Is this the year we finally wipe out polio once and for all?

In 1979, the World Health Organization successfully eradicated smallpox, removing one of history's greatest killers from the face of the Earth. Now, 33 years later, we just might be on the verge of repeating that feat with polio.

Polio, which once killed or paralyzed a half million people each year in the 1940s and 1950s, has been on the run from scientists and health officials for some time now. While there were 52,552 recorded cases of polio worldwide as recently as 1980 - and that vastly underestimates the true total that year, which is estimated to have been as high as 400,000 - there were just 649 new cases of the disease last year. The Americas, Europe, the countries of the Indian Ocean, and much of the Pacific Rim has been polio-free for over a decade.

Polio is now on track to be the second human virus (and third overall, including the bovine disease rinderpest) to be certified eradicated, and the big breakthrough this past year has been in India, which has not seen a case of polio since January 2011. That means the country just completed its first polio-free year, leaving just three countries where the disease is still endemic: Nigeria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. With 99% of incidences of the disease long since destroyed, that just leaves the 1%. Unfortunately, that 1% has proven almost intractable, with the efforts to get rid of it compared to "trying to squeeze Jell-O to death."

MORE HERE >>

Breakthrough: The first sound recordings based on reading people’s minds

Neuroscientists have developed a way to listen to words you've heard, by translating brain activity directly into sound. Their findings represent a major step towards understanding how our brains make sense of speech, and are paving the way for brain implants that could one day translate your inner thoughts into audible sentences.

Every language on Earth is made up of distinct acoustic features. The volume or rate at which syllables are uttered, for example, allow our minds to make sense out of speech. How the brain identifies these features and translates them into relevant information, however, remains poorly understood.

MORE HERE >>

Amazing video shows us the actual movies that play inside our mind

By Alasdair Wilkins

This is about as awesome as neuroscience gets. This video shows us some everyday clips, and - thanks to some super-advanced brain imaging and computer simulations - how those clips are seen inside our brains.

Researchers at UC Berkeley used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and some seriously complex computational models to figure out what images our minds create when presented with movie and TV clips. So far, the process is only able to reconstruct the neural equivalents of things people have already seen, but eventually it might be possible to construct the images people see in dreams and memories.

This could also open up new ways to communicate with those whose speech is severely impaired, such as stroke victims, patients with neurological diseases, and even people in comas. It's probably worth stressing that we're decades away from using this tech to read people's thoughts and intentions, just in case that's something you're worried about.

MORE HERE >>

The first scientific evidence that massage helps heal muscles after exercise

The Wall Street Journal's Katherine Hobson has a story today about a small study that tested the common-sense idea that massage helps soothe sore muscles. She writes:

The researchers exercised 11 young men to exhaustion over about 70 minutes, then massaged a single leg (determined randomly for each man) for ten minutes. The subjects received a muscle biopsy in both quad muscles to gather samples for massaged and non-massaged legs. The biopsy was repeated after a 2.5-hour rest period.

Researchers analyzed the samples from the different legs to see what was going on after the massage. They found two major changes: reduced signs of inflammation, and an increase in production of mitochondria, the cell's energy factories.

Curbed production of inflammatory molecules "may reduce pain by the same mechanism as conventional anti-inflammatory drugs" like aspirin and ibuprofen, the authors write.

The increase in mitochondria might also aid in recovery, the researchers speculate. This means that massage joins a few other alternative therapies in the category of "it works, but we're not sure why." Still, it's useful to know that massage causes a measurable physiological reaction.

http://io9.com/5881470/the-first-scientific-evidence-that-massage-helps-heal-muscles-after-exercise

Foundations of AT Classlist, Wednesday, 6:30-9:30

Snezana Bechtina, DT202A
Andrew Costello, DT202A
Niall Duffy, DT202A
Gabriel Lawless, DT202A
Kerri Toft, DT202A

How does your brain create short-term memories?

The brain's long-term memory allows us to hold onto experiences long after we initially encountered them. But short-term memory is a more fleeting and mysterious phenomenon, allowing us to hang onto a thought only until we're distracted by something else.

While the basics of how the brain creates long-term memories is decently well understood - it's basically just a question of encoding data in the brain so that it can be recalled later - short-term memory is harder to understand. After all, the whole point of short-term memory is that nothing is being recorded, at least not for more than about twenty to thirty seconds. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics - which is one of the more awesome things a Max Planck Institute can be for - decided to get to the bottom of this mystery.

Previous research has shown that structures in the frontal region of the brain are involved in short-term memory, whereas visual information is processed in areas found in the back of the brain. That's tricky, because the subjects of short-term memories are often things you just saw - in other words, visual information. Those two distant parts of the brain need to be able to work together for our brains to hold onto visual information in the short-term.

To figure out how all this works, the researchers showed some images to monkeys while recording electrical activity in both of these key regions of their brains. After being initially shown one picture, the monkeys would be shown another after a short break, and they had to use their short-term memory to figure out whether they were looking at the same picture or a different one.

Here's where things get interesting - the electrical activity revealed strong oscillations in a particular set of frequencies known as the theta-band. What's more, the frequencies coming from the two separate regions of the brain actually synchronized together when the monkeys tried to recall information from their short-term memory. The level of synchronization varied, but the more lined up the two sets of frequencies were, the better the monkeys were at remembering what they had seen. In a statement, first author Stefanie Liebe describes this phenomenon:

"It is as if you have two revolving doors in each of the two areas. During working memory, they get in sync, thereby allowing information to pass through them much more efficiently than if they were out of sync."

It's a really intriguing result, as it helps show how distant regions of the brain can communicate to perform complex acts at breakneck speed. It's pretty amazing to think of a pair of electrical currents whose frequencies are constantly spinning in and out of sync in our brains every time we try to remember something we were looking at five seconds ago.

http://io9.com/5881106/how-does-your-brain-create-short+term-memories

MOVIE: The D Word: Understanding Dyslexia

The D Word: Understanding Dyslexia skillfully explores the complex and often challenging world faced by those who have this disability. The film focuses on high-school senior Dylan as he shares his early struggles in school and prepares to begin studies at the college of his choice. Interviews with other young dyslexics, as well as highly accomplished businesspeople diagnosed with the learning disability, including Richard Branson, Charles Schwab, and California’s Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, are seamlessly incorporated into the story. Two prominent doctors in the field at the Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity help demystify and mitigate the stigma surrounding this syndrome.

Focusing on the positive aspects of dyslexia and incorporating creative animation sequences, James Redford’s film emphasizes specific areas where dyslexics excel and suggests thoughtful strategies for their academic success in our often-rigid educational system.

10 Incredibly Strange Brain Disorders

You're used to relying on your brain. Whatever else happens, your personal lump of gray matter will take in the world, and respond to it in a fluid and predictable way. But actually, whatever your brain does is made up of many successive mental steps — and if just one of those steps fails, you'll find yourself behaving very differently.

Here are 10 weird and highly specific brain conditions, and what they each show us about the human brain.

10. Astasia-Abasia Patients Are Always On the Verge of Falling
9. Anosognia Patients Are Unable to Recognize Their Own Injuries 
8. Broca's Aphasia Patients Are Able to Do Everything But Speak
7. Palinopsia Patients Literally Cannot Unsee Things 
6. Dysmimia or Amimia Patients Don't Know if You Give Them the Finger
5. Verbal Dysdecorum Patients Can't Censor Themselves
4. Dysantigraphia Patients Can't Possibly Copy Their Neighbor's Paper 
3. Amelodia Patients Can Never Name That Tune
2. Anhedonia Patients Can't Take Pleasure in Anything 
1. Jargonaphasia Patients Are Makeshift Gertrude Steins


http://io9.com/5874229/10-incredibly-strange-brain-disorders