Author Archives: T Goodman

Live And In Color, McGill Neuroscientists Prove Famous Hebbian Theory Is Correct

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Xenopus tadpolesIn 1949, Donald Olding Hebb, a psychologist at McGill University proposed this theory: "Cells that fire together, wire together. Cells that fire out of sink, lose their link."  Sixty-five years later, neuroscientists from the same university, along with those from the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, have finally seen the Hebbian Theory in real time, in real living creatures, in action, and in color.

Mental Illness Worse For Longevity Than Smoking

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Mental illness can also cause physical diseaseIf you smoke 20 or more cigarettes a day, your average life span is 8 to 10 years less than the person who never smoked.  That's a lot of years.  But data from 20 different studies involving more than 1.7 million people show researchers from Oxford University that people with mental illnesses die, on average, even earlier than those who are regular or heavy smokers.....

Red Wine: It May Stain Your Teeth But It Fights Cavities

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What a glass or two of red wine can do to your pearly whites!  But never you mind.  A new study published in the American Chemical Society's Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry has revealed that red wine is not only healthy for your heart, but for your teeth. It fights cavities! 

Hope For Successful Alzheimer’s Drug Comes After Compound Reverses The Disease In Mouse Models

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Amyloid beta plaques

Researchers at Saint Louis University have successfully reduced the symptoms of Alzheimer's in mice genetically engineered to have Alzheimer's disease (AD).  The specific molecular compound that was used in the study, antisense oligonucleotide (OL-1), attacked the most widely-studied cause of AD, the accumulation of amyloid beta protein in the brain.

New Research Findings: Which Meditation Methods Are Best To Reduce Stress?

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Meditation at sunsetThose who want to practice meditation are often initially challenged to pick 'the best way' to meditate.  Some experts argue for mindfulness meditation, like focusing on your breathing or on body parts, or about a specific object or even a real problem one is experiencing.  Others prefer a non-directed, open-minded meditation in which one allows thoughts to come and go without dwelling on them or judging them or even reacting to them.  A team of researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the University of Oslo, and the University of Sydney recently published their findings on the respective methods and their effects on the brain as seen on magnetic resonance imagery (MRI).

New Lab-On-A-Chip Detects Cancer In Very Early Stages

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Newest Cancer Detector: Lab-On-A-ChipAn international group of inter-disciplinary scientists in oncology, plasmonics, nano-fabrication, microfluids, and surface chemistry have developed a detection device that can identify cancer in the blood long before any detection device available now. Though many years and many scientists have contributed to its development, the cancer detector and tracker is deceptively simple-looking and fits on a chip that's only a few square centimeters in size.

All That Jazz Is Good For Your Brain: 3 New Studies

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Jazz band....Studies have shown that those with early music training benefit from that training long into their adult years, and there are correlations between early music training and improved neural reaction to speech sounds in elderly persons, for whom these signals are generally the first to go.  These three most recent studies help explain why musical training might be so important to the retention of language skills....

Night Shift Sleep Study Is Novel Use For Crowdsourcing

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Night Shift sleep therapy deviceHow much would you pay to be involved in an international study registered by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in which you are testing a new sleep apnea device?  Would you pay $269? $539? $1299? $2499?  Those are some of the pricings of the packages being offered by the makers of Night Shift, a new device that promises to correct your snoring problems - problems that can lead to serious health consequences such as memory loss, chronic fatigue, and even heart failure.

Researchers Learn Optimal Working Conditions For Therapy Dogs

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Therapy dogMore and more, dogs are being used in the management of human health and rehabilitation situations. Dogs are trained to help blind persons identify visual cues in their sphere, to help hearing-impaired persons identify auditory cues, to be companions to heart patients and cancer patients, and buddies to soldiers with post traumatic stress disorder and other debilitative conditions.... But what needs do therapy dogs have to keep them happy and alert?  Specifically, what can humans do to reduce any stress these dogs might experience?