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The brains of dead Russian geniuses:

March 20th, 2008 by Mylo

What makes a man a genius? Russian neuroscientists were pondering this exactly this question in the early 1900s and did exactly what seemed sensible at the time - they collected and dissected the brains of some of the greatest cultural figures in a huge collection called ‘The Pantheon of Brains’.

It’s a fascinating story told in a recent article published in the medical journal Brain. Amazingly, the last brain was only added in 1989.

Rather fittingly, the collection contains the brains of some of the Russia’s greatest psychologists and neuroscientists and has many curious aspects to it, such as the mysterious death of its founder. After death, his brain was immediately added to the collection.

In 1927, Bekhterev came up with a plan to organize ‘The Pantheon of Brains’ in Leningrad in order to collect elite brains. It was a severe irony of fate that precisely when the question about creating the Pantheon had been positively solved, the very initiator of this creation, Bekhterev, suddenly passed away. The circumstances are still questionable.On December 17, 1927, the First All-Union Congress of Neuropathologists and Psychiatrists was held in Moscow. Bekhterev, along with L. S. Minor and G. I. Rossolimo, was elected as honourable chairmen of the congress. On December 23rd, the last day of the congress, Bekhterev gave a presentation during the afternoon session. In the evening, symptoms of a gastrointestinal disorder started and 24 hs later, Bekhterev died of (as officially stated) acute heart failure. Without any further post-mortem pathoanatomical investigation, his brain was removed, in accordance with his will, and his body was cremated the next day. However, the idea did not fade away.

In 1928, the neuroanatomical laboratory of Vogt and his Russian colleagues were reorganized into the Moscow Brain Research Institute, where the structured collecting and mapping of the brains of famous Russians started. Bekhterev did not see his plan come to fruition, but his own brain enriched the collection of the Moscow Institute (the weight of his brain was 1720g). The collection acquired the brains of Soviet politicians, famous writers, poets, musicians, etc. Read the rest of this entry »

Study Links Genetic Footprint Of Embryonic Stem Cells To Cancer Cells

March 5th, 2008 by Mylo

A new study suggests that a genetic fingerprint associated with normal embryonic stem cells may be important for the development and function of cancer stem cells. The research in Cell Stem Cell demonstrates that embryonic stem cells and multiple types of human cancer cells share a genetic expression pattern that is repressed in normal differentiated cells, a finding that may have significant clinical implications for cancer therapeutics.

“Self-renewal is a hallmark of stem cells and cancer, but existence of a shared stemness program remains controversial,” explains study co-author, Dr. Howard Y. Chang from Stanford University. Dr. Chang, Dr. Eran Segal from the Weizmann Institute in Israel and their colleagues constructed a gene module map to systematically relate transcriptional programs in embryonic stem cells (ESCs), adult tissue stem cells and human cancers.

The researchers identified two predominant gene modules that distinguish ESCs and adult tissue stem cells. “Importantly, the ESC-like transcriptional program was activated in diverse human epithelial cancers and strongly predicted metastasis and death,” says Dr. Segal. Conversely, the adult tissue stem gene module had an opposite pattern, activated in normal tissues relative to cancer and repressed in various human cancers when compared to normal tissues. Read the rest of this entry »

The “Trust Me” Drug That Makes You Take Social Risks

February 16th, 2008 by Mylo

What if you could convince people to trust you and take risks for you with just a few drops of liquid surreptitiously placed in their water? There would be no drunkenness, no rufie-esque glazed eyes: just pure, human trust created via chemicals. The person wouldn’t even know they’d been dosed. A study coming out tomorrow in the journal Neuron explains how this scenario is possible today, with just a small dose of the brain chemical oxytocin.
Oxytocin is a chemical associated with many of the “pleasurable” feelings you have, from basic trust, to love and orgasm. Researchers in Switzerland theorized that people playing social trust games might change their behaviors if given doses of oxytocin, since the chemical might artificially enhance their willingness to trust someone. Indeed, they were right: subjects dosed with Oxytocin were willing to trust people even after they’d been explicitly told that those people had behaved in untrustworthy ways in the past. People who had not been dosed did not trust the “untrustworthy” people.

Histogenetic Probes and Diagnostic Aids

December 30th, 2007 by Mylo

Information on Histogenetic Probes and Diagnostic Aids:

Acquaporins
Acquaporins are water channel proteins found in the membranes along the nephron. These proteins allow you to recognize what part of the nephron you are visualizing, as different acquaporins are expressed differently along an individual nephron. Moreover, renal tumors can be revealed.

Acquaporin-1 - proximal renal tubule, descending thin limb of Henle’s loop
Acquaporin-2 - collecting ducts only

Actin
Actin is a contractile protein found in almost every cell. It allows for cell motility through changes in its shape. This is a marker of smooth muscle cells and myofibroblasts. Striated muscle actin is used to define rhabdomyosarcoma.

Albumin
Albumin is an abundant extracellular protein, with numerous functions made within hepatocytes, in the liver. Hepatocellular and hepatoid carcinomas can be marked by albumin immunohistochemistry.

Vimentin
Vimentin is one of the cytoplasmic intermediate filaments. Found almost everywhere, it is mainly prominent in mesenchymal cells, such as fibroblasts and endothelial cells. Because of its expression throughout many different cells, vimentin is often used as a positive control for the immunohistochemistry reaction.

WT-1
WT-1 is a transcription factor, found in Wilm’s Tumor (WT). WT-1 is also expressed in mesothelioma and mullerian epithelial neoplasms, such as ovarian serous carcinoma.

Z-protein
Found in the Z-band of striated muscle, the Z-protein can help mark rhabdomyosarcoma.

10 Craziest Facts About The Human Body

December 24th, 2007 by Mylo

#1 Your Hand Can Have A Mind On Its Own
Remember Devon Sawa’s character in 1999’s ‘Idle Hands’, a comedy / horror movie about a teen whose hand becomes possessed and goes on a killing spree?

Apparently this movie has some truth in it. The ‘idle hand’ which referred to as the ‘Alien Hand Syndrome’ is an unusual neurological disorder in which the sufferer’s hand seems to take on a mind of its own. This is due to the damage in the medial motor frontal region of the brain and often occurs after a brain surgery, a stroke or an infection of the brain.

The sufferer has no control over the movements of the ‘alien hand’ nor will they have any conscience idea on what that hand is doing. The person suffering from this condition can often feel disconnected with their hand, and feel as if it was not part of their body.

When the suffer is unaware the alien hand can sometime act out complex movements like unbuttoning clothing, using tools or even tearing pieces of clothing. There are no know treatments or cure for ‘Alien Hand Syndrome’ however the best solution is to give this alien hand an object it can play with to keep it distracted from doing anything harmful to the sufferer.

#2 You Could Remove A Large Part of Your Internal Organs and Survive

While the human body may appear fragile, your body is stronger than you could possibly imagine. It is possible for you to survive even after the removal of the spleen, the stomach, one kidney, one lung, 75% of the liver, 80% of the intestines, and almost every organ from the pelvic and groin area. Read the rest of this entry »

History of Immunohistochemistry

December 20th, 2007 by Mylo

Immunohistochemistry is a molecular technique that combines principles from both immunology and biochemistry techniques and principles to the study of histology and pathology by revealing molecules and patterns within cells and tissues.

The first to describe immunohistochemistry was Dr. Coons. The original immunohistochemistry method consisted of an antibody tagged with a fluorescent probe which was developed in rabbits, which was mixed with tissue sections and searched for, under a fluorescent microscope following a period of incubation. Since, numerous advancements and improvements have been done, to make the technique of immunohistochemistry fairly inexpensive and indispensable in both pathology departments and molecular laboratory benches worldwide.

Numerous different procedures are available, however the most commonly used are the peroxidase-antiperoxidase immune complex method and more so, the biotin-avidin immunoenzymatic technique.