Brain Scanners Know Where You've Been

The brain's center of memory and navigation, once considered too disorganized to decode, may soon be unlocked. Using a brain scanner, researchers were able to determine the location of people standing in a virtual room from the activity in their brains.

"We could read their spatial memories, so to speak," said study co-author Eleanor Maguire, a University College, London, cognitive neuroscientist. "There must be a structure to how this is coded in the neurons. Otherwise we couldn't have predicted this."......

Building blocks of hope

For eight years, research on stem cells has limped along, despite the potential it holds for human well-being and health.

But things are changing - in the US, that is. This week, scientists hailed US President Barack Obama's decision to allow federal taxpayer dollars to fund broader research on embryonic stem cells.

"Medical miracles do not happen simply by accident," Obama told journalists after signing the order, which reverses former US president George Bush's decision in 2001 to limit funding.

It was a "difficult and delicate balance", said Obama, quick to point out that the order would not open the door to human cloning because "that would be entirely wrong"...

Medical food for Alzheimer's.

Apparently, deficiencies in glucose metabolism contribute to the progression of the disease. This product is metabolized into beta-hydroxybutyrate which neurons use as an alternative to glucose.

I had read a while ago that part of the problem in AD is a reduction in the ability of cells to clear waste products of normal metabolism. I wonder if giving them an alternate energy source works because it helps to improve the efficiency of the waste disposal system. Interesting.

Sek

You posted abt the connection between diabetes and Alzheimer here (( 0n October 2 2007 )

Interesting how the nanotech application to time-release of insulin has taken a second form from normal ingestion development of same rather than inhaling.... on the diabetes front last year at a Spanish Meet a paper was presented where it was found that Diabetes was a precursor to Alzheimer i.e. a high chance of getting it if being of type II. The linked article below takes a different view and is headed: "Alzheimer's Disease Could Be A Third Form Of Diabetes"
Science Daily — Insulin, it turns out, may be as important for the mind as it is for the body. Research in the last few years has raised the possibility that Alzheimer's memory loss could be due to a novel third form of diabetes.

Now scientists at Northwestern University have discovered why brain insulin signalling -- crucial for memory formation -- would stop working in Alzheimer's disease. They have shown that a toxic protein found in the brains of individuals with Alzheimer's removes insulin receptors from nerve cells, rendering those neurons insulin resistant. (The protein, known to attack memory-forming synapses, is called an ADDL for "amyloid ß-derived diffusible ligand.")

Maggots no better than medical gel for healing leg ulcers, study suggests

TORONTO — The use of maggots to deep-clean leg ulcers has grown in popularity in recent years as a way to promote healing, but a pair of British studies suggest the creepy-crawlies offer little advantage over an easier-to-use topical medication.

The studies, published online Friday in the British Medical Journal, found that maggots — the larvae of blow flies — worked about the same as the standard treatment of spreading hydrogel on the chronic wound.

As well, maggots were no more cost-effective than the pharmaceutical treatment, a companion study found.

The studies by the University of York in England were commissioned by the U.K.’s National Health Service to evaluate maggots in treating venous and venous-arterial leg ulcers, which are caused by poor blood circulation....