Brain

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Laura Campo and Justin Pearson hoped their baby's short and tortured life would bring a new definition of death, but the Florida Supreme Court has refused their wish and said Baby Theresa was indeed alive with only a stub of a brain.And with her being alive, the doomed baby's vital organs could not be taken from her to help save the lives of others, the court said.Ruling on an appeal filed while the nation debated the fate of the baby with no brain, Justice Gerald Kogan wrote yesterday for the unanimous court that "the weight of the evidence supports the conclusion that [Baby Theresa]

Dr. Mark E. Molliver, a Johns Hopkins School of Medicine professor emeritus of neuroscience and neurology, died of complications after cardiac arrest May 10 at his hospital. The Canton resident was 75. Colleagues said his discoveries had an impact on analyzing the structure of the brain and its response to drugs. "Mark was one of the country's greatest neuroanatomists," said Solomon Snyder, founder and longtime director of the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience. "He made major discoveries about the role of serotonin," the brain molecule connected to well-being and happiness.

I n the 1950s, a third of those who worked in the area used their hands to make cars and cans, soap and sugar, tools and spices. But that steel-solid manufacturing core was barely holding on by the dawn of this decade. Bethlehem Steel declared bankruptcy in 2001. General Motors' Broening Highway plant assembled its last van in 2005. At ghostly Sparrows Point, once teeming with 30,000 steelworkers, just a couple of thousand people punch in. The region's economy now centers on the head, not the hands, with workers in the lab rather than on the line.

"They do that because they were born that way. " If you say that about homosexuals, you are tolerant and realistic. If you say it about blacks, you are racist (unless you're black yourself). If you say it about women, you may or may not be sexist, depending on who is manning (er, womanning) the feminist battle stations. If you say it about men, you just might be a writer for Esquire. But if you say it about conservatives, you're a scientist. Over the past decade, a new fad has taken hold among academics and liberal journalists: call it the new science of conservative phrenology.

Bengals wide receiver Chris Henry suffered from a chronic brain injury that may have influenced his mental state and behavior before he died last winter, West Virginia University researchers said Monday. The doctors had done a tissue analysis of Henry's brain that showed he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Henry died in December, a day after he came out of the back of a pickup truck his fiancee was driving near their home in Charlotte, N.C. Neurosurgeon Julian Bailes and fellow researchers at West Virginia believe chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, is caused by multiple head impacts, regardless of whether those blows result in a concussion diagnosis.

Lonni Sue Johnson spends every spare moment creating word puzzles superimposed on elaborate grids. The moment she puts one down, she starts on the next. In not quite three years, she has amassed a stack of paper that is 15 feet high. Family member say that's how she pins down time. "In order to grasp the present moment before it vanishes from her memory, Lonni Sue urgently writes and draws," says her sister, Aline Johnson. "As she works on her puzzles, her thoughts — which would otherwise be constantly slipping away — are held on the page, where she can build ideas.

Providing one more clue for solving the autism mystery, researchers have discovered that the brain mechanism that stops or slows nerve impulses contributes to the disorder. A team at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., found that genes that serve as "off switches" in the brain's neurons play a role. Exactly how such genes interact and what happens in the brains of autistic children remains unknown. But the findings are sure to intrigue the many parents of autistic children who have long suspected that their children suffer from a sensory overload.

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions have developed a computer-assisted "magic wand" they say will greatly reduce the risks of brain surgery.The prototype device, tested and developed at Hopkins, "could revolutionize" neurosurgery, Dr. Donlin Long, the neurosurgeon in chief, said yesterday at a science writers' seminar called "Beyond Radiology: All Things Exposed."So far, the wand has been tested on three brain tumor patients "with dramatic results," Long said. "We were able to reduce the size of incisions into the skull and brain and minimize potential brain damage."

Scientists are still a long way from figuring out what women and men really want, but they are getting a lot closer to understanding what makes their brains so different. That women and men think differently has little to do with whether they are handed dolls or trucks to play with as infants. After all, when infant monkeys are given a choice of human toys, females prefer dolls and males go after cars and trucks. The differences, researchers are beginning to discover, may have a lot more to do with how powerful hormones wire the female and male brain during early development and later in life.

Scientists have found that smoking tends to reduce levels of a key enzyme in the brain that is important to the "reward system" linked by scientists to addiction.The enzyme, called MAO-B or monoamine oxidase-B, breaks down dopamine, a brain chemical that acts as a messenger between nerve cells. Dopamine is one of several chemicals that have been linked by scientists to emotion and arousal, the brain's reward system.Dopamine is also linked to controlling movement, scientists say. When dopamine levels drop in Parkinson's disease, for instance, a patient's symptoms of muscle tremor and rigidity worsen.

"They do that because they were born that way. " If you say that about homosexuals, you are tolerant and realistic. If you say it about blacks, you are racist (unless you're black yourself). If you say it about women, you may or may not be sexist, depending on who is manning (er, womanning) the feminist battle stations. If you say it about men, you just might be a writer for Esquire. But if you say it about conservatives, you're a scientist. Over the past decade, a new fad has taken hold among academics and liberal journalists: call it the new science of conservative phrenology.

Forty-four of the nation's brightest high school students are in Baltimore to test their brains about the brain — in a two-day neuroscience competition that started Sunday morning with a visit to the cadaver laboratory in the University of Maryland School of Medicine and, for many of the teenagers, their first encounter with gray matter. Some had observed sheep's brains and rabbit brains in biology class, and all had studied plastic brain models and atlases as they prepared for the fifth annual U.S. National Brain Bee, founded by a University of Maryland neuroscientist.

Babies who develop autism later in life may show signs of the disease in their brain development as early as six months old, new research has found. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis , the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and other institutions looked at brain scans taken on babies at night while they were sleeping. The scans indicate autism may develp in infants over time, according to the findings published online in the American Journal of Psychiatry . By aged 24 months, 28 of 92 infants showed the medical signs for autism spectrum disorders.

From a distance, birds are fun to watch. Over the years, my attitude toward birds has migrated, in kind of the same way geese migrate in the fall: south. Birds, regardless of size, are probably the most striking of wild creatures because, though they generally need to have a measure of camouflage, their ability to fly allows them a bit of flash. A ring-necked pheasant rooster, with its white collar and green head is a good example of a mostly camo bird with just a dash of flash.

Ken and Kristen Sheely have experienced a parent's ultimate tragedy: the loss of a child. Now, through a fledgling nonprofit organization, they hope to educate young athletes about brain trauma injuries and possibly spare other families from the pain and suffering the Germantown couple endured last year. Derek Sheely was a 22-year-old honor student and a captain of Frostburg State's football team who collapsed in late August after suffering a blow to the head in practice. He died six days later of severe head trauma.

The Baltimore Sun Though the small statue with the greenish hue is nicknamed "The Modest Venus," she is anything but. It's true that the 10-inch figurine from the Italian Renaissance has one hand demurely covering her fig-leaf area, and the other held up as if to fend off unwanted advances. But around 1500, an anonymous metalworker crafted the Venus from bronze, which is naturally cool and pleasing to the touch. He gave her rounded limbs and an abundance of undulating curves; her buttocks might have been expressly designed to fill an adult's cupped palm.

CHICAGO -- Researchers from Chicago, New York and Florida report the first proof that fetal tissue transplants survived, grew and functioned in the brain of a Parkinson's patient, a milestone that eventually may lead to new therapies for Huntington's, Alzheimer's, strokes and other disorders.The transplant was linked to a significant improvement in the patient's condition, freeing him from the prison of rigidity and immobility, the main symptoms of the disease, and enabling him to enroll in an exercise class.

Researchers have for the first time identified a brain abnormality associated with hyperactivity, the disorder that causes up to 5 percent of children to be restless, inattentive and often disruptive in the classroom.Using a highly sensitive imaging technique to observe the activity of brain cells, psychiatrists from the National Institute of Mental Health found decreased activity in the portions of the brain that are involved in control of attention and motor functions.Their results, to be reported today in the New England Journal of Medicine, "represent a clear advance in our understanding" of hyperactivity, said psychiatrist Gabrielle Weiss of Montreal Children's Hospital in an editorial in the same journal.

If  you're stressed out from a divorce, a hard day at work or a fight with your girlfriend it might be causing your brain to shrink. A study by Yale University researchers found that stressful life events can reduce gray matter in regions of the brain that regulate emotion and important physiological functions in healthy people. Past studies have only linked stress to brain structure changes associated with psychiatric disorders, such as addiction, depression and anxiety.

Dan Duquette is continuing to staff his front office with veteran baseball men and former co-workers, announcing on Sunday that he has hired two 75-year-olds with a world of baseball experience. In an attempt to revamp the organization's infrastructure, Duquette, the Orioles' new executive vice president for baseball operations, has hired former Philadelphia Phillies general manager Lee Thomas as a special assistant and longtime scout Fred Ferreira as the club's new executive director of international recruiting.