Word: neural
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...transplantation is “a very exciting application of stem cells,” it is not a solution for many diseases, as stem cell and regenerative biology professor Kevin Eggan said in a talk last night, titled “Using Stem Cells and Reprogramming to Model Neural Degeneration.” For example, he said it is difficult to imagine growing a new forebrain in the case of Alzheimer’s Disease, which is effectively what would need to be done to cure it. Stem cell research can be applied to better understand the biological progression...
...uses, for infants and adults" was based on data available at the time. Back in April, for example, the National Toxicology Program, which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), released a preliminary report expressing "some concern" that according to studies done in animals, BPA could have neural and behavioral effects on fetuses, infants and children at current levels of exposure. Recent surveys by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had suggested that exposure is widespread, showing that 93% of Americans excrete some BPA in their urine. Still, the weight of the evidence, mostly from animal...
...matter of fact, we are born equipped with most of the neurons our brain will ever have - and that's fewer than we have in utero. Humans achieve their maximum brain-cell density between the third and sixth month of gestation - the culmination of an explosive period of prenatal neural growth. During the final months before birth, our brains undergo a dramatic pruning in which unnecessary brain cells are eliminated. Many neuroscientists now believe that autism is the result of insufficient or abnormal prenatal pruning...
...long-term studies have documented is that there is a second wave of proliferation and pruning that occurs later in childhood and that the final, critical part of this second wave, affecting some of our highest mental functions, occurs in the late teens. Unlike the prenatal changes, this neural waxing and waning alters not the number of nerve cells but the number of connections, or synapses, between them. When a child is between the ages of 6 and 12, the neurons grow bushier, each making dozens of connections to other neurons and creating new pathways for nerve signals. The thickening...
...Most scientists believe that the pruning is guided both by genetics and by a use-it-or-lose-it principle. Nobel prizewinning neuroscientist Gerald Edelman has described that process as "neural Darwinism" - survival of the fittest (or most used) synapses. How you spend your time may be critical. Research shows, for instance, that practicing piano quickly thickens neurons in the brain regions that control the fingers. Studies of London cab drivers, who must memorize all the city's streets, show that they have an unusually large hippocampus, a structure involved in memory. Giedd's research suggests that the cerebellum...