Archive for the ‘Health’ Category
The results of a research project conducted aboard the International Space Station offer new clues as to why in space the astronauts immune system does not work as well as it should. This discovery could have a direct application on Earth, improving the quality of life of older people.
Astronauts undergo many physiological changes in the process of adaptation to microgravity. For years scientists have known that, in space, the immune system does not work as well as they should, and the search for answers to this question has been precisely one of the main drivers of research in orbit.
A team of researchers from the University of Teramo, the European Brain Research Institute and the Foundation Santa Lucia has discovered that there is an enzyme in particular, known as 5-LOX, which becomes more active in microgravity conditions. Read the rest of this entry »
Apart from specific brain diseases, brain undergoes normal wear and aging. Memory, in its various facets, is one of the mental skills that suffer more with advancing age. In new research, we analyzed now what brain components fail more memory with aging. The results have been somewhat unexpected.
Judging from the evidence obtained in previous studies, everything seemed to indicate that spatial memory would be most affected by aging. But instead of this, the Wisconsin researchers have found that the aging brain seems to be more likely to lose its ability to react to signs that indicate when it’s time to stop, even momentarily, the task you are working for move to another address.
Anyway, this is consistent with the difficulty for older people to do several things at once, and explain the precise cause. The team of Mark Laubach, Faculty of Medicine, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA, was studying the impact of aging on working memory, the type of memory that allows us to remember that dinner is cooking as we speak by phone, and we can not leave it too long to fire or burn. Read the rest of this entry »
A recent study provides more evidence that eating blueberries, blackberries, strawberries and other berries have beneficial effects on the brain and may help prevent memory loss associated with aging and other such harmful changes in the brain.
The results of this research are added as well to other studies that, in increasing numbers in recent years indicate that eating berries may exert beneficial effects in the brains of older people.
To assess the strength of previous evidence on the berries, the authors of the new analysis of results, Barbara Shukitt-Hale and Marshall G. Miller, exhaustively examined studies on the subject made up of cells, animals and humans. Their work on the positive consequences of eating berries has been released by the journal of Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, the ACS (American Chemical Society). Read the rest of this entry »
How the brain coordinates the creation of one hundred billion cells, each with specific functions? Nature tends to do without problems, but for the scientific community this wonder has always been involved in mystery. Recently, a team of researchers at the Linkoping University, Sweden, has moved a step closer to clearing up this mystery.
It is necessary to understand the mechanisms that diversify to maintain neurons and diversified, as this knowledge will be essential for in a not too distant future perhaps, to grow nerve cells to use them as parts of other, as Mattias Alenius says, professor of neuroscience at the Linkoping University.
Alenius and his research team at the Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine seek the answer to this important question from a more localized: the olfactory system of the fruit fly. Read the rest of this entry »
It is known that different areas of the brain specialize in different senses, including vision, smell, and touch. But the work of a brain region need not always be isolated from the work of others.
A spectacular demonstration of this last has recently become to see, for the first time, activate the visual cortex of the brain with a small amount of electrical stimulation improves the sense of smell.
The team of Dr. Christopher Pack, the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, Canada, and colleagues from McGill University in the same country and the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, USA, proposed the idea to check that activation of brain regions devoted mainly to a sense could influence the processing of data from other senses. Read the rest of this entry »
A new three-dimensional image of the neural connections that map shows roads in a grid, allowing the organization at multiple scales. “More than a century trying to explain the anatomy of brain connections”, said Van J. Wedeen, associate professor of Radiology, Harvard Medical School (USA).
Wedeen published this week in Science the way in which neurons are opened step by the brain. “This is a beautiful crossing pattern is like a cloth of gold in three dimensions”, he says excitedly. This brain map is ‘drawn’ by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The images obtained ‘track’ the nerve cells of the gray matter, which is entangled in the fibers and cables of the white matter.
The scientist said that if, in its way neurons were bystanders of a big city like New York, avenues and streets of Manhattan elevators need to build the third dimension of the district of the Big Apple. Read the rest of this entry »
Each body part has its own area of nerve cells in the brain. We can say therefore that we have a map of our body in our head. It is not known for sure how important are these maps, but a new study may help to estimate it more safely, and also provides a more detailed explanation of the low reaction rate of the middle finger.
The researchers undertook the study subjects a simple task to measure the speed of decision: they showed a picture on a monitor representing the ten fingers. If one finger marking appeared, subjects had to press a corresponding key as quickly as possible with that finger.
The thumb and little finger were the fastest. The middle finger was the slowest. You might think that this difference is due to anatomical causes or exercise-dependent which gives each finger as compared to others. Read the rest of this entry »
A study conducted by King’s College London, in England, found that children as young as three months old can recognize a different set of sounds made by humans, such as coughing or laughing.
However, the most significant of the research is that after several experiments it was found that newborns are able to detect even if the sounds are emotional charge as sadness. One of the directors of the report, Anna Blasi said that this is probably due to the human voice is an important social reference that the brain shows early specialization for processing.
Analyses were performed using functional magnetic resonance imaging of the brains of 21 babies between three and seven months old while they were sleeping. During sleep, the infants were exposed to a series of neutral human sounds such as coughing or yawning, and sounds of water toys. Read the rest of this entry »
For the many people with diabetes that there is in the world (it is calculated that only in the United States there is 26 million), the habitual way to verify its levels of glucose is being extracted blood. It is an invasive method and produces, although be little, something of pain.
A team of investigators is working in a new sensor that can determine the levels of sugar in the blood by means of a measurement of the concentrations of glucose in the saliva.
The technique takes advantage of advances in the nanotechnology as well as in the surface plasmon. The team, of the University Brown in the United States, created by means of engraving thousands of plasmonic interferometers in a biochip of the size of a nail, and used this to measure the present glucose molecules concentration in a sample of water. Its results indicate that this biochip can detect levels of similar glucose to the presents in the human saliva. Read the rest of this entry »
Different types of jewelry are designed for use as medical alerts. This helps to remove various complexes, created in the minds of holders who are conscious of their image. They do not like to wear visible features that draw attention to their unjustified medical problems, and hurt their market sensitivity. The jewelry created for the purpose of this type has a distinctive style and is also made of a solid material such as gold or sterling silver.
Medical Alert Devices For Seniors are of various types such as bracelets, pendants, lockets, watches, pins and other items. It is advisable to purchase or donation of a medical alert system before disaster strikes. Many people mistakenly expect to occur in an emergency, before buying a medical alert device. Others are not able to learn, even after an experience and go through the whole crisis again. Read the rest of this entry »