Adapted from image courtesy of Lynn D. Selemon Stereologic cell counting of prefrontal cortical area 9. Nissl-stained neurons (shown as triangles and dots) were counted directly in a stack of three-dimensional boxes extending throughout all layers of the cortex. Could any major illness be more difficult to study than schizophrenia? Despite unprecedented advances in research over recent years, largely aided by improved neuroimaging technologies, little is known for sure about either its origins

if (n == null) The Scientist - Georgia Gets New Neuroscience Center The Scientist 13[18]:26, Sep. 13, 1999 Profession Georgia Gets New Neuroscience Center By Steve Bunk Reductionist science is overemphasized, declares zoologist Pat Marsteller, director of the Hughes Undergraduate Program at Emory University. "As my grandfather would say, they're learning more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing." What's needed now, she thi

Photo: Steve Bunk Dave Tinnin, field research associate in the University of New Mexico's biology department, takes blood samples and measurements of rodents caught on the research station grounds. At the end of a freeway exit near Soccoro, N.M., the hairpin turn onto a gravel road is marked by a sign that warns, "Wrong Way." But it isn't the wrong way if you want to reach the University of New Mexico's (UNM) long-term ecological research (LTER) station. The sign's subterfuge is the first indi

Image courtesy of Bernard Rimland "Birches" by Mark Rimland, an autistic artist. At least 15 clinical trials have begun or soon will be under way to help answer a question that has tantalized parents across the country in recent months: Can autism be effectively treated with secretin? The hormone, produced by the small intestine to incite secretion of pancreatic juice as a digestive aid, leaped to public attention in October of last year, when physicians began prescribing it off-label to treat

The 1999 International Conference on Science and Consciousness held recently in Albuquerque, N.M., might be described in many ways, but "a droning bore" is not one of them. Physicists and psychologists, physicians and philosophers, astronauts and astronomers, even the odd biophysicist and evolutionary biologist, were among the more than 50 speakers who tackled the formidable challenge of linking objective and subjective reality. Although some of the talks were long on vibes and rather short on

Could there be a repair mechanism in the human body more remarkable than that of chaperonins, which help misfolded proteins to refold themselves properly? Recent collaborative work by two leading chaperonin researchers has fitted what is known of the structure of a particular such enzyme to a model of its action.1 The result is a wonder to behold. If a protein's amino acid chain fails to fold into its proper or native three-dimensional shape, other proteins can attach to it, creating clumps th

Edited by: Steve Bunk Arnold S. RelmanAndrew Weil Integrative medicine, the combining of alternative and conventional medical methods, was the subject of a debate held recently at the University of Arizona (UA) College of Medicine. The opponents were Arnold S. Relman, editor-in-chief emeritus of the New England Journal of Medicine and professor emeritus of medicine and social medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Andrew Weil, director of the UA program in integrative medicine and best-selli

For the most part, modern medicine is no match for neurodegenerative diseases. But with advances in the study of genetics, the ability of scientists to get a molecular "handle" on such mysterious malfunctions promises to change all that. And perhaps the most useful such handle yet found is the phenomenon called trinucleotide repeat expansion. This occurs when any three of the four nucleotide subunits in DNA material begin to excessively repeat their adjacent appearance in a molecule. For examp

Pfizer's Anipryl is designed to treat dogs with Cognitive Dysfunction Syndrome. A new market is emerging for the use of human psychoactive drugs on pets with behavioral problems. The first two such medications to gain U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval, both of them for dogs, became available early this year. Novartis Animal Health of Greensboro, N.C., now markets clomipramine hydrochloride, a tricyclic antidepressant used for obsessive-compulsive disorder in humans, under the

Above is a photomicrograph of the spinal cord terminal of a sensory axon. The neuron's immunoreactivity for human preproenkephalin suggests that the preproenkephalin gene, which was delivered via a herpes virus vector, is being expressed in sensory neurons. TELOMERE TROUBLES Lack of telomerase makes mice old before their time, a new study shows, but what effect this might have on age-related disease remains uncertain (K.L. Rudolph et al., "Longevity, stress, response, and cancer in aging telom

University of Wisconsin biochemistry professor Ronald T. Raines nominates pancreatic ribonuclease A (RNase-A) as "probably the most-studied enzyme of the 20th century." But in the next breath, he admits, "There are ribonucleases floating through your bloodstream right now, and we don't really know [their function]." Raines and Richard Youle, director of the biochemistry section in the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at Bethesda, Md., led two research groups that are fri

The American chestnut, decimated by a fungus that scientists have tried in vain to quell throughout this century, finally may be on its way back to health, thanks largely to genetics. Once a dominant tree throughout the Northeast, prized for the timber from its long, unbranched trunks, the American variety (Castanea dentata) stopped providing those famed chestnuts roasting on an open fire long before Bing Crosby's time. The tree bore sweet nuts, but they were small, and the quest for a meatier n