Published: November 17, 2010
Americans have Alzheimer’s disease, a form of dementia that causes a decline in memory and other cognitive abilities. As our aging population booms, the Alzheimer’s epidemic will increasingly become a critical issue, not just for the elderly and their families, but also for society at large. BigThinks four-week series focuses on the latest research and thinking about Alzheimer’s, including cutting-edge advances in detection, prevention, and treatment.
While much remains unknown about the deadly disease, advances in research have shed new light on its mechanisms, and on how dementia affects the aging brain. Alzheimer’s disease is an incurable—and ultimately deadly—form of dementia that causes loss of memory and other cognitive abilities. A degenerative disorder, the disease unravels the fundamental functions of the brain over time, taking with it many components of personality and identity. An estimated 5.3 million people in the U.S. currently have Alzheimer’s, and each year the disease ranks as the nation’s sixth or seventh leading cause of death. In 2007 alone, over 74,000 Americans died from Alzheimer’s.Curious? Continue reading
Source: BigThink
Published: November 16, 2010
When the Oregon attorney, Brandon Mayfield, was arrested for the Madrid bombing six years ago, the FBI’s fingerprint examiners claimed they were 100% sure that his fingerprints were on the bag containing detonators and explosives. But they were wrong. And this sensational error has drawn attention ever since, to the widely held, but erroneous belief, that fingerprint identification is infallible.
Cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists have challenged forensic science as a whole to raise its game; and acknowledge that errors in fingerprinting and other forensic disciplines are inevitable because of the architecture of cognition and the way our brains process information. Experts say that it’s not a case of will an error occur, but when.
Claudia Hammond investigates the evidence that forensic examiners are making mistakes simply because they’re human, and asks what safeguards are in place to limit the potentially lifethreatening impact of forensic error.
Producer: Fiona Hill.
Listen to this All in the Mind podcast
Published: November 16, 2010
Researchers have discovered why some people with dementia are compelled to massively overeat, opening the way for better diagnosis and the development of new treatments for the disease.
The research, led by Dr Olivier Piguet from Neuroscience Research Australia, shows for the first time that some people with frontotemporal dementia have deterioration in the brain region that controls hunger.
“We think the cells in this brain region lose the ability to tell these individuals when they’ve had enough to eat,” says Dr Piguet. [continue reading…]
Published: November 15, 2010
This press release upsets me so. You see my 3rd son wants to get a motor cycle. “Not while you live in my house” is my mantra…. but I do know that I can only sing that song for so long. And so I wring my hands and will continue to print out these press releases in the hope that some modicum of sense will prevail.
Patients with traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) associated with motorcycle accidents were found to have a high probability of long-term disability and were significantly more likely to die in the hospital than were patients without TBIs.
Age-specific helmet laws were found to be less effective than universal helmet laws and were associated with an increased incidence of death and traumatic brain injury in the population that they were supposed to protect
Almost a third of young motorcycle riders who have a crash sustain a traumatic brain injury, researchers reported.
Once injured, they are more than 10 times as likely to die in the hospital as riders who have other forms of trauma, according to Harold Weiss, PhD, of the University of Pittsburgh, and colleagues. [continue reading…]
