An Artificial Retina With the Capacity to Restore Normal Vision

Two researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College have deciphered a mouse's retina's neural code and coupled this information to a novel prosthetic device to restore sight to blind mice. The researchers say they have also cracked the code for a monkey retina -- which is essentially identical to that of a human -- and hope to quickly design and test a device that blind humans can use. Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Amandine_Eyes.jpg The lead researcher, Dr. Sheila Nirenberg, a computational neuroscientist at Weill Cornell, envisions a day when the blind can choose to wear a visor, similar to the one used on the television show Star Trek. The visor's camera will take in light and use a computer chip to turn it into...

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Half of Inhaled Soot Particles from Diesel Exhaust, Fires Gets Stuck in the Lungs

The exhaust from diesel-fueled vehicles, wood fires and coal-driven power stations contains small particles of soot that flow out into the atmosphere. The soot is a scourge for the climate but also for human health. Now for the first time, researchers have studied in detail how diesel soot gets stuck in the lungs. The results show that more than half of all inhaled soot particles remain in the body. (Credit: © Imagenatural / Fotolia) The figure is higher than for most other types of particles. For example "only" 20 per cent of another type of particle from wood smoke and other biomass combustion gets stuck in the lungs. One explanation is that diesel soot is made up of smaller particles and can therefore penetrate deeper into the lungs,...

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How stress can boost the immune system

The study's findings provide a thorough overview of how a triad of stress hormones affects the main cell subpopulations of the immune system. They also offer the prospect of, someday, being able to manipulate stress-hormone levels to improve patients' recovery from surgery or wounds or their responses to vaccines. You've heard it a thousand times: Stress is bad for you. And it's certainly true that chronic stress, lasting weeks and months, has deleterious effects including, notably, suppression of the immune response. But short-term stress -- the fight-or-flight response, a mobilization of bodily resources lasting minutes or hours in response to immediate threats -- stimulates immune activity, said lead author Firdaus Dhabhar, PhD, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral...

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Keep aging brains sharp

Exercising, eating a healthy diet and playing brain games may help you keep your wits about you well into your 80s and even 90s, advises a new book by researchers at George Mason University.  "These are all cheap, easy things to do," says Pamela Greenwood, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology on Mason's Fairfax, Va. campus. "We should all be doing them anyway. You should do them for your heart and health, so why not do them for your brain as well?"  For the past 20 years, Greenwood and Raja Parasuraman, University Professor of Psychology, have studied how the mind and brain age, focusing on Alzheimer's disease. Their book, "Nurturing the Older Brain and Mind" published by MIT Press, came out in March. The cognitive...

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Why the brain is more reluctant to function as we age

New findings, led by neuroscientists at the University of Bristol and published this week in the journal Neurobiology of Aging, reveal a novel mechanism through which the brain may become more reluctant to function as we grow older.  It is not fully understood why the brain's cognitive functions such as memory and speech decline as we age. Although work published this year suggests cognitive decline can be detectable before 50 years of age. The research, led by Professor Andy Randall and Dr Jon Brown from the University's School of Physiology and Pharmacology, identified a novel cellular mechanism underpinning changes to the activity of neurones which may underlie cognitive decline during normal healthy aging.  The brain largely...

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Why Are Older People Happier?

Older people tend to be happier. But why? Some psychologists believe that cognitive processes are responsible -- in particular, focusing on and remembering positive events and leaving behind negative ones; those processes, they think, help older people regulate their emotions, letting them view life in a sunnier light. "There is a lot of good theory about this age difference in happiness," says psychologist Derek M. Isaacowitz of Northeastern University, "but much of the research does not provide direct evidence" of the links between such phenomena and actual happiness.  In a new article in Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science, Isaacowitz and the late Fredda Blanchard-Fields...

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Study Looks at the Nature of Change in Our Aging, Changing Brains

As we get older, our cognitive abilities change, improving when we're younger and declining as we age. Scientists posit a hierarchical structure within which these abilities are organized. There's the "lowest" level -- measured by specific tests, such as story memory or word memory; the second level, which groups various skills involved in a category of cognitive ability, such as memory, perceptual speed, or reasoning; and finally, the "general," or G, factor, a sort of statistical aggregate of all the thinking abilities.  What happens to this structure as we age? That was the question Timothy A. Salthouse, Brown-Forman professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, investigated in a new study appearing in an upcoming issue...

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People with Parkinson's disease more likely to have leg restlessness than restless leg syndrome

People with Parkinson's disease may be more likely to have a movement disorder called leg motor restlessness, but not true restless legs syndrome as previous studies have suggested, according to a study published in the Nov. 9, 2011, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.  Restless legs syndrome is a sleep and movement disorder. People with the disorder have the urge to move their legs to stop uncomfortable sensations. The urge occurs when the person is at rest, in the evening, and is temporarily relieved by movement. In leg motor restlessness, people also have the urge to move their legs, but it is either not worse when they are at rest or during the evening or it does not go away when...

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Researchers identify diabetes link to cognitive impairment in older adults

Many complications of diabetes, including kidney disease, foot problems and vision problems are generally well recognized. But the disease's impact on the brain is often overlooked.  For the past five years, a team led by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) neurophysiologist Vera Novak, MD, PhD, has been studying the effects of diabetes on cognitive health in older individuals and has determined that memory loss, depression and other types of cognitive impairment are a serious consequence of this widespread disease.  Now, Novak's team has identified a key mechanism behind this course of events. In a study published in the November 2011 issue of the journal Diabetes Care, they report that in older patients with diabetes,...

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The new old age – today's pensioners are very different to yesterday's

Old people today have more sex, are more likely to be divorced, are cleverer and feel better, reveals a long-term research project comparing what it is like to be old today with 30 years ago. "It's time to start talking about the 'new old age'," says researcher Ingmar Skoog.  The number of elderly is rising worldwide, and it is estimated that average life expectancy in Europe will reach 100 by the end of the century.  At the same time, old age and what we expect from it are changing. An extensive research project at the University of Gothenburg's Sahlgrenska Academy has spent a number of years comparing the elderly of the 1970s with those of today. The project, known as the H70 study, reveals that old age has changed drastically...

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