Word: scratch
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...Take the common itch. Everyone knows from experience that a good scratch can cure an itch, but doctors still don't understand the physiological mechanism behind the itch-scratch connection. And that ignorance can have serious medical consequences. The common itch isn't so benign in many conditions, including shingles and AIDS, which can cause uncomfortably severe itching. Sometimes itching can occur inexplicably, without any apparent physical cause, and a patient's unchecked scratching can lead to excessive skin damage or worse. (Read "The Year in Medicine 2008: From...
...Minnesota study, researchers sedated macaque monkeys and placed recording electrodes in their spinal nerves. They injected histamine into the monkeys' lower legs to produce an itch, and the STT neurons fired up. The researchers then scratched the paralyzed, itchy legs with a metal device that mimics the sensation of monkey fingers and found that the firing rate in the neurons dropped rapidly. That sudden drop-off in firing is the neurological equivalent of the relief felt after a good scratch, indicating that scratching seemed to calm the nerves and therefore relieve the itch. The findings supported the researchers' initial hunch...
...When the team scratched the leg without first creating an artificial itch, the STT neurons fired - the normal STT-neuron response - but scratching did nothing to calm them. That demonstrates that STT nerves react differently to the sensation of a scratch when it happens in response to an existing itch. The researchers then injected a pain-producing chemical into the monkeys' legs, which also spurred the firing of STT neurons. Again scratching did nothing to calm them, suggesting that the nerve-dampening effect of scratching applies uniquely to itching, not pain...
Season 1 was gripping, but it raised the question of whether In Treatment could start again from scratch. That doesn't seem to be a problem. It's like a police procedural of the mind; if there are a million ways for CSI to solve murders, surely there are dozens of ways for Paul to follow dark tunnels in search of life's imponderables. It's a crazy world out there. It could keep Paul Weston busy for a long, long time...
However, though enforcement on the state and federal level may now be virtually the same in the affected states, a large legal gray area remains. "They've only begun to scratch the surface on this," says Dale Gieringer, California coordinator for NORML, a group lobbying to legalize marijuana. "They're going to have to change the whole treatment of marijuana under federal law because you can't just have a law lying around and say, 'Well, we're just not going to enforce it in this case,' and leave it like that. If they don't change the law, there...