Tag: Health

• 12.18.07

  Mixed Feelings

  Scientists Rewire the Brain through the Tongue Most of us see with our eyes, but what if we could see with other parts of our body, too? The idea may seem ridiculous, but it's already been done. Nearly a half-century ago, maverick neuroscientist Paul Bac

• 12.17.07

  Crossing Sensory Boundaries

  Scientists Learn About Other Forms of Brain Plasticity from People with Mixed Senses Some people see colors when they hear music. Others taste strange flavors when they look at letters of the alphabet. And still others visualize numbers as if the digits

• 11.19.07

  Deep Brain Stimulation

  How a Tiny Electrode can Change People's Lives Neurons use electricity to communicate to one another, but just as our electronic gadgets sometimes break, brain signals can also go a little haywire. This is what happens in movement disorders like Parkinso

• 11.19.07

  Zapping the Brain

  Deep Brain Stimulation might soon Treat a Number of Brain Disorders When something goes even slightly wrong in the brain, a lot of bad things can happen—take depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, chronic pain, Parkinson's disease and epilepsy,

• 11.19.07

  Video Lab: Keepon Dancing

  Rocking Out with Japan's Cutest Robot He's tiny, yellow, as squishy as the Pillsbury Dough Boy, and over a million people have downloaded a video of him dancing to a Spoon song. The little robot called Keepon is much more than just another online time-w

• 11.12.07

  The Business of Disease

  Do Pharmaceutical Companies Market Diseases as well as Drugs? These days - if you watch TV - television drug commercials are so ubiquitous that it's hard to remember a time when they didn't exist. But direct-to-consumer advertising, as it is called, has

• 11.12.07

  Art Tackles Big Pharma

  A Few Creative-types Raise Awareness About Disease-Mongering Stumble across the Web site for Havidol and you're bound to believe it’s what it says it is: an advertisement for a new drug treating Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiet

• 11.5.07

  Biobanking

  Harvested Organs Revolutionize Medicine Some of the best medical research comes about when scientists can study large numbers of human tissue samples—they can, for instance, pinpoint the ways in which sick tissues differ from normal ones and thus i

• 11.5.07

  So Many Samples, So Little Agreement

  Why the US Needs Biobanking Policies There is little argument over the potential benefit of biobanks—most scientists agree that repositories of human blood and tissues could vastly improve how well we understand, treat, and even cure debilitating d

• 10.29.07

  Blood Simple

  Developing Blood Substitutes Doctors predict that by the year 2030, U.S. medical clinics will suffer from a total shortage of four million units of blood, leaving scores of patients without the blood transfusions they desperately need. Luckily, a handful

• 10.29.07

  Beyond Blood

  Blood Substitutes May Be Able To Do What Regular Blood Cannot Those who speak of the promise of synthetic blood often focus on its potential use in trauma situations —such as after vehicular accidents, for example, or military combat. But there are

• 10.22.07

  Body Builders

  Anthony Atala bakes things that will make you feel good inside,but we're not talking cakes and muffins - we're talking human organs. Atala, a researcher at North Carolina's Wake Forest University School of Medicine,  broke new ground in medical tech

• 10.22.07

  An Arm and a Leg?

  Lizards Can Replace Missing Limbs - Someday Maybe We Will, Too Medical scientists recently scored a major breakthrough when they successfully implanted several people with the world's first laboratory-grown bladders. (See the whole story on WIRED Science

• 10.15.07

  Hot Wheels

  High Tech Wheelchairs for Racers, Athletes...and Dancers? Think a wheelchair can only help a disabled person get down the street? Think again. Engineers, artist and wheelchair users are developing new conveyances that let their riders do everything from

• 10.15.07

  Got Clones?

  The Controversial World of Animal Cloning To some people, "cloning" might as well be a four-letter word. But in less than a year, it could become routine in some families—families of livestock animals, that is. Last year, the U.S. Food an

• 10.15.07

  The Making of El Corazon

  Anatomy of a Latin Love Song Ever wanted to learn about the heart by way of a Latin love song? Well, now you can, thanks to California-based musical comedy duo Hard 'N Phirm, comprising  our very own Chris Hardwick and his close college pal Mike Phi

• 10.15.07

  Cloning: About More Than Just Meat

  Cloning Regulations Could Have Implications for the Economy and Public Health Chances are it won't be long before our Big Macs come from cloned cows or their offspring. While it's unlikely that the beef itself will hurt us, some experts argue the issue o

• 10.10.07

  fMRI - Neuroscience Go-To Technology

  Can Detailed Brain Images Really Show Us When We’re Lying? Functional magnetic resonance imaging—fMRI—was all but unknown a decade ago. Today it’s the go-to technology for neuroscience, allowing phenomenally detailed images of the

• 9.27.07

  The Engineer's Disease

  Asperger's Syndrome May Help Make Some Scientists Who They Are Nobody wants to have Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism that limits a person's ability to communicate, often leaving them socially isolated and mired in weird-seeming behavior. But the dis

• 9.27.07

  Remote-Controlled Robot Surgery

  Doctors May Soon Operate From Miles Away Never mind RoboCop; the future belongs to RoboDoc. Sophisticated robots are already performing surgery in operating rooms around the world -- and may soon be saving lives on battlefields, underwater and in outer

• 9.17.07

  Face Reader

  Children with Asperger’s Syndrome Test Facial-Recognition Software In our everyday communication, we are constantly monitoring other people's facial and body cues to discern whether we are enrapturing them, boring them, or confusing them—such

• 9.17.07

  What's Inside Your Fridge?

  This week's mystery product features a mixture of ingredients found in antifreeze, lubricant and detergent. Chances are you've eaten it and asked for seconds. Check out the video to see Chris Hardwick break down what's inside….your fridge.

• 9.17.07

  RoboDoc

  Robot Surgeons are Fully Operational If you're getting surgery these days, chances are good the scalpel will be wielded by a doctor with nerves of steel - literally. Across the country, a growing number of operations are now performed with the help of ro