Health on ZME Science

The unified theory of brain learning

The brain learns basically by shifting between different strengths of its synapses, as a response to different stimuli – that much is clear. However, recently, a team of UCLA scientists have shattered the common belief about the mechanism of learning, showing that the brain learns rhythmically, and that there is an optimal ‘rhythm’, or frequency, […]

Brain imaging reveals the movies inside our mind

Mixing in a typical fMRI brain scanner with advanced computer modeling simulations, scientists at the University of California have managed to achieve the the unthinkable – render the visual expressions triggered inside the brain and play them like a movie. This is the forefront technology which will one day allow us to tap inside the mind […]

Cyborg-rats with artificial cerebellums - first step ahead the age of borg

Remarkably enough, scientists from Tel Aviv University in Israel, have manged to implant an artificial cerebellum in a rat’s brain, which successfully restored lost brain function. This research could provide the foundations for implementing cyborg-like functions in the human brain sometime in the distant future. Such an advancement, could possibly one day offer the prospect […]

Yawning to cool the brain

Generally, yawning is considered a sign of fatigue or boredom, and it has been shown to be contagious in humans. A new study led by Andrew Gallup, a postdoctoral research associate in Princeton University’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, shows how yawning varies in frequency according to the season and heat exposure. Basically, after […]

Brain stimulation through electric shocks can improve learning

Licking 9 volt batteries or tasering yourself with a fork stuck in a power plugs is apparently evidence enough to consider a person both a cretin and a genius. A new study presented by scientists at University of Oxford have shown that electrically stimulating the brain can significantly speed up the process of learning. The […]

'Longevity gene' debunked - there's no such thing

Scientists from the UK and Hungary have run various experiments to verify the claim of US researchers that a certain gene is responsible for the increase of lifespan, as shown in some test organisms. Their results show, in fact, that the so called “longevity gene” allegedly responsible for the generation of an anti-aging protein doesn’t […]

China clones pig national-hero who survived catastrophic 2008 quake

In 2008 a deadly earthquake hit the Sichuan province of China killing tens of thousands and living millions homeless – it was the most devastating natural disaster in China’s recent history. From the among the rubles of the quake, however, emerged a survivor-pig which made him an instant national hero at the time. Now, Chinese […]

Shark anti-virus compound could cure deadly infections in humans

In 1993 Michael Zasloff, of the Georgetown University Medical Center, discovered an incredible compound inside the tissue dogfish sharks (Squalus acanthus), called squalamine, which has the remarkable property of shielding sharks from viral infections by preventing them from multiplying. Almost ten years later, further research shows that the compound might provide effective treatment and even cure terribly […]

Gamers solve decade old HIV puzzle in ten days

Scientists from the University of Washington have been struggling for the past decade to decipher the complex structure of an enzyme that exhibits behavior similar to that of an enzyme key in the development of AIDS from an HIV infection, and which might hold a critical role in building a cure for the disease. Gamers […]

Fancy a cup of pigeon milk?

Common sense might tell you that only mammals are capable of lactating, it’s a little know fact, however, that some species of birds are also capable of making milk for their young. The common pigeon produces milk in its crop, located near the esophagus, to feed its young. Scientists have long been wondering how the […]

Anxiety treatment with a computer just as good as therapy, study says

All you clinically diagnosed anxious readers might want to boot your therapist and settle for a cheaper, more comfortable alternative in the form a computer software which offers therapy through a series of highly effective tests, apparently just as effective as “the couch”. Called Cognitive bias modification (CBM), the therapy developed by researchers at Brown […]

Tiny neuromicroscope can see inside a moving animal's brain

A team of neuroscientists from Stanford University have managed to create a remarkably tiny device capable of monitoring brain activity in a rodent or other small animals. The device can be manufactured extremely cost-effective and might prove to be an invaluable tool for researchers of the new decade. Mice have always been the lab subjects […]

Scientists strive to create inorganic life

A team or Scottish scientists are pushing material science on the extreme side by conducting research which, they hope, will enable them to create life out of inorganic molecules. All life on Earth is based on organic biology – carbon compounds. The researchers from Glasgow University, however, have shown in a recently published paper a […]

Birth control pills affect memory, study finds

Women who use birth control pills or other contraceptives experience memory changes, according to a study conducted by UC Irvine researchers. They tend to remember emotional events more vividly, at the cost of losing their attention for details. “What’s most exciting about this study is that it shows the use of hormonal contraception alters memory,” […]

Behind today's cyborg technology - reality more closer to fiction than you think

Biomechanics has come a long way during the past few decades, on trend with the exponential growth of CPUs and electronics, in general. Articulated limbs or artificial optic units are just a few of today’s options that individuals with various impairments and disabilities can use to make their lives closer to normal. Limitations exist of […]

Dolphins talk like humans, study says

A team of researchers have shown in a recently released paper published in the journal Royal Society Biology Letters that dolphins actually communicate with each other through a process much in the way humans use. What has been mistaken for a long time as plain whisteling has now been proven to be a much more […]

Science brings mind reading tech a step closer

Researchers from Princeton University recently published a study in which they show how they’ve been able to use functional magnetic resonance imaging and a computer program that condensed 3,500 Wikipedia articles to associate words to particular brain activity patterns. Basically, they were able to read thoughts. To reach this remarkable correlation, researchers first did some […]

Anti-cancer virus shows promise

An engineered virus injected directly in the patient’s blood has shown some remarkable promise in targeting and destroying cancer cells, in what researchers have called a first. Using viruses to attack cancer isn’t really a novel concept, but until now, they had to be injected directly into the tumour, which leads to several other complications. […]

Human mating with Neanderthals made our immune system stronger

The mating between Neanderthals and modern homo sapiens has been a highly controversial matter between scientists in the anthropology scene for decades now. That was until last year, however, when anthropologists convened that the two related species did indeed mate, but the genes passed down from Neanderthals were inactive. Recently, there’s been another reason for […]

The US is debating the use of chimps in medical research

The United States and Gabon are the only countries left in the world that are still using chimps for medical research. While research made on our closest relatives is considered invaluable by scientists studying deadly diseases such as HIV, animal rights activists are pressuring the authorities to ban the use of chimps in research labs, […]

MRI scan reveals tarantulas have double heartbeat

Biologists from Edinburgh University might have stumbled across a significant discovery, after strapping a tarantula to a magnetic resonance imaging scanner, which showed how its heart contracted in a unique double beat. The find might apply to a species of spiders. If your curious to see the strange double heart beat for yourself, scientists have […]

Memory deficits of the elderly may be reversed

A team of researchers from Yale University have shown at a cellular basis why we tend to be more forgetful as we age, and claim that the condition may be reversed. There’s no secret to the fact that an elderly person has a much weaker memory than the one he did at 20 years of […]

Meditation stronger than morphine and drugs

Meditation can have pain reliefing effects much greater than even morphine, one of the strongest drugs, according to a recent study. We are only beginning to understand the deep effects that meditation has on our bodies, and researchers are baffled, to say the least. It calms and relieves pain with unbelievable efficiency, reducing the pain […]

Amazing device allows the blind to see with their ears

More like props from a James Bond movie than something that might have come from a scientific lab, a new device developed by neuroscientists combines a pair of special glasses, a webcam and a smartphone might allow the blind to see again by converting visual signals into auditory ones, which get transmitted through a headset. […]

An unhealthy lifestyle leads to brain shrinkage later on, study says

The latin phrase “mens sana in corpore sano” has been put to the test by researchers who wanted to study what kind of repercussions an unhealthy lifestyle has on the mind. What they found was a dramatic increase in brain damage and dementia cases among subjects who have experienced high blood pressure, diabetes, smoking and obesity […]

Scientists genetically engineer glowing dog

In a recent groundbreaking research study, scientists from Seoul National University in South Korea have successfully created a dog that can glow in the dark, using genetic engineering techniques. This achievement holds the potential for finding cures for human diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. The dog in question, a genetically modified female beagle named […]

Researchers create artificial lung that works on air, not oxygen

Researchers from Cleveland have managed to create an artificial lung that reaches an efficiency comparable to that of the real organ, by using air, instead of pure oxygen, as an essential element. There is still a long way to go, and human transplant is years away, but the results so far are extremely encouraging, and […]

Northern people have bigger eyes and brains

A new Oxford University study shows how people living further away from the equator have bigger eyes and brains than those living closer to it. This is to cope with the harsh colder climate, scientists say. Anthropologists come to this conclusion after examining 55 skulls, dating from the 1800s, representing 12 different populations from around […]

Amazing Brain Art

Brain-Art competition is an annual celebration of the beauty and creativity of artistic renderings emerging from the neuroimaging community. Last month concluded the first edition in which various artists from around the world submitted some incredible work for the competition’s galleries – 3D-rendering gallery, connectome gallery, abstract gallery and humorous gallery. Below are a few […]

Even the best liars can't suppress all their facial expresions

Mark Frank has been studying the faces of people lying when the stakes are high for over two decades, being one of the leading authorities in this matter; now, he has some good news for the good guys. According to his latest research, entitled “Executing Facial Control During Deception Situations” people lying can suppress most […]

New DNA sequencing device could decode your genome for just $1000

News of a low-cost semiconductor-based gene sequencing machine has been reported this Wednesday in the journal Nature, by a team led by Jonathan Rothberg. The astonishing advancement might lead to a age of personal human genome sequence, where people will be able to decipher their own DNA for as low as $1000. The human genome was […]

CalTech soup displays brainlike behaviour

Researchers from the CalTech University have managed to create the first artificial neural network from DNA, a circuit built out of interactinig molecules that can recall memories based on an incomplete pattern, in pretty much the same way a brain works. “Although brainlike behaviors within artificial biochemical systems have been hypothesized for decades,” says Lulu […]

Neural signature of mental time travel

Pretty much everyone has experienced some sort of memory triggering, but there hasn’t been any satisfactory explanation for this common phenomenon. But now, researchers from University of Pennsylvania have provided the first neurobiological proof that memories which are formed in the same context can become linked, the foundation of the theory of episodic memory. This […]

HIV treatment brings African patients to normal lifespan

It seems that recently, science is finally beginning to corner the HIV virus. Last week, two studies had the same conclusions, showing how a daily antiviral pill protects sexually active men and women from becoming infected with HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS. Now, researchers show that the life expectancy of already infected African […]

Over half of Alzheimer's cases could be avoided

According to a study conducted by Deborah Barnes, PhD, a mental health researcher at the San Francisco VA Medical Center, more than half of all Alzheimer’s cases could be prevented through lifestyle changes or light treatment. Analyzing thousands of cases worldwide, she concluded that the biggest impacting factors on Alzheimer that can be modified are, […]

Genetic research confirms that non-Africans are part Neanderthal

There has been a long standing debate regarding the Neanderthal people, and what kind of legacy we carry from them. Recently, a study conducted by an international team of researchers led by Damian Labuda of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Montreal and the CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center showed that a part of […]

Extremely fatal monkey virus spreads to human lab worker

Adenoviruses are nonenveloped (without an outer lipid bilayer) icosahedral viruses, characterized by a particular large size compared to other types of viruses. For years, scientists have thought that each adenovirus strain could infect only one species of animal, however, a recently published report shows how the same strain that infected and decimated a titi monkey […]

Human history recorded in a single genome

First of all, I hope you’re having a great Summer so far, and I apologize for my leap of absence – I’ve been missing you guys. If you want to know the history of your ancestors, you don’t have to look any further than your own body. As it turns out, your own genome carries […]

Pollution linked to memory loss

It’s pretty evident for anyone living in a big, crowded city what pollution looks like and to what degree our health is affected by it. Besides things like your lungs or skin, scientists relate in a new study published in Molecular Psychiatry, how they believe pollution can cause memory loss. To prove their point, they […]

Bionic glasses aim to replace guide dogs for the visually impaired

On display at one of the featured stands at this year’s Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition is a pair of special glasses developed by scientists at Oxford University, which mixes technology already developed by gaming and smartphone manufacturers, and allows people with next to none vision orientate. ‘We want to be able to enhance vision […]

How aging can be cured in the future - a scientist's view

If we’re to guide ourselves after Aubrey de Grey‘s telling, according to his predictions the first person who will live to see their 150th birthday has already been born, and as science advances along the decades at the current pace it does, he claims people born soon after the latter mentioned birthday will live to […]

Tour de Hell: 2,100 miles of pain for cyclists

Each year for three weeks, professional cyclists suffer at great lengths, enduring both physical and mental pain, in the Tour de Frace. Considering each day means around 100 miles on a bike, most of the time uphill, though mountains and so on, there aren’t any losers at the Tour de France. If you manage to […]

Scientists predict age using only a saliva sample

In a recently patented research, UCLA geneticists have shown and demonstrated how they’ve accurately been able to predict a person’s age just by analyzing a saliva sample. The research could possibly find highly welcomed applications in crime scene investigation, as a forensics tool for pinpointing a suspect’s age. “Our approach supplies one answer to the […]

Introspective individuals spot illusions harder, study says

According to a new study by scientists from University College London, it seems people who find optical illusion solving easier are less inclined to think about the process and understand how they came to that decision. This conclusion came after further analysis of data from a research conducted last year, which showed people with more […]

Amazing 1800s mechanical arm

With today’s technology, prosthetics are not at all uncommon, and what’s even more important, they have become more and more performant, allowing certain actions which would have been impossible a century ago. But even more than a century ago, in the 19th century, people were incredibly creative and resourceful. This prosthetic victorian arm, made out […]

Brain-like computing is one step closer

The development of a brain-like computer would have numerous and varied benefits, and this achievement is one step closer, according to research published by researchers from the University of Exeter. Unique handling of information The brain is an unique processor from many points of view, displaying many extraordinary abilities, including simultaneous information processing and storage […]

Remember and forget at the flick of a button

A team of neuro-scientists have managed to restore lost memories to rats by activating a part of their brains through an artificial memory chip – just like a sort of neuro-prosthesis. Further advances backed by this study might lead to the development of important leaps in long-term memory treatment, providing relief for Alzheimer or dementia […]

Giving Primates a Third Arm (and Why it Matters)

When you first hear of the work done by Miguel Nicolelis and his team, though the “cool factor” is high, you might wonder as to the practical application. Miguel has spent the last number of years (and, in fact, most of his career) working to gives our primate cousins a third (robotic) arm. In his […]

Magic Mushrooms can treat depression, anxiety and addiction, study shows

Researchers have found that the mystical experiences obtained by volunteers under the psychoactive substance found in hallucinogenic mushrooms has lead to a substantial improvement of their lives. Although a lot of similar studies have been made showing the beneficial long term effects which come with ingesting psilocybin mushrooms, be it spiritual or physical, this particular […]

Study: traumatic brain injuries in Asterix comics

Brain surgeons must have the best sense of humor in the whole scientific community. Seems like a team of German neurosurgeons took the liberty to analyze the hundreds of head injuries roman legionnaires had to suffer at the hands of the ruthless gaul Asterix. They’re results have been remarkable – this my friend is pure […]

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