Brain

For decades, those with high cholesterol have been given a list of don'ts when it comes to their diet: Don't eat cholesterol-rich eggs; don't eat butter; don't eat red meat or regular ice cream. Well, now researchers have identified a list of do's for the diet that may work to lower cholesterol levels better than avoiding those don'ts. In a study published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers found that eating cholesterol-lowering foods like nuts, soy protein, and certain fiber-rich items result in bigger drops in "bad" LDL cholesterol than avoiding...

WHO Dr. Jordan Smoller WHAT Smoller, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, has just written a book called "The Other Side of Normal. " Q. You write in your book that psychiatrists are just starting to try to understand what it means to have "normal" mental health. Why is it important to understand normalcy? A. The biology of normal teaches us about both our everyday life and also mental illness.

After years of suffering from chronically inflamed and infected sinuses, I finally decided I'd had enough. I chose to do what 500,000 other Americans do every year - have sinus surgery. It wasn't an easy decision. I had to balance my need for a fix against my fear of surgery and research that raised questions about the procedure. I was miserable. My sinuses, those supposedly hollow spaces around the nose, had become clogged by scar tissue and the build-up of thickened mucus from decades of infections and inflammation.

Dorothy Anger has taken nine courses at Boston University, ranging from film to foreign relations and the Middle East. But unlike the majority of her classmates, Anger is not in search of a future career path. Her working days are already behind her. Anger, 69, retired several years ago after a career in grant writing and communications. In that time, she has become a dedicated student in BU's Evergreen program, which allows adults 58 and older to audit undergraduate and graduate-level courses.

WHO Dr. Jordan Smoller WHAT Smoller, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, has just written a book called "The Other Side of Normal. " Q. You write in your book that psychiatrists are just starting to try to understand what it means to have "normal" mental health. Why is it important to understand normalcy? A. The biology of normal teaches us about both our everyday life and also mental illness.

Cathy Hutchinson imagined picking up her coffee from the table. She thought hard about bringing the red bottle toward her lips and taking a drink, without any assistance. Then, for the first time since a stroke left her arms and legs paralyzed 15 years earlier, she did it. A blue robotic arm, guided by an experimental brain implant that "read" Hutchinson's thoughts, grasped the bottle and carried it toward her. By picturing her own immobile right arm and hand moving, she navigated the robot arm to the right position, tipped the bottle toward her lips, and took a long, satisfied sip through a straw.

Dorothy Anger has taken nine courses at Boston University, ranging from film to foreign relations and the Middle East. But unlike the majority of her classmates, Anger is not in search of a future career path. Her working days are already behind her. Anger, 69, retired several years ago after a career in grant writing and communications. In that time, she has become a dedicated student in BU's Evergreen program, which allows adults 58 and older to audit undergraduate and graduate-level courses.

Seen from the outside, our deep relationship with art can seem bizarre: Why should a few notes arranged just so, or a few patches of color on a canvas, engage us so profoundly? This question drives the young field of neuroaesthetics, whose researchers are starting to explore how we use our brains to make art come alive. In his new book, "The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain from Vienna 1900 to the Present," Eric Kandel—both a Nobel laureate neuroscientist and a passionate art collector — uses the vivid Viennese painting of Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, and...

DENVER -- A western Colorado coroner said yesterday that two hospitals allowed vital organs to be removed from a man before they had proved he was brain dead, and he declared the death a homicide. The cause of William Rardin's death was the "removal of his internal organs by an organ recovery team," Montrose County Coroner Mark Young said. He said he did not believe the case should be a criminal matter, but it "should lead to a clarification of what the accepted standard is. " Young said Montrose Memorial Hospital in Montrose and St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Junction did...

Sven Birkerts must be smiling, grimly. Author of the bestselling 1994 cri de coeur “The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age,’’ now editor of the journal Agni at Boston University, Birkerts saw it coming. He raised the alarm on the intellectual and cultural effects of digital media long before Google’s corporate motto, “Don’t be evil,’’ took on an Orwellian tone. In fact, before Google even existed. But Birkerts’s argument was literary and anecdotal.

In a finding sure to fuel the debate over the harms of saturated fat, researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital published a study Friday suggesting that saturated fats -- found in red meat and full-fat dairy products -- causes the brain to age more rapidly than other kinds of fat. Olive oil, avocado, and other monounsaturated fats appear to slow brain aging. The study, published online in the Annals of Neurology , compared dietary surveys taken from nearly 6,200 healthy women over age 65 with cognitive functioning tests taken about five years later and...

Cathy Hutchinson imagined picking up her coffee from the table. She thought hard about bringing the red bottle toward her lips and taking a drink, without any assistance. Then, for the first time since a stroke left her arms and legs paralyzed 15 years earlier, she did it. A blue robotic arm, guided by an experimental brain implant that "read" Hutchinson's thoughts, grasped the bottle and carried it toward her. By picturing her own immobile right arm and hand moving, she navigated the robot arm to the right position, tipped the bottle toward her lips, and took a long, satisfied sip through a straw.

Cathy Hutchinson imagined picking up her coffee from the table. She thought hard about bringing the red bottle toward her lips and taking a drink, without any assistance. Then, for the first time since a stroke left her arms and legs paralyzed 15 years earlier, she did it. A blue robotic arm, guided by an experimental brain implant that "read" Hutchinson's thoughts, grasped the bottle and carried it toward her. By picturing her own immobile right arm and hand moving, she navigated the robot arm to the right position, tipped the bottle toward her lips, and...

The same type of brain damage identified in 14 deceased professional football players has been pinpointed in veterans who endured bomb blasts in Iraq and Afghanistan - a finding that raises concerns that numerous other military personnel may be vulnerable to similar long-term impairments. An international team of researchers led by Boston scientists said in a study published Wednesday that they discovered chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in the brains of four veterans after their deaths, including three who had survived explosions from improvised explosive devices.

A small study raises more concern about the long-term consequences of brain injuries suffered by thousands of soldiers — suggesting they may be at risk of developing the same degenerative brain disease as some retired football players. Autopsies of four young veterans found the earliest signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in their brain tissue, Boston researchers reported Wednesday. They compared the brain tissue of some of the youngest athletes ever found with signs of early CTE, in their teens and 20s, and concluded the abnormalities were nearly...

Sydney Arbelbide graduated from Northeastern University last year with a degree in systems engineering and a job offer in Silicon Valley from Google Inc. But she turned down the Internet search giant for a small tech firm in Boston. A major reason was her six-month co-op job, similar to an internship, with the Boston company, Eze Castle Integration, which provides information technology services to the financial industry. As she set up IT systems downtown, she found she liked working at a smaller company - and liked being in Boston.

The next installment of the popular Science on Screen series at the Coolidge Corner Theatre will combine a talk by Dr. Charles Limb, a researcher and musician who studies the brains of freestyle rappers in the midst of rhyming, and a screening of Curtis Hanson's 2002 hip-hop drama, "8 Mile," at 7 p.m. April 16. The film stars Eminem as a young white rapper in Detroit's predominantly black hip-hop world, and features a furiously creative freestyle rap...

Here are some tips for staying mentally fit: Get plenty of exercise. Regular exercise can counter effects of aging on the brain. Get adequate sleep. Poor quality or too little sleep can cause fuzzy thinking. Avoid cigarettes. Smoking can damage the heart and affect blood flow to the brain. Don't overdo alcohol. Drinking can affect memory. Eat colorful produce. Chemicals called flavonoids, which give fruits and vegetables their color, have been associated with improved brain function.

Junior Seau's family is revisiting its decision to donate the former NFL linebacker's brain for research into football-related injuries. Chargers chaplain Shawn Mitchell said Sunday that the family, which is of Samoan descent, is consulting with a group of elders on a number of matters. He said it doesn't necessarily mean that the family won't donate Seau's brain for research. "They really want to do everything right," Mitchell said. The medical examiner's office said Friday it was awaiting a decision by the family on whether to turn over Seau's brain to unidentified...