions, the neuro-scientific basis of this phenomenon remains unclear.

Dr Henrik Ehrsson, a neuroscientist working at the Institute of Neurology University College London (UCL) has devised the first experimental method to induce an out-of-body experience in healthy participants. In a paper published in Science, he outlines the unique method by which the illusion is created and the implications of its discovery.

The set-up of the illusion is as follows: the study participant sits in a chair wearing a pair of head-mounted video displays. These have two small screens over each eye, which show a live film recorded by two video cameras placed beside each other two metres behind the participant's head. The image from the left video camera is presented on the left-eye display and the image from the right camera on the right-eye display. The participant sees these as one 'stereoscopic' (3D) image, so they see their own back displayed from the perspective of someone sitting behind them.

The researcher then stands just beside the participant (in their view) and uses two plastic rods to simultaneously touch the participant's actual chest out-of-view and the chest of the illusory body, moving this second rod towards where the illusory chest would be located, just below the camera's view.

The participants confirmed that they had experienced sitting behind their physical body and looking at it from that location. Dr Ehrsson said: "This was a bizarre, fascinating experience for the participants - it felt absolutely real for them and was not scary. Many of them giggled and said 'Wow, this is so weird!'".

"The invention of this illusion is important because it reveals the basic mechanism that produces the feeling of being inside the physical body. This represents a significant advance because the experience of one's own body as the centre of awareness is a fundamental aspect of self-consciousness."

Discovering this means of inducing an OBE could also have industrial applications. Dr Ehrsson explains:

"This is essentially a means of projecting yourself, a form of teleportation. If we can project people into a virtual character, so they feel and respond as if they were really in a virtual version of themselves, just imagine the implications. The experience of playing video games could reach a whole new level, but it could go much beyond that. For example, a surgeon could perform remote surgery, by controlling their virtual self from a different location."

To test the illusion further and provide objective evidence, Dr Ehrsson then performed an additional experiment to measure the participants' physiological response - specifically the level of perspiration on the skin - in a scenario where they felt the illusory body was threatened. Their bodily response strongly indicated that they thought the threat was real.

The creation of this perceptual illusion stems from an idea Dr Ehrsson had as a medical student, when he wondered what would happen to the 'self' if you could effectively move your eyes to another part of the room, just a few metres away, so you could observe yourself from an outside perspective. Would the self 'follow' the eyes or stay in the body"

The illusion is different from anything published previously. It is the first to involve a change in the perceived location of the self, relative to the physical body. It is also different from any virtual reality set-up because it examines what happens when you look at yourself, and there is also multisensory information that triggers the illusion. There has been no way of inducing an OBE in healthy people before, apart from unsubstantiated reports in occult literature. It's a very exciting development, and has implications for a range of disciplines from neuroscience to theology.

Article: 'The experimental induction of out-of-body experiences' published in the advance online edition of Science on Thursday 23rd August.
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Non-Critical String Theory Formulation of Microtubule Dynamics and Quantum Aspects of Brain Function arxiv hep-ph/9505401v3
Beyond Virtual Reality: "Out of Body Experiences" @ The Daily Galaxy
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The Colour Purple

Compounds that colour fruits may protect against cancer

Understanding the molecular structures of compounds that give certain fruits and vegetables their rich colours may help researchers find even more powerful cancer fighters.

Anthocyanins, the compounds that give colour to purple, red and blue fruits and vegetables—some of which are also commonly used as dyes—can significantly slow the growth of cancer cells.

“These foods contain many compounds, and we're just starting to figure out what they are and which ones provide the best health benefits,” said Monica Giusti, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor of food science at Ohio State University.

Giusti and her colleagues found that in some cases, slight alterations to the structure of anthocyanin molecules made these compounds more potent anti-cancer agents. The finding brings scientists a step closer to figuring out exactly what properties in fruits and vegetables give them their cancer-fighting capacity.

The anti-cancer effects of anthocyanin-rich extracts from a variety of produce were tested. They retrieved these anthocyanins from some relatively exotic fruits and other plants, including grapes, radishes, purple corn, bilberries, purple carrots and elderberries.

The plants were chosen due to their extremely deep colours, and therefore high anthocyanin content. The researchers added different extracts to flasks that contained colon cancer cells. They used an analytical technique called high-performance liquid chromatography – mass spectrometry in order to determine the exact chemical structure of each compound. They used biological tests to determine the number of cancer cells left after anthocyanin treatment.

Researchers found that the amount of anthocyanin extract needed to reduce cancer cell growth by 50 percent varied among the plants. Extract derived from purple corn was the most potent, in that it took the least amount of extract to cut cell numbers in half.

In additional laboratory studies, she and her colleagues found that anthocyanin pigments from radish and black carrots slowed the growth of cancer cells anywhere from 50 to 80 percent. But pigments from purple corn and chokeberries not only completely stopped the growth of cancer cells, but also killed roughly 20 percent of the cancer cells while having little effect on healthy cells.

“All fruits and vegetables that are rich in anthocyanins have compounds that can slow down the growth of colon cancer cells, whether in experiments in laboratory dishes or inside the body,” Giusti said. There may be relatively simple ways to implement these new findings.

“There are more than 600 different anthocyanins found in nature,” Giusti said. “While we know that the concentration of anthocyanins in the GI tract is ultimately affected by their chemical structures, we're just beginning to scratch the surface of understanding how the body absorbs and uses these different structures.”

“It is possible to use natural, anthocyanin-based food colourants instead of synthetic dyes,” Giusti said. “Doing so still maintains the wonderful colours of foods while enhancing their health-promoting properties.”

Previous research at Ohio State found that black raspberries appear to reduce the growth of esophageal and colon cancers tumors.

The team is also evaluating how these pigments interact with other compounds in foods – such interactions could ultimately affect the health benefits of the food or the anthocyanin itself.
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Essence of Being

neuron from cimion @ digitalblasphemy dotcom

The Essence of Being.

Are we riding the camel or is the camel riding us.

We all know about the origin of cells, the origin of biological 'life' on earth, and the evolution of organisms into species.

We even know about the cataclysmic demise or extinction of the dynosaurs.

The cell is the structural and functional unit of all known living organisms, and is sometimes called the "building block of life."

The origin of cells has to do with the origin of life, and was one of the most important steps in evolution of biological life as we know it. The birth of the cell marked the passage from prebiotic chemistry to biological life.

In a gene-centered view of evolution, life is regarded in terms of replicators—that is DNA molecules in the organism. In this paradigm, cells satisfy two fundamental conditions: protection from the outside environment and confinement of biochemical activity. The former condition is needed to maintain the stability of fragile DNA chains in a varying and sometimes aggressive environment, and may have been the main reason for which cells evolved. The latter is fundamental for the evolution of complexity.

The eukaryotic cell seems to have evolved from a symbiotic community of prokaryotic cells. It is almost certain that DNA-bearing organelles like the mitochondria and the chloroplasts are what remains of ancient symbiotic oxygen-breathing proteobacteria and cyanobacteria, respectively, where the rest of the cell seems to be derived from an ancestral archaean prokaryote cell – a theory termed the endosymbiotic theory.

There is still considerable debate about whether organelles like the hydrogenosome predated the origin of mitochondria, or viceversa: see the hydrogen hypothesis for the origin of eukaryotic cells.

Some organisms, such as bacteria, are unicellular (consist of a single cell). Other organisms, such as humans, are multicellular. (Humans have an estimated 100 trillion cells; a typical cell size is 10 µm; a typical cell mass is 1 nanogram.) The largest known cell is an ostrich egg.

Sex, as the stereotyped choreography of meiosis and syngamy that persists in nearly all extant eukaryotes, may have played a role in the transition from prokaryotes to eukaryotes. An 'origin of sex as vaccination' theory suggests that the eukaryote genome accreted from prokaryan parasite genomes in numerous rounds of lateral gene transfer. Sex-as-syngamy (fusion sex) arose when infected hosts began swapping nuclearized genomes containing coevolved, vertically transmitted symbionts that conveyed protection against horizontal infection by more virulent symbionts.

Why do people have sex?

Research at The University of Texas at Austin reveals hundreds of varied and complex motivations why people have sex, that range from the spiritual to the vengeful.

People's motivations ranged from the mundane "I was bored", to the spiritual "I wanted to feel closer to God"
and from the altruistic "I wanted the person to feel good about himself/herself" to the manipulative "I wanted to get a promotion".

Some said they had sex to feel powerful, others to debase themselves. Some wanted to impress their friends, others to harm their enemies "I wanted to break up a rival's relationship".

Buss and Meston conducted two studies. In the first, they asked more than 400 men and women to identify reasons people have sex. In the second, the researchers asked more than 1,500 undergraduate students about their experiences and attitudes.
The Texas psychologists identified four major factors and 13 sub-factors for why people have sex:

Physical reasons
such as to reduce stress "It seemed like good exercise", feel pleasure "It's exciting", improve or expand experiences "I was curious about sex", and the physical desirability of their partner "The person was a good dancer".
Goal-based reasons,
including utilitarian or practical considerations "I wanted to have a baby", social status "I wanted to be popular" and revenge "I wanted to give someone else a sexually transmitted disease".
Emotional reasons
such as love and commitment "I wanted to feel connected" and expression "I wanted to say 'thank you'". Insecurity-based reasons, including self-esteem "I wanted the attention", a feeling of duty or pressure "My partner kept insisting" and to guard a mate "I wanted to keep my partner from straying".

So here's the golden question, what motivates YOU ?
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From couch potatoes to world-class athletes,
Fitness Institute of Texas helps them achieve their fitness goals
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Is it for Real?

We live in an age where we can create computer software and sequencing, and hardware to build robot car makers and even manufacture smaller & smaller chips for ever more powerful computers - even to the point of presuming to simulate the big bang and the universe, but god forbid that we should conceive of a higher being or 'creator' of the universe.

We live in an age where dna sequencing is almost complete, where we presume to be able to manipulate genes to create new species and/or beings thru genetic modification, but god forbid we should dare presume that man (humanity) is the product of anything other than 'evolution' and natural selection.

It seems the only thing that truly defines some large brains, is their inability to accept there could be anything greater than themselves - and this in the age when we can communicate via mobile phone with unseen beings on the remotest corners of the earth (the other side of the planet) or even on the ISS International Space Station, if not quite on other planets yet, and we are on the verge of showing that other worlds in other dimensions may actually 'exist' even if we are still far from communicating with them, or travelling there.

But hey, some people whilst busy insisting that imagination and fiction are not 'real' - fail to realise they are very much a part of the 'real' world.

What is clear is that the human species has evolved in the last 50 years. By and large the females of the species can now choose, if, when & where they wish to procreate, and organ transplants mean that many who would by 'natural selection' be dead, can now hope to live a little longer. But no matter how far we try to be masters of our own destiny, we still have no choice in whether we are born, where & when. By and large we have no say on where, when, and how we die.

Ultimately, perhaps the only difference between humans & turkeys, is that turkeys get 'plucked' before they get stuffed at xmas.
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Chronic Pain

Why Don't Painkillers Work For People With Fibromyalgia?

People who have the common chronic pain condition fibromyalgia often report that they don't respond to the types of medication that relieve other people's pain.

New research from the University of Michigan Health System helps to explain why that might be: Patients with fibromyalgia were found to have reduced binding ability of a type of receptor in the brain that is the target of opioid painkiller drugs such as morphine.

The study included positron emission tomography (PET) scans of the brains of patients with fibromyalgia, and of an equal number of sex- and age-matched people without the often-debilitating condition. Results showed that the fibromyalgia patients had reduced mu-opioid receptor (MOR) availability within regions of the brain that normally process and dampen pain signals -- specifically, the nucleus accumbens, the anterior cingulate and the amygdala.

"The reduced availability of the receptor was associated with greater pain among people with fibromyalgia," says lead author Richard E. Harris, Ph.D., research investigator in the Division of Rheumatology at the U-M Medical School's Department of Internal Medicine and a researcher at the U-M Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center.

"These findings could explain why opioids are anecdotally thought to be ineffective in people with fibromyalgia," he notes. The findings appear in The Journal of Neuroscience. "The finding is significant because it has been difficult to determine the causes of pain in patients with fibromyalgia, to the point that acceptance of the condition by medical practitioners has been slow."

Opioid pain killers work by binding to opioid receptors in the brain and spinal cord. In addition to morphine, they include codeine, propoxyphene-containing medications such as Darvocet, hydrocodone-containing medications such as Vicodin, and oxycodone-containing medications such as Oxycontin.

The researchers theorize based on their findings that, with the lower availability of the MORs in three regions of the brains of people with fibromyalgia, such painkillers may not be able to bind as well to the receptors as they can in the brains of people without the condition.

Put more simply: When the painkillers cannot bind to the receptors, they cannot alleviate the patient's pain as effectively, Harris says. The reduced availability of the receptors could result from a reduced number of opioid receptors, enhanced release of endogenous opioids (opioids, such as endorphins, that are produced naturally by the body), or both, Harris says.

The research team also found a possible link with depression. The PET scans showed that the fibromyalgia patients with more depressive symptoms had reductions of MOR binding potential in the amygdala, a region of the brain thought to modulate mood and the emotional dimension of pain.
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7 Medical Misconceptions

Popular culture is loaded with myths and half-truths.
Most are harmless. But when doctors start believing medical myths, perhaps it's time to worry. In the British Medical Journal this week, researchers looked into several common misconceptions, from the belief that a person should drink eight glasses of water per day to the notion that reading in low light ruins your eyesight.

Myth: We use only 10 percent of our brains.

Fact: Physicians and comedians alike, including Jerry Seinfeld, love to cite this one. It's sometimes erroneously credited to Albert Einstein. But MRI scans, PET scans and other imaging studies show no dormant areas of the brain, and even viewing individual neurons or cells reveals no inactive areas, the new paper points out. Metabolic studies of how brain cells process chemicals show no nonfunctioning areas. The myth probably originated with self-improvement hucksters in the early 1900s who wanted to convince people that they had yet not reached their full potential. Our other organs run at full tilt.

Myth: You should drink at least eight glasses of water a day.

Fact: There is no medical evidence to suggest that you need that much water. This myth can be traced back to a 1945 recommendation from the Nutrition Council that a person consume the equivalent of 8 glasses (64 ounces) of fluid a day. Over the years, "fluid" turned to water. But fruits and vegetables, plus coffee and other liquids, count.

Myth: Fingernails and hair grow after death.

Fact: Most physicians queried on this one initially thought it was true. Upon further reflection, they realized it's impossible. As the body’s skin is drying out, soft tissue, especially skin, is retracting. The nails appear much more prominent as the skin dries out. The same is true, but less obvious, with hair. As the skin is shrinking back, the hair looks more prominent or sticks up a bit.

Myth: Shaved hair grows back faster, coarser and darker.

Fact: A 1928 clinical trial compared hair growth in shaved patches to growth in non-shaved patches. The hair which replaced the shaved hair was no darker or thicker, and did not grow in faster. More recent studies have confirmed that one. Here's the deal: When hair first comes in after being shaved, it grows with a blunt edge on top. Over time, the blunt edge gets worn so it may seem thicker than it actually is. Hair that's just emerging can be darker too, because it hasn't been bleached by the sun.

Myth: Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight.

Fact: The researchers found no evidence that reading in dim light causes permanent eye damage. It can cause eye strain and temporarily decreased acuity, which subsides after rest.

Myth: Eating turkey makes you drowsy.

Fact: A chemical in turkey called tryptophan is known to cause drowsiness. But turkey doesn't contain any more of it than does chicken or beef. This myth is fueled by the fact that turkey is often eaten with a colossal holiday meal, often accompanied by alcohol — both things that will make you sleepy.

Myth: Mobile phones are dangerous in hospitals.

Fact: There are no known cases of death related to this one. Cases of less-serious interference with hospital devices seem to be largely anecdotal, the researchers found. In one real study, mobile phones were found to interfere with 4 percent of devices, but only when the phone was within 3 feet of the device. A more recent study, this year, found no interference in 300 tests in 75 treatment rooms. To the contrary, when doctors use mobile phones, the improved communication means they make fewer mistakes.

"Whenever we talk about this work, doctors at first express disbelief that these things are not true," said Vreeman. "But after we carefully lay out medical evidence, they are very willing to accept that these beliefs are actually false."
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Natural Chemo-prevention

The next cancer-fighting therapeutic could be growing in your garden. For example, a black raspberry-based gel might offer a means of stopping oral lesions from turning into a particularly dangerous and disfiguring form of cancer.

And new studies show that cancer prevention might come in drinkable form: green tea extract, a powerful antioxidant, shows efficacy against colorectal cancer; and a new berry-rich beverage, made from a combination of known plant-based antioxidants, could prevent or slow the growth of prostate cancer.

That is, according to research presented December 6, at the American Association for Cancer Research's Sixth Annual International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research, being held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Topically applied black raspberry gel applied on oral premalignant tumors

Oral squamous cell carcinoma is a deadly cancer that, even when treated successfully, often leaves patients permanently disfigured. Other than radical surgery, there are few known treatments. Researchers at Ohio State University, however, report a Phase I/II trial demonstrating that a gel made from black raspberries shows promise in preventing or slowing the malignant transformation of precancerous oral lesions.

"Black raspberries are full of anthocyanins, potent antioxidants that give the berries their rich, dark colour, and our findings show these compounds have a role in silencing cancerous cells," said Susan Mallery, professor in the Department of Oral Maxillofacial Surgery and Pathology at Ohio State University's College of Dentistry. "This gel appears to be a valid means of delivering anthocyanins and other cancer-preventing compounds directly to precancerous cells, since it slowed or reduced lesion progression in about two-thirds of study participants."

According to American Cancer Society statistics, oral cancer is one of the deadliest of all cancers, with about 35,000 new cases each year in the United States and 7,500 deaths annually. These cancers generally begin as small, often unnoticed, lesions inside the mouth. "More than a third of untreated precancerous oral lesions will undergo malignant transformation into squamous cell cancer, but we do not have the capability to predict which lesions will progress," Mallery said.

The National Cancer Institute-funded trial included 30 participants, 20 of whom had identifiable precancerous lesions, and 10 normal controls. Each of the participants was instructed to gently dry the lesion sites (or a pre-selected control site for the normal participants) and rub the gel into the area four times a day, once after each meal and at bedtime.

After six weeks, about 35 percent of the trial participants' lesions showed an improvement in their microscopic diagnosis, while another 45 percent showed that their lesions had stabilized. About 20 percent showed an increase in their lesional microscopic diagnoses. Importantly, none of the participants experienced any side effects from the gel.

"The trial was designed to test the safety of the gel and detect any possible toxicity, but the next obvious step is a multicenter, double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase II study," Mallery said. "Such a study would enable us to determine that the black raspberries are the active factor and not just the gel base or the act of drying and rubbing the lesions."

The researchers also collected cell samples from the lesion sites of each participant before and after treatment in order to study the genetics and biology of the lesions. The majority of patients with precancerous lesions at the start of the trial showed elevated levels of COX-2 and iNOS, two proteins closely correlated with inflammation and malignant progression. Following treatment, Mallery says, levels of those proteins in the treated lesional epithelial cells decreased dramatically.

Mallery and her colleagues also examined samples for three tumor suppressor genes in order to determine what researchers call "loss of heterozygosity," whether or not a cancer cell has lost one of its two copies of the gene. Such loss greatly increases a cell's chances of losing the benefit of the tumor suppressor genes due to a second mutation or gene silencing event. Following the trial, the researchers noted that many lesions returned to normal, retaining both copies of each tumor suppressor gene. "We speculate that the chemopreventive compounds in black raspberries assist in modulating cell growth by promoting programmed cell death or terminal differentiation, two mechanisms that help "reeducate" precancerous cells," Mallery said.

"Oral cancer is a debilitating disease and there is a desperate need for early detection and management of precancerous lesions," Mallery said. "While screening can help detect the disease early -- and survival rates are definitely improved the earlier the disease is caught -- many of these precancerous lesions recur despite complete surgical removal. There are currently no effective chemopreventive treatments which could conceivably serve as either adjunctive or alternative approaches to surgery."

According to Mallery, the development of black raspberries as potential cancer-fighters is the result of decades of research into identification of naturally derived chemopreventive compounds by Ohio State researcher Gary D. Stoner, Ph.D., an emeritus professor at Ohio State University's College of Medicine and Public Health. Clinical studies stemming from his research are currently underway for oral, esophageal and colorectal cancer.

The gel looks deceptively like black raspberry jam, but it certainly does not taste like something you would want to spread on toast, Mallery says. The bioadhesive gel, which contains 10 percent freeze dried black raspberries, is devoid of many of the tasty sugars found in native berries.

The black raspberry gel was manufactured by the University of Kentucky's Good Manufacturing Production (GMP) facility. NanoMed Pharmaceuticals is partnering with OSU investigators Mallery, Stoner and Peter E. Larsen and Russell J. Mumper, of the University of North Carolina, in product development.

Suppressive effects of a phytochemical cocktail on prostate cancer growth in vitro and in vivo

A commercially available nutrition drink reduces the growth of tumors in a mouse model of human prostate cancer by 25 percent in two weeks, according to researchers from the University of Sydney. The drink, Blueberry Punch, is a mixture of plant-based chemicals - phytochemicals - known to have anti-cancer properties.

In particular, Blueberry Punch consists of a combination of fruit concentrates (blueberry, red grape, raspberry and elderberry), grape seed and skin extract, citrus skin extracts, green tea extract (EGCG), olive leaf and olive pulp extracts, tarragon, turmeric and ginger.

"We have undertaken efficacy studies on individual components of Blueberry Punch, such as curcumin, resveratrol and EGCG, in the same laboratory setting and found these effective in suppressing cell growth in culture," said Jas Singh, research fellow at the University of Sydney.

"While individual phytochemicals are successful in killing cancer cells, we reasoned that synergistic or additive effects are likely to be achieved when they are combined."

Singh and her colleagues studied the effect of the beverage on both cancer cell cultures and in mouse models that mimic human prostate cancer. After 72 hours of exposure to increasing concentrations of Blueberry Punch, prostate cancer cells showed a dose-dependent reduction in size and viability when compared with untreated cells, Singh says. After feeding mice a 10 percent solution of the punch for two weeks, the tumors in the test mice were 25 percent smaller than those found in mice that drank only tap water.

Because Blueberry Punch is a combination of several ingredients, it could have multiple mechanisms of action, Singh says. "Based on our initial findings, the mechanisms include, at least, the inhibition of the inflammation-related pathways, which is similar to the action of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs; and inhibition of cyclin D1, which is similar to green tea action."

Based on these results, the researchers believe Blueberry Punch is now ready for human prostate cancer trials. Because Blueberry Punch is a food product rather than a drug, it is unlikely to have adverse reactions or side effects assuming that the individual is tolerant to all ingredients, Singh says. "The evidence we have provided suggests that this product could be therapeutic, although it requires clinical validation," Singh said.

The study was partially funded by the makers of Blueberry Punch, Dr. Red Nutraceuticals, a firm located near Brisbane, Australia, but the experiments were designed and conducted independently in the University of Sydney.

Read More
Chemoprevention, Naturally: Findings On Plant-derived Cancer Medicines
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Making Sense of what We See

In a situation where the visual information provided is ambiguous — whether we are looking at Escher's art or looking at, say, a forest — how do our brains settle on just one interpretation?

In a study published this month in Nature Neuroscience, researchers at The Johns Hopkins University demonstrate that brains do so by way of a mechanism in a region of the visual cortex called V2.

Researchers say that mechanism, identifies "figure & background" regions of an image, provides a structure for paying attention to only one of those two regions at a time and assigns shapes to the collections of foreground "figure" lines that we see.

"What we found is that V2 generates a foreground-background map for each image registered by the eyes," said Rudiger von der Heydt, a neuroscientist, professor in the university's Zanvyl Krieger Mind/Brain Institute and lead author on the paper. "Contours are assigned to the foreground regions, and V2 does this automatically within a tenth of a second."

The study was based on recordings of the activity of nerve cells in the V2 region in the brain of macaques, whose visual systems are much like that of humans. V2 is roughly the size of a microcassette and is located in the very back of the brain. Von der Heydt said the foreground- background "map" generated by V2 also provides the structure for conscious perception in humans.

"Because of their complexity, images of natural scenes generally have many possible interpretations, not just two, like in Escher's drawings," he said. "In most cases, they contain a variety of cues that could be used to identify fore- and background, but oftentimes, these cues contradict each other. The V2 mechanism combines these cues efficiently and provides us immediately with a rough sketch of the scene."

Von der Heydt called the mechanism "primitive" but generally reliable. It can also, he said, be overridden by decision of the conscious mind.

"Our experiments show that the brain can also command the V2 mechanism to interpret the image in another way," he said. "This explains why, in Escher's drawings, we can switch deliberately" to see either the white birds or the dark birds, or to see either side of the staircase as facing "up."

The mechanism revealed by this study is part of a system that enables us to search for objects in cluttered scenes, so we can attend to the object of our choice and even reach out and grasp it.

"We can do all of this without effort, thanks to a neural machine that generates visual object representations in the brain," von der Heydt said. "Better yet, we can access these representations in the way we need for each specific task. Unfortunately, how this machine' works is still a mystery to us. But discovering this mechanism that so efficiently links our attention to figure-ground organization is a step toward understanding this amazing machine."

Understanding how this brain function works is more than just interesting: It also could assist researchers in unraveling the causes of — and perhaps identifying treatment for — visual disorders such as dyslexia.
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Can 3D movies like Beowulf save the World of Cinema
Surrogate Memory - Back Up your Brain @ The Galactic Emporium
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Mirror in the Brain

Recent findings are rapidly expanding researchers' understanding of a new class of brain cells -- mirror neurons -- which are active both when people perform an action and when they watch it being performed.

Some scientists speculate that a mirror system in people forms the basis for social behavior, for our ability to imitate, acquire language, and show empathy and understanding. It also may have played a role in the evolution of speech. Mirror neurons were so named because, by firing both when an animal acts and when it simply watches the same action, they were thought to "mirror" movement, as though the observer itself were acting.

Advances in the past few years have newly defined different types of mirror neurons in monkeys and shown how finely tuned these subsets of mirror neurons can be. New studies also have further characterized abnormal-as well as normal-mirror activity in the brains of children with the social communication disorder known as autism, suggesting new approaches to treatment.

"The tremendous excitement that has been generated in the field by the study of mirror neurons stems from the implications of the findings, which have led to numerous new hypotheses about behavior, human evolution, and neurodevelopmental disorders," says Mahlon DeLong, MD, of Emory University School of Medicine.

Mirror neurons, a class of nerve cells in areas of the brain relaying signals for planning movement and carrying it out, were discovered 11 years ago, an offshoot of studies examining hand and mouth movements in monkeys. Mirror neuron research in the intervening years has expanded into a diverse array of fields. And the implications have been enormous, encompassing evolutionary development, theories of self and mind, and treatments for schizophrenia and stroke.

Findings being presented at Neuroscience 2007 include new research based on work in monkeys, showing that subsets of mirror neurons distinguish between observed actions carried out within hand's reach and those beyond the animal's personal space.

In his study, Peter Thier, PhD, at Tübingen University, first identified a group of mirror neurons by recording single nerve cell activity from electrodes when a monkey gripped different objects and when the monkey watched a person grasp the same objects, both nearby and farther away. About half of the nerve cells that were active when the monkey picked up the objects also sprung into action when it watched a person do so. Thier was assisted by research fellow Antonio Casile and PhD student Vittorio Caggiano, and worked closely with the lab of Giacomo Rizzolatti, MD, at the University of Parma.

They also noticed that some of these confirmed mirror neurons were active only when the monkey was watching activity within its personal space, defined as within reaching distance; others responded only to actions performed in a place outside the monkey's grasp. Thier and colleagues recorded this preferential activity in 22 nerve cells, or together half of the mirror neurons. The other half of the mirror neurons showed activity that did not depend on how close the grasping action was to the monkey.

Although at this stage assigning a functional role is still speculation, Thier suggests this proximity-specific activity in mirror neurons may play an important role when we monitor what goes on around us, or serve as the basis for inferring the intentions of others and for cooperative behavior. "These neurons might encode actions of others that the observers might directly influence, or with which he or she can interact," he says.

Other findings show that mirror neuron activity is instrumental for interpreting the facial expressions and actions of others but may not be sufficient for decoding their thoughts and intentions.

The studies examined changes in certain electroencephalograms (EEG) or brain wave patterns known as mu rhythms, which have a frequency of 8-13 hertz, or oscillations per second. Previous findings based on EEG recordings from the part of the brain that is directly involved in relaying signals for movement and sensing stimuli, known as the sensorimotor cortex, indicate that mu rhythms typically are suppressed by mirror activity in premotor areas of the brain. However, this does not happen in children with autism. As a result, the new work suggests, alternative strategies for reading faces and understanding others develop in the brains of these children.

Pursuing two parallel studies, Jaime Pineda, PhD, at the University of California, San Diego, aimed to contribute evidence supporting one of two theories about the ways we evaluate the actions and intentions of other people-either implicitly or through language-based theoretical concepts.

Using EEG recordings to examine patterns of brain wave activity, Pineda first worked with 23 adults, who were asked to look at photos showing just the eye region of people making various facial expressions. In three separate trials, the subjects were asked to identify either the emotion, race, or gender of the people in the photographs. In a subsequent task, subjects looked at three-panel cartoon strips and were asked to choose a fourth panel that completed the strip-either the conclusion of a series of physical actions or the result of a person interacting with an object. A sequence of a prisoner removing the window of his cell, then looking at his bed, for example, could be followed by a frame of the prisoner asleep, yawning, or using the bedsheet to make a rope. Answering correctly depended on interpreting the cartoon character's intentions appropriately or understanding how physical objects interact.

Pineda repeated the studies with 28 children, 7 to 17 years old, half of whom had autism. The other half were typically developing children.

Recordings from the studies with adults showed a correlation between mu suppression, or mirror neuron activity, and accuracy for both tasks. In fact, the suppression of mu rhythms during the facial expression task also correlated with accuracy in the exercise with the cartoons, suggesting that reading people's expressions and interpreting their intentions may draw from similar activity in the brain.

Recordings from the typically developing children showed similar patterns of suppression during the two tasks, indicating that mirror neuron activity is fully developed by age 7.

In contrast, recordings from the children with autism showed that mu rhythms were enhanced during both tasks. Enhancement is an indication that the mirror neuron system is disengaged. However, because the children still were able to perform the task, Pineda says, "we propose that children with autism develop alternative, non-mirror neuron-based coping strategies for understanding facial expressions and interpreting others' mental states." He suggests that "these compensatory strategies involve inhibition of residual mirror neuron functioning."

These results could be applied to the development of treatments for autism. Pineda and his group have been using neurofeedback training to successfully renormalize functioning in this system. That is, they see mu suppression that is more characteristic of the typically developing brain following such training. "Our findings are consistent with the idea that mirror neurons are not absent in autism," Pineda says, "but rather are abnormally responsive to stimuli and abnormally integrated into wider social-cognitive brain circuits.

"This idea implies that a retraining of mirror neurons to respond appropriately to stimuli and integrate normally into wider circuits may reduce the social symptoms of autism."

Advances in recording brain activity also have made possible findings showing that mirror systems are active even when we are not observing an action with an eye to repeating it.

Suresh Muthukumaraswamy, PhD, at Cardiff University, found that the mirror system is activated when we watch specific actions, even when we are concentrating on a separate task.

The results are based on previous research showing that motor systems in the brain are activated when a person observes an action being performed and on interpretations suggesting that we understand and learn to imitate the actions of others through these brain mechanisms.

Working with 13 adults with an average age of 29, Muthukumaraswamy compared brain activity recorded via magnetoencephalography (MEG). This monitoring technique measures the weak magnetic fields emitted by nerve cells, and, recording from 275 locations, Muthukumaraswamy was able to monitor changes in activity every 600th of a second.

"Although MEG has been in existence for more than 20 years, recent advances in hardware, computing technology, and the algorithms used to analyze the data allow much more detailed analysis of brain function than was previously possible," he says.

Brain activity was recorded as the subjects passively watched a sequence of finger movements, watched the movements knowing they would be asked to repeat them, added up the number of fingers moved as they watched, and performed the sequence of movements themselves.

Results from these recordings showed similar activity when the subjects performed the movement sequence and when they watched someone else do it. In addition, Muthukumaraswamy noted increased activity in areas of the brain regulating motor activity when subjects observed the movements knowing they would later do them, and when they added up the number of fingers used, compared with passive watching.

"These data suggest that activity of human mirror neuron systems is generally increased by attention relative to passive observation, even if that attention is not directed toward a specific motor activity," says Muthukumaraswamy. "Our results suggest that the mirror system remains active regardless of any concurrent task and hence is probably an automatic system.

"A good scientific understanding of the properties of the mirror system in normal humans is important," he adds, "because this may help to understand clinical disorders such as autism where the mirror system may not be functioning normally."

Other findings based on EEG recordings provide the first evidence of normal mirror activity in children with autism: People familiar to children with autism may activate mirror areas of the brain in normal patterns when unfamiliar people do not.

Previous research has shown that mu rhythms are suppressed when a subject identifies with an active person being observed. Based on this work, Lindsay Oberman, PhD, at the University of California, San Diego, examined the role of two separate factors in the mirror system response of children with autism.

Six videos were shown to a group of 26 boys, 8 to 12 years old; half had autism. Three videos showed images representing varying degrees of social interaction: two bouncing balls (the baseline measurement), three people tossing a ball to themselves, and three people throwing the ball to each other and off the screen to the viewer. The other set of videos showed people with varying degrees of familiarity to the subjects: strangers opening and closing their hand, family members making the same hand movement, and the subjects themselves doing the same.

EEG recordings from 13 electrodes in a cap showed that mu activity was suppressed most when subjects watched videos of themselves, indicating the greatest mirror neuron activity. For both groups, the measurements showed a slightly lower level of suppression when subjects watched familiar people in the video and the least when watching strangers. This indicates that normal mirror neuron activity was evoked when children with autism watched family members, but not strangers.

"Thus, to say that the mirror neuron system is nonfunctional may only be partially correct," says Oberman. "Perhaps individuals with autism have fewer mirror neurons and/or less functional mirror neurons that require a greater degree of activation than a typical child's system in order to respond."

The mirror neuron system may react to stimuli that the observer sees as "like me." If this is the case, suggests Oberman, "perhaps typical individuals apply this identification to all people (both familiar and unfamiliar), resulting in activation of these areas in response to the observed stimuli, while individuals on the autism spectrum only consider familiar individuals (including themselves) as 'like me,' " she says.

This evidence for normal mirror neuron activity in autistic children may indicate that mirror system dysfunction in these cases reflects an impairment in identifying with and assigning personal significance to unfamiliar people and things, Oberman suggests. Whether deficits in relating to unfamiliar people that are characteristic of autism are the cause or the result of a dysfunctional mirror neuron system is unclear.

Mirror, Mirror In The Brain: Mirror Neurons, Self-understanding And Autism Research
Adapted from Society for Neuroscience findings (2007, November 7)
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Autism A Dysfunctional Mirror-neuron System?
Autism Linked To Mirror Neuron Dysfunction from Science Daily
Humans Do Not Understand Mirror Reflections, Say Researchers
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Reboot Your Brain

Contrary to popular belief, recent studies have found that there are probably ways to regenerate brain matter.

Animal studies conducted at the National Institute on Aging Gerontology Research Center and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, for example, have shown that both calorie restriction and intermittent fasting along with vitamin and mineral intake, increase resistance to disease, extend lifespan, and stimulate production of neurons from stem cells.

In addition, fasting has been shown to enhance synaptic elasticity, possibly increasing the ability for successful re-wiring following brain injury. These benefits appear to result from a cellular stress response, similar in concept to the greater muscular regeneration that results from the stress of regular exercise.

Additional research suggests that increasing time intervals between meals might be a better choice than chronic calorie restriction, because the resultant decline in sex hormones may adversely affect both sexual and brain performance. Sex steroid hormones testosterone and estrogen are positively impacted by an abundant food supply. In other words, you might get smarter that way, but it might adversely affect your fun in the bedroom, among other drawbacks.

But if your not keen on starving yourself, there are other options. Another recent finding, stemming from the Burnham Institute for Medical Research and Iwate University in Japan, reports that the herb rosemary contains an ingredient that fights off free radical damage in the brain. The active ingredient, known as carnosic acid (CA), can protect the brain from stroke and neurodegeneration such as Alzheimer’s and from the effects of normal aging.

Although researchers are patenting more potent forms of isolated compounds in this herb, unlike most new drugs, simply using the rosemary in its natural state may be the most safe and clinically tolerated because it is known to get into the brain and has been consumed by people for over a thousand years. The herb was used in European folk medicine to help the nervous system.

Another brain booster that Bruce N. Ames, Ph.D., a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of California, Berkeley, swears by his daily 800 mg of alpha-lipoic acid and 2,000 mg of acetyl-L-carnitine, chemicals which boost the energy output of mitochondria that power our cells. Mitochondrial decay is a major factor in aging and diseases such as Alzheimer's and diabetes. Elderly rats on these supplements had more energy and ran mazes better.

Omega-3s fatty acids DHA and EPA found in walnuts and fatty fish (such as salmon, sardines, and lake trout) are thought to help ward off Alzheimer's disease. (In addition, they likely help prevent depression and have been shown to help prevent sudden death from heart attack).

Turmeric, typically found in curry, contains curcumin, a chemical with potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. In India, it is even used as a salve to help heal wounds. East Asians also eat it, which might explain their lower rates (compared to the United States) of Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease, in addition to various cancers. If curry isn’t part of your favorite cuisines, you might try a daily curcumin supplement of 500 to 1,000 mg.

Physical exercise may also have beneficial effects on neuron regeneration by stimulating regeneration of brain and muscle cells via activation of stress proteins and the production of growth factors. But again, additional research suggests that not all exercise is equal. Interestingly, some researchers found that exercise considered drudgery was not beneficial in neuronal regeneration, but physical activity that was engaged in purely for fun, even if equal time was spent and equal calories were burned, resulted in neuronal regeneration.

Exercise can also help reduce stress, but any stress-reducing activity, such as meditation and lifestyle changes, can help the brain. There is some evidence that chronic stress shrinks the parts of the brain involved in learning, memory, and mood. (It also delays wound healing, promotes atherosclerosis, and increases blood pressure.)

It should go without saying that short-term cognitive and physical performance is not boosted by fasting, due to metabolic changes including decrease in body temperature, decreased heart rate and blood pressure and decreased glucose and insulin levels, so you’re better off not planning a marathon or a demanding work session during a fasting period.

As part of a healthy lifestyle the prescription of moderating food intake, exercising, and eating anti-oxidant rich foods is what we’ve long known will boost longevity, but it’s good to know that we can bring our brains along with us as we make it into those golden years without being the 1 in 7 who suffers from dementia. Keep your fingers crossed and eat some rosemary chicken.

by Rebecca Sato @ The Daily Galaxy
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Brain Images

People are more likely to believe findings from a neuroscience study when the report is paired with a coloured image of a brain as opposed to other representational images of data such as bar graphs, according to a new Colorado State University study.

Image - Aaron Kondziela

Persuasive influence on public perception

Scientists and journalists have recently suggested that brain images have a persuasive influence on the public perception of research on cognition. This idea was tested directly in a series of experiments reported by David McCabe, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Colorado State, and his colleague Alan Castel, an assistant professor at University of California, Los Angeles. The forthcoming paper, to be published in the journal Cognition, was recently published online.

"We found the use of brain images to represent the level of brain activity associated with cognitive processes clearly influenced ratings of scientific merit," McCabe said. "This sort of visual evidence of physical systems at work is typical in areas of science like chemistry and physics, but has not traditionally been associated with research on cognition.

"We think this is the reason people find brain images compelling. The images provide a physical basis for thinking."

In a series of three experiments, undergraduate students were either asked to read brief articles that made fictitious and unsubstantiated claims such as "watching television increases math skills," or they read a real article describing research showing that brain imaging can be used as a lie detector.

When the research participants were asked to rate their agreement with the conclusions reached in the article, ratings were higher when a brain image had accompanied the article, compared to when it did not use a brain image or included a bar graph representing the data.

This effect occurred regardless of whether the article described a fictitious, implausible finding or realistic research.

"Cognitive neuroscience studies which appear in mainstream media are often oversimplified and conclusions can be misrepresented," McCabe said. "We hope that our findings get people thinking more before making sensational claims based on brain imaging data, such as when they claim there is a 'God spot' in the brain."
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Like Goldilocks, the brain seeks proportions that are "just right."
Brain needs perfection in synapse number from Baylor College of Medicine
What Emotional Memories are made of from John Hopkins Medicine
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Cambridge Neuroscience

Cambridge University launch a new initiative to raise the profile of neuroscience at Cambridge by enhancing multi-disciplinary research and teaching across the University and affiliated Institutes.

See cutting-edge collaborative research happening in Cambridge.
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Ghosts in The Machine by Steven Pinker @ Cosmos Magazine
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Natural Antioxidants

Antioxidants such as vitamins C and E, carotene, lycopene, lutein and many other substances may play a role in helping to prevent diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease and macular degeneration.

Antioxidants are thought to help because they can neutralize free radicals, which are toxic byproducts of natural cell metabolism. The human body naturally produces antioxidants but the process isn’t 100 percent effective and that effectiveness declines with age.

Research at the Mayo Clinic is increasingly showing that those who eat antioxidant-rich foods reap health benefits. Foods, rather than supplements, may boost antioxidant levels because foods contain an unmatchable array of antioxidant substances. A supplement may contain a single type of antioxidant or even several. However, foods contain thousands of types of antioxidants, and it’s not known which of these substances confer the benefits.

Some of the better food sources of antioxidants are:

Berries: Blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries and cranberries
Beans: Small red beans and kidney, pinto and black beans
Fruits: Many apple varieties (with peels), avocados, cherries, green and red pears, fresh or dried plums, pineapple, oranges, and kiwi
Vegetables: Artichokes, spinach, red cabbage, red and white potatoes (with peels), sweet potatoes and broccoli
Beverages: Green tea, coffee, red wine and many fruit juices
Nuts: Walnuts, pistachios, pecans, hazelnuts and almonds
Herbs: Ground cloves, cinnamon or ginger, dried oregano leaf and turmeric powder
Grains: Oat-based products
Dessert: Dark chocolate
Though supplements containing antioxidants are generally considered safe, two recent studies have suggested that taking higher than recommended doses of supplements such as vitamin E over time may actually be harmful and possibly toxic.

In contrast, many foods higher in antioxidants offer an array of health benefits, such as being high in fiber, protein and other vitamins and minerals and low in saturated fat and cholesterol.
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Eye of the Beholder

Colour is in the Eye of the Beholder
Pumpkin seed oil and water. Credit: iStockphoto/Glenn Bristol

The unique makeup of the cells in our retina, as well as the specific physical properties of substances themselves, explain why we occasionally see things change colour before our very eyes! Samo and Marko Kreft from the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia investigated this phenomenon using pumpkin seed oil as an example. They have just published their research online in Springer’s journal Naturwissenschaften.

In some regions of Central Europe, salad dressing is made preferably with pumpkin seed oil, which has a strong characteristic nutty flavor and striking colour properties. Indeed, in a bottle it appears red, but it looks green in a salad dressing or mixed with yoghurt.

Samo and Marko Kreft’s paper examines the remarkable two-tone (or dichromatic) colour of pumpkin seed oil, by the use of a combination of imaging and CIE (International Commission on Illumination) chromaticity coordinates. The paper also explains why human vision perceives substances like pumpkin seed oil as dichromatic or polychromatic (exhibiting a variety of colours).

Two phenomena explain the perceived shift in colour of pumpkin seed oil from red to green:

Firstly, the distinctive change in colour shade of the oil is due to a change in oil layer thickness. As the oil layer thickens, the oil changes its appearance from bright green to bright red. The observed colour is neither dependent on the angle of observation nor on the direction or type of light.

Secondly, the shift in colour is due to the unique characteristics of the cells in the human retina. Our eyes have two types of photoreceptor cells: rods and cones. Rod photoreceptor cells are very sensitive and operate in dim illumination conditions. Cone photoreceptor cells function well in bright light conditions. They are also the basis of colour perception in our visual image. It is the presence of multiple classes of cone cells, each with a different spectral sensitivity, that gives us the ability to discriminate colours.
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Taxol Bristle Ball

Cancer-clogging drugs loaded onto nanospheres from Rice University

Rice chemists have discovered a way to load dozens of molecules of the anticancer drug paclitaxel onto tiny gold spheres. The result is a ball many times smaller than a living cell that literally bristles with the drug.

Paclitaxel, which is sold under the brand name Taxol®, prevents cancer cells from dividing by jamming their inner works.

First isolated from the bark of the yew tree in 1967, paclitaxel is one of the most widely prescribed chemotherapy drugs in use today. The drug is used to treat breast, ovarian and other cancers. Paclitaxel works by attaching itself to structural supports called microtubules, which form the framework inside living cells. To divide, cells must break down their internal framework, and paclitaxel stops this process by locking the support into place.

Since cancer cells divide more rapidly than healthy cells, paclitaxel is very effective at slowing the growth of tumors in some patients. However, one problem with using paclitaxel as a general inhibitor of cell division is that it works on all cells, including healthy cells that tend to divide rapidly. This is why patients undergoing chemotherapy sometimes suffer side effects like hair loss and suppressed immune function.

"Ideally, we'd like to deliver more of the drug directly to the cancer cells and reduce the side effects of chemotherapy," Zubarev said. "In addition, we'd like to improve the effectiveness of the drug, perhaps by increasing its ability to stay bound to microtubules within the cell."

The new delivery system centers on a tiny ball of gold that's barely wider than a strand of DNA. Finding a chemical process to attach a uniform number of paclitaxel molecules to the ball - without chemically altering the drug - was not easy. Only a specific region of the drug binds with microtubules. This region of the drug fits neatly into the cell's support structure, like a chemical "key" fitting into a lock. Zubarev and Gibson knew they had to find a way to make sure the drug's key was located on the face of each bristle.

Zubarev and Gibson first designed a chemical "wrapper" to shroud the key, protecting it from the chemical reactions they needed to perform to create the ball. Using the wrapped version of the drug, they undertook a series of reactions to attach the drug to linker molecules that were, in turn, attached to the ball. In the final step of the reaction, they dissolved the wrapper, restoring the key."We are already working on follow-up studies to determine the potency of the paclitaxel-loaded nanoparticles," Zubarev said. "Since each ball is loaded with a uniform number of drug molecules, we expect it will be relatively easy to compare the effectiveness of the nanoparticles with the effectiveness of generally administered paclitaxel."
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New Cancer Weapon

Nuclear Nanocapsules

Rice University chemists have found a way to package some of nature's most powerful radioactive particles inside DNA-sized tubes of pure carbon - a method they hope to use to target tiny tumors and even lone leukemia cells.


"There are no FDA-approved cancer therapies that employ alpha-particle radiation," said lead researcher Lon Wilson, professor of chemistry. "Approved therapies that use beta particles are not well-suited for treating cancer at the single-cell level because it takes thousands of beta particles to kill a lone cell.

By contrast, cancer cells can be destroyed with just one direct hit from an alpha particle on a cell nucleus."

In the study, Wilson, Rice graduate student Keith Hartman, University of Washington (UW) radiation oncologist Scott Wilbur and UW research scientist Donald Hamlin, developed and tested a process to load astatine atoms inside short sections of carbon nanotubes.

Because astatine is the rarest naturally occurring element on Earth - with less than a teaspoon estimated to exist in the Earth's crust at any given time - the research was conducted using astatine created in a UW cyclotron.

Astatine, like radium and uranium, emits alpha particles via radioactive decay. Alpha particles, which contain two protons and two neutrons, are the most massive particles emitted as radiation. About 4,000 times more massive than the electrons emitted by beta decay - the type of radiation most commonly used to treat cancer.

"It's something like the difference between a cannon shell and a BB," Wilson said. "The extra mass increases the amount of damage alpha particles can inflict on cancer cells."

The speed of radioactive particles is also an important factor in medical use. Beta particles travel very fast. This, combined with their small size, gives them significant penetrating power.

In cancer treatment, for example, beams of beta particles can be created outside the patient's body and directed at tumors. Alpha particles move much more slowly, and because they are also massive, they have very little penetrating power. They can be stopped by something as flimsy as tissue paper.

"The unique combination of low penetrating power and large particle mass make alpha particle ideal for targeting cancer at the single-cell level," Wilson said. "The difficulty in developing ways to use them to treat cancer has come in finding ways to deliver them quickly and directly to the cancer site."

In prior work, Wilson and colleagues developed techniques to attach antibodies to carbon fullerenes like nanotubes. Antibodies are proteins produced by white blood cells. Each antibody is designed to recognize and bind only with a specific antigen, and doctors have identified a host of cancer-specific antibodies that can be used to kill cancer cells.

In follow-up research, Wilson hopes to test the single-celled cancer targeting approach by attaching cancer-specific antibodies to astatine-loaded nanotubes.

One complicating factor in any astatine-based cancer therapy will be the element's short, 7.5-hour half-life. In radioactive decay, the term half-life refers to the time required for any quantity of a substance to decay by half its initial mass.

Due to astatine's brief half-life, any treatment must be delivered in a timely way, before the particles lose their potency.
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Area responsible for Self Control

The area of the brain responsible for self-control is separate from the area associated with taking action.

Image Above: Brain area in the fronto-median cortex that was activated when participants intentionally withhold a planned action in the last moment

The results illuminate a very important aspect of the brain's control of behavior, the ability to hold off doing something after you've developed the intention to do it-one might call it 'free won't' as opposed to free will," says Martha Farah, PhD, of the University of Pennsylvania. "It is very important to identify the circuits that enable 'free won't' because of the many psychiatric disorders for which self-control problems figure prominently-from attention deficit disorder to substance dependence and various personality disorders." Farah was not involved in the experiment.

The findings broaden understanding of the neural basis for decision making, or free will, and may help explain why some individuals are impulsive while others are reluctant to act, says lead author Marcel Brass, PhD, of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences and Ghent University. Brass and Patrick Haggard, PhD, of University College London, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the brain activity of participants pressing a button at times they chose themselves. They compared data from these trials to results when the participants prepared to hit the button, then decided to hold back or veto the action.

Fifteen right-handed participants were asked to press a button on a keyboard. They were asked to choose some cases in which they stopped just before pressing the button. Participants also indicated on a clock the time at which they intended to press the button or decided to hold back. When Brass and Haggard compared fMRI images of the two scenarios, they found that pulling back yielded activity in the dorsal fronto-median cortex (dFMC), an area on the midline of the brain directly above the eyes, which did not show up when participants followed through and made the action. In addition, those who chose to stop the intended action most often showed greatest contrast in dFMC activity.

"The capacity to withhold an action that we have prepared but reconsidered is an important distinction between intelligent and impulsive behavior," says Brass, "and also between humans and other animals."

Future study will involve methods with a better time resolution such as EEG to determine whether the inhibitory process could operate in the brief time period between the time of conscious intention and the point of no return for motor output.

Image: Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
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Milestone In The Regeneration Of Brain Cells
Brain Cells Work Differently Than Previously Thought
One Step Closer To Transplanting Stem Cells In The Brain
Researchers Identify Brain Network That May Help Prevent Or Slow Alzheimer's
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Ancestors help Bird Memory

Birds learn to fly with a little help from their Ancestors

A University of Sheffield researcher has discovered that the reason birds learn to fly so easily is because latent memories may have been left behind by their ancestors.

It is widely known that birds learn to fly through practice, gradually refining their innate ability into a finely tuned skill, and these skills may be easy to refine because of a genetically specified latent memory for flying.

Dr Dr Jim Stone from the University of Sheffield´s Department of Psychology, used simple models of brains called artificial neural networks and computer simulations to test his theory.

He discovered that learning in previous generations indirectly induces the formation of a latent memory in the current generation and therefore decreases the amount of learning required. These effects are especially pronounced if there is a large biological 'fitness cost' to learning, where biological fitness is measured in terms of the number of offspring each individual has.

The beneficial effects of learning also depend on the unusual form of information storage in neural networks. Unlike computers, which store each item of information in a specific location in the computer's memory chip, neural networks store each item distributed over many neuronal connections. If information is stored in this way then evolution is accelerated, explaining how complex motor skills, such as nest building and hunting skills, are acquired by a combination of innate ability and learning over many generations.

However not every bird automatically knows how to fly.
A crowling which has been blown from its nest, had a great fall and hurt its legs, may never fly - though there be nothing wrong with its wings at all. Birds learn fear, pain and doubt too. - Q9
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New Caledonian Crows Find Two Tools Better Than One
Uncertainties Of Savanna Habitat Drive Birds To Cooperative Breeding
Birds With Child-care Assistance Invest Less In Eggs @ Science Daily
Are Artist's Born or Taught from Hank @ Scientific Blogging
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Functioning Neuron Produced

Scientists with the Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Medicine at UCLA were able to produce from human embryonic stem cells a highly pure, large quantity of functioning neurons that will allow them to create models of and study diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, prefrontal dementia and schizophrenia.

Researchers previously had been able to produce neurons - the impulse-conducting cells in the brain and spinal cord - from human embryonic stem cells. However, the percentage of neurons in the cell culture was not high and the neurons were difficult to isolate from the other cells.

UCLA's Yi Sun, an associate professor of biobehavioural sciences, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Thomas Südhof at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center were able to produce 70 to 80 percent of neurons in cell culture. Sun and Südhof also were able to isolate the neurons and determine that they had a functional synaptic network, which the neurons use to communicate. Because they were functional, the neurons can be used to create a variety of human neurological disease models.

"Previously, the system to grow and isolate neurons was very messy and it was unknown whether those neurons were functioning," Sun said. "We're excited because we have been able to purify so many more neurons out of the cell culture and they were, surprisingly, healthy enough to form synapses. These cells will be excellent for doing gene expression studies and biochemical and protein analyses."

Sun's method prodded human embryonic stem cells to differentiate into neural stem cells, the cells that give rise to neurons. When the time was right, Sun's team added protein growth factors into the cell culture that stopped the neural stem cells from self-renewing and prodded them into differentiating into neurons.

To isolate the cells, Sun and her team added an enzyme that digests a sort of protein matrix that holds cells in culture together. The neurons could then be separated from the neural stem cells that had not yet differentiated, a sort of chemical round-up that isolated the neurons. The cells were then put into a cell strainer that allowed passage through of the isolated neurons.

The large number of pure neurons produced will allow Sun and her team to study their biological form and structure, the genes they express, the development of synapses and the electric and chemical communication activities within the synapse network.

"We will be able to study the cellular properties of neurons in a very defined way that will maybe tell us what goes wrong in diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's," Sun said. "We're currently creating many models of human neurological diseases that may provide the answers we're looking for. We don't know what causes prefrontal dementia, Huntington's disease or schizophrenia. The key is likely in the quality of neuronal communications. By studying the chemical and electrical transmissions, we may be able to determine what goes wrong that leads to these debilitating diseases and find a way to stop or treat it."

Sun will be among the first researchers to be able to study true neuron function.

A second important discovery in Sun's study showed that two embryonic stem cells lines derived in similar manners, and therefore expected to behave similarly when differentiating, did not. Using the same techniques to prod the two embryonic stem cells lines to differentiate, Sun found that one line had a bias to become neurons that are found in the forebrain. The other line differentiated into neurons found in rear portions of the brain and spinal cord. The finding was surprising, and significant, Sun said.

"The realization that not all human embryonic stem cell lines are born equal is critical," Sun said. "If you're studying a disease found in a certain part of the brain, you should use a human embryonic stem cell line that produces the neurons from that region of the brain to get the most accurate results from your study.

Huntington's disease, for example, is a forebrain disease, so the neurons should be differentiated from a cell line that is biased to produce neurons from the forebrain."Sun said there are ways to prod an embryonic stem cell line biased to become neurons found in the rear brain to become neurons found in the forebrain. However, there are limits to how much prodding can be done.

Sun and her team confirmed that the two embryonic stem cell lines were different through gene expression analysis - neurons that perform different functions in different parts of the brain express different genes.

The cell line prone to becoming neurons found in the forebrain expressed genes typically found in those neurons, while the other line expressed genes found in the rear brain and spinal cord.

The team now are studying why the two human embryonic stem cell lines have biases to become different types of neurons. "If we knew that, we might be able to tweak or alter whatever is driving the bias so that limitation in the stem cell line could be bypassed," Sun said.

Study results were recently published in an early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Functioning Neurons From Human Embryonic Stem Cells Produced
UCLA Institute of Stem Cell Biology
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