O...M..G..-Comatose Man Was Actually Conscious For 23 years

Imagine being completely paralyzed in your body but fully conscious. You can hear everything going around you but you have no way to signal to the outside world that you are awake. This man did that (or rather nothing) for 23 years.

The man was involved in a 1983 car crash and diagnosed as being in a coma. Initial brain scans failed to pick-up his conscious brain activity. Both his family and caregivers attempted to communicate with him, but eventually gave up and assumed his vegetative state was permanent. Over the years, the doctors used the internationally used Glasgow Coma Scale to assess his condition. It tests eye, verbal and motor assessments to determine brain function, however, doctors still failed to miss signs his brain was fully functioning. Just three years ago, doctors used a "state of the art scanning system" that detected his consciousness.

Steven Laureys, a neurologist in Belgium says that of 44 diagnosed comatose patients he examined, 18 showed responses to communication. In about 40% of vegetative cases, closer examination shows a certain level of consciousness. He has also published a paper on the misdiagnoses of vegetative states.

This is not only TERRIFYING for the patient to be considered unresponsive by the outside world, but shines a new perspective on the decision for people who are considered comatose and are taken off life support. Eep.

I'm Addicted to Cheesecake...Literally.

We've all had those moments, where we've eaten an entire package of oreos, a pint of ice cream or huge super-sized meal from McDonald's.

However, could these (hopefully) one time ordeals be setting us up for a junk food addiction?

New research from the Scripps Research Institute in Florida suggests that junk food addiction is surprisingly similar to drug addiction.

Rats were split into two groups: Controls which had high-nutrient/low-cal diets or Junkies who were given unlimited junk food bought in a local grocery store (ie bacon, cheesecake, ho-hos, sausage, etc.). As expected, the junkie rats quickly became obese and compulsive eaters.

The rats were then allowed to control the pleasure center of their brains (also associated with drug addiction) by running on a wheel. The more they ran, the better they felt. Rats on the high fat diet ran more demonstrating that they need more stimulation in order to feel pleasure.

To see how strong the urge to eat junk food was, the rats were shocked whenever they ate high-fat foods. Control rats refused to eat the food again after one shock. However, the obese rats continually ate despite the repeated discomfort.

Furthermore, when the rats were put back onto the strict control diet, they had much difficulty adjusting. Formerly junky rats refused to eat their new food and starved themselves for two weeks.

Scientists are now interested in seeing if the eating habits of these junky rats are affected in the long term sense.

Tetris Increases Brain Matter

A new excuse to play videogames: BMC Research Notes finds that playing Tetris for 3months increases the brain's gray matter and efficiency.



Fifteen adolescent girls played Tetris for 3months, on average for 1.5hrs a week. (Girls were used since boys' tendency to have increased videogame experience might skew the results). MRI scans showed that their brain's gray matter, which is used for information processing, became thicker. These regions included the temporal and frontal lobe which is thought to be involved in information integration and planning complex movements.However, other parts of their brains had reduced activity compared to initial readings when monitored during gameplay. The control group who did not play the game at all showed no difference at all.

Scientist theorized this reduced activity may be because the brain is learning which regions are less important during Tetris. Another is that different parts are beginning to communicate with one another, to become more streamlined.

"Seizure Makes Woman Mistake Herself For A Man"

We all know that brain and head injuries can cause drastic personality change in people. The most of which being Phineas Gage.

That looks like it stings.

Gage was a railroad worker who had a 1.25in diameter metal rod blasted into his head. Surprisingly, he was quite conscious and capable right after the accident, although he literally vomited some brain out. The rod was successful taken out and he lived, but it was well-documented that Gage had a significant personality change.

In a more recent case, a 37 yr old woman had been admitted to an epilepsy clinic in Germany. She had no previous mental health problems . She had reported feelings of fear, nausea as well as delusions she was a man. She reportedly felt her voice becoming deeper like a man and that she saw her own arms as male with male hair growth.

She saw the same thing among other woman; that they appeared to change into men before her eyes. An MRI scan showed a tumor linked to her seizures, located in the amygdala, of which is linked to one's sense of identity "including aspects like familiarity, emotional state, and sex, and past studies revealed that electrical stimulation of the temporal lobe triggered doubt about sexual identity." Anticonvulsive drugs prevented furture delusions and seizures.

I Don't Need Heroin, Running Is My High

Running is one of those things that I never understood. Maybe it's because running makes me want to strangle myself with my shoelaces. Maybe because I'm never late. Maybe it's because I don't believe in a running unless something is chasing you (bears, dogs, cops). So I have never had a runner's high.

However, research has shown the existence of a "runner's high" which can also become addictive. Using rats, scientists have shown that a release of endorphins during running is comparable to opiate use. It is speculated that running can be used as therapy for heroin and morphine addicts.

During long runs, glycogen (which are sources of energy) stores become emptied and glands in the brain release endorphins that allow the person to keep going.

The experiment had 44 male and 40 female rats divided into 4 groups:

• rats with a wheel and food availability 24hrs a day
• rats with no wheel and food availability 24hrs a day
• rats with a wheel and food availability for 1 hr
• rats with no wheel and food availability for 1hr

The rats where subjected to these conditions for several weeks then given a drug used to treat opiate addicts and causes withdrawl symptoms. The theory is that the more endorphins or "high" from exercising would produce more intense withdrawls. Active rats had more withdrawl symptoms than their inactive counterparts. Rats given food for an 1 hr exercised much more and had even a more significant symptoms.

Big People, Little Brains

A new finding at UCLA has found a link between obesity and brain tissue.

Obese people had 8% lesser brain tissue and appeared 16yrs older than people of normal weights.

Overweight people seem to have half the effects, with 4% lesser brains an appeared to have aged 8 years older.

"Obese people had lost brain tissue in the frontal and temporal lobes, areas of the brain critical for planning and memory, and in the anterior cingulate gyrus (attention and executive functions), hippocampus (long-term memory) and basal ganglia (movement), the researchers said in a statement today. Overweight people showed brain loss in the basal ganglia, the corona radiata, white matter comprised of axons, and the parietal lobe (sensory lobe). "

This means that other than taking a toll on your body, extra weight and fat can deplete your brain making you more susceptible to diseases such as Alzheimer's.

BANG YOUR HEAD....for brain wrinkles.

Wired into the Brain

Whenever we think of a brain, we imagine it has a wrinkley mass of.....stuff.

Besides a unique aesthetic look, the wrinkles are related to cognitive abilities, as abnormalities are linked to autism and depression.

However, it turns out all those crevices and crenelations actually help prevent damage.

Other than packing a large surface area into a tiny space, the crinkles absorbs some of the shock from banging your head on the desk, being in a mosh pit, or one mean bar fight. Researchers discovered this through computer models of the brain, which in this case, smooth vs. wrinkled. In the smooth layout, every part of the brain was more susceptible to damage.

Need To Remember Things? Take A Nap.

I love sleeping. Unfortunately, I don't do it enough at night, which leaves me to make more of it up during the day.

Read this, then go nap.

"New research conducted by brain researcher Avi Karni of the University of Haifa in Israel explores the possibility that naps help lock in sometimes fleeting long-term memories. A 90-minute daytime snooze might help the most, the study finds.

"We still don't know the exact mechanism of the memory process that occurs during sleep, but the results of this research suggest the possibility that it is possible to speed up memory consolidation," Karni said. "In the future, we may be able to do it artificially."

Long-term memory refers to memories that stay with us for years, such as "what" memories — a car accident that happened yesterday — or "how to" memories, such as one's learned ability to play the drums or tear it up in a game of soccer.

Karni, who co-authored the study in a recent issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, instructed participants to learn a complex thumb-tapping sequence, then split the study subjects into two groups: one that napped for an hour, and one that didn't. The people who took an afternoon snooze showed sizeable improvement in their performance by that evening.

"After a night's sleep the two groups were at the same level, but the group that slept in the afternoon improved much faster than the group that stayed awake," Karni said.

An additional leg of the study showed just how much faster a 90-minute nap could help lock in long-term memories.

"Daytime sleep can shorten the time 'how to' memory becomes immune to interference and forgetting," Karni said. "Instead of 6 to 8 hours, the brain consolidated the memory during the 90-minute nap."

Sound Surgery

Switzerland does more than Ikea.

Swiss scientists have performed ultrasonic surgery on 9 patients that h ave survived this procedure (so far).

In this case study, the different patients had severe debilitating pain and had surgery performed on the thalamus.

Ultrasound beams were directed at a specific part of the brain and then focused to an area "about the size of a rice grain." This rice grain-sized area is then zapped, through the intact skull and scalp, where it heats up brain tissue to ~130F, effectively killing the surrounding cells. Just to make sure they don't slice an entire hemisphere off, surgeons are armed with magnetic resonance scanners and thermal imagers of the brain.

As you can see, this newer technology allows more precision, accuracy and faster healing time. There is no physical surgery; only the targeted area is laser'd.

This is a huge improvement over the old type of surgery which was the jam a radio probe into the skull or with radiation treatments on the affected area. I think I prefer the lasers.

You Might Look Like A Smurf, But At Least You Can Walk.

Aaaaw, he looks cold.

Want to know how they did it?

Scientists accidentally found out that Brilliant Blue G (BBG), a blue food dye, can be used to treat spinal cord injuries.

Spinal cord injuries occur when the spinal cord has been harmed in some way, causing swelling. The swelling blocks blood flow which leads to nerve cell death. Neurons also die from stress incurred by the sudden release of ATP (energy molecules) causing overstimulation. To prevent this, scientists figured they can simply block ATP receptors. However, there was no known compound that existed.

BBG is very similar to one type of ATP receptor. BBG is commonly used and FDA approved. A benefit is that it can cross blood-brain barrier, i.e. you don't have to riskily inject into the spine itself, you can simply go through the bloodstream.

Moving on to blue rats. Rats with spinal cord injuries given BBG infusion showed to recover much faster than control rats. BBG rats still had a limp, but were able to walk after 6wks of treatment, unlike control rats who never regained that ability. Also, they turned very blue.

As with any animal trials, more research needs to be done...the injured mice were treated 15 minutes after they were hurt, something unrealistic for people. Also, we don't know how blue (if any) they will turn. Maybe they will look tinged to the girl from Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. Or a smurf.