Apr 28, 2011

Questionnaire may help predict autism at 1 year

A quick and simple questionnaire given to parents during a regular checkup in a pediatrician's office may help detect autism in children as young as 1 year old, a new study suggests.


The 24-item questionnaire, which assesses a child's ability to communicate with eye contact, sounds, and gestures, may steer infants who show early signs of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) into appropriate treatment at earlier ages, the researchers say.

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Healing Blindness in Mice

Viruses can deliver light-sensitive proteins to specific cells in the retinas of blind mice, allowing rudimentary vision, according to new research. Although previous studies have shown that the light-sensitive proteins can be beneficial, the delivery methods were not practical for humans. The viral-delivery method is similar to ones already used in human gene therapy.

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Sleep-deprived brains turn themselves off

Researchers know that sleep deprivation makes people and animals less functional. Now a team of researchers in Wisconsin and Italy has found that in rats kept awake past their bed times, their brains begin to turn themselves off, neuron by neuron, though the rat is still awake.

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Apr 16, 2011

Neurological Basis for Embarrassment

Recording people belting out an old Motown tune and then asking them to listen to their own singing without the accompanying music seems like an unusually cruel form of punishment. But for a team of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco and University of California, Berkeley, this exact Karaoke experiment has revealed what part of the brain is essential for embarrassment.

The twist to the experiment was that most of the subjects had neurodegenerative diseases, which helped scientists identify a thumb-sized bit of tissue in the right hemisphere of the front part of the brain called the “pregenual anterior cingulate cortex” as integral to embarrassment.

Knowing that people lose their ability to be embarrassed and which part of the brain governs that ability may suggest ways to help diagnose people with certain neurodegenerative diseases earlier.


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