A New Movement in Parkinson’s

By: Adrienne Lindsey

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=new-movement-in-parkinson-2005-07

My Summary:

Parkinson’s disease is among the most prevalent of neurological disorders. It is estimated that at least four million people have it worldwide. It is also estimated that about 500,000 to one million people have the disease in North America, with about 50,000 cases being diagnosed each year. These numbers are expected to double by the year 2040 as the world’s elderly population grows. James Parkinson first described this neurodegenerative disease in the 1800s as “shaking palsy”.
Like other neurodegenerative diseases, Parkinson’s is on its way to surpassing cancer as the leading cause of death in the elderly. But the elderly are not the only ones affected by this debilitating disease. About fifty percent of cases are diagnosed or start before the age of forty. Although treatments such as drugs and brain stimulation for the disease do exist, researchers have not yet found a way to prevent or slow down the onset of Parkinson’s. However, in recent years scientists who study the role of proteins have linked some proteins to the genetic foundations of this disease. Such findings give hope that the cause of the disease can be identified.
Many people are familiar with the affects of Parkinson’s due to the efforts of celebrities in recent years that currently live with the disease. Parkinson’s is characterized by movement disorders. Tremor in hands, arm rigidity, impaired balance and coordination and slowness of movement are some of the disease’s chief symptoms. Some also have trouble walking, talking and sleeping among other things. Such impairments are a result of neurons dying. The cells that are hit the hardest are those that produce the neurotransmitter, dopamine. Initially the brain can function normally, but when half or more of the cells disappear the brain can no longer support them. In the case of Parkinson’s the damages to the brain that are seen through autopsies are protein masses also featured in Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s. Investigators debate on whether the protein clusters cause destruction or whether they try to protect and remove toxic molecules from the neurons.
In recent years scientists have come to believe that Parkinson’s develops when some form of injury to the substantia nigra triggers a cascade of cellular stresses. These stresses result in a wealth of misfolded proteins that congregate. Chaperones star eliminating proteins that cannot be refolded and when the production of poorly folded proteins overwhelms the body’s ability to process them neuronal death follows. Recently scientists have found that perhaps chaperone-type drugs can be developed to limit degeneration in people. Scientists also believe that gene therapy could possibly be used to trigger the production of needed chaperones. Although there is still so much to be learned about Parkinson’s disease, the cellular insights that have come about encourage researchers and give hope for the development of future treatments that could improve and help control this disorder.

My Response:
I was encouraged to read about all of the new research that had come about regarding Parkinson’s disease. Although I don’t know anyone personally who is affected by the disease, I have seen celebrities who have the disease and how it affects them. I was also astonished at the growth of this disease. 50,000 new cases a year is a little scary. I was surprised to hear that half of new Parkinson’s cases affect those forty and under. The fact that the number will double in the next twenty years also concerned me. It is good to know that efforts are being made to improve the lives of those with this disease.

Cure in the Mind

Summary:

A man referred to as “Mr. Wright” was dying from cancer of the lymph nodes. His neck, groin, chest, and abdomen were being occupied by orange-size tumors. Doctors had tried many treatments, none of which were successful. “Psychological Variables in Human Cancer”, a report by psychologist Bruno Klopfer of the University of California, Los Angeles had convinced Mr. Wright that Krebiozen, a newly discovered anticancer drug was the answer. Prior to receiving his first treatment, Mr. Wright was bedridden and gasping for each breath. Within just three days Mr. Wright was happily walking around and making jokes, and his tumors had shrunk to half their size. Ten days later he was released from the hospital. Others patients who received the same treatment of Krebiozen remained unaffected by the treatment.

During the next two months Mr. Wright was troubled by reported who questioned Krebiozen’s efficiency, and suffered a relapse. The doctors decided to test the placebo effect with Mr. Wright. They told him that a new doubly effective version of Krebiozen was arriving the next day, which thrilled Mr. Wright. This time after receiving the treatment, which contained absolutely no Krebiozen, Mr. Wright improved even more than he had after receiving the actual Krebiozen the first time. After a short while he left the hospital with no remaining symptoms. Over the next two months Mr. Wright remained perfectly healthy, until he read reports stating that Krebiozon was a worthless/useless treatment; he died within the next few days. Mr. Wright’s case is an example of the placebo effect, of how a patient’s expectations and beliefs can affect the course of their illnesses.

The psychological component of placebos can help to alleviate pain, depression, and anxiety as well as to lessen symptoms of certain diseases or as in Mr. Wright’s case shrink tumors. New research has shown that placebo effect does not only arise from a conscious belief, but also subconscious associations between recovery and the actual experience of being treated. If a patient has previously experienced a situation, for example: receiving a shot, that has made them feel better, a reenactment of the same situation could (with the placebo solution in the shot of course) have the same effect.

My Response:

I think it is really interesting that Mr. Wright’s adamant belief in the supposedly “anticancer” drug Krebiozen was enough to shrink the size of his tumor drastically. It reminds me when the Bible talks about having faith as small as a mustard seed. Mr. Wright truly believed that Krebiozen would cure him; it ended up that it was actually the drug but his belief in the drug that cured him. Within mere days of learning that Krebiozen was worthless Mr. Wright died-it was as if the rug had been pulled out from under him. In a similar way when we lack faith we fall flat on our faces, which reminds me of when Peter walked on the water with Jesus but as soon as he looked down he become afraid and began to sink. Faith is crucial to the Christian walk.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=placebo-effect-a-cure-in-the-mind

Addicted to Starvation: The Neurological Roots of Anorexia

Out of the United States population, up to 3.7 percent of girls and women suffer from anorexia. Twenty percent of these young girls and women will die because of it. This high death rate makes anorexia the most deadly mental illness found in young females. Anorexia is characterized by several behaviors: compulsive dieting (or not eating at all), compulsive exercise, obsession, constant pursuit of thinness and constant dissatisfaction with ones own body. Over the years, society continues to blame media, Hollywood, and even families for girls’ ongoing struggle with anorexia. But if it were just the pursuit of a better physique that influenced these women and girls to partake in anorexic behaviors, then why do they continue to afflict themselves with starvation long after their bodies have reached the point of emaciation? Furthermore, culture and environment alone, although capable of great influence, cannot account for an anorexics loss of the necessary survival instinct, that is, to eat as a reaction hunger.
Anorexia is not just a reaction to negative influence; it’s a full blown mental illness. The effects of anorexia go far beyond mere changes in appetite. In fact anorexia can be directly related to a disturbance in the brain’s reward circuitry that causes loss of enjoyment in life’s many pleasures such as: winning a game, vacation, sex, and most importantly eating. This disturbance in the brain’s reward circuitry not only can deprive an anorexic of feeling pleasure when eating, but can in turn generate pleasure when they are being starved. When the majority of population diets, their metabolic rate slows down and they feel tired, sluggish, even agitated. On the other hand, when an anorexic is in a state of dieting (starvation) their metabolic rate actually increases. They feel more alert, energetic, and just better overall. This particular characteristic of anorexia has lead many doctors and scientist to believe that anorexia is underlined by a seemingly dangerous drug addiction, in which case the drug is starvation itself. Like anorexia’s drug, that is, starvation, many drugs of abuse act on the brain’s reward circuitry. These drugs specifically affect a pleasure hub called the nucleus accumbens in order to increase the levels of a neurotransmitter called dopamine, which in turn rapidly promotes good feelings (in the case of abused drugs, causes a “high”). After several tests scientists were able to link activation of the brains reward system to the lack of appetite found in anorexics. This significant connection proves that an anorexic individual is completely capable of linking reward to hunger, therefore, becoming addicted to starvation the same way an individual may become addicted to a drug of abuse.
There are many reasons why one might turn to anorexia (media, pressure, family, depression, control), but there are several biological reasons why a certain individual person may be specifically prone to anorexia. The most common biological reason for being at risk for anorexia is chronic anxiety. About eighty to ninety percent of anorexics report suffering from chronic anxiety before becoming anorexic. Their anxiety brings about a sense of perfectionism which has the consequence of feeling as though one must live up to society’s standards, avoid mistakes, and avoid anything negative. The second reason for the onset of anorexia is hormones, specifically estrogen. Puberty tends to be the most prominent trigger of anorexia. Forty percent of newly reported cases of anorexia are found in teenage girls ages fifteen to nineteen. The final reason for the onset of anorexia is the deprivation of food. A person who has been exposed to starvation over a period of time, such as one who is fasting, or dieting, is susceptible to becoming anorexic as well. Even normal men with no former symptoms of anorexia, began showing anorexic like behavior after going through twenty-four weeks of eating nearly half their normal calorie intake. If anorexia in a normal male could be spawned by deprivation of calories, then there are millions more out there susceptible to this dangerous illness.

My Response:
Having known several persons who have struggled with anorexia, I have sadly witnessed its consequences. For example, one friend of mine is no longer capable of having children because of her inability to quit starving herself. She would constantly get better then relapse again. Until reading this article I didn’t understand why she couldn’t just eat, but it’s so much more than that. After reading this I realize how hard it must be for someone to stop a habit that makes them feel happiness when without it they feel no pleasure. I also realized how dangerous anorexia really is. Before I viewed it as a phase some people go through that you can quit at anytime. Now I see it is a lot like drug abuse, it’s physically and psychologically hard to quit and stay that way. Anorexia is a downward spiral that is close to impossible to get out of, and with so many who are susceptible to it, we must be careful.
Article: Addicted to Starvation

Can stress cause gray hair?

People tend to see gray hair at about thirty years of age of men and around thirty-five years of age for women. It can happen earlier or later in life. Is it possible for stress to cause gray hair?
Each person has about 100,000 follicles on their scalp. This is where gray hair is produced from. Hair is assembled from the bottom to the top by keratinocytes. When the cell dies, it becomes keratin. This protein accounts for the texture and strength of hair.
Summary:

Melanin is a pigment made by keratinocytes that gives hair one of two shades: Eumelanin, dark brown or black, and pheomelanin, which is blonde or red. Variations of these create a vast *****.. When hair loses melanin, it turns gray; however, when hair loses pigment, it is white.
Hair cells have a life of anywhere between two and seven years. After it dies and falls out, a new follicle must be made. Stem cells re-make the keratinocytes and melanocytes in the bottom of the hair follicle.
It is unsure if stress truly causes gray hair. Hormones from stress may cause the life of melanocytes to change, but its not proven yet. Stress may cause and inflammation of the hair follicle. This produces free radicals, which are unstable, cell damaging molecules. The creation of these can bleach the melanin, causing gray hair.
General practice physicians have seen that more stressed people tend to gray faster by two or three years on average. Tyler Cyment, Sinai Hospital in Boston, observes that graying is genetic, but lifestyle and stress levels can change the age of graying by five to ten years.

Response:

If graying is really related to stress level, that would be unfortunate. Sometimes people can control their stress level, while others cannot. If someone is constantly being thrown difficult and stressful situations, they could produce gray hair faster. It makes sense for someone to age by genetics. That is the way things are suppose to be. Stress is an outside force that could tamper with the genetic timing.
Thinking about this, it would make sense for Christians to gray later on average than non-Christians. Because of Christ, we do not have to be anxious about anything. Christ paid the price for our mistakes. As humans, we have someone who will take all our problems and give us a peace that surpasses all understanding. We can know that God has a perfect plan for our life and will take care of us. As Christians, our lives should be less stressful because of God's gift of peace.



http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fact-or-fiction-stress-causes-gray-hair

Can a person be scared to death?

Our bodies have a natural protective mechanism called the fight-or-flight response in which our autonomic nervous system responds to life-threatening situations by increasing heart rate, increasing blood flow to muscles, slowing digestion, and dilating pupils. These increase in order to give us the chance to out run or fight off danger.

The autonomic nervous system uses the hormone adrenaline to send signals to various parts of our body to active the response. This chemical is toxic in large amounts and can damage our internal organs. Almost all sudden deaths are caused by damage to the heart because almost no other organ would fail fast enough to cause sudden death.

When the heart is flooded with too much adrenaline, the chemical lands on the receptors of the cardiac muscle causing calcium channels in the membranes of the those cells to open. The calcium ions rush in and cause the heart to contract. Because there is an overwhelming amount of calcium, it keeps pouring in and the heart won’t be able to relax. The heart then goes into abnormal rhythms that are not compatible with life causing death. The most common of these deadly rhythms is ventricular fibrillation, which is when the ventricles vibrate in a way that impedes their ability to deliver blood to the body.

While someone who is predisposition to heart disease is most likely to suffer a risk, it can happen to someone at any age and even someone who is considered healthy. If doesn’t just have to be fear, it can be any strong emotion such as happiness or sadness. For example, after 9/11 there was an increase of sudden cardiac deaths in New Yorkers.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=scared-to-death-heart-attack

My response:

While I have heard the expression of being "scared to death", I never knew that it could actually happen. I have also heard of people dying of sadness after their spouse passed away. What I personally find the most interesting is that someone could be so happy that they would die. I find that to be incredible; yet, after learning about our hearts it makes perfect sense. Our hearts pumps vital oxygen to our brains which tells our bodies how to run. If our heart stops for just a few seconds and our brains do not receive oxygen, it could result in brain death, which is the legal definition of death that refers to the irreversible end of all brain activity, or death.

Can a DVD Teach Emotions?

http://discovermagazine.com/2009/mar/04-can-a-dvd-teach-kids-with-autism-to-understand-emotions

Autism is on the rise. It may be from vaccinations or better diagnosing or a higher awareness, but whatever it is, more children have autism now. It had risen ten times in the past two decades. One of the very sad symptoms of autism is that the children have trouble comprehending emotions, especially complex ones, such as jealousy. Simon Baron-Cohen has created a DVD that strives to lessen this gap. He has created a DVD that actually tries to teach emotions.
His DVD, The Transporters, features animated trains with human faces. Actual human faces are used to help the children familiarize what happens in the movies with real life. Children with autism love trains and predictable, one-way movement. Trains are perfect for this because kids with autism like mechanical objects and linear movements. There are eight characters that all move slowly and predictably along the tracks. Simple story lines are incorporated, such as a surprise party or a train stuck on the tracks. The actors portray very clear facial expressions, such as surprise, and the movie names each emotion with a close up of the actor’s face. The movies are about fifteen minutes long and have interactive quizzes and questions, including a guide for the parents. Parent involvement is crucial to the success of the videos; the lessons have to be reinforced in the home.
The DVD was tested by taking three groups of twenty children. The first two groups were formed of highly functioning autistic children very close in age, skills, language, parent background and IQs. The third group consisted of children in the same age bracket that did not have autism. For four weeks Group one watched the videos while groups two and three did not. They were then tested on recognition of facial expressions they had seen in the DVD in new situations with new characters they had not yet seen. Group one improved dramatically and actually tested near the children without autism who had not watched the videos in their ability to recognize and understand emotions.
The videos are believed to work because of Baron-Cohen’s theory of systemizing. Everyone learns, and everyone has to have a way to understand things. People learn and understand things differently and understand on different levels. Autistic children tend to seem separate, lost in their own world. This is because they are extremely aware of things happening- hypersystemizing. Trying to understand the way these kids think is a big part of being able to connect with them and help them learn difficult things.
Some critics thought that the facial expressions were too subtle for autistic children to notice, especially with the eyes. Others mentioned that they thought the videos were unpredictable and hard to follow. This would be a very unfortunate flaw, because the whole video has to do with systematic thinking and movement, especially since it is such a big interest to autistic children.
There are many treatments or attempts of treatments for autism out there. The reality is, with more kids diagnosed with autism, more kids need help. This may be a small step in the right direction but sometimes a small step can be huge to a family. Even if the video doesn’t work a miracle- which it does not claim to do by the way- it is very promising and encouraging and not going to hurt any possible development.

My response: I have no idea why there are so many more autistic children now, but I think it is really great that there is now a DVD to try to help teach them emotions. The fact that he tries to understand the way they think is key. This program is designed to be interesting and interactive while being very helpful. It doesn’t simply repeat and emotion and name it. It is hard to think of not being able to understand emotions- something I can’t really wrap my mind around. That must be very frustrating and confusing. It would be very important for a parent or sibling to be able to connect with their autistic family member in any way, even if it is small thing. I do agree that with autistic or disabled kids that very small things can mean the world and really change things. Even if this DVD is not perfect, I believe that it is a step in the right direction and I hope more people will catch onto this. It is encouraging to see research and programs being developed in a growing area of need. The parents of autistic children would probably be very ready to try this, as it seems to be effective. I haven’t seen any of the videos but this is probably something worth trying over a medication or something with possible side effects. It’s a video. It’s spending time with your child. It just might work. It definitely sounds good to me.

Eyes on th Swine

We live in an age where the public believes someone, or thing, is always watching. Yet recently the Swine Flu has jumped into the human population. It made its first appearance in March and April, yet by late May officials were still trying to figure out where it came from.

The recent outbreaks of Swine Flu has tested systems that watch for human flu outbreaks, and proves a theory that pigs could be the “mixing vessels” of pandemic viruses. It has also pointed out how little progress has been made showing where and how such viruses evolve and predicting their transmissions to humans. Both would be great in preventing or warning of an approaching pandemic.

Though much funding and attention have been given to flu research, we are no closer to soundly finding animal diseases that could harm humans. For example in 2007 Jürgen A. Richt and his colleagues at the US Department of Agriculture’s National Animal Disease Center in Ames, Iowa found an H2N3 virus thought to have potential in going to humans; no one was interested. They put their findings in a scientific journal concluding with “it would be prudent to establish vigilant surveillance in pigs and in workers who have occupational exposure.”

When speaking of the disease, surveillance means doctors and diagnostic labs report every instance of certain pathogens found. Every human flu case is “reportable” to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDCP tracks the incidence and movement of the illness. In both animals and humans voluntary lab testing only finds a small percentage of cases involving a doctor’s visit. Mandatory reporting and systemic sampling in swine herds are limited to a very small number of devastating illnesses.

Richt thinks veterinary labs could play a bigger part in animal screening by testing every sample for every pathogen. Richt says, “We need a better network to look in animal populations for emerging infectious agents with 21-st century technology.” A couple labs already have the technical ability to do this, says Richt. Microarray chips able to test pigs, cattle, and poultry could give small labs a large capacity to keep watch for microbial threats developing in livestock. Identifying animal flu strains is one thing, but finding whether or not they could pass to human is another thing altogether. “I'm a lot more pessimistic about being able to predict these things,” says Jeffery K. Taubenberger of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He wrote a book about two swine branches of the H1N1 family tree. Both had a common H1N1-type ancestor, but they evolved differently, and little changes have let them transfer to different host species. Scientists looking for clear patterns about whether a virus is switching hosts have failed so far.

Because of this, no one can explain why avian H5N1 has infected about 400 people worldwide, but has, thus far, failed to totally adapt to humans. They also don’t know where the original pandemic virus from 1918 came from or where H1N1, its descendant, is going. H1N1 might fizzle out or learn to pass between people more easily. It could later return powerful or weak.
Taubenberger thinks that if we keep watch over an entire rural ecosystem, we might find some deeper insights as to why and how the flu virus evolves.

Money and research directed toward pandemic preparations have dramatically improved human flu surveillance and response systems. Unfortunately, without closer monitoring of animal sources of flu strain, human surveillance must remain the ultimate first line of defense.

Response
I found it quite interesting that so much goes on behind the scenes with viruses such as the flu. I never had thought about how these viruses develop and change to be able to transfer from animal to human. I had also never heard that the new H1N1 (Swine Flu) outbreak is a descendant of a 1918 pandemic. It’s weird to think that we may come into contact with a flu virus, and later be challenged by the same virus after it has developed and become much stronger.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=eyes-on-the-swine

Musicophobia: When Your Favorite Song Gives You Seizures

Response: I think this was a very intersing article. It caught my eye because I couldn't understand how your favorite song could give you any seizures. It is so interesting how our brain works. It also amazed me how there were only four people before Stacey Gayle who had ever had the surgery and it was a complete success! It must have taken a great amount of courage and bravery to go through the surgery.

Musicophobia: When Your Favorite Song Gives You Seizures by Nikhil Swaminathan

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=musicophobia-when-your-fa
Stacey Gayle is what we would consider a normal person who loved music. She had many CD’s in her car of her favorite artists and was a active member of her church choir. Everything was fine until Stacey Gayle started having seizures. The first one occurred in her bedroom on March 3, 2005. She was 22 and her mother took her to the hospital from her home in Queens New York. The doctors were able to stabilize her but they could find no reason for the seizure. Later, she went to her friend’s cookout where she blacked out and started to shake uncontrollably.
The Seizures seemed to be occurring randomly until Stacey Gayle noticed a pattern in the spring of 2006. One of the top songs at the time was “Temperature” by Sean Paul and was played at almost every social outing. Every time Stacey Gayle heard the song, she would begin to seize. However, Gayle was afraid that no one would believe her story and told no one but her neurologist, Alan Ettinger at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center. He offered her many medications but none of them seemed to offer any real help. In order to treat Gayle, Ettinger and a colleague decided to try something new in early 2007. They monitored her for four days to see if she would have a seizure and put a cap over her head to try to observe her brainwaves. Nothing happened and therefore forcing them to release her and her I pod. That night, Gayle listened to “Temperature” and seized over three times. The doctors were amazed that what she said was true.
Throughout the next year Gayle responded in similar ways when songs such as “Umbrella” by Rihanna and “Beautiful Girls” by Sean Kingston came on. The only music that didn’t cause a seizure was classical or jazz, of which Gayle did not particularly like. She had to drop out of school because of people’s phone going off in class. “I remember sitting outside of stores in the mall and crying because I can’t even go shopping or sit in a restaurant and eat” Says Gayle. Doctors began to wonder if they could help her in any way since medication was not working and keeping music away from her was impossible.
The first time anyone heard of musicogenic epilepsy- seizures caused by music- was in a 1937 paper. Ashesh Mehta, a neurosurgeon at LIJ Epilepsy Center says that the condition is “exceedingly” rare and only 150 cases have been reported. Researcher Dan Friedman says that the people are not seizing because of a specific tune “but an emotional reaction to it.”
Scientists still do not know what causes epilepsy although 2.5 million Americans have it. The activity in the brain is very chaotic although it looks as if it were controlled. The brain becomes “unstable when activity patterns sync up” meaning that the brain activity during a seizure is one of activity falling into step says Mehta. Charles Schroeder, a neurologist in Ney York, says “music generates a pattern of rhythmic activity that if the rhythm is similar to a negative pattern that your brain has a tendency toward, the seizures.” When medications will not help, the only way to get rid of seizures is through surgery. They must take out enough, not too much to damage the brain.
Ettinger began to look in this same direction he told Gayle that in order to stop the seizures, he suggested that Mehta remove all of the brain cells that acted throughout her episodes. Gayle at first refused but then called Mehta and decided to do the surgery. This surgery was one of which only four people had ever had before. After some tests, Mehta found that the area of the overexcited brain cells was located in the lower section behind her right ear. Mehta sent her to a nuerophyschologist who put parts of her brain to sleep and gave her speech and memory tests, the areas left would be the ones Mehta would cut out. Gayle went through a surgery in September then one in October. Since then she has been seizure free. She also has had no mental side effects of her surgery.

With a Wave of the Hand: How using gestures can make you smarter

Summary

Most people have noticed the frequent use of hand gestures during a conversation. You see a man at a hardware store looking ask an employee where the hammers are located while acting out the action of nailing with a hammer. Or you see a woman telling her friends about what her new dress looks like, showing them with her hands how it is shaped. Most people do this. But why do people do this? Is it because they want their listeners to fully understand what they are talking about, or could it possibly be another reason? More and more scientists actually think that the gestures serve the speaker. The belief is that the moving of your hands can help you think more clearly and better. This means that our physical body shapes abstract mental processes so that the speaker can deliver the words easier. Now scientists believe that hand movements may help the person learn, particularly on how students learn how to solve math problems at school.

University researchers did a study focused on how third and fourth graders solving math problems that required grouping. The students who were taught to make a "V" symbol with their index finger and middle finger, pointing to the two terms they were going to combine, learned how to solve the grouping problems better than those who didn't use the "V" gesture. The researchers believe that the use of their hands solidifies the method in the student's mind, such as speech does. This study has brought on a new school of thought, called Embodied Cognition. Embodied Cognition views the basic elements of thought as bodily representations with bases in perception, action, and emotion.

So next time your in a conversation with a friend and they are using hand gestures during the conversation, think about whether they are trying to describe something better, or they are trying to verbalize their thoughts in an easier way.

My Response

This article was very interesting to me because I have a close friend who uses hand gestures just about everytime he talks. It's amazing how deeply connected our brain is to the rest of our body. Even something like this is legitimate evidence for the intelligent design of a creator. Next time I am in a conversation I am definitely going to think about the person's motives in using hand gestures, that is wheter they are using them for me or for themselves.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=with-a-wave-of-the-hand

The Benefits of Bleeding

http://discovermagazine.com/1997/dec/thebenefitsofble1308/?searchterm=the%20benefits%20of%20bleeding

Before menopause, women suffer only about half as many heart attacks as men of similar age do. After menopause the statistics balance out because estrogen production drops sharply after menopause, the hormone might somehow help ward off heart disease. The monthly loss of blood may protect women from heart disease and men might benefit by blood donation. Dacid Meyers who is a cardiologist at Kansas University, became interested in a possible link between lossing blood and heart disease. In the survey he followed up on 3855 men and women and they were all over 40. he noted how manydonated blood in the past and how many went on to develop heart disease. He found that men who had donated blood at least once in the last 3 years were 30% less likely to have developed heart disease but he found no difference for women between donors and nondonors. The blood loss also reduces their stires of iron. Women have about half as much iron as men. Iron acts as a catalyst in cholesterol oxidation, transforming cholesterol into a more dangerous molecule. Cholesterol is kind of a mild irritant, but oxidized cholesterol is hust a really nasty irritant. The blood loss does indeed lower the risk of heart disease.

I thought the old women get heart attack easily because of the age before i read this article. If we become healther by doneting blood, we should donete our blood so we are gonna be healther and people who need blood for surgery can fine blood easily.

How Could Explosions cause Brain Injuries without Piercing the Skull?

This article is talking about how people can get brain injuries without actually piercing/damaging their skull. An example used was soldiers. Soldiers can get brain injuries in war without actually getting hit by different pieces of shrapnel. They can get brain injuries from the force of pressure made by the shrapnel or other explosives. If an explosive went off in a close distance from the solider, but it didn’t actually physically hit the soldier, he could still have been hit by the waves of the explosive. The force of pressure could have gone straight through his skull and hit his brain. Scientist Willy Moss and his colleague Michael King proved this at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. They made a three-dimensional simulation of a soldier and had it stand less than 15 feet from an explosive. They used data on blast waves from explosives and properties of the human brain, cerebrospinal fluid, and skull to calculate this experiment. Once the explosive went off Moss stated, “There’s lots of oscillation. The skull is ringing. It’s not pleasant.” He states that the skull is actually flexed and the brain is rippled because the pressure of the blast is so intense. Any change in pressure than our normal atmospheric pressure can do this kind of damage. They then repeated the experiment using helmets that had webbing on the inside. This experiment showed that these helmets actually made more damage to the brain because the helmet trapped the pressure inside and focused the blast. They then tried the experiment with recent helmets with padding on the inside. Even though the pads feel soft, they actually stiffen during the blast causing not only the helmet to flex, but the skull to also. This flexure gets transmitted to your skull. Helmets are still needed though because fragments are still coming after you. This has been proven in the lab and will soon be tested in the field.
I think this article was interesting. When I thought of brain injuries, I thought they were made because of damage done to the skull. It’s interesting to see how waves of an explosive can be so powerful that they actually flex the skull. With all the new technology coming out, we could see how others injuries can come about in the body without the body actually being physically injured. It’s cool.

Five ways to protect yourself and others from swine flu

1. Wash Your Hands
Don’t touch your face. Keep your hands away from your eyes, nose and mouth, because they serve as pathways to viruses. If you must touch your face scrub your hands, including under your fingernails for twenty to thirty seconds. Wash them with hot soap and water because soap has surfactants in it, which is also used in detergent, which will damage fats that protects the virus.

2. Cover your nose and mouth
Sneezes and coughs contain flu viruses and is why they travel as far as three feet. Maintain at least an arm’s length between people with viral sings. To help others when you sneeze or cough cover your mouth and nose with a tissue. Then wash your hands.

3. Use sanitizer
Use alcohol-based sanitizer. About a quarter sized spot, and rub until the sanitizer evaporates completely. Alcohol inactivates viruses by destroying the structure of their proteins.

4. Consider a mask
Surgical masks could be helpful when needed, but they may not be very effective because they filter out water droplets containing the virus. They do little unless hand washing is also frequent. Use facemasks when it is impossible to avoid crowded areas or close contact with infected people, such as caring for a sick family member.

The article could have done a better job thickening the reasoning behind the protection of swine flu, however the just of the protection options are explained in manner that can be circulated and used in public places.

Stress Fractures

Sandra is a patient who claimed to have diabetes. When she saw Mark Siegel she was dressed as any normal person would. He tested her diabetes and glucose level, which was in the normal range. Sandra didn't complain about being thirsty, having tingling feet, or having blurred vision, which are the common factors of a diabetic. She didn't have regular doctor visits like she should have done, instead she had been giving herself insulin shots. Although she claimed she was diabetic, Siegel couldn't find any case of her being diabetic. Sandra made an appointment to see Seigel, but she missed it and the next one.

Sandra came back awhile later without an appointment and a different person. She was rude and dressed inappropiatly. Her glucose level was 250mg per deciliter. Normal glucose is 70-140. Sandra came back for another appointment as a total opposite as she was when Siegel first saw her. She claimed her name was Donald and that she was a male of twenty-two years, who was not a diabetic. Siegel decided to send "Donald" to a psychiatrist. Siegel was coming to the conclusion that Sandra was suffering form multiple personality disorder.

Sandra was admitted into the hospital. Siegel thought her different personalities and glucose level was due to her blood sugar. Sandra can't make the insulin she needs to increase her blood sugar. Sandra was there for two months and was reported to have shown forty different personalities. Siegel never did find the actual reason why Sandra was acting like different people. None of her personalities that claimed to be diabetic free were found to have a glucose level higher then 200. She was released from the hospital and is doing well. She has to have five insulin injections a day and still see Siegel and the psychiatrist. In conclusion, the one thing Siegel did find out about Sandra is that she is diabetic.

I thought this article was very interesting. I never knew that someone could have forty different personalities. I was dissappointed to find out that they couldn't find what was exactly wrong with her. It's strange how something so little can mess you up in such a big way.

http://www.discovermagazine.com/1996/may/stressfractures767

Head Attack

Head Attack
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=head-attack&SID=mail&sc=emailfriend

Summary:

How is your head able to to hurt your heart? Well for example during times of danger the body releases stress hormones, which pour into your blood for the flight or fight response. Stress is also just in everyday life, turning the body into overdrive causing a vicious cycle that can knock us out of our routine giving us more of a chance for arrhythmia (irregular heartbeat). Therefore causing a blockage and most likely later on a heart attack.

It also seems that emotional tension is a significant factor of physical factors. Even Type A personalities are more susceptible to heart attack because their behavior is characterized by ambition, competitiveness and impatience. The agression and hostility sometimes felt by Type As adds more levels of stress at a faster deterioration rate. Anger, depression, hoplessness, and the loss of a loved one can increase the risk of a person getting arrhythmia.

On the bright side, the frontal brain which is important in fibrillation is connected to nerve cell bodies of the sympathetic nervous system in the spinal cord. Meaning we can influence our heart function in a positive way. Another way to slow heart disease, depression and so on is with cognitive behavioral therapy. Along with eating healthy and exercising.

My reaction: I find this article to be a little bit of what I already knew. Of course the brain has some control over the heart, its other things like emotional stuff and stress that adds to the way of the heart... However it was interesting to see in what ways exactly the mind can cause something to happen with the heart, along with the other factors.

The Blind Climber Who “Sees” With His Tongue

Erik Weihenmayer was born with retinoschisis, a disease that is macular degenerative and affects the nerve in the eye. Weihenmayer was completely blind by age thirteen. He had a deep love for climbing and even after going blind he still climbed. In 2001 Weihenmayer was the first and only to date blind man to climb to the summit of Mount Everest.
Now Weihenmayer climbs with the help of a devise called a BrainPort. This tool allows for Weihenmayer to see things with his tongue. People who see with their eyes see things when light hits the retina making electrical impulses and the brain translates them into pictures. The BrainPort takes light and makes it into electrical impulses that stimulate the tongue instead of the retinas and the impulse is sent to the brain and the brain translates them into pictures. Visual inputs are sent from the tongue to the brain in much the same way they would be sent from the eyes of a seeing individual. The tongue is full of tactile nerve endings that can differentiate two points that are less than a millimeter apart.
The information the BrainPort sends to the user is two dimensional. The user sees lines and has to figure out location, dimension, and perspective. When Weihenmayer is climbing with the BrainPort he uses his hand as a scale because he knows its size and distance. He waves his hand in front of the rock that he is reaching for to judge the distance and size.
The BrainPort is a very incredible tool that gives sight to those who would otherwise not be able to see. With the BrainPort Weihenmayer is able to kick a soccer ball back and forth with his daughter from fifteen feet away. He is also able to identify the x’s and o’s in tic-tac-toe. The hard thing for Weihenmayer is to differentiate shadows from objects because the BrainPort is unable to distinguish between them.
Paul Bach-y-Rita a co-creator of the BrainPort believed that one sense could take the place of the other. Kind of like how a blind person can read by using their sense of touch. Bach-y Rita used this idea of substitution to develop the BrainPort. He said that, “We see with our brain and not our eyes.”
The defense advanced Research Agency is also looking into the BrainPort technology and they are funding research for devises that could benefit the military. They want a device that makes it possible for a diver to swim in a straight line in a dense fog at night. Many advancement have been made in this area and are greatly benefiting the blind and military.

Response:
I think that the BrainPort is a great devise that helps those who would otherwise not be able to see anything. It is amazing how the tongue is used to help a blind man see. The idea that the brain uses visual inputs from the tongue and creates an image from them shows how intricate the brain is. I think that it is amazing that people can use their tongue to see when they have lost the use of their eyes.

http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jul/23-the-blind-climber-who-sees-through-his-tongue/?searchterm=the%20blind%20climber

What causes insomnia?

Summary:

During some time during most people's lives, they will deal with trouble sleeping, usually due to stress or pain. Some of these sleep problems turn into insomnia, which is the inability to fall asleep or to have uninterrupted sleep. Some researchers say that a persons attitude about sleep makes them vulnerable to insomnia.


In 2002, The National Sleep Foundation surveyed over a thousand adults and thirty-five percent said that they had problems sleeping within the last year. Of the thirty-five percent, fifteen percent took sleep medication a few times a month. Age does not seem to be a factor, but other research shows that insomnia increases with age.


Many people believe that depression and anxiety cause insomnia. A study that was done shows the risk of developing depression was 39.8 times higher for insomniacs. Another study done shows that too much sleep can cause depression. Combining these two studies, we can say that insomniacs who are depressed get to much sleep. However, it is known that insomniacs don't get enough sleep, so this statement can't be true.


Evidence is showing that insomniacs are actually getting as much sleep as they need, and maybe more. They spend more time in bed that non-insomniacs. They just underestimate the amount of sleep that they get. One cause of insomnia is voluntarily extending your sleep.


So why would someone spend more time in bed that they actually need? It depends on your attitude towards sleep. Charles M. Morin found that insomniacs have stronger beliefs about the affects of insomnia on mental and physical health. Their mood changes more often and they have a lack of energy. People with sleep-onset insomnia (trouble falling asleep) think about worries and problems prior to sleep and think about what happened throughout the day. One night of bad sleep may make someone stay in bed later or take a longer nap. This could make the insomnia chronic.


It is often said that a person needs eight hour of sleep at night. However, sleep is an individual thing and some people may need more or less than eight hours of sleep.


Even after a good night's sleep, a person is still likely to be drowsy early in the morning. However, if you have trouble staying awake throughout the day, then it most likely means you aren't getting good enough sleep. Taking ten minute naps will most likely refresh you, but longer naps will make you have problems sleeping at night. However, if you're tired and can't fall asleep during the day, it's probably fatigue instead of sleepiness. If a person experiences this kind of tiredness with insomnia, this suggests thath a person is getting more sleep than necessary.


There is therapy that can change attitudes about sleep. Insomniacs should practice "sleep hygiene". Sleep restriction could also help. These treatments are more effective and last longer than medication.

My Reaction:
I really liked this article. I never realized that if you have insomnia you could actually be getting more sleep than you really need. I also never realized that too much sleep could cause depression. I think it's really interesting how not every person needs eight hours of sleep a night and that it varies from person to person. I think it's really cool that they have found ways to help insomnia other than medication.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-causes-insomnia

Head Attack

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=head-attack

Summary:
Many patients who enter a hospital with a suspected heart attack have experienced the effects the mind can have on the body. Although these patients felt the same symptoms as a heart attack, a physical cause will not be found. The cause is psychosomatic; however, that does not make them insignificant. There could be many causes for these physical attacks, but the one that stands out is stress. Studies show that every year in the U.S. 1.5 million people have heart attacks, and for more than 200,000, it results in death. It is unclear how many of these are related to stress; however, in a study of how people were feeling and what they were doing soon before a heart attack, a very common factor was emotional stress.
Stress has a great effect on the physical body. When the brain senses danger, it causes the body to prepare for a "fight of flight" reaction. The heart pumps harder and faster and blood vessels constrict. This is a good temporary reaction, and it protects us in dangerous situations. When this happens on a daily basis, however, it can have damaging effects. Everyday events, such as runnning late, can cause our bodies to remain under constant stress. This causes our bodies to "keep working in overdrive", which can lead to problems such as hypertension, arrythmia (irregular heartbeat), or a heart attack.
The method in which a person handles problems can influence that person's risk of a heart attack. Individuals who are typically ambitious, competitive, and impatient are known as having a "Type A personality." These individuals are at a higher risk for having heart attacks than those who do not have those traits. This information was gathered from a study done by Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman of people with Type A personalities. Having a Type A personality does not necessarily increase an individual's lifetime risk, but it increases the likelihood that he will have one soon. Another study done by Bruce C. Jonas and James F. Lando shows that strong emotions, such as anger and depression, also increase the risk of a heart attack.
According to multiple studies, the human mind can highly impact the heart. James A. Blumenthal suggests that relaxation techniques are helpful and can reduce the risk of a heart attack. Another good method is "cognitive behavioral therapy." This is when people concentrate on positive events more than negative events. Relationships are also important in reducing stress levels. Other people can help minimize stress. Two other ways to reduce stress are eating healthy foods and exercising on a regular basis. Both have been proven to improve the stress levels of individuals. Through different studies, specialists have shown that as much as physical health can affect our state of mind, our thoughts and emotions can have a powerful effect on our bodies.


My Reaction:
I have definitely experienced some of the effects stress can have on the physical body. I think it's important that we pay attention to the amount of stress in our lives so we can work on reducing it, therefore lowering the risk of health problems, such as a heart attack. Understanding the significance of stress could potentially prevent many people from having a heart attack, because we can learn techniques to help reduce our stress levels. I hope that as more research is done, more treatments can be found that will help more people live longer, healthier lives.

How we find our identities.

It is a well known fact that teenagers are usually very self conscious. Many wondered why that
might be. A scientist by the name of Sarah Blakemore did a study on this and noticed how when thinking of one's self, a teen tends to think of what other people think of them. She discovered the part of the brain used when thinking of one's identity is the medial prefrontal cortex. (MPFC) In people this part of the brain develops last. This would explain why many teens have a self conscious demeanor. Our feeling of self develops from what others think of us, and what we see in ourselves.

My response:
I thought this article was very interesting because this issue is a problem many teens have today, and it explains it very well. It was very well written and helps the reader understand how the brain works without being confusing. Altogether, an impressive article.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-teenagers-find-themselves

How Down syndrome works against cancer

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/43950/title/How_Down_syndrome_works_against__cancer

How Down syndrome works against cancer

Down syndrome is a result from an extra chromosome. Researchers of cancer believe that the extra chromosome carries a cancer suppressing gene that reduces the possibility of a person with Down syndrome to acquire cancer. A tumor grows rapidly from a blood vessel by mimicking a process called angiogenesis. The researchers believe the extra chromosome makes extra protein for an anticancer effect, which works against the production of angiogenesis. The chromosome has an Endostatin, which also stops the production of angiogenesis. The article said, “A recent study found that people with Down syndrome are only about one-tenth as likely to get a solid-tumor cancer as are people without the syndrome. “ The researchers have done tests on mice and even on fetal tissues. The results came out that those who were injected with Down syndrome had twice as many protein encoded by RCAN1 than normal tissues. “The RCAN1 protein dampens vessel growth by inhibiting the actions of vascular endothelial growth factor, preventing it from instigating a cascade of vessel-growth orders”, says study coauthor Sandra Ryeom of Harvard Medical School. The RCAN1 could be a factor that helps keep cancer away.

Response:
I’ve never really thought about people with Down syndrome not having cancer. It is really a blessing to them, because they already have a major life problem and wouldn’t be able to understand what is happening to them. It is a big help to researchers to study their proteins and maybe in time find a cure for cancer. Maybe by studying Down syndrome it might help find a cure for Down syndrome itself.

The Big Similarities & Quirky Differences between Our Left and Right Brains

While the brain may initially seem like a mass of squishy tissue that can be easily taken apart, it holds the ability to control the body and send out thousands of impulses at once at speeds up to 250 mph. While it was originally thought that humans were uniquely right- or left-brained, but it has more recently been discovered that more animals are also this way, such as parrots, toads, zebra fish, and bees. Lesley Rogers, a biologist at the University of New England in Australia, performed an experiment on chicks while they were still on the eggs. Since most chick embryos have their right eye facing the egg wall, Rogers found if someone shines a light on the egg for an amount of time, the chick will have a more lateralized brain than a chick on whom no light was shone. Other similar experiments were performed on humans and songbirds which, for the sake of time and space, I will not mention here. However, it was discovered that: it is likely while one hemisphere is busy performing a task, the other side relaxes; the front of the brain is usually less synchronized than the back; and the left side deciphers what words and sounds mean, and the right side recognizes the emotion and tone of the words.
While all this seems like it will work out perfectly for ever and ever, amen, there are failures as are always present in our world. There are disorders in which the two hemispheres of the brain are not in sync with each other, such as in dyslexia or Alzheimer's. Nevertheless, it is possible to remove one side and be able to survive with only the other (a lot of physical therapy is needed, no doubt).

My Response
I found this article intriguing because I know the thoughts about how right vs. left brained people think, and I knew there were some differences between the thought patterns of men and women, but beyond this was unknown territory. I learned while the brain is in some ways symmetrical, there are distinct differences not only between each hemisphere but between the front and back as well.

The human brain is directly affected by its immediete surroundings. Scientists have been studying the affects of open spaces or tight surroundings on the brain and people's emotions. Human beings who have alot of space and are not confined to a tight area appear to feel more secure and are less affected by brain activity. On the other hand, people who are in an enclosed space are have a more exaggerated response to brain activity. when scientists had test subjects read traumatic or extreme things, those who were feeling confined or trapped had a much more intense and extreme response, whereas those at a normal state of mind were nearly unaffected.

In another test, the patients were asked questions regarding the health threats of french fries and chocolate, and brown rice and yogurt. The subjects who were in a mental state of relaxation due to the openeness reasoned that the unhealthiness was the same. Those who where primed thought that the chocolate and french fries had more. Lastly, both sets of test subjects where asked questions about their homes. Those who were primed were anxious, but the others were relaxed and unaffected.

Response:
This article was really interesting because of the way that your mental state actually affects how you react physically. It just proves further that what you think about has a profound affect on who you are, what you do, and who you become. It was also interesting to read just how much the sense of security is involved in the descisions we make and how we react to certain things.
. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=arranging-for-serenity&page=1

Does Sleep Make You Smarter?

When we sleep, our brains are active. During the cycles of sleep, our brains process the information we have learned during the day, it makes our memories stronger and eliminates the least important details of the day, and help to solve problems that complex us during the day.

In 2006, Robert Stickold performed an experiment to prove that sleep stabilizes memories. They had the volunteers memorize words in an A-B pattern. Then they let half of the volunteers sleep and kept the other half awake all night. In the morning, they taught them words in an A-C pattern. The group that was able to sleep remembered far more of the A-B pairs than the group that had obtained no sleep.

Besides stabilization, our brains also may be deciding what of the day's information is important to remember and what can be discarded. One study that was conducted tested the memory of neutral objects against a neutral background against emotionally evocative objects. The memory of the neutral objects decreased by 10% only twelve hours later, and the memory of the emotional objects improved in twelve hours. During sleep our memories are recalling and reviewing our memories, which makes them stronger. This also increases the possibility of long-term retention.

Studies have also shown that the popular phrase "sleep on it" may actually be true. In 2007, Jeffery Ellenbogen conducted a study that proved we learn during our sleep. He did a cognitive study use premise pairs that built on each other. They had to learn which pairs to choose (purple ring over brown, brown ring over green, etc). After twenty minutes, the volunteers had still not noticed the hidden theme that one object is superior to another. Twelve hours later, after sleep, they picked the correct superior pair 70% of the time. Therefore, the brain needs longer time to process and piece together information.

My response:

This article was very interesting, but i think that it still lacked some details. Some of these details might not be known yet, but I was curious about some things. How does the brain know what is important? What causes these reactions? The amazement I have for God's creation of the brain has increased since reading this article. Its incredible that our brain can process information to the point of solving problems while we are not even awake.


http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-snoozing-makes-you-smarter

Hiccups

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=this-old-body
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-causes-hiccups

The information in this article summary is from the second half of the article "The Evolutionary Origins of Hiccups and Hernias" and the full response of William A. Whitelaw in "What Causes Hiccups?".


Hiccups vary from short annoyances to long-term, problematic conditions. Persistent or dramatic hiccups can be caused by various disorders. Some causes include expansion of the stomach and movement of stomach acid into the esophagus, disease or irritation in the thorax, irritation of the phrenic nerve, and neurological lesions. Any hiccup, whether from a severe, prolonged problem or a short annoyance, results from a spasm or sudden, strong, contraction of the muscles in the throat and chest. The "hic" sound comes when, after the contraction begins, one sharply inspires air as the epiglottis closes.
Since hiccups are rarely isolated events, but rather occur consistently for quite some time, there is believed to be a "central pattern generator" somewhere in the brain. This means that, like those for breathing, coughing, and walking, there is a neuronal circuit that generates hiccups. The CPG for hiccups is a conditional oscillator because while it sends a reoccurring signal to cause a hiccup, it sends this signal only under certain conditions.
Observations of hiccups in a variety of animals and in the fetus body suggest that the CPG for hiccups comes from a previous stage of evolution. One bodily activity in animals similar to the hiccup in the humans is the tadpoles' use of gill ventilation. The tadpole, with both lungs and gills, cannot suck air into its lungs. The tadpole uses the pressure pump action of the mouth to fill the lungs and to push water through the gills. When breathing air, the tadpole closes its nose, mouth, and passage to the gills in order to compress the mouth cavity and force air into the lungs. It breathes water by closing the glottis and forcing the water out the gills. When pushing water through gills, tadpoles must keep water from the lungs. Therefore, while the tadpole inspires, the glottis closes. This is essentially the same action happening in the human body during a hiccup.
Along with connecting humans to an amphibian history, hiccups demonstrate a connection to a history shared with fish. Major nerves used by humans in breathing are inherited from fish. The phrenic nerves travel from the base of the skull in humans, through the chest cavity, and through the diaphragm. Anything interrupting these nerves can inhibit breathing. If these nerves are irritated hiccups can result. The unfortunate design of humans' phrenic nerves comes from fish who have gills closer to the neck instead of a diaphragm a good distance below it. Humans' shared history with animals like tadpoles and fish seems to reveal once useful and necessary mechanisms that now cause unnecessary, annoying, and even problematic issues.

The discussions in the two articles I read are presented in a clear and extreme evolutionary perspective. The arguments and information in the articles have challenged me to think of an adequate response correctly defending my faith and belief in creationism. I believe God created each species of animal as unique from other species and humans as different from all other animals. Different living species, as this article discusses, have evident similarities in both structure and function. While this may seem to point to evolution, I believe this fact shows that the essentially same structure or action used to help one living thing can create problems for another. This structure or action did not evolve from one creature to another, but is rather used in a different way producing different effects. I believe the authors of these articles stress ways similar structures and actions in animals and humans cause problems for humans. However, they neglect to discuss potential problems similar elements could cause in the animals. The articles discuss the mechanisms and structures involved in hiccups which are logical and useful in amphibians and fish, while cumbersome in humans. I find myself wondering if there are structures or mechanisms afflicting an animal species while similar structures or mechanism cause no such harm in humans.
The idea that an element similarly found in two different beings could cause harm to one and help another seems to reflect a larger connotation involving various aspects of life. For example, just as the same mechanism that helps tadpoles breathe causes unwanted hiccups, the same mouth that speaks kind, uplifting words can tear someone down with unkind, harmful words. Our creator choose to use similar elements in different species of his creation. The mechanisms useful for the tadpole and the nerve logical for the fish are both seen in the humans with seemingly less use and logic. Our creator also choose to give each person the ability to use his or her mind, mouth, and tongue to speak both kind and harmful words. The same mouth used kindly can be seen at a different time used harmfully. While our hiccups are not a matter of free will and personal choices, they can be seen, like unkind words, as an unbeneficial use of a mechanism that can be beneficial in other circumstances.

The Brain

The human brain appears to be two separate brains glued together. When the corpus callosum is cut, people wonder why we have two hemispheres in the first place.
Many scientists believe that human symmetry is linked withy our “evolutionary history”. They believe that there was one common ancestor that caused symmetry in most living organisms. Other truths hold that symmetry is imperative for survival. With muscles and bones on each side of the body, animals and people can move more efficiently and quickly. Symmetry also allows for one side of the body to pick up the slack if the other is weak. Many prey animals use the different sides of their brain to do different things. For example, a chicken uses the left part of their brain to look for food and the right to look for predators. They can do this because each hemisphere controls one side of the body.
There are other indications of why we have two hemispheres. Many people prefer to use one side of their body over the other and are considered left brained if they are more logical and right brained if they are more emotional.
Even though the brain has two seemingly identical hemispheres, each half is not responsible for the same functions. The way the two halves are connected to each other is also different in different regions of the brain. The front halves have looser connections between them than the back, because the front is responsible for thought and ideas and the back is in control of sight and hearing. These functions call that the two sides work together, so the connections between them must be stronger. The brain’s two sides work very well together. For example, the left side of the brain interprets sounds and words in a conversation, and the right side interprets the way the sounds and words were presented. This is why it is so remarkable that that a young child can survive with only one hemisphere. An adult cannot because they cannot break the habit of using both sides of their brain and a child can. Our symmetry seems to be at the very core of our existence.

http://http://discovermagazine.com/2009/may/15-big-similarities-and-quirky-differences-between-our-left-and-right-brains

I thought this article was very interesting and thought is was cool about how well the two hemispheres can work together. The only thing that I didn’t agree with was the whole evolutionary history thing. How can scientists look at something as complex as the human brain and not realize that it was designed?

Why Babies don't Talk like Audults

We often don't ask ourselves why babies don't speak like all adults. It is commonly believed that children learn to talk by imitating what they hear from other, older people. However, the theory that babies simply copy and regurgitate what the hear does not explain why young children are not as articulate as adults. Babies and toddlers often talk in one or two word phrases like, "Me want cookie" or "kittie"; most adults speak in complex, grammatically correct sentences, making it unlikely that babies copy exactly what they hear, because if they did, they too would speak in complex, multi-word sentences. Over the years, scientists have produced two possible theories hoping to explain why young toddlers speak in short phrases if they are in fact coping what they hear. One such theory is called the mental developmental hypothesis which says that babies speak in "baby talk" because their brains are immature and cannot process complex adult speech.This hypothesis states that babies don't speak more complicated sentences until their brains are ready and more mature. The second theory, the stages-of-language hypothesis, says that the levels of progress in child speech are necessary stages in language development. Basically, children will not speak in multi-word, complex sentences until they have first mastered small, basic phrases and sentences and have learned a certain number of words. The main difference between the mental development hypothesis and the stages-of-language hypothesis is that with the mental development theory, the patterns in learning how to talk are directly related to the child's level of mental development and maturity, while with the stages-of-language theory, learning a language should not depend on the child's level of mental development, but on time.
In 2007, researchers studied adopted children from non-English speaking countries and found that even older children with more mature brains than babies first spoke in single words and short phrases.Compared to children born in the United States, the children adopted from non-English speaking countries started putting words into complex sentences around the same as native born children, and this was once their vocabularies reached the same size. Scientists do, however, acknowledge that there is a period when children are younger that makes learning a new language easier compared to older adults trying to learn a new language. This discovery-that is is not whether your brain is more mature but how many words you know- explains why babies do not talk as articulately as adults. It is not because their brains are immature but that babies have just begun learning words and need time to build their vocabularies.
I never really wondered why babies and toddlers don't talk like adults, and I found this article very interesting because it attempted to explain why this is. I think the fact that non-English speaking adopted children and American born children both starting speaking when their vocabularies were the same size shows that there is truth in the stages-of-language hypotheses. Like anything people do, whether learning a language or learning a sport, one can't move onto the next stage before first mastering the first stage. I do, however, believe that learning how to speak and how quickly it happens has something to do with babies' brains and how developed they are, and I also believe that there is a critical learning period that makes learning to speak or read easier for children than for adults.

Autism Genes that control Early Learning

Autism is a mental disorder where the people have trouble with communication, doing things repeatedly, and it causes antisocial behavior. Every year 150 babies are born with autism in the United States.
The Children's Hospital Boston has scientists who discovered six more genes. They hadn't been linked to autism in the past. The things wrong with them were usually due to deletion, mainly of the genes that help in smooth connections. These genes help to create a tight and smooth connection between nerves in the brain. These genes also deal with learning and responses to the world/environment.
This discovery shows that with an early diagnosis of autism followed by treatment can improve the affects of autism. They use behavioral therapy and enriched environments for learning at a young age in hopes to strengthen the connections in the brain. The mutations damage the connections in the brain during a crucial age of development. Since only part of the gene is deleted, not all of the DNA, it's possible that some of the function can be regained. It has been shown that children with autism improve when they are put in places where repetitive learning happens. This trains the neurons not missing to pick up the slack from the deleted neurons.



This article gives hope to families who have a baby diagnosed with autism. There isn't a cure for autism, so anything that would improve the situation would do wonders for a family. This article hits home for me. I have an eighteen year old autistic sister. She functions pretty well, but still is hard to manage at times. She has gotten semi worse as she grew older. This article makes me wonder how she would be different if she had received treatment when she was first diagnosed. Would it have helped her or done nothing? I will never know how it would be if she was different. God had some other plan for her, me, and my family.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=autism-genes-that-control

Postpartum Depression Affects More than Just Mothers

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=misery-in-motherhood

My Summary:
Postpartum Depression is a condition that plagues women worldwide. While the cause is not fully known, some experts believe that Postpartum Depression is possibly caused by the dramatic hormone fluctuations that occur in a woman after delivery. Whatever the cause, Postpartum Depression can weaken the natural bond between a mother and her child. Studies suggest that a weak bond between mother and child can cause the child to be more passive, insecure and socially inhibited; although in most cases a child’s intellectual development is not affected. Because of this, Psychologists and Psychiatrists focus on strengthening the bond between mother and child when treating Postpartum Depression.
In general, women seem to be most susceptible to depression in their reproductive years. Consequently rates of the disorder are higher in women ages twenty-five to forty-five. New data states that the incidence of depression rises modestly after giving birth. Patricia Dietz of the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention stated that 10.4 percent of mother had been depressed in the nine months following childbirth and 8.7 percent of women had been depressed in the nine months before pregnancy as well as 6.9 percent during pregnancy. This data suggests that a previous occurrence of depression may be the biggest risk factor in acquiring the illness postpartum.
Of course the hormonal change that occurs after pregnancy does not fully explain postpartum depression. The demands of motherhood may also play a role in the illness. Many women feel exhausted from the lack of sleep and can become overwhelmed by child care duties. But the consequences of depression reach beyond the mother and affect the child. If a mother is overwhelmed by depression it prevents her from properly caring for her child; causing her not to perceive her child’s cries, smiles, gestures and other attempts to communicate with her. Ergo infants of depressed mothers look at their mothers less often and show fewer signs of positive emotion than do babies of mentally healthy moms.
Studies show that infants develop essential social skills in months two through six, building relationships with their mothers as well as other people. A child of a depressed mom may be at risk for social phobia which can be disastrous for their social development. While postpartum gloom does not usually have a long-lasting affect on a child’s development it impairs the child’s ability to bond with its mother and others.
Because of the fear of being judged by family members and others in society, many women shy away from getting treatment for their Postpartum Depression. Many new mothers require medication or Psychotherapy. The newest kind of treatment is that which also involves the child. Psychotherapy involves video intervention therapy which helps mothers to correctly perceive their infant’s behavior by recording and analyzing it. Video intervention therapy also helps mothers to feel better about their actions.
Most mothers can take steps to ease the emotional burden of having a child by asking for help from family and friends. It also helps mothers to sleep more, spend time with their spouse and getting out of the house can also help a depressed mother to not put pressure on herself. Usually mothers who receive adequate treatment recover completely within two months of starting treatment. Some mothers even emerge from their depression with a new sense of clarity and zest for life.
My Opinion: I believe that this article sheds some much needed light on a disease that is often frowned upon in today’s society, especially among Christians. When most people think of Postpartum Depression they think only of the mother. I never really thought about how it could affect the child. I think that many people frown on the illness because of all of the bad press it gets in the news with depressed mothers harming their children and such. This article allowed me to understand the reasons why a mother may become depressed and the alternatives mothers have to combat their depression. I feel a little more enlightened on the subject of Postpartum Depression and will be less inclined to judge it.

When Sleep becomes Violent

Summary:
Normally, we cycle through two stages of sleep throughout the night: REM and NREM. REM sleep stands for rapid eye movement, and NREM is non-rapid eye movement sleep. We do most of our dreaming during REM sleep, and although we are moving in our dreams, our real bodies are basically paralyzed, a condition known as atonia. Only our eyes move, darting around as if watching the scenes from our mind. Even though our bodies lie motionless, our minds are just active as if we were awake.
In NREM sleep, an EEG--electroencephalogram--will show decreased brain activity.
There is, nevertheless, a condition called parasomnia which occurs between wakefulness and deep sleep in NREM sleep, and produces those famous activities such as sleep walking and talking. If one is woken from the former, he or she will be confused and disoriented, which is why people are advised not to wake them. The person will also not be able to recall their dream in the slightest amount.
There is a step beyond parasomnias, however: RBD, or REM sleep behavior disorder. When a person has this, he will literally act out his dream, as in the case of one man who dreamed he was playing baseball again. In his dream, saw the ball coming at him, and reached out for it. Next thing he knew was he was on the floor next to his bed and had nearly put his hand through the wall. Doctors usually connect this disorder with a degenerative neurological condition.
Although simply acting out the dream is not the whole story. People also tend to display Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde type behavior—they may be kind in the waking world but say profanities and be belligerent in the sleeping one. In fact, this is usually the case with people diagnosed with RBD.
A polysomnogram, a test that employs sensors placed over muscles, is used to show if movements are interrupting the normal REM sleep stage. In the case of the man who dreamed of playing baseball, doctors discovered through the test that he did in fact have RBD. While there is no known cure for this disorder, doctors do know how it happens and have medication for it, a drug similar to Valium by the name of clonazepam.

Response:

I thought it interesting when I saw the title of this article, because I did not know one could be so violent while asleep. Sure, I thought, people toss around in bed, but to hit someone, all because of a dream was a different story (the wife of the baseball man in the article had actual bruises from him striking out at her.) It is comforting to know that there is a known cause for RBD and a drug for it, so that people with the disorder will not have to hear the words, “We don’t know what’s wrong with you.” Although it will be a hard road, I am sure researchers will be able to discover a cure for REM sleep behavior disorder.

Brain, Heal Thyself

In our bodies, organs have their own stem cells that replace injured and dead cells. But according to the conventional wisdom, the brain doesn't have stem cells. Instead, nature gives us need replacement. Nevertheless, the conventional wisdom on brain stem cell is changing these day. Samuel Weiss and other researchers maded mouse brain cells act like stem cells in the experiment. The result is that it can be possible to get cell in brain to act like stem cells for only one day. In 1992, Evan Snyder and his colleagues had removed stemlike cells from the newborn mice' brain. Snyder said that his manipulated cells meet the requirements of true stem cell. They can reproduce and maintain themselves, and they can give rise to all the major cell types in the brain. The marked cells had indeed differentiated in to neurons and other brain cells. After differentiating, the cell stopped dividing, just like normal brain cells because of some innate brain signal that dampens division. Snyder had found that his implanted cells could repair some kinds of brain damage. The cells get injured easily when the oxygen supply is cut off. Normal mature brain cells lost the ability to respond to brain signals, or the signals may have been suppressed. Snyder and his colleagues used stem cells to gene therapy. They put a gene into the cells that codes for an enzyme missing. The enzyme breaks down a cellular waste product in brain. The waste accumulates if there is no enzyme and it causing severe mental retardation and death. Snyder found the genetically enginered cells began producing the enzyme at levels thought to be sufficient to alleviate symptoms of the disease. The stem cells might naturally tend to spread and produce their crucial enzyme throughout the damaged brain. Weiss injection of egf into mouse brains spurred the growth of new neurons. These cells spread into regions near the subependmal layer and the striatum. This is so improtant because in people with Huntington's disease, neurons in this region die. The gap between experiments with mice and human cell therapy for brain damage is huge. Snyder and Weiss' experiment show us the human brain has the protenial to repair itself, and brain may have stem cells.


http://discovermagazine.com/1996/aug/brainhealthyself847/?searchterm=brain heal thyself

The Inner Savant

http://discovermagazine.com/2002/feb/featsavant/?searchterm=the%20inner%20savant

Summery

An autistic savant is a rare condition marked by severe mental and social deficits but also a mysterious talent that appears spontaneously usually before the age of six. Autism is thought to occur during early brain development when neurons connect at random causing problems in the cerebellum with processing information and movement. Problems also occur in the limbic region which causes problems with processing experiences and emotions. When autistic children see an object they do not see the object as a whole, but rather the individual parts that make up the object.

Only one out of every ten autistic child is considered to be a savant. There are many different kinds of savant some can play a song on the piano perfectly after hearing it only once, some can multiply massive numbers together in a matter of seconds, some are artistic , and some are calendar savants and when they are given a date they can tell you what day of the week it fell on. A savant named Nadia at the age of three could draw an amazing picture of a horse from memory. When she went to draw it she did not start with the basic shape, but the details of the horse like his hoofs and mane and then drew the basic shape to connect all of the details together. This show that she saw not just a picture of a horse, but all of the components that make up the picture of the horse.

Allan Snyder, a physicist in Australia suggests that everyone has the capacity to obtain savant like skills, but we are unable to access them. When people who are not autistic see an object they just see the object as a whole and not all of the different components that make it up. Some people have been able to obtain savant like skills only under certain conditions. People who have frontotemporal dementia, a degenerative brain disease, which usually hits people who are around fifties or sixties, are able show savant like qualities in the areas of music and art. Even though they gain these new talents their disease makes them lose their ability to speak, read, and write. The only thing that they have in common with savants besides the ability is the decrease in blood flow and slowed neuronal firing in the left temporal lobe.

One reason why savants have these amazing abilities is because they process things differently and they see things differently. If a child who is not autistic is told to copy a picture of an optical allusion they would get frustrated and would be unable to draw it. An artistic savant would look at the picture and see the individual components that make up the picture. Sometimes artist who are having a hard time drawing an object will look at it upside down so that the do not see the object any more, but rather the components that make up the object, kind of like how a savant sees an object. People who are autistic have a single-minded drive. They can do the same thing over and over without getting bored. So those who are savants are able to practice there ability without getting bored, but getting better at what they do.

An autistic researcher did an experiment on seventeen people to see if they could perform savantlike tasks. The researchers inhibited their neural activity in the frontotemporal area. Only five out of the seventeen people improved in there tasks, but not at a savantlike level. This can expected because savants have repetitive practice of their skill. Researchers hope that one day that there will be a device that could help people tap into their creative abilities that they do not have access to.

Response

I think that the abilities that savants have are amazing, some of them can’t even tie their shoes, but can play a song on the piano after only hearing it once. One of the savants that I found most interesting was a boy who could stand in a room that is full of speakers and find were the sweat spot, the spot where the sound from different sources hits both of your ears at the same time, is. I also thought that it was amazing that researchers could get savant like responses from people who are not autistic. I think it is interesting that some day they want to make a device that could give great creative abilities to people who are not savants.

From Noisy Eyeballs to Regulating Information Flow in the Brain.

R. Douglas Fields is a Neuroscientist that found out a lot about his area of study by studying a disfunction of his own brain. His disfunction was that he literally had noisy eyeballs. The problem, despite the fact that this was not normal, was that he was the only one who could hear his eyes move. The Neuroscientist was lucky to know a professor who had insight the scientist's problem. His problem was that his nucleus accumbens were smaller then normal. Now the nucleus accumbens are like the fliter of sensory input for the brain. With sound it helps fliter to what a person whats to hear and pay attention too. So for example, when your on a basketball court for your team you can still very clearly make out the coaches voice despite numerous more equally as loud voices. Or another example is when you talk on a cell phone in a nosy enviorment but you still only hear the person your talking too. This "zoneing out" of what you dont want to hear is credited to the nucleus accumbens. When this is smaller it cant block out all the sounds, so therefore unwanted noise is heard. Even interal bodly noises such as the noise of muscles pulling on the eyeball. A key component of the nucleus accumbens is serotonin which modulate's its activity. Moreover the Neuroscientist published his story and got many email replies back from people with similar, sometimes more sereve cases of his disfunction. In particular one person sent him an article from a scientific magazine that was inspired for the scientists own article. This article suggested sulfites were the problem. This hypothothis came about given the fact that sulfites, which are used as preservities for food, block enzymes that are very similar to the enzymes that are key in the production of serotonin. Therefore sulfites could impair the production of serotonion thus hurting the nucleus accumbens. But at this time this is only a possible theory. More scientific research is needed to find out more.

I thought this article was very intresting. Learning about the nucleus accumbens was fascinating as I never knew that our "zoneing out" of noses was actually a function of the brain that could be impared. I cant imagine not being able to block things out. It is also intresting to hear that we can hear many bodly noises but our nucleus accumbens just block the noises out.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=noisy-eyeballs-regulating-information-brain

Does Exercise Really Make You Healthier?

Many people workout for various reasons such as: to lose weight, become healthier, or just to become more active. Mostly everyone has worked out sometime in their life, but when we workout do we ever think how it is affecting the body? How exercise can not only make us stonger, but help prevent us from various diseases? Most people when they workout don't think of these things. While some people think exercise makes you healthier, others think there is no purpose to exercising. This article shows some benefits to exercising. Exercise is good for the heart and blood vessels. Exercising lowers the risk for heart disease in many ways. When a person exercises, their heart is pumping faster casing more blood to be forced through the arteries. This forceful pumping causes changes in the autonomic nervous system that controls the contraction of the heart. Thus leads to lower resting heart rates which in return lowers the risk of cardiovascular diseases. Exercise also heightens the cardiovascular health by decreasing the plasma triglycerides, fatty molecules in the
blood that are associated with plaque build-up in the arteries. Exercise reduces low-density lipoprotein, bad cholesterol, and increases the amounts of high-density lipoprotein, good cholesterol, which occurs as less artery clogging. Exercise also lessens the risks to some cancers. Physical activity affects your body weight, said Albanes a researcher. Leaner people have lower circulating levels of insulin. People who are overweight develop insulin-resistance where the cells no longer respond to glucose, a primary energy source. When this happens, the pancreas produces great amoutns to try to absorb more glucose, causing higher levels of insulin which can be connected to some forms of cancer like colon cancer. Exercising also builds strong bones. Laying on the couch all day is making your bones not work, and your bones
not working are more open to fractures. Bones become stronger when more weight is forced on them causing the muscles to contract more to exert force on this particular area of your body. Exercising also wards off type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is where your body isn't producing
enough insulin so other tissues can't absorb glucose from the blood cauing nerve and blood vessel damage. Physical activity reverses this affect. Exercising causes the muscle to contract which heighten the production of an enzyme called adenosine momophosphate-activated kinase (AMPK) which promotes the breakdown of the fats with the cell glucose transporters. Finally exercising promotes weight loss. Exercising causes calories to be burned which loses weight. You can't just exercise to see these results though. You have to learm to eat a balanced diet on a regular basis. working out causes us to be physically and potentially mentally stronger.
I think this article was well written and explained each benefit of exercising well. It explained how each thing/benefit worked by using the inside of the body and the heart and blood blow from exercising. I think this article was really cool and jumped out to me. Playing basketball is exercising on a regular basis, and i never thought that it could prevent certain types of cancer and diabetes. It's amazing to see how working out regularly can help increase your health
and stenghten your body. Each part of the human body has a specific purpose and exercising help make it do it's job regularly. It's been shown that someone who exercises regularly can live up to 7 years longer than a couch potato. It's amazing to see how exercise can really affect you mentally and physically.

Fact or Fiction? Babies Exposed to Classical Music End Up Smarter

The Mozart effect invokes the image of a pregnant woman playing classical music over her belly in hopes to improve her unborn child’s intelligence. In one study scientist used thirty-six college-aged kids to perform several spatial reasoning tasks after listening to one of Mozart’s relaxing sonatas. One of these tasks was to determine what a paper ,that had been folded several times and then cut, might look like when unfolded. The students that had listened to Mozart displayed a significant improvement in their performance by eight to nine spatial IQ points.

In sixteen studies related to the Mozart effect, it shows the only task that showed significant improvment was the paper-folding task. One scientist attributes it to the natural variability a person experiences between two test settings.

Scientist, Rauscher, doesn’t see how the two are connected saying, “I think parents are very desperate to give their own children every single enhancement that they can.” On the other hand, others still argue for the power of music saying that music has tremendous organizational quality to the brain. Some physicians use music therapy to aid children with dyslexia, ADD, and autism because they believe that music that is not very emotional or rhythmic can modulate mood and alleviate stress. They also believe it improves our ability to be intelligent. In Georgia and Florida, daycare centers went as far as to required classical music to be played while the children slept.

Rather than passively listening to music, Rauscher advices putting instuments into childrens hands to improve cognitive abilities. Phychologist Chabris goes even further to say that just playing the symphonies of a long-dead Austrian composer takes away from beneficial interaction that may be truly beneficial for the children.



http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=fact-or-fiction-babies-ex



Response:

I had always heard that listening to classical music can improve our intellegent. After thinking about it, I do not think it is true, but I do believe that playing an intrument can. Since I am in band, I know that to play music you must actively think about what each notes is, how it will sound, and how to play it. When it comes down to it, I believe it is being the type of parent that would play the music for their child. The type of parent that would care enough to try. I guess you could say, it really is the thought that counts.

Existing Drug Reverses a Form of Mental Retardation in Mice

Researchers report that if a study on mice holds true, a drug used for a completely different purpose could be used to treat a kind mental retardation linked to autism.

A medication, used by doctors for patients whose bodies may reject new organs in their bodies due to transplants, is used by scientists learning disorders by the name of tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) in mice. This disease is a rare genetic disorder that causes tumors, seizures, sores, and learning issues in 50,000 people in the US and 1,000,000 people in the whole world.

Half of everyone with TSC have autism, and 1 in 5 suffer from mental retardation. A neurobiologist, Alcinco Silva, says that the hope is that this medication (rapamycin) can be used to treat learning issues and short-term memory problems in all kinds of autism as well.

Silva and coworkers removed a copy of the gene TSC2 from mice (if both are removed the mice die short after birth) to have them be born with TSC. When both genes are there, in both mice and humans, the make proteins that aid innerve connections that help the brain learn.

The mice with TSC had issues in various learning tests. In the mice "learning and memory are disrupted just like they [are] affected in most patients with TSC," says Silva.

Their reason for using rapamycin, says Silva, is that it regulates the same proteins the TSC gene does, just in different parts of the body. When they tried the medication on animals 3-6 months old (far into adulthood for mice) it leveled the defferences between TSC and regular mice in as short as 3 days.

"What was surprising is that we could give rapamycin to adult mice and reverse their condition," says Silva. "We did not know...that this drug would be equally effective for the learning disabilities" because it is for tissue rejection.

For transplant patients rapamycin cost aroun $1,000 a month. It suppresses the immune system, thus the following side effects come about: impaired wound healing, infections, mouth sores, and skin cancer (rare instances).

SIlva also says that thye have "early, positive signs" from the mice models that rapamycin can help treat kidnye tumors, skin lesions, and the other effects associated with TSC. A director of a TSC Clinic, David Franz, has reported that the medicine reduced kidney and brain tumors in small clinical trials he has conducted.

Scientists were also able to reverse mantal retardation in mice suffering from fragile X syndrome and Rett syndrome. Put together and these results suggest that researchers are finding the brains malfunctions causing autism and thus might find a way to reverse them.

These studies "suggest that we're about to have a paradigm shift in how we look at developmental disorders, like autism," Silva explains.Silve believes these learning disabilities can be eliminated by altering the brain's biochemistry, so the illnesses should no longer be seen as something a person is born with.

Franz agrees that this medication can modify TSC, but thinks that Silva is over-estimating it insaying that it will work for all autism sufferers. Franz says, "You might make them better, but I don't think you're going to normalize them."

At the University of Cambridge in England, the next step, being clinical trials of rapamycin in human TSC sufferers, is already underway.


My Response:

I always thought that mental retardation was permanent and that there was no chance of reversing it. I am glad to say that this article totally changes this thought. This gives new hope to possibly "curing" mental retardation and autism. This research could lead to a way of making the mentally disabled have a possibility of fully living independent lives. This could be a bit of an exageration..but this research and experimentation definately opens a whole new world of possibilities for brain malfunctions and learning diasabilities.


http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=existing-drug-reverses-a

Simple Salves for Severe Brain Injuries

Summary

Imagine that you or a loved one is involved in a car crash, and the impact produced a severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). The extent of the damage is unknown at this point, but there is unconsciousness and lasting brain damage. Wouldn't you want doctors in the intensive care unit (ICU) to be able to treat you right away? Well, scientists and doctors are coming close to that with new healing methods. This article discusses how the "simple salves for traumatic brain injuries" work and what they do to the brain.

After a sever TBI, blood vessels can bleed into the brain, raising the pressure inside the skull. These vessels may even dilate to feed oxygen-starved brain, regions, increasing the brain volume which increases the pressure. This pressure build-up may even cause the brain to be pushed through the only available hole, at the base of the skull, crushing the brain stem and killing the patient. The doctors must slow metabolism and thereby reduce the brain's demand for oxygen rich blood. A new technique doctors are using is called hypothermia therapy. This is when doctors inject chilled saline or cover a patient with a blanket that circulates cool water, "quieting" the brain by lowering the patient's body temperature. The cooling acts as a "brake" on cellular metabolism. A 2007 analysis by the Brain Trauma Foundation suggested that hypothermia therapy had little or no effect on the survival rate of TBI victims, but it did improve their mental capacity and responsiveness.

Another concern to TBI victims is the release of biological poisons that ooze out of ruptured neurons and cause serious problems on neighboring cells. You can monitor the chemical imbalances by performing an analysis on extracted fluid from inside the skull. But doctors want to prevent the release of these toxins. Biomedical engineer Richard Borgens of Purdue University and his colleagues are developing a method that repairs cell membranes using polyethylene glycol, which is bicycle tire sealant. They did tests on brain-injured rats and found that the rats that received injections of polyethylene glycol navigated mazes more proficiently than ones that didn't receive the injection. Scientists do not know if the same thing will happen in humans, but they hope it will.

Doctors hope that advances in intensive care for TBI victims will reduce the long term effects of their brain injury. New discoveries, that will only occur through more research, will improve the lives of brain injury victims each year.

My Response

This article game me a little bit of an idea of how difficult and stressful a brain surgeon's line of work is. There's so much they must be concerned with. The new potential healings discussed in the article are quite fascinating. The fact that bicycle tire sealant can be used as a method for repairing damaged cell membranes is remarkable. I really enjoyed reading about this article. It was well written and easy to understand. I look forward to seeing what progress is made in the treatment of traumatic brain injury victims.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=simple-salves

Touch DNA

Summery

The touch DNA method was discovered in the past five years. The method acquired the name “touch DNA,” because of the fact that it examines skin cells left behind on various objects, weapons, and victims the assailants touched at the crime scene.

The method of touch DNA has drastically improved the number of items of evidence that can be used in DNA detection. In the 1980s, to be able to perform a DNA analysis, forensic investigators had to have a blood or semen stain approximately the size of a quarter. In the 1990s the size of the sample needed dropped to about the size of a dime; after that they just needed a sample big enough to see, “if you can see it, you can analysis it.” With the touch DNA method you don’t have to be able to see the sample; it only requires seven or eight cells from the outermost layer of skin.

Here is how the DNA touch method works:

1) First, investigators recover cells from the crime scene by swabbing objects, victims, articles of
clothing, and other things that were or may have been touched by the assailants.

2) Next, a process called polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, is used to generate several copies of
the genes.

3) Then scientists add in fluorescent compounds which then attach themselves to thirteen
specific locations on the DNA resulting in a very specific genetic portrait of that person.

The entirety of the process takes a few days.

The thirteen specific locations, to which the copied genes that are mixed with the fluorescent compounds, were intentionally chosen because they vary greatly from person to person and to not give away specific information like race, genetic diseases, gender, or personal health. The reason behind this being: authorities don’t want individuals’ personal health information to be used for law-enforcement purposes, like interrogations. The chances of two people having the same DNA profiles are extremely small.

My Response: I think it’s very beneficial that the touch DNA method only requires seven or eight skin cells as opposed to the methods in the 1980s and 1990, which required a sample of blood or semen the size of a quarter and later a dime. In some cases blood or semen may not be present at the scene of the crime. God made each of us differently; we all have our different DNA’s for example and this can be used to help fight crime. It’s just neat to see another reason/aspect as to why God made us all unique and different; clearly this is not the only reason why God gave us all our own DNA, but it is just gives us a little more insight to the human body and why God designed it the way he did.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=experts-touch-dna-jonbenet-ramsey

Hannah Eastwood

Can a Walk a Day Keep Alzheimer's Away?

Alzheimers is a horrible disease that many people are at risk of. five million people have Alzeimers disease and ten million boomers are at risk for memory problems. Although medicine seems to always be the answer, scientists have found a non-medical way that could reduce risk factors for dementia, which is a form of Alzheimers. That non-medical way is to exercise. Studies show that adults who are more active in their lifestyles have a lower risk of dementia. Some of the activities that were tested were; swimming, walking, and ballroom dancing. Nicola Lautenschlager at the University of Western Australia studied 170 older people. Sixty percent of the people had a condition that seemed to be the beforehand of Alzheimers. The study went on for six months.
The study consisted of three fifty minutes of some sort of exercise each week. The study divided people into two groups. One group consisted of people who were already doing fifty minutes of exercise per week. The other group had people who were informed about health education. The group who had the people who were already exercising were asked to exercise for an additional fifty minutes per week for this study. By the end of the six months, the exercisers improved on an a long-term measure of cognitive abilities. The group of people who had a little bit of cognitive also improved. Aerobic exercise seemed to improve establishable cognitive abilities. The exercisers maintained a ten percent vantage on the cognitive scores and had less of a decline in memory measure a year after the study was over.This study is very important because it shows how exercise can benefit cognition in older adults with memory problems within an 18 month range. Although this test may seem to show that exercise can help reduce dementia, the effect size shown was too small for a persom to notice a change.

I thought this article was very imspiring. Scientists trying to find a way to postpone Alzheimers without using medicine shows that people don't always have to realize on medicine. I think that trying something other then the same thing (medicine) would get more people to really start thinking about their health and what can happen. I feel like this article is a good way to make people realize they should start exercising. Not only is it healthy for them, it could also save their memory. I am interested to see if they can actually get a better result if they double or triple the size of the groups.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=fitness-and-the-brain

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=fitness-and-the-brain

Set in Our Ways: Why Change is So Hard

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=set-in-our-ways&print=true

Many people dream of doing something adventurous when they reach around the age of 20. They are often very willing to experience new things. When a person is past the early 20's, however, hia openness to change becomes less, and he tends to be more resistant. This often happens with any cultural background. Even though people become more resistant to change as they age, many still say they want change. Although this is the case, they typically won't make it happen. Researchers believe that this may partially be caused by unrealistic expectations and a numerous amount of responsibilities.
Openness to new experiences is one personality trait of the "Big Five", according to psychologists. Extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism are the others. Although there is disagreement about the amount of change of these personality traits in adulthood, most research agrees that openness decreases. A survey that evaluated the Big Five traits in people ages 21 to 60 was taken by more than 130,000 people. The results suggested that while women begin adulthood less open to new experiences than men, men often decline in openness quicker than women in their 30's.
Even though 30 is often associated with this change, it happens gradually over the coarse of many years. Almost everyone experiences this change, no matter the individual's personality. One can get an idea of how open he might become by looking at his childhood. A study done by psychologist Richard W. Robins showed that children who are very adventurous will continue to try new experiences as adults.
Psychologist and personality researcher Rainer Riemann suggests that adults from every culture face similiar loads and expectations. These include marriage, an occupation, and often children. Such responsibilities take devotion and regulation, and they may hinder a change in personality. At this stage of life, new experiences might be exciting, but they would likely bring insecurity. Brain researcher Gerhard Roth states that the brain constantly tries to form habits which bring pleasure as well as a sense of comfort and safety.
According to psychologist Brent W. Roberts, young adulthood is when most personality changes occur. Minor ones may take place past the age of 30, but one's personality becomes increasingly sound until the age of 60, which is about when most people have completed their lifetime commitments, such as a career and raising children. This allows them to again open their minds to new experiences.
WHen people look to accomplish major changes in their lives, they often fail. Psychologists Janet Polivy and C. Peter Herman have named it "false hope syndrome". People often attempt making changes in their lives, yet they don't get anywhere, many times because their expectations are too high. Trying to accomplish too much too fast will set anyone up for failure. The key is to make reasonable goals and understand the difficulty of the challenge.

My Response:
This article brought up some points that really made me think about how much I accept change and how the people I know accept change. I tend to agree with what the article says about how young adults seem to seek adventure while older people who have settled down have done exactly that - settled down. But I, personally, think that sometimes it's hard for people to change, because they associate what they do with who they are. That's what people expect of them because "that's who they are". But I think we can encourage each other to help people achieve their goals. It's easier for anyone to take one step at a time when someone is beside him, cheering him on.

Are Immune System Molecules Brain-Builders---And Destroyers?

Summary

A group of scientists from Stanford University, about five years ago, wanted to see how the developing of the brain starts the last set of synapses. A synapse is when cells in the nervous system converse with each other and with cells that are not of the nervous system. When the scientists tried to find the genes involved, they found something they did not expect: they found a gene, C1q, which is a protein important for the immune system.

Before this, it was believed that the brain had no immune cells. Scientists have discovered that these molecules exist and that they have an important role there. Experts say that these findings help show they way the brain works and why disorders such as autism and Alzheimer's disease occur and that this could help find new therapies to treat them.

Lisa Boulanger, a neurobiologist, says that the body is constantly under immune surveillance. The surveillance is not as quick in the brain, that is why it was thought that there were no immune cells in the brain.

A team from Harvard University ran a procedure to find genes controlled by neuron firing and they unexpectedly found a gene that is critical for the immune system to recognize pathogens that are invading. Studies showed that the immune proteins functioned differently in the brain than they did on the body. The proteins in the brain control the signals that are sent between neurons instead of looking for germs.

Other research that was done has shown that immune molecules are important to keep the brain working correctly. During childhood, unnecessary connections are slowly removed and that production of C1q climaxes at that time.

Scientists have discovered that C1q seems to be a connection between synapse loss and glaucoma. Also, scientists believe that the immune proteins are so important that if something disrupts them, it could cause autism and schizophrenia. Scientists have also discovered that if a pregnant woman is exposed to a virus it is more likely that the child could develop one of these disorders. They think that the immune molecules that are in the brain may be the cause.

Recently, Boulanger found that if the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I molecules are decreased in both the bodies and brains of mice, symptoms of autism and schizophrenia occurred. She is now trying to see if this is the same in humans by checking bodily fluid samples of autistic and schizophrenic patients to check the MHC class I levels. If this research holds up it could help with the development of drug treatment for these disabilities and understanding the cause of them.

Basically, by determining the relationship between the immune molecules and diseases of brain degeneration and damage, this could help find new way to treat the diseases.

My Response

I think it's really interesting how immune cells have a totally different function in the brain than in the rest of the body. I also think it's interesting that scientists have found out that these could be what causes certain diseases and disabilities. I am glad that by researching this, scientists can try to find treatments for the diseases. I think it is amazing that God has made our bodies so complex and detailed. I also think that it is amazing that scientists can find out so much about us and our bodies and that they can find out how diseases are caused and how to treat them. Our technology keeps getting better and will help the scientists in their research and they will be able to find out even more things.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=are-immune-system-molecules-build-brains

Autism epidemic?

Recently it has been discovered that every 1 in 166 children are diagnosed with autism. Originally it was 1 in 2500. It has been called an epidemic and many wondered what had caused it to rise so dramatically. Many have blamed vaccines that may have had small traces of mercury. However the way of diagnosing autism has changed quite a bit. Origianally a child had to have all 6 of 6 symptoms to be diagnosed, where now one can be diagnosed if they have 8 of the 16 symptoms. This has probably helped to raise the amount of those diagnosed, and also the awareness of autism has greatened which would also help doctors to recognize someone with autism much easier. It is most likely the number of those with autism hasn't changed, but rather that developements in science have increased our awareness of autism and therefore we more are diagnosed so the figures have changed. So if it has raised it is probable that it hasn't raised as much as we think.

My opinion of this article:
This article was well written to keep one informed but also to keep one interested. It helps to lessen the worries about a possible epidemic, and brings a logical and objective view on it's subject. The writer did well in staying away from rumors and basing his writing on facts. This article does it's purpose well in giving it's message without pointing fingers at vaccines and antibiotics and instead follows the history of diagnosing autism. This article is a good one to read and is worth the reader's time.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=is-there-really-an-autism-epidemic

blockbuster

Blockbuster

Herceptin is a drug that is used for breast cancer. It shrinks the size of the tumor which makes it easier to control and allows some of the patients to live longer. It also stops the outside of the cancer cells to stop growing so that the cells don’t divide uncontrollably. It has only been used on twenty to twenty-five percent of woman who have breast cancer. It hasn’t been proven that this drug is useful on other cancers. A scientist from Health and Science University in Oregon named Adelman, is studying a new protein that he believes can be the cure for breast cancer. Adelman is also studying a chemical compound that has characteristics of this new protein. This protein is called the HER2 protein. It’s a small piece of the receptor component that comes through the cell’s domain. They say that when the cell that uses the HER2 protein needs a protein, it turns a gene into RNA and cuts out copies of DNA segments that are not used. Cancer cells sometimes have more cell-surface receptors than normal cells. Normally a cell uses a chemical signal to get a message to start replication, but since a decoy imitation of this receptor is involved the transmission of the chemical signal is set off. So scientists are testing a large amount of solid tumors to explore many methods of inhibiting receptors. Many drugs for beast cancer that are supposed to shrink the size of the tumor react negatively to herceptin. Scientists have studied different treatments for breast cancer for a long time. They hope to start chemical trial on mice to test the protein’s interaction with many receptors.
This article explains how herceptin affects other drugs and the depth of the problem with it not working with other drugs or proteins. It tells the science behind cancer treatment and how and why many solid tumors were tested and why some failed.

Strange but True: Less Sleep Means More Dreams

Sleep, what Shakespeare would describe as "Nature's soft nurse," can quickly turn into nature's curse when messed with. One may think that the deprivation of sleep is no big deal, but in fact sleep deprivation can quickly turn back to bite you. Many people who sleep well after a long period of sleep deprivation declare that they experience dreams that are very vivid and feel terrifyingly real. " I imagine that's what it’s like when you're on heroine," Eva Salem said after experiencing a vivid dream of a crocodile attack after being sleep deprived for many months. Neurologist Mark Mahowald addressed this new discovery by stating, "When someone is sleep deprived we see greater sleep intensity, meaning greater brain activity during sleep; dreaming is defiantly increased and likely more vivid." This response to sleep deprivation is referred to as REM rebound.

REM stands for "rapid eye movement," a state of the sleep cycle in which our brain activity closely resembles that of being conscious. During the REM state of sleep our mind begins to experience what we might refer to as dreaming. Over the course of an average life span, a human being will spend about twenty-seven years dreaming. REM is one of five states that make up the sleep cycle. The first four states are called the four stages of non-REM. Each of the four states of non-REM generate an individual brain frequency. The first phase of the sleep cycle is identified by the state the body is in when it’s in-between sleeping and being awake. During this stage many people will experience a feeling of falling. The second phase of the sleep cycle is identified as the stage where the brain begins to slow with the exception of a few short bursts of activity. The third and fourth state of the sleep cycle is when the body changes into slow-wave sleep. During the third and fourth phase is identified by the bodies severe decrease heart and breathing rates. Finally after the four non-REM stages end, the REM stage can begin.

Throughout an average night of sleep the body will repeat the sleep cycle about five times. The cycle lasts about ninety minutes in all, however during the first cycle of the night REM will only last around a total of five minutes. As the night goes on, the total amount of time spent in REM will increase. Most often before waking we have experienced a forty-minute phase of REM. Because the brain gives most of its priority to slow-wave sleep (non-REM), REM is the stage that is reduced or lost when we become sleep deprived for a night. Scientist have proven that losing thirty minutes of REM one night can cause a thirty-five percent increase in REM the next night. Not only that, but subjects participating in the REM research stated that when they laid down to sleep, having about twenty-five minutes of REM from the night before, they experienced extremely vivid dreams.

No one is really sure why the body and the brain must make up for lost time spent in REM. Is it really that important? There are some very puzzling discoveries made by scientists researching REM. For example, some of the larger brained mammals, such as dolphins and whales, do not have a REM stage in their sleep cycle. However, studies show that when rats are deprived of the REM phase for four weeks, they die of a cause still unknown. Babies, both in and out of the womb, spend seventy-five percent of their time asleep in the REM phase. People who are using alcohol, nicotine, antidepressants, and blood pressure medicine, all lose time in the REM phase. Although the importance of REM is not scientifically proven, there are a few theories. Various theories put forward the idea of REM regulating neurotransmitter levels, and body temperature. Some Psychologists even believe that dream vividness has nothing to do with the deprivation of REM, but rather all our dreams are related to our anxiety level. There is however evidence that dreaming assists us process and soak in memories.

My Response:

I myself, having experienced very vivid dreams, found this article extremely intriguing. I never had any idea how important each phase of the sleep cycle was to our bodies. Although it does not apply to humans, death of the rats deprived of REM was shocking. I can’t help but wonder what the complete purpose of REM and our dreams is. I defiantly think that more research should be done in this area. In my opinion it seems like an open possibility that increasing REM could cure many mental diseases such as post-traumatic stress, anxiety, depression, memory problems, or stress in general. Even if there is no curing involved, I would love for the mystery and meaning behind dreams and REM to be solved. It is altogether fascinating to me and probably many others.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=strange-but-true-less-sleep-means-more-dreams

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=what-causes-insomnia&SID=mail&sc=emailfriend

Summary

What causes insomnia?

Insomnia is the chronic inability to fall asleep or to enjoy uninterrupted sleep. Sadly a larger proportion of people suffer from this. some research shows that sleep patterns, and behaviors from certain attitudes leave some people with the higher chance of having insomnia.

Symptons are difficulty falling asleep, waking a lot during the night, waking up to early and not being able to get back to sleep, or waking up feeling unrefreshed. Some of factors the factors with insomnia in the National Sleep Foundation survey included being female, being widowed or single, having a low education level, low income, unemployment, smoking, life stress, physical health problems, and pain or activity limitation. Also in some cases insomnia does increase with age.

Many people with insomnia believe that they are not getting enough sleep, when most people are likely are getting a sufficient amount. Insomniacs tend to stay in bed longer and sleep during the day bekieving that being in bed more will get them to sleep more. Really they are underestimating the amount of sleep they get each night, thinking it is less than it really is. So insomnia is really caused by the attempt to get more sleep than needed. If an insomniac believes thay need eight hours sleep when really it's six hours, that leaves them with two hours of wakefulness. The attitudes of insomniacs is the cause for most because they believe that with an insufficient amount of sleep thier day will not run smoothly. If they feel then that the night before they didn't get enough sleep their attitude, mood, and behavior might be different that day.

There is good news, cognitive-behavioral therapy can change insomniacs attitude toward sleep. They can practice good "sleep hygiene," it includes paying attention to the effects on sleep of environmental factors such as noise, light, and temperature; avoiding behaviors that can lead to conditioned insomnia such as reading or watching TV in bed; avoiding alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, or certain medications before bedtime; and paying attention to the timing of exercise, snacks, and bedtime itself. Shortening sleep time might also help. In the end these treatments seem to help more than certain medications.

Conclusion: I find it really intersting that it's the attitudes and certain other behaviors that cause insomnia. I originally thought that it would've been some chemical reaction in the brain that caused insomnia. Also it seems that more people, than I thought, suffer from insomnia and other sleep related problems. It was surprising to find that behavioral therapy helps more than medications . Simple things such as not reading or watching TV can help an insomniac get more sleep.

Sparkling Recovery with Brain "Pacemakers"

A man in a video is doing a short demonstration, holding a remote control in his hand. He clicks a button on the remote and his arm starts to shake uncontrollably. The man clicks the remote again and his arm stops as if it was never shaking. The man has Parkinson disease, which is an unhealthy basal ganglion that is in charge of quick fluid movements. In this demonstration he was showing a kind of pacemaker that is placed inside the collarbone that receives pulses of electricity from a battery in the pacemaker. This is a miracle for the patients of Parkinson’s disease. By using the remote it can stop tremors and even help people gain control over walking again! And yet this is not a cure, but it can help people for many years with the disease. With this new wave of pacemaker it is bringing about more advanced and helpful technology. This is not only helpful for those with Parkinson, but also other kinds of disorders like some types of depression, OCD, and Tourette’s syndrome. To be able to further the advanced technology, scientist have to be able to identify where the brain areas where electrical stimulation will be most effective for each patient. The brain is perfect and complex, which they are still learning what each part of the brain controls. With the studying of human brain they might get the answer to cure and fix these diseases.
My Response:
This new pacemaker is a very important for people struggling with Parkinson’s disease and other associated diseases. It is a miracle for the people who have lost hope in their life. I know if I was under the same circumstances; I would like something that could give me a normal life. This new pacemaker can help the people live a normal life. As time goes on the pacemaker will only continue to improve and even help other diseases. The pacemaker is the stepping stones to a new and better future for those struggling with diseases. Through this study many new things can be learned.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=sparking-recovery-with-brain-pacemakers&print=true

The Reason Behind Panic Attacks and Disorders

A panic attack is defined as a quick experience of intense fear or discomfort. The symptoms are an extremely high heart rate, difficulty to breathe, trembling, sweating, and worries about losing control. People who suffer from these attacks are feeling more than just brief anxiety, but instead say that is the most terrifying experience in their life. There are two reasons why people experience panic attacks: genetics and triggered "false alarms."
A psychologist names Regina A. Shih claims that panic attacks and panic disorders run in families. This is found true especially in identical twins who are two to three times more likely to have an attack if the other twin did than fratermal twins. This is called "biological vulnerability" toward anxiety.
Also, attacks stem from "false alarms". This is when your body reacts as it would if there was a real danger. Your "fight or flight" instinct takes over even though there is no real danger. This is dangerous because our body remembers what triggered the attck and it is more likely to have another attack the next time that trigger is prevelant. This is caused either from being taught as a child certain things are dangerous even if they are not or the fear that world is dangerous and cannot be controlled.
A panic disorder is diagnosed when the person suffering from attacks begins to avoid all situations which would trigger another attack. These situations include places where it would be embarrasing to have an attack, places where it is difficult to escape, and places where it is difficult to find help. One symptom of panic disorder is a prolonged experience of stress just thinking about having an attack, which can actually cause you to have one.
I personally have had three panic attacks and so have other members of my family. While I myself have never had a panic disorder, I can attest that panic attacks are extremely terrifying. You know you are scared and are very aware that it is irrational, yet you cannot bring yourself to overcome your fear. In my family's case it is genetic since it spans a couple generations. It was very ecouraging to know that it can be genetic and that there wasn't something seriously wrong with me.

Science American Online Article
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=why-do-we-panic&print=true

Restoring Scents

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_1_172/ai_n19377487

Faulty sniffers may get help

Imagine having to spend practically your whole life without ever smelling a thing. This is the story for many people including one woman named Betty (not her real name). Betty, however, was one of the lucky ones. At the age of fifty-one, Betty smelled an orange for the first time in her life. Because of her olfactory problem, Betty had never been able to receive the same sense of smell that many of us have today.
There are around 25 million people with an olfactory problem in this country today. Many of these people are deprived of good olfaction which can lead to dangerous situations. Without good olfaction, a person could be unable to identify gas leaks or spoiled food, which can both cause great harm.
Jason Feifer, an associate editor at Boston magazine, had a similar problem to Betty’s. However, it wasn’t until college, when his girlfriend constantly asked his opinion on foods, that he realized he had an olfaction problem. You may ask, how could you know that you can’t smell what you are eating? Well the truth is that Feifer’s taste buds and color helped him know what he was eating. However, if he was blindfolded, Fiefer could have never told the difference between mint and peanut butter-cup ice cream. When Fiefer saw what he was eating, his mind was able to “fill in some sensation that helps [him] differentiate between foods.” Luckily, Feifer was tested negative for a brain tumor- whose symptoms often include smell loss.
The Olfactory system is the only one of the human senses whose nerves from the brain makes contact with the outside world from inside the nose. An Olfaction problem can often occur during head trauma in which the nerves are severed or, respiratory infections and allergies. The most common causes of smell loss in middle age are chronic inflammation of the nose due to infections and obstructions by growths called polyps.
Most Olfactory cells in the nasal lining live for a while then die when the tumor necrosis factors (TNF’s) give their command. Growth factors then tell stem cells to wake up and divide to create new scent-sensing cells. In May, D.C. Henkin, at the Experimental Biology Meeting, found that the poorer an individuals sense of smell, the higher ratio of these death signaling agents to growth factors in the persons mucus. Henkin reported new data that treated patients with a drug that inhibits the breakdown of cyclic-AMP and cyclic-GMP, pivotal signal messenger compounds. Although 13 patients responded, Henkin warns that there can be a long time before patients see the difference.
Another treatment that has been looked into is Vitamin A therapy. Although it proved to be very successful in animals, many doctors warned that too much Vitamin A could be toxic, especially to a fetus. However, nothing has been found to work well to fix this problem. Scientists are now trying something along the lines of sniff training in Germany. People are tested by having to sniff all different kinds of things daily. Nancy E. Rawson of the Monell Center thinks that the treatment may help the brain pick up scent signals from what had been olfactory noise. While Rawson takes this approach, other scientists are trying to grow “nasal” epithelium stem cells in the lab. However, the stem cells do not grow well in the lab and hardly ever recognize the donor’s nasal tissue.
I think that this article opened my eyes to how much we take smell for granted. The most interesting thing that I thought was in this article was the story about Jason Fiefer. He knew the difference between foods when he saw them, but blindfolded, he could tell nothing. This shows how amazing the brain works that it is able to make up for the loss of one sense and use its other abilities to almost replace it.

Stephanie Kariuki