Word: neuroscientist
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...mothers is a strong indicator for ASP and that people with ASP often come from abusive or impoverished home environments. But increasingly, research is focusing on biological factors. Studies have shown that identical twins have a dramatically higher chance of sharing ASP than do fraternal twins. Adrian Raine, a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California, has found that the brains of people with ASP look different from those of the rest of the population, with less gray matter in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that regulates behavior and social judgment. Just last month University of Iowa...
Whole-brain transplants are still science fiction. "I never like to say that something's impossible," says Dr. Evan Snyder, a neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital in Boston. "I've been burned too many times by categorically ruling something out. And yet I can't imagine that 20 years from now human-brain transplants will be possible. The connections required are just too complex; they number in the millions. But the future of brain-cell transplants--that's another matter...
Snyder was not so sure. "I'm an optimist. Why would evolution have been parsimonious in depriving the human brain of the power of self-healing? I was a pediatrician before I became a neuroscientist. As a pediatrician, I was impressed by how much plasticity there really must be in the human brain. Pediatricians know that damage to the infant brain doesn't have the same outcome as damage to the adult brain. If a newborn has a stroke, even in the cortex [an area important to higher intellectual functions], he or she may sustain it and develop quite normally...
Much of what is behind the new hope is a better understanding of why the cord doesn't heal itself. In 1988 neuroscientist Martin Schwab of the University of Zurich isolated substances in the central nervous system whose sole purpose appears to be to block growth. In a healthy spine, the chemicals establish boundaries that regulate cell growth. After an injury, they do little but harm. In recent years, however, Schwab has developed antibodies that neutralize the growth blockers, allowing regeneration to occur...
...Damasio's turn. In a new book titled The Feeling of What Happens (Harcourt Brace; $28), the noted neuroscientist not only argues that human consciousness is comprehensible but also offers an arrestingly original explanation of its workings. What makes his views so noteworthy is that they're grounded not in theoretical musings but in years of clinical research on patients who are epileptic or have suffered brain damage through strokes, disease or traumatic injuries...