Engineers are designing new high-tech medical tools to equip the operating room of the future, in an effort to help doctors treat patients more safely and effectively and allow them to perform surgical tasks that are nearly impossible today.
A Northwestern University study uses a new strategy to show precisely how paying attention alters brain activity. Digging deep to summon that extra ounce of attention engages a symphony of brain activity that comes to your rescue as millions of neurons work together to make the music of a vivid conscious experience. Think of a conductor stepping in to control a large set of unruly musicians in an orchestra so that they can all play together.
A different approach to treating urinary tract infections (UTIs) could defeat the bacteria that cause the infections without directly killing them, a strategy that could help slow the growth of antibiotic-resistant infections. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have been working to create pharmaceuticals that essentially “defang” the bacteria by preventing them from assembling pili, microscopic hairs that enable the bacteria to invade host cells.
Asthmatics and people prone to respiratory problems should have an action plan for the fire season to help them breathe easier over summer.
A high level of physical activity in women who smoked reduced their risk of developing lung cancer by 28 percent compared to smokers who did not exercise, an analysis of more than 36,000 women shows.
Xabier L?pez Aranguren, a biologist and biochemist at the University of Navarra, has studied in his doctoral dissertation the use of adult stem cells in order to palliate damage to the tissues affected by cardiovascular diseases, which are one of the leading causes of death in the Western world. The results of his research have recently been published in the journal Blood.
A new advanced magnetic resonance imaging technique developed at the University of Illinois at Chicago for the diagnosis of neurological problems, such as Chiari malformations, hydrocephalus and brain injury, will be evaluated for clinical use through a $1.4 million National Institutes of Health Bioengineering Research Partnership grant.
University of Arkansas public radio station KUAF 91.3 FM has been awarded a $15,000 grant from the American Psychiatric Foundation for the production of a year-long five-part series of in-depth reports on mental health and the elderly.
Memory training and other non-drug treatments may one day help older adults ward off declines in mental function, according to researchers from Wake Forest University School of Medicine in an editorial in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Researchers at the University of Southern California have discovered a direct link between loss of testosterone and the development of an Alzheimer’s-like disease in mice. They also discovered that testosterone treatment slows progression of the disease.The study, published in the Dec. 20 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, predicts that testosterone-based hormone therapy may be useful in the treatment and prevention of Alzheimer?s disease in aging men.