For the first time, the public will have the extraordinary opportunity to observe live brain surgery in a pioneering event at the Science Museum’s Dana Centre in London, on Thursday 28 October.

Broadcast for the first time to a UK audience, visitors to the Dana Centre will not only watch live surgery, but be able to direct questions to the surgical team in the USA whilst the operation takes place. Live from Brainworks will be broadcast across the Atlantic Ocean from Overlook Hosp

For people who suffer from a rapid heartbeat condition called tachycardia, an implanted device can usually nudge the racing blood pump back into a normal rhythm by applying electrical pulses to the heart. But on rare occasions, in a twist that has baffled physicians, the anti-tachycardia pulses produce the opposite effect: they trigger an even faster and more dangerous heartbeat.

By electrically jolting cardiac cells in a lab and mapping the change in the electrical activity, bio

Inebriated bees could give researchers better insight into alcohol’s effects on human behavior, a new study suggests.

“Alcohol affects bees and humans in similar ways – it impairs motor functioning along with learning and memory processing,” said Julie Mustard, a study co-author and a postdoctoral researcher in entomology at Ohio State University.

Researchers gave honey bees various levels of ethanol, the intoxicating agent in liquor, and monitored the ensuing behavio

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have dispelled the widespread belief among obstetricians that, in premature infants, brain injury results from a lack of oxygen, also called hypoxia, when, in fact, infection plays a larger role.

“Infection plays a much larger role than lack of oxygen in brain injury among premature infants,” said high-risk obstetrician Ernest Graham, M.D., an assistant professor at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and lead author of the study, presen

A repetitive drop in blood oxygen levels in newborn rats, similar to that caused by apnea (brief pauses in breathing) in some human infants, is followed by a long-lasting reduction in the release of the brain neurotransmitter dopamine, according to an Emory University research study. Because dopamine promotes attention, learning, memory and a variety of higher cognitive functions, the researchers believe repetitive apnea during neonatal development may be one factor leading to the development

Severe calorie restriction prevents certain aging-related changes in the brain, including the accumulation of free radicals and impairments in coordination and strength, according to a mouse study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. However, the dietary changes did not seem to prevent mice from developing some cognitive deficits associated with age, such as declines in memory. The study will be presented at 3 p.m. PT on Sunday, Oct. 24 at Neuroscience 2004, the Society fo

While breast cancer screening in rural America remains underutilized, barriers to screening mammography in poor, rural areas are marked by significant racial disparities, according to a new study. These barriers include poor knowledge about breast cancer and screening, difficulty accessing facilities, and lack of encouragement and funds to get screened. These factors are particularly striking among Native Americans. The study will be published in the December 1, 2004 issue of CANCER, a peer-re

The voice laboratory at the University of Navarre University Hospital has designed a novel and efficient protocol to evaluate and rehabilitate the voice of patients who have undergone laryngectomy. This involves a monitoring procedure based on patterns of phonatory flow. The study forms part of the PhD thesis by Dr. Francisco Vázquez de la Iglesia. The title of the work is “Physiological Bases of the Pharyngoesophageal Segment. Characterisation of the erigmophonic voice as a function of its a

In order to divide, cells must first replicate their chromosomes. Cells use an array of proteins to accomplish the job, including a large enzyme complex that synthesizes new strands of DNA. In a paper to be published Oct. 22 in the journal Molecular Cell, University of Minnesota researchers report that a particular protein, called minichromosome maintenance protein 10 (Mcm10), protects the enzyme from destruction and, like a molecular tugboat, escorts it to its “port”–the location on a chromo

For the first time, researchers from the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) connected with the Catholic University of Leuven have shown clearly that receptors in yeast cells detect and react to nutrients in the cell. The chance is great that this is also the case with human cells. Because about 40% of today’s medicines act on receptors in our cells, this research opens new possibilities for the treatment of metabolic disorders such as diabetes and obesity.

Researchers at Yale and Syracuse Universities found the first direct evidence for a mutation in mitochondrial DNA that directly affects blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

It has long been known that several metabolic traits including high cholesterol and hypertension cluster in individuals more frequently than by chance, but the underlying causes were unknown. This study, published early in Science Express on line, suggests that altered mitochondria may account for the clusteri

For the first time, researchers have demonstrated that a single change in a person’s DNA can contribute to a range of life-shortening risk factors, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and other metabolic disorders.

The mutation affects the genes of the mitochondria – the energy-producing power plants of the cell that are passed from mother to offspring. The researchers are hopeful their discovery could help unravel the complex genetic and environmental factors th

Volcanic ash that encased and preserved sea life in the Silurian age 425 million years ago near Herefordshire, UK has yielded fossils of an ancient sea spider, or pycnogonid, one of the most unusual types of arthropod in the seas today.

Sea spiders are soft-bodied arthropods, found widely in modern oceans. For two-centuries there has been a controversy about the relationship of sea spiders to land spiders, scorpions, ticks and mites because of their unique body form. Sea spiders

Alzheimer’s. Parkinson’s. Lou Gehrig’s. Huntington’s. These neurodegenerative diseases exhibit loss of nerve function in different ways, from memory lapses to uncontrollable muscular movements, but it is now believed that these diseases share many common molecular mechanisms.

A team of Northwestern University scientists, led by Richard I. Morimoto, John Evans Professor of Biology, has made a key discovery toward understanding one of these mechanisms. In stu

A University of Florida scientist has grown a living “brain” that can fly a simulated plane, giving scientists a novel way to observe how brain cells function as a network.

The “brain” — a collection of 25,000 living neurons, or nerve cells, taken from a rat’s brain and cultured inside a glass dish — gives scientists a unique real-time window into the brain at the cellular level. By watching the brain cells interact, scientists hope to understand what causes neural disorde

The progress of Parkinson’s disease (PD), or any brain-wasting disease, is painful to watch in oneself or in a loved one. Physicians and researchers are not immune to that pain, but they watch the progression of disease with an eye toward understanding it and, one day, halting or reversing it.

Johannes Schwarz, M.D., and a team of researchers from Germany and Canada reported in the October issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine on a study that measured the molecular changes