Word: rao
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...script is coming into view. "We want to find the bedrock against which all further interpretation of the language should be checked," says Vahia. Down the road, he imagines he could write in "flawless Harappan" - even though he may have no idea what the assembled sequences would mean. Rajesh Rao, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Washington and a co-author of the study, says the task ahead of them is "like a jigsaw puzzle, one where you try to fit meanings into patterns and sequences." At the moment, he and his team are wary...
...journal Neurology, a team led by Stephen Rao, a brain-imaging specialist, describes a study of 69 healthy men and women aged 65 to 85. The researchers divided the group into three: those who had no risk factors for Alzheimer's, those who had a family history of the disease but no genetic indicators of it themselves and those who had both family members with Alzheimer's as well as a version of a gene for a protein called apolipoprotein E4 (ApoE4) that has been linked to the condition. They slid all of the subjects into an fMRI machine...
...Rao's team found that when volunteers saw names such as Britney Spears, George Clooney, Albert Einstein and Marilyn Monroe, those who were at the highest risk of developing Alzheimer's - those with both the genetic makeup and a family history - showed high levels of activity in the hippocampus, posterior cingulate and regions of the frontal cortex, all areas involved in memory. The control group showed the opposite pattern. Their brains became more excited when they saw unfamiliar names, which included Irma Jacoby, Joyce O'Neil and Virginia Warfield...
...among those with a family history of Alzheimer's, since most people who have the risky version of ApoE4 don't have the necessary gene copies. But looking more closely at people who have a family history of the disease by adding an fMRI scan such as the one Rao conducted to the genetic screen could help doctors select those who do seem to be in the greatest danger of being claimed by the disorder. (See the Top 10 Celebrity Twitter Feeds...
...idea is not necessarily to diagnose Alzheimer's earlier, says Rao. But imaging studies can help to identify those most vulnerable to cognitive decline so they can participate in clinical trials of new drugs designed to postpone or reduce symptoms. "If we can delay the onset of Alzheimer's by five years," he says, "by some estimates we can cut the incidence of Alzheimer's in half. If we can delay the disease by 10 years, we could almost eliminate it because people would die from other conditions first...