 “O Prabhu, you fulfill all desires and give the four fruits of existence. Understanding that, I am fearful of what I could possibly give to you.” (Janaki Mangala, 22)
tumha prabhu pūrana kāma cāri phaladāyaka |
tehiṃ teṃ būjhata kāju ḍarau munidāyaka ||
Just imagine being the wealthiest person in the world, capable of going into any area and taking property because of your ability. Then picture coming up to someone else and telling them that you can’t give them anything valuable. Your statement isn’t one based on sentiment and it is not rooted in a deficiency in ability. Rather, the person you’re speaking to is the one who can give you anything that you really desire, anything important to you. Though they outwardly have nothing, their wealth is more valuable than anything else, so it is impossible to repay them when they are kind enough to bestow benedictions upon you. Such a scene was present in the city of Ayodhya many thousands of years ago, but the acknowledged wealthy party in this scenario, the king Dasharatha, was able to provide the exalted sage Vishvamitra something invaluable. That gift is the most cherished item for every single person, and the fact that Dasharatha would voluntarily part with it for a moment only enhances his wonderful stature.
Who is Maharaja Dasharatha? The ancient kings of the world were concentrated in the area today known as India. Not that their influence was confined locally; they were addressed by such names as Mahipati and Bhupati, which mean “lord of earth”. The names weren’t assigned out of sentiment either. The kings had control over the entire earth, through either personal supervision or the influence of their many proxies. There were other kingdoms headed by other leaders, but the main king would have a recognized supremacy.
 With that firm authority came great responsibility. King Dasharatha and those rulers appearing before him in the family upheld virtue. Maharaja Ikshvaku set the standard for good governance, having heard the truths of the Bhagavad-gita from his father Manu. Manu heard it from Vivasvan, who heard it from Shri Krishna, the original speaker of the Gita. The Bhagavad-gita is a song containing the essence of Vedic teachings, the true meaning of life and the ultimate philosophy to guide mankind’s behavior.
How can we make qualitative comparisons between philosophies? How do we determine if one philosophy is better than another? The more the philosophy tackles the root issue of life, especially with respect to identity, the more valuable it will be. For instance, if we read a book on how to succeed in business, it will only benefit us if we identify with businessmen. The same goes for cookbooks, marriage counseling, and instruction on how to be a good life partner.
Sometimes even philosophies that seem larger in scope get mistaken to be guiding philosophies on life. The Constitution of the United States of America is a nice example in this regard. A document formed off of compromise and aimed to rebuke the perceived harsh treatment from the past government, the Constitution serves as the foundation of the American government. Some revere the Constitution and its principles so much that they refer to the document as their “Bible”, which is a stunning admission. For something other than the original Bible to be considered the guiding philosophy on life indicates that the Bible is either misunderstood or deficient in its ability to guide behavior.
Religion in the true definition is not based merely on sentiment. It is a science which has laws that cannot be denied. Just as it would be silly to say that we believe or don’t believe in the law of gravity, to deny the existence of spirit and its position transcendental to the material nature can only be a sign of ignorance. Documents like the Constitution negate behavior that is considered harmful from governing bodies, championing the concept of freedom and its benefit to society. At the same time, tyranny, oppression and those acts of government which are shunned by the founders of the United States are the very result of freedom. Without an exercise of freedom, we cannot get any outcome in behavior. Therefore freedom itself cannot be the answer to life’s problems.
The Bhagavad-gita addresses all of these issues, as it puts forth the ultimate philosophy on life, the primary guiding principle. It is said that the Vedas, the system of spirituality instituted by Shri Krishna, are the root of the tree of material existence. This means that every philosophy, existing past, present or future, is derived from the Vedas. Lord Krishna is the head of Vedic philosophy, and since He is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, His original system of religion is meant for connecting the living entities with their most preferred destination. Thus every rule presented by Vedic philosophy, including the recommendations given to kings, is intended to carry the living entity further along towards the ideal destination of the Supreme Lord’s company.
 A king like Dasharatha knew the governing principles, how to guide human behavior properly. Freedom is wonderful, but if it is misused you get chaos and misery. A document only limiting the actions of government will not provide man the guidance that he so desperately wants. History is filled with tyrannical regimes who killed millions of people to meet the demands of their brutal leaders. This could only occur because of the soul’s inclination to serve. Even with full freedom, with no restrictions on action, the living being will have a desire to offer some service.
Vedic philosophy does not overlook the service issue. Rather, the tendency towards service is completely embraced, with every member of society given an object of service that matches their body’s inherent qualities. The pious ruler implements these matches to keep safe what is known as the varnashrama-dharma system. Because of their fidelity to the Vedas and the nature of the work they had to perform, the pious kings like Dasharatha were in possession of so much wealth. They distributed charity, but only to the brahmanas, the priestly class of men who were voluntarily living by austerity.
One such austere brahmana was Vishvamitra, who visited King Dasharatha’s palace one time. The king could give away in charity pretty much anything valuable to a brahmana, even if they didn’t specifically ask. All special occasions were marked by the donation of such things as gold, cows and jewelry to brahmanas, who thus didn’t have a hard time surviving despite not specifically working for a living. The priests engaged in sacrifice, penance, austerity, learning the Vedas, teaching the Vedas, and giving instruction to society and its leaders. Since they were so busy providing valuable instruction, they didn’t have time to earn a living through fruitive activity.
King Dasharatha was so pleased to have Vishvamitra visit him and bless his family that he offered the above referenced sincere words of praise. The sage could grant any desire, including the four fruits of a human existence: religiosity, economic development, sense gratification and ultimate salvation. As this combination of rewards is difficult to come by, one is considered very fortunate to get all of them. If Vishvamitra, who had no possessions, could provide this to the king, what could Dasharatha possibly give in return? This imbalance instilled some trepidation in the king, for perhaps the brahmana would ask for something that he couldn’t give. If that were the case, it would be a shameful stain on the Ikshvaku line that Dasharatha belonged to. The king must always give the bona fide brahmanas whatever they want, for why else do they rule the earth? If the most intelligent and munificent members of society are not pleased and protected, how can the king say that he is doing a good job?
Fortunately for the king, Vishvamitra would ask for something that he could give. Nevertheless, the request tore at the heart of the pious ruler. Vishvamitra wanted protection while living in the forests. Some night-rangers were causing a disturbance, and rather than exhaust his spiritual merits by casting curses on them, Vishvamitra thought it would be better to have expert fighters guarding him for a while.
Did the sage ask for the most experienced fighter in Ayodhya? Did he ask Dasharatha for his most capable man who had proven his fighting ability in the past? Oddly enough, Vishvamitra asked for the king’s eldest son Rama to be his escort. This was strange because Rama was still a young boy, who barely had signs of maturity on His face. We know this from the accounts of one of the attacking night-rangers.
 Rama was Dasharatha’s most prized possession, his favorite person in the world. The king would have to agree to the sage’s request though, so Rama went with Vishvamitra, with Rama’s younger brotherLakshmana following along. Lakshmana would never do anything without Rama, so strong was the love he had for his elder brother. While in the forest, Vishvamitra would get attacked by a night-ranger named Maricha during a time of sacrifice. Though Rama was so young, Vishvamitra’s intuition would prove correct, as Dasharatha’s eldest son would unhesitatingly string His bow and pierce Maricha with an arrow. The blow was so fierce that the night-ranger was thrown many miles away into an ocean.
Shri Rama was none other than the Supreme Lord, appearing on earth to enact pastimes and rid the world of the influence of Maricha’s clan, which was concentrated on the island of Lanka at the time. Dasharatha sacrificed his most beloved son, and for that kindness his stature as the most wonderful king would increase even more. Through Vishvamitra, Rama and Lakshmana would make it to the famous bow sacrifice held in the kingdom of Videha. There Rama would win the hand of Sita Devi, King Janaka’s daughter, in marriage. Thus it can be said that Dasharatha’s love for the brahmanas acted as a catalyst for the eventual meeting of the divine couple, Sita and Rama, the savior of the fallen souls.
In Closing:
Picture a person who has everything,
For no wealth is he at all longing.
Then to another admits that nothing can give,
For how to repay knowledge on how to live?
This situation long time ago occurred for real,
Vishvamitra king’s son for a moment wanted to steal.
To brahmanas Dasharatha never could say no,
So with Vishvamitra eldest son Rama did go.
Lakshmana, devoted brother took with Him,
In Janakpur hand of Sita Devi to win.
 |
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
What To Give
Man Alive Without a Heart and No Pulse!
The continuous-flow device consists of 2 turbine-like blood pumps implanted to replace the 2 sides of the patient's removed heart. These 2 pumps act as a man-made substitute for the natural heart. The left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) used are manufactured by Thoratec Corporation (Pleasanton, Calif.) and were approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in January 2010 for assisting the failing left ventricle (the heart's main pumping chamber) in patients suffering from terminal heart failure.
Prior to using the device on Lewis, the researchers had first experimented with it on 38 calves at their animal research facility. Today, a calf named Abigail resides at the facility with one of their devices and no pulse.
However, aside from listening to the machine itself, the lack of pulse makes it hard to tell if a patient is alive or dead. According to the institute, even EKG machines would register a person using the new heart as dead.
The device (Courtesy The Texas Heart Institute):
Posted by JacobSloan
Perhaps in the future, we’ll spend our youth — i.e. the first hundred or so years of our lives — with a heart and a pulse, and our next couple hundred without them. DesignTaxi writes:
Two doctors from the Texas Heart Institute successfully replaced a dying man’s heart with a device—proving that it is possible for your body to be kept alive without a heart, or a pulse.The turbine-like device, that are simple whirling rotors, developed by the doctors does not beat like a heart, rather provides a ‘continuous flow’ like a garden hose.If you listened with a stethoscope, you wouldn’t hear a heartbeat. If you examined [the] arteries, there’s no pulse. Hooked up to an EKG, [he'd] be flat-lined.”
Early exercise beats diseases
| VICTORIA UNIVERSITY MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA |
 "We think...more activity for children and more physical education in school could really help set them up for better health later in life." Image: CEFutcher/iStockphoto New research suggests exercise early in life could fend off diabetes and heart disease, even for those predisposed to such diseases. The study by Victoria University’s Professor Glenn McConell and Melbourne University’s Associate Professor Mary Wlodek tested whether exercise could ‘reprogram’ rats with a predisposition to diabetes and heart disease due to being born underweight. “Those born small are programmed for a higher chance of disease later in life because of their underdeveloped heart and pancreas, but we think you can reprogram yourself by exercising early in life,” Professor McConell said. In the trials on rats born small, those that exercised from five to nine weeks of age showed a smallimprovement in organ function at the end of that month, but remarkably, six months later their organs were the same as the healthy control group. Another group of born small rats were not exercised and showed no improvement. Professor McConell said a nine-week old rat correlated roughly with a five-year-old child and a six-month-old rat with a young adult person. “We think this means more activity for children and more physical education in school could really help set them up for better health later in life and even help those predisposed to diabetes and heart disease to re-program themselves in time to avoid it,” he said. He said trials were now planned with sheep; a larger mammal model with more similar hormones to humans than rats. He said they would eventually like to try it on humans. The study titled ‘Short-term exercise training early in life restores deficits in pancreatic β-cell mass associated with growth restriction in adult male rats’ was published recently in the American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism. The study was made possible by National Health and Medical Research Council funding. Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here. |
Global warming could kill off snails
| FLINDERS UNIVERSITY |
 "The majority of current global warming research is mistakenly driven by air temperature which does not reflect the body temperature of most animals." Image: marekuliasz/iStockphoto Climate change models must be reworked in a bid to save some of the world’s smallest and slimiest creatures from extinction, a Flinders University PhD candidate warns. Biological Sciences postgraduate student Coraline Chapperon says any future policies for global warming must consider mobile organisms on rocky beaches – such as snails – and their capacity to survive the predicted rise in extreme conditions such as heatwaves. She said the majority of current global warming research is mistakenly driven by air temperature which does not reflect the body temperature of most animals. “A lot of current global warming research uses air temperature as a proxy for animal body temperature – so if it’s 31 degrees at the beach they’d say all the animals at the beach are 31 degrees but that’s not the case,” Ms Chapperon said. “Even the same rock surface varies in temperature at a very small spatial scale at one time which is more pertinent to the biology and ecology of intertidal animals than air temperature,” she said. “As such, we need to consider factors like rock temperature and the individual physiology and behaviour of animals in our climate change models, and look at it on a much smaller scale.” To prove how crucial individual animal body temperatures are to global warming policies, Ms Chapperon has spent the past three years investigating the temperature and behaviour of snails and their ability to cope in extreme conditions. As part of her research she took a series of thermal images of marine snails and rocks in two topographically different habitats, a rock platform and a boulder field, over the course of a summer and autumn at Marino Rocks to quantify variances in body temperature and snail behaviour. She found that temperatures between microhabitats separated by just a few centimetres, such as crevices and underneath rocks, actually varied more than habitats separated by up to 250 metres, and that rock and snail temperatures were strongly connected, suggesting snail body temperatures are largely determined by the temperatures of the rocks they are crawling on. Ms Chapperon said that while snails have limited physiological abilities to adapt any further to climate as they have already reached the upper limit of their “thermal tolerance window”, her research suggests they may be able to modify their actions in order to survive locally. However, she said more research was needed to determine whether these “thermoregulatory behaviours” could actually buffer the warming climate. “Despite their limited physiological abilities, snails have certain behavioural qualities that help them cool down when it is warm, such as aggregating or moving underneath rocks. “But this is a relatively unknown area of research and that’s why further studies are needed to see whether their ability to find refuge in cooler microhabitats could compensate for their lack of physiological ability.” Ms Chapperon’s snail studies have earned her one of Flinders Best Student Paper Awards, a new initiative which aims to showcase excellence in student research across the University. Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here. |
Climate ups risk of toxic harm
| CRC CARE |
A leading scientist has warned that climate change could expose Australians to greater risks from toxic contamination. Increased flooding could release contaminants previously regarded as secure into groundwater, rivers, oceans, the food supply and the atmosphere, the director of the CRC for Contamination Assessment and Remediation of the Environment, Professor Ravi Naidu, said. “Most of our urban landfills contain highly toxic substances from past decades – and were designed for the climatic conditions at the time. These have now changed, with the risk of bigger and more frequent floods, droughts, heat and acidity releasing substances we thought were gone for good,” he says. Professor Naidu is inviting Federal, state, and Environmental Protection Agencies to rethink nationwide contamination and cleanup policy in light of the risk that yesterday’s poisons could be remobilised in our environment. “The floods in Queensland and northern NSW illustrate how things are changing – and how we can no longer count on toxic disposal systems designed half a century or more ago to work as well in future under changed climate conditions,” he says. “From now on all landfills and contaminated sites will need better flood protection upstream and high-tech contamination barriers downstream to filter the groundwater that leaches out of them, and remove the heavy metals, pesticides, hydrocarbons and organic toxins it contains.” Other contaminated land containment systems such as cover systems, stabilisation, etc could also be adversely impacted by climate change via factors such as wet-dry and freeze-thaw cycles. Professor Naidu says that climate change also brings increased urgency to the task of rehabilitating contaminated lands. “Where you have a large area of contaminated land, it is often very hard for plants or soil microbes to regrow, leading to reduced carbon sequestration, which adds to climate change. Researchers are currently working on specially-adapted trees, grasses and soil microbes, which can be used to recover these sites, devastated by historic industrial and mining activities – but there is a need to speed up national efforts to adopt such solutions, he adds. Another form of contamination likely to accelerate under climate change is acidification. “Acid rain produced by the industrial release of sulphur dioxide from coal-fired power stations into the atmosphere is poisoning lakes, forests, and soils in the northern hemisphere. When soils become more acidic, they can release toxic heavy metals as well as carbon. “At the same time, the carbon dioxide we release when we use vehicles or fossil-fuelled electricity is increasing acidity in the world’s oceans and endangering their food chains,” Prof. Naidu explains. “There are engineering solutions to these problems, which involve trapping the gases before they enter the atmosphere and disposing of them safely – but they are costly and must be adopted universally.” These issues illustrate how climate change can affect the total toxic load delivered to society in its food, water and environment and the importance of acting in a timely fashion to prevent this from happening. “People often regard contamination as a local issue, and contaminants as things which tend to stay in one place or where they are put. “This is no longer the case. Man-made contamination by toxic organic chemicals and metals is already swirling around the planet in air, water and wildlife – and there is a risk that the changes unleashed by climate change will mobilise even more,” Prof. Naidu warns. “Containment of contaminants is critical in the sustainable management of legacy contaminants. It is not yet time to be alarmed – but we should be concerned. And we should certainly begin to think about the solutions.” He says Australian industries, including the mining, energy, and agriculture sectors, are world leaders in developing and implementing environmentally friendly and cost-effective solutions to contamination issues. “If Australia makes an early start in overcoming these unforseen impacts of climate change it will also position us as a world leader and exporter of clean, green solutions for a changing world. It will not only be healthy – it will also be profitable and create jobs.” Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here. |
Why the middle finger has such a slow connection
Each part of the body has its own nerve cell area in the brain -- we therefore have a map of our bodies in our heads. The functional significance of these maps is largely unclear. What effects they can have is now shown by Ruhr-University Bochum (Germany) neuroscientists through reaction time measurements combined with learning experiments and "computational modeling." They have been able to demonstrate that inhibitory influences of neighboring "finger nerve cells" affect the reaction time of a finger.
The fingers on the outside – i.e. the thumb and little finger - therefore react faster than the middle finger, which is exposed to the "cross fire" of two neighbours on each side. Through targeted learning, this speed handicap can be compensated. The working group led by PD Dr. Hubert Dinse (Neural Plasticity Lab at the Institute for Neuroral Computation) report in the current issue of PNAS.
The researchers set subjects a simple task to measure the speed of decision: they showed them an image on a monitor that represented all ten fingers. If one of the fingers was marked, the subjects were to press a corresponding key as quickly as possible with that finger. The thumb and little finger were the fastest. The middle finger brought up the rear. "You might think that this has anatomical reasons or depends on the exercise" said Dr Dinse, "but we were able to rule that out through further tests. In principle, each finger is able to react equally quickly. Only in the selection task, the middle finger is at a distinct disadvantage."
To explain their observations, the researchers used computer simulations based on a so-called mean-field model. It is especially suited for modelling large neuronal networks in the brain. For these simulations, each individual finger is represented by a group of nerve cells, which are arranged in the form of a topographic map of the fingers based on the actual conditions in the somatosensory cortex of the brain. "Adjacent fingers are adjacent in the brain too, and thus also in the simulation", explained Dr. Dinse. The communication of the nerve cells amongst themselves is organised so that the nerve cells interact through mutual excitation and inhibition.
The computer simulations showed that the longer reaction time of the middle finger in a multiple choice task is a consequence of the fact that the middle finger is within the inhibition range of the two adjacent fingers. The thumb and little finger on the other hand only receive an inhibitory effect of comparable strength from one adjacent finger each. "In other words, the high level of inhibition received by the nerve cells of the middle fingers mean that it takes longer for the excitement to build up – they therefore react more slowly" said Dr. Dinse.
From the results of the computer simulation it can be concluded that weaker inhibition from the neighbouring fingers would shorten the reaction time of the middle finger. This would require a so-termed plastic change in the brain – a specialty of the Neural Plasticity Lab, which has been studying the development of learning protocols that induce such changes for years. One such protocol is the repeated stimulation of certain nerve cell groups, which the laboratory has already used in many experiments. "If, for example, you stimulate one finger electrically or by means of vibration for two to three hours, then its representation in the brain changes" explained Dr. Dinse. The result is an improvement in the sense of touch and a measurable reduction of the inhibitory processes in this brain area. This also results in the enlargement of the representation of the finger stimulated.
The Bochum researchers then conducted a second experiment in which the middle finger of the right hand was subjected to such stimulation. The result was a significant shortening of the reaction time of this finger in the selection task. "This finding confirms our prediction" Dr. Dinse summed up. Thus, for the first time, Bochum's researchers have established a direct link between the so-called lateral inhibitory processes and decision making processes. They have shown that learning processes that change the cortical maps can have far-reaching implications not only for simple discrimination tasks, but also for decision processes that were previously attributed to the so-called "higher" cortical areas.
More information: Claudia Wilimzig, Patrick Ragert, and Hubert R. Dinse. Cortical topography of intracortical inhibition influences the speed of decision making, PNAS (2012), doi/10.1073/pnas.1114250109
Provided by Ruhr-University Bochum
"Why the middle finger has such a slow connection." February 7th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-middle-finger.html
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Robert Karl Stonjek
Robert Karl Stonjek
Parkinson's disease: Study of live human neurons reveals the disease's genetic origins
Parkinson's disease researchers at the University at Buffalo have discovered how mutations in the parkin gene cause the disease, which afflicts at least 500,000 Americans and for which there is no cure.
The results are published in the current issue of Nature Communications.
The UB findings reveal potential new drug targets for the disease as well as a screening platform for discovering new treatments that might mimic the protective functions of parkin. UB has applied for patent protection on the screening platform.
"This is the first time that human dopamine neurons have ever been generated from Parkinson's disease patients with parkin mutations," says Jian Feng, PhD, professor of physiology and biophysics in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and the study's lead author.
As the first study of human neurons affected by parkin, the UB research overcomes a major roadblock in research on Parkinson's disease and on neurological diseases in general.
The problem has been that human neurons live in a complex network in the brain and thus are off-limits to invasive studies, Feng explains.
"Before this, we didn't even think about being able to study the disease in human neurons," he says. "The brain is so fully integrated. It's impossible to obtain live human neurons to study."
But studying human neurons is critical in Parkinson's disease, Feng explains, because animal models that lack the parkin gene do not develop the disease; thus, human neurons are thought to have "unique vulnerabilities."
"Our large brains may use more dopamine to support the neural computation needed for bipedal movement, compared to quadrupedal movement of almost all other animals," he says.
Since in 2007, when Japanese researchers announced they had converted human cells to induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) that could then be converted to nearly any cells in the body, mimicking embryonic stem cells, Feng and his UB colleagues saw their enormous potential. They have been working on it ever since.
"This new technology was a game-changer for Parkinson's disease and for other neurological diseases," says Feng. "It finally allowed us to obtain the material we needed to study this disease."
The current paper is the fruition of the UB team's ability to "reverse engineer" human neurons from human skin cells taken from four subjects: two with a rare type of Parkinson's disease in which the parkin mutation is the cause of their disease and two healthy subjects who served as controls.
"Once parkin is mutated, it can no longer precisely control the action of dopamine, which supports the neural computation required for our movement," says Feng.
The UB team also found that parkin mutations prevent it from tightly controlling the production of monoamine oxidase (MAO), which catalyzes dopamine oxidation.
"Normally, parkin makes sure that MAO, which can be toxic, is expressed at a very low level so that dopamine oxidation is under control," Feng explains. "But we found that when parkin is mutated, that regulation is gone, so MAO is expressed at a much higher level. The nerve cells from our Parkinson's patients had much higher levels of MAO expression than those from our controls. We suggest in our study that it might be possible to design a new class of drugs that would dial down the expression level of MAO."
He notes that one of the drugs currently used to treat Parkinson's disease inhibits the enzymatic activity of MAO and has been shown in clinical trials to slow down the progression of the disease.
Parkinson's disease is caused by the death of dopamine neurons. In the vast majority of cases, the reason for this is unknown, Feng explains. But in 10 percent of Parkinson's cases, the disease is caused by mutations of genes, such as parkin: the subjects with Parkinson's in the UB study had this rare form of the disease.
"We found that a key reason for the death of dopamine neurons is oxidative stress due to the overproduction of MAO," explains Feng. "But before the death of the neurons, the precise action of dopamine in supporting neural computation is disrupted by parkin mutations. This paper provides the first clues about what the parkin gene is doing in healthy controls and what it fails to achieve in Parkinson's patients."
He noted in this study that these defects are reversed by delivering the normal parkin gene into the patients' neurons, thus offering hope that these neurons may be used as a screening platform for discovering new drug candidates that could mimic the protective functions of parkin and potentially even lead to a cure for Parkinson's.
While the parkin mutations are only responsible for a small percentage of Parkinson's cases, Feng notes that understanding how parkin works is relevant to all Parkinson's patients. His ongoing research on sporadic Parkinson's disease, in which the cause is unknown, also points to the same direction.
Provided by University at Buffalo
"Parkinson's disease: Study of live human neurons reveals the disease's genetic origins." February 7th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-parkinson-disease-human-neurons-reveals.html
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Robert Karl Stonjek
Robert Karl Stonjek
Friday, February 3, 2012
Brains of addicts are inherently abnormal: study
Drug addicts have inherited abnormalities in some parts of the brain which interfere with impulse control, said a British study published on Thursday.
Previous research has pointed to these differences, but it was unclear if they resulted from the ravages of addiction or if they were there beforehand to predispose a person to drug abuse.
Scientists at the University of Cambridge compared the brains of addicts to their non-addicted siblings as well as to healthy, unrelated volunteers and found that the siblings shared many of the same weaknesses in their brains.
That indicates that the brain vulnerabilities had a family origin, though somehow the siblings of addicts -- either due to environmental factors or other differences in brain structure -- were able to resist addiction.
"Presumably, the siblings must have some other resilience factors that counteract the familial vulnerability to drug dependence," said the study led by Karen Ersche of the University of Cambridge, published in the journal Science.
"An individual's predisposition to become addicted to stimulant drugs may be mediated by brain abnormalities linked to impaired self-control."
Researchers tested 50 biological sibling pairs, in which one was addicted to drugs and the other one had no history of chronic drug abuse. They also tested 50 healthy, unrelated pairs of people as a control group.
The tests involved measuring how well they could control their impulses in a stop-signal reaction time test that assesses how quickly a person can switch from following one set of instructions to another.
Addicts are known to have poor impulse control.
The researchers found that the sibling pairs -- even the non-addicts -- fared significantly worse on the test than the healthy volunteers.
Brain scans showed that the siblings shared some of the same weaknesses in the frontal lobe and its connections to the basal ganglia, which mediates motor, cognition and behavior.
In an accompanying Perspective article, Nora Volkow and Ruben Baler of the US National Institute on Drug Abuse said that knowing more about brain circuitry could help understand and treat other "impaired control" disorders, like obesity, pathological gambling, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorders.
"Several childhood and adolescent interventions can improve executive function and self-control," though more study is needed to see how such work may or may not impact the brain, they wrote.
More information: http://www.science … 601.abstract
(c) 2012 AFP
"Brains of addicts are inherently abnormal: study." February 2nd, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-brains-addicts-inherently-abnormal.html
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Robert Karl Stonjek
Robert Karl Stonjek
Mental gyms reap younger minds
(Medical Xpress) -- A daily mental ‘work-out' has given a group of over 50s the brain performance of people several years younger, a Swinburne University of Technology clinical trial has shown.
The independent study is one of the first to examine brain training and shed light on its effects on mental processing speed.
The 34 Australians aged 53 to 75 achieved significant increases in mental processing speed - which underpins efficient daily decision-making and learning - after completing a popular US online brain-training program, Swinburne Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience Con Stough said.
"We found an improvement in simple reaction time of about 10 per cent compared to the control group, which is quite a lot. The intervention improved speed of processing which translates to younger brain performance," he said.
While the initial results were promising, Professor Stough cautioned that the study size was small and the findings needed to be replicated by other researchers on a larger scale.
"However if the research can be replicated it could suggest that speed of processing is improved so much that the training group might have ameliorated several years of cognitive ageing," Professor Stough said.
The results stand in contrast to the normal age-related deficits in cognitive abilities that have been consistently reported across a range of cognitive areas including processing speed, attention, episodic memory, spatial ability and executive function.
Professor Stough said if the results can be replicated, they could have important implications for both the longevity of older workers and enjoyment by retirees.
"A major societal health issue for an ageing population is not only the greater incidence of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, but also the impact of normal age-related cognitive decline. Up to 50 per cent of adults aged 64 and over have reported difficulties with their memory," he said.
Economic pressures meant people were staying in the workforce longer, and it made no sense for them to be leaving the workplace because of cognitive impairment unless it was necessary.
"We want them to be as active as possible as they get older and continue to enjoy the world and continue to engage in our community. So people are looking at these brain training programs - which are growing in number - but which have been subject to little research."
In the current independent study, the 34 individuals played www.mybraintrainer.com - which describes itself as the world's first and best mental gymnasium - for a minimum of 20 minutes a day over 21 days, and were compared to a control group that played Solitaire.
The computerised training consisted of reaction time, inspection time, short term memory for words, executive function, visual spatial acuity, arithmetic, visual spatial memory, visual scanning/discrimination and working memory, with tasks becoming increasingly more challenging.
Participants were tested at baseline, post-training and at a three-week follow-up using a battery of neuropsychological outcome measures. The results of the study have been accepted for publication in the journal Educational Gerontology.
Provided by Swinburne University of Technology
"Mental gyms reap younger minds." February 2nd, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-mental-gyms-reap-younger-minds.html
Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek
Robert Karl Stonjek
What the Brain Hears
By recording nerve impulses in sound-processing regions of the brain, researchers can recreate the words people think.
By Edyta Zielinska |
Flickr, Travis Isaacs
Researchers were able to reverse engineer the sounds of human speech using only patterns of neuron firing measured in subjects listening to such sounds.
They measured nerve impulses in one of the auditory regions of patients’ brains while playing them a recording of words and sentences. After feeding the electrical impulses through an algorithm that interpreted certain characteristics of the sounds, such as volume changes between syllables in a word, the computer could recreate the words or sentences. The research, published in PLoS Biology
“A major goal is to figure out how the human brain allows us to understand speech despite all the variability, such as a male or female voice, or fast or slow talkers,” first author Brian Pasley told Nature
True speech recognition from neuronal recordings may still be a ways off. But “this approach may enable [the authors] to start determining the kinds of transformations and representations underlying normal speech perception,” University College London neuroscientist Sophie Scott, who was not involved in the research, told Nature.
Source: TheScientist
http://the-scientist.com/2012/02/01/what-the-brain-hears/
http://the-scientist.com/2012/02/01/what-the-brain-hears/
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Robert Karl Stonjek
Robert Karl Stonjek
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