Beware – Facebook can cause
short-term memory loss!
Are you always logged in? Take a break. A new study warns that too much
time browsing social media could lead to short-term memory loss. Contrary to
common wisdom, an idle brain is in fact doing important work – and in the age
of constant information overload, it’s a good idea to go offline on a regular
basis, according to a researcher from Stockholm’s KTH Royal Institute of
Technology.
Erik
Fransen, whose research focuses on short-term memory and ways to treat diseased
neurons, said that a brain exposed to a typical session of social media browsing
can easily become hobbled by information overload. The result is that
less information gets filed away in your memory.
The
problem begins in a system of the brain commonly known as the working memory,
or what most people know as short-term memory. That’s the system of the brain
that we need when we communicate, Fransen said. ‘Working memory enables
us to filter out information and find what we need in the communication. It
enables us to work online and store what we find online, but it’s also a limited
resource,’ he said.
‘At any
given time, the working memory can carry up to three or four items. When we
attempt to stuff more information in the working memory, our capacity for
processing information begins to fail.
‘When you
are on Facebook, you are
making it harder to keep the things that are ‘online’ in your brain that you
need. ‘In fact, when you try to process sensory information like speech
or video, you are going to need partly the same system of working memory, so
you are reducing your own working memory capacity.
‘And when
you try to store many things in your working memory, you get less good at
processing information,’ he said. You’re also robbing the brain of time
it needs to do some necessary housekeeping. The brain is designed for both
activity and relaxation, Fransen said.
‘The brain
is made to go into a less active state, which we might think is wasteful; but
probably memory consolidation, and transferring information into memory takes
place in this state. Theories of how memory works explain why these two
different states are needed. ‘When we max out our active states with
technology equipment, just because we can, we remove from the brain part of the
processing, and it can’t work,’ Fransen said.
Source: http://health.india.com
23.09.2013
Now – a nano-medicine for blood
cancer!
Coinciding
with the 60th birthday of Mata Amritanandamayi, the Kochi-based Amrita Centre
for Nanosciences and Molecular Medicine has developed a nano-medicine for
drug-resistant blood cancer.
This is
expected to dramatically improve the treatment of drug-resistant chronic
myelogenous leukemia (CML), when used in combination with Imatinib, the
standard drug for the disease.
In another
significant invention, the 2006-founded Amrita Centre has devised a mechanism
that can effectively prevent recurrence of glioma or brain tumour.
This
deadly disease affects about four out of every 100,000 people in India. The
life expectancy of high-grade glioma patients is about one to two years.
The two
projects will be formally unveiled Sep 26 at Amritavarsham60, the 60th birthday
celebrations of the hugging saint or Amma as she is popularly referred to by
her devotees.
CML
annually affects approximately two out of every 100,000 Indians. Almost 40 per
cent of these cases are resistant to Imatinib. For such patients, treatment
options are extremely limited.
‘What we
have done at Amrita is to take a particular ‘small-molecule inhibitor’ class of
anti-cancer drug, currently available in the market and encapsulate it into a protein
nano-capsule,’ said Shantikumar Nair, the centre’s director.
‘This
allows the drug to be absorbed directly into the cancer cells circulating in
the patient’s bloodstream. This has a marked increase on its efficacy in
killing cancer cells. Further, the circulation lifetime of the drug in the
blood is increased, which also enhances its efficacy,’ he added.
The
nano-encapsulated version of the drug has shown itself to be non-toxic in
healthy mice in tests conducted by his department, and it has similarly
demonstrated itself to be effective in tests involving blood samples of people
with Imatinib-resistant CML.
Manzoor
Koyakutty, professor at the Centre, says the next step is to evaluate its
efficacy in fighting CML in mice. ‘If it continues to remain non-toxic and
effective, we can move on to clinical trials,’ added the expert and drug
co-inventor.
Source: http://health.india.com
23.09.2013
Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is
progress.Working together is success.
Henry Ford
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