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Recent News and Articles on the Keywords: brain + your + 0.21  Related to the article below (Last Update: 8/5/2008)


New York Times
Learning to Be Your Own Best Defense in a Disaster
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One of the main lessons is that panic, denial and fear may be inevitable during a disaster, but your brain will perform best in a stressful situation if you ...
You?re Checked Out, but Your Brain Is Tuned In
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In various fields including neuroscience and education, research suggests that falling into a numbed trance allows the brain to recast the outside world in ...

New Zealand Herald
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National Post
CAUCUS POLITICS FROM CT TO DC
Hartford Courant, United States -
Conservative political commentator Robert Novak announced his immediate retirement Monday because of his diagnosis of a malignant brain tumor. ...
AssociatedPress
Pundit Robert Novak, diagnosed with brain tumor, retires Canton Repository (subscription)
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The EPOC is at once intuitive and complex: Slap the sleek white or black helmet on, fit the 16 brain-wave sensors in place, and you're ready to program the ...
7 ways to exercise your brain
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PC World
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When scientists genetically tweaked a part of the brain involved in learning and memory in fruit flies, the flies were unimpaired even after being deprived ...
Source: Google News

Accuracy of frameless and frame-based image-guided stereotactic brain biopsy in the diagnosis of … -
G Woodworth, MJ McGirt, A Samdani, I Garonzik, A … - Neurological Research, 2005 - ingentaconnect.com
... frame-based stereotaxis was similar (89 versus 66%, p=0.21). ... and frame-based
MRI-guided stereotactic brain biopsy are ... javascript to be enabled in your browser. ...

Who Do You Love, Your Mother or Your Horse? An Event-Related Brain Potential Analysis of Tone … -
S Brown-Schmidt, E Canseco-Gonzalez - Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 2004 - Springer
... 33, No. 2, March 2004 (? 2004) Who Do You Love, Your Mother or Your Horse? An
Event-Related Brain Potential Analysis of Tone Processing in Mandarin Chinese ...

Comment on" Ongoing Adaptive Evolution of ASPM, a Brain Size Determinant in Homo sapiens" -
F Yu, RS Hill, SF Schaffner, PC Sabeti, ET Wang, … - Science, 2007 - sciencemag.org
... what you can do to make your experience of ... Ongoing Adaptive Evolution of ASPM, a
Brain Size Determinant in ... 0.20, -0.75, 0.30, -1.26, 0.18, -1.29, 0.21, -1.61, 0.14 ...

… trial of very early decompressive craniectomy in children with traumatic brain injury and sustained … -
A Taylor, W Butt, J Rosenfeld, F Shann, M … - Child's Nervous System, 2001 - Springer
... within a range of 1.00 to ? 0.21, where 1.00 is ... any other physical problems that
cause your child, or ... Intensive Care Society Working Party on Brain Death and ...

Putative involvement of mechanogated membrane ion channels in the genesis of traumatic brain edema
R Vaz, A Sarmento, N Borges, C Cruz, I Azevedo - Clinical Neurology and Neurosurgery, 1997 - ingentaconnect.com
... Brain water content was increased in traumatized, 79.78% versus 76.67% in ... rate increased
significantly with trauma, 1.53 +/- 0.04% versus 0.21 +/- 0.04% in ...

Blockade of NMDA Receptors and Apoptotic Neurodegeneration in the Developing Brain -
C Ikonomidou, F Bosch, M Miksa, P Bittigau, J … - Science, 1999 - sciencemag.org
... about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience
of ... Brain region, Vehicle, ... Cing II, 218,932 ? 11,239, 1.54 ? 0.21, 15.49 ? 1.8 ...

Severe brain injury in children: long-term outcome and its prediction using somatosensory evoked … -
BG Carter, A Taylor, W Butt - Intensive Care Medicine, 1999 - Springer
... possi- ble health states lie within a range of ?0.21 to 1.00 ... excellent predictors
of long-term outcome following severe brain injury in ... a) Does your child have ...

CLIP Identifies Nova-Regulated RNA Networks in the Brain -
J Ule, KB Jensen, M Ruggiu, A Mele, A Ule, RB … - Science's STKE, 2003 - stke.sciencemag.org
... what you can do to make your experience of ... were evident, but in Nova-2 ?/? brain
RNA cross ... binding protein, Hu (99% confidence interval ? 0.21, average tag ...

Subjective experience after traumatic brain injury -
C Martin, D Viguier, G Deloche, G Dellatolas - Brain Injury, 2001 - ingentaconnect.com
... as it uses as a reference the levels of `normal? difficulties expressed by non
brain-injured subjects. ... 0.21 0.05 11. ... Others do not understand your problems ...

The development and psychometric validation of a brain cancer quality-of-life questionnaire for use … -
D Osoba, NK Aaronson, M Muller, K Sneeuw, MA Hsu, … - Quality of Life Research, 1996 - Springer
... of a brain cancer quality-of-life questionnaire ... Key words: Brain cancer; brain cancer
module; known groups comparisons; quality of life; scale reliability. ...

Source: Google Scholar
 

This is your brain, addicted

Scans explore role of automated responses for smokers, alcoholics, drug abusers

By Dennis O'Brien
Sun reporter
Originally published March 16, 2007
You might think reaching for that cup of coffee or cigarette is a simple decision.

But scientists believe the way we act to satisfy cravings involves a little-understood automated response - one we have no control over - and researchers in Baltimore are using brain scans to unlock its secrets.
If there's an automated component to craving, we really want to understand how it works," says Elliot Stein, director of the neuroimaging lab at the Bayview campus of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in East Baltimore.

In a basement lab, Stein and other NIDA researchers routinely scan the brains of smokers, drug addicts and alcoholics with a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging machine, or fMRI, to try to determine why their subjects have such a hard time kicking their habits.

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The scientists are part of a growing research movement that's using fMRI to unlock the brain's secrets. The technology was developed in the early 1990s by scientists who discovered they could track increased blood flow to different brain regions in real time.

"We were trying to see changes in the brain as they were occurring, and not just look at brain structures," says Kenneth Kwong, a physicist at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital who was instrumental in developing fMRI as a research tool.

Work at the NIDA lab is infused by the philosophy - backed up by years of research - that addiction is a brain disease, Stein says. He's convinced that a key to helping those trying to overcome addiction lies in understanding the brain's response to conscious and subconscious cues.

"There's a multiplicity of factors that are behind human behaviors. Why wouldn't there be a multiplicity of factors behind addiction and something like drug abuse?" Stein asked.

"Clearly, 'just saying no' doesn't work."

Stein and NIDA colleague Britta Hahn are studying how cues trigger cravings in addicts. They want to know what happens in the brains of smokers when they see cigarettes, and in drug addicts when they see the kinds of drug paraphernalia that remind them of their habits.

Previous studies have established that images of cigarettes and drugs cue brain activity associated with cravings among smokers and drug addicts. But there are also unconscious cues that trigger less understood automated responses, they say.

Stein and Hahn's work is aimed at pinning down brain areas involved in both the conscious and unconscious cues. Known as cue reactivity, it's an emerging question in drug addiction research. Some of the findings apply to smokers, alcoholics and caffeine addicts, they say.

"You have to keep in mind that sometimes responses to these cues happen fast, and you might not even be aware of them," Stein said.

Stein and his colleagues are part of a research movement that's using fMRI to decipher what's actually going on in the brain.

Over the years, researchers have tapped fMRI to identify activity associated with a variety of mental and emotional processes, from pleasure and pain to deception and decision-making. Doctors also use fMRI, along with magnetic resonance spectroscopy, to track the progress of brain cancer treatments, said Dr. Rao Gullapalli, director of the MRI Research Center at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

"It's pretty amazing, to be able to look inside the workings of someone's brain," said George Loewenstein, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. For example, Loewenstein has found that decisions about spending money can activate brain regions associated with pain.

In fMRI research, a volunteer lying on a table inside a cylindrical tube is given a test or task to perform while his brain is scanned.

The process of carrying oxygen-rich blood to specific brain regions alters the magnetic field that surrounds the volunteer. Radio waves help pin down the exact locations of where the brain activity occurs.

Experts can also probe the brain with positron emission tomography, or PET scans, but they require injecting volunteers with a radioactive dye for each test.

At the University of Maryland Dental School, Joel Greenspan, a professor of biomedical sciences, uses fMRI to study pain responses among people with chronically painful conditions, such as temporomandibular disorder.
 
In a study of 25 women published in 2004, Greenspan found that those suffering chronic pain were more sensitive to pain in other areas of the body than a control population. One long-term goal of research is the possibility of pain relievers that can block a receptor in the brain, known as the NMDA receptor, that becomes more active when someone experiences prolonged pain, he said.

For such work, Greenspan applies a flat-tipped probe to the backs of volunteers' fingers while they undergo fMRIs. The probe feels like a pin prick, but doesn't break the skin.
 
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 It's not quite as sadistic as it sounds," Greenspan said.

At NIDA's Bayview campus, many fMRI studies are aimed at developing therapies to help smokers and drug addicts kick their habits, Stein said. Researchers are also trying to understand why addicts are so prone to relapse.

"Drugs, we believe, fundamentally change your brain - that's why people who quit smoking have a phase of irritability during withdrawal," Stein said. "The question becomes, are these changes reversible?"

In a recent study, Stein and Hahn placed 16 smokers and 16 nonsmokers in a simulated fMRI scanner and activated machinery so the volunteers thought their brains were being scanned.

Then the subjects performed a series of progressively harder memory tasks - requiring them to recall images they had just seen. Periodically, researchers also showed the volunteers pictures of cigarettes between the images.

The researchers found that the smokers performed better than nonsmokers on difficult memory tasks when shown a cigarette as a cue, most likely because it acted as an alerting mechanism for them - waking up their brains. The results show how the brains of smokers respond to conscious cues, the researchers say.

"It's a reaction to a smoking cue that happens without much thinking," Hahn said.

In follow-up tests, the researchers hope to unravel how brains respond to unconscious cues. As a first step toward that goal, they plan to test the same group of smoking volunteers while they undergo brain scans.

dennis.obrien@baltsun.com
To download a new government pamphlet called "The Science of Addiction," go to baltimoresun. com/addiction. To view or print it, you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader, available at adobe.com.
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