Derren Brown Investigates – Tonight 10pm Ch4
That’s right, The last episode in the mini series of Derren Brown Investigates is showing tonight at 10pm on Channel 4.
Tonight Derren investigates the world of Lou Gentile, a top American ghost hunter who for the last 20 years has been helping the haunted and possessed of America.
After watching the show head over to our Derren Brown Investigates Page to leave you comments and tell us what you thought of the mini series.
Acupuncture’s molecular effects pinned down
“Scientists have taken another important step toward understanding just how sticking needles into the body can ease pain.
In a paper published online May 30 in Nature Neuroscience, a team at the University of Rochester Medical Center identifies the molecule adenosine as a central player in parlaying some of the effects of acupuncture in the body. Building on that knowledge, scientists were able to triple the beneficial effects of acupuncture in mice by adding a medication approved to treat leukemia in people.
The research focuses on adenosine, a natural compound known for its role in regulating sleep, for its effects on the heart, and for its anti-inflammatory properties. But adenosine also acts as a natural painkiller, becoming active in the skin after an injury to inhibit nerve signals and ease pain in a way similar to lidocaine.
In the current study, scientists found that the chemical is also very active in deeper tissues affected by acupuncture. The Rochester researchers looked at the effects of acupuncture on the peripheral nervous system – the nerves in our body that aren’t part of the brain and spinal cord. The research complements a rich, established body of work showing that in the central nervous system, acupuncture creates signals that cause the brain to churn out natural pain-killing endorphins.”
Read more at Physorg
Google has mapped every WiFi network in Britain
“Google has mapped every wireless network in Britain in order to use the information for commercial purposes, it has emerged. Every WiFi wireless router – the device that links most computer owners to the internet – in every home has been entered into a Google database. The information was collected by radio aerials on their Street View cars, which have now photographed almost every home in the country. The data is then used on Google’s Maps for Mobile application to locate mobile phones such as iPhones in order for users to access information relevant to the area such as restaurants, cinemas, theatres, shops and hotels.
The project had remained secret until an inquiry in Germany earlier this month in which Google was forced to admit that it “mistakenly” downloaded data packets, which may have included fragments of emails and other data, from unsecured wireless networks where they were not protected by a password. Google points out that other companies have already mapped wireless networks, notably a company called Skyhook Wireless which has a contract with Apple, manufacturers of the iPhone.
Google say the information, which lists the networks’ MAC (Media Access Control) address and SSID (Service Set-ID) number, but not their house number, is publicly available because the wireless network signals extend beyond the property in which they are located. Google has now suspended the use of Street View cars across the world – but their work in Britain is already complete. They said last week that they had not notified data protection authorities because “we did not think it was necessary” but they added: “It’s clear with hindsight that greater transparency would have been better.””
Read more at The Telegraph
Derren Brown Investigates – Tomorrow Ch4 10pm
We’ve had quite a few emails from people asking if the next Derren Brown Investigates is on. The answer is a resounding yes. Monday 31st May at 10pm on Ch4 and available later on 4oD. For those who haven’t seen the clip it promises to be an interesting episode. We assure you the guy in the clip is not faking or acting. You’ll find out why by watching the show.
Click here to visit our Derren Brown Investigates Page and watch the exclusive clip.
Bone Marrow Transplants Shown to Cure Mentally Ill Mice
“Feeling a bit obsessive-compulsive? New research suggests maybe it’s not all in your head after all. More likely, researchers say, it’s in your bones. A Nobel laureate at the University of Utah claims he has cured an OCD-like behavior in mice by giving them bone marrow transplants.
That’s right, bone marrow transplants. And while the costs and risks associated with bone marrow transplants make it such that humans would not want to consider the procedure as a treatment option for mental illness, the findings show a direct link between a psychiatric disorder and problems with the immune system. That could potentially inspire a new spate of immune-based research into treatments for maladies often perceived as neural or behavioral.
To make the immune-psychiatric connection, the team performed bone marrow transplants on mice that carry a defective gene that causes them to groom themselves too often and for far too long, rubbing their fur completely off in places and sometimes even resulting in skin wounds. It’s similar to the human disorder trichotillomania, which causes people to pull their own hair out. It’s also quite comparable to obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD.
The mice who received the healthy bone marrow were cured of their disorders. Further, when researchers injected that faulty bone marrow into healthy mice, they quickly developed the disorder. The problem revolves around a specific cell type called micoglia. About 60 percent of a person’s microglial cells originate in the brain during early stages of development. The rest form in bone marrow and move to the brain, and those were the cells causing the problem.”
Read more at PopSci
How Poverty Shapes The Brain
“Using sophisticated imaging, Canadian James Swain will soon begin to peer inside the brains of people who grew up in poverty.
Over the past four decades, researchers have established how poverty shapes lives, that low socioeconomic status is associated with poor academic performance, poor mental and physical health and other negative outcomes. Dr. Swain is part of a new generation of neuroscientists investigating how poverty shapes the brain.
The University of Michigan researcher will use a number of imaging technologies to compare the structure and function of brains of young adults from families with low socioeconomic status to those who are middle-class.
He knows the work has the potential to be controversial, but he hopes it will eventually lead to new teaching methods or early childhood interventions that would help children from low socioeconomic status (SES) families succeed at school and in life.
‘That would be the dream, to inform social policy,’ said Dr. Swain, who is from Toronto.
He and other neuroscientists are building on preliminary evidence that suggests the chronic stress of living in an impoverished household, among other factors, can have an impact on the developing brain.”
Read more at The Globe And Mail (thanks, DG)
Do You Smell, Or Is It All In Your Head?
“Imagine worrying that you smelled bad – that you had horrid halitosis or unbearable body odor – only to find that no amount of mouthwash, deodorant or aggressive showering could get rid of the stench.
That’s the reality for sufferers of a strange and agonizing condition called olfactory reference syndrome, in which people believe they emit foul or offensive odors – when they really don’t.
This week, scientists at the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting are hearing that the problem is serious enough to warrant its own entry in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the bible for assessing mental trouble.
‘This disorder causes a lot of pain, shame and self-consciousness among its victims,’ said Dr. Katharine A. Phillips, a psychiatrist with Rhode Island Hospital and Brown University who studies ORS.
It’s difficult to estimate the prevalence of the disorder, which is probably less than obsessive compulsive disorder, which affects about 2.3 percent of adults in the U.S., or some 3.3 million people.
‘ORS is very under-recognized, but I would say it’s more common than we know,’ Phillips said When I mention it to clinicians, they say, ‘Oh, I have a patient like that.’’
Phillips conducted a close study of 20 ORS patients and chronicled the toll the disorder takes on their lives. About 60 percent of the victims are women and most started worrying about their smell as teenagers, usually about age 15.”
Read more at MSNBC (thanks, SonOfSam)
Will We Succeed? The Science Of Self-Motivation
“Can you help you? Recent research by University of Illinois Professor Dolores Albarracin and Visiting Assistant Professor Ibrahim Senay, along with Kenji Noguchi, Assistant Professor at Southern Mississippi University, has shown that those who ask themselves whether they will perform a task generally do better than those who tell themselves that they will.
Little research exists in the area of self-talk, although we are aware of an inner voice in ourselves and in literature. From children’s books like ‘The Little Engine That Could,’ in which the title character says, ‘I think I can,’ to Holden Caulfield’s misanthropic musings in ‘A Catcher in the Rye,’ internal dialogue often influences the way people motivate and shape their own behavior.
But was ‘The Little Engine’ using the best motivational tool, or does ‘Bob the Builder’ have the right idea when he asks, ‘Can we fix it?’
Albarracin’s team tested this kind of motivation in 50 study participants, encouraging them explicitly to either spend a minute wondering whether they would complete a task or telling themselves they would. The participants showed more success on an anagram task, rearranging set words to create different words, when they asked themselves whether they would complete it than when they told themselves they would.”
Read more at Physorg.com (thanks, SuZi)
Video Games Possibly Improve Lucid Dreaming
“Playing video games before bedtime may give people an unusual level of awareness and control in their dreams, LiveScience has learned.
That ability to shape the alternate reality of dream worlds might not match mind-bending Hollywood films such as ‘The Matrix,’ but it could provide an edge when fighting nightmares or even mental trauma.
Dreams and video games both represent alternate realities, according to Jayne Gackenbach, a psychologist at Grant MacEwan University in Canada. But she pointed out that dreams arise biologically from the human mind, while video games are technologically driven by computers and gaming consoles.
‘If you’re spending hours a day in a virtual reality, if nothing else it’s practice,’ said Jayne Gackenbach, a psychologist at Grant MacEwan University in Canada. ‘Gamers are used to controlling their game environments, so that can translate into dreams.’
Gackenbach first became interested in video games in the 1990s, when she watched her son repeatedly kiss a new Nintendo gaming console on the way home from a Toys R Us. She had previously focused on studying lucid dreams, in which people have awareness of being in a dream.
The last decade of game-related research has since yielded several surprises, although the findings represent suggestive associations rather than definitive proof, Gackenbach cautioned. She is scheduled to discuss her work as a featured speaker at the Sixth Annual Games for Health Conference in Boston this week.”
Read more at LiveScience (thanks, Tammy)
Eat bacteria to boost brain power
“Could playing in the dirt make you smarter? Studies in mice suggest that it could.
Mice given peanut butter laced with a common, harmless soil bacterium ran through mazes twice as fast and enjoyed doing so. So says Dorothy Matthews of the Sage Colleges in Troy, New York state, who presented her results at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in San Diego, California, this week.
In a classic test of learning ability, Matthews gave mice a treat – white bread with peanut butter – as a reward to encourage them to learn to run through a maze. When she laced the treat with a tiny bit of Mycobacterium vaccae, she found that the mice ran through the maze twice as fast as mice that were given plain peanut butter. This suggests that they had learned to navigate the maze faster, Matthews says.
Moreover, the mice given the bacteria continued to run the maze faster than those without it for 18 more trials over the next six weeks, showing they weren’t just made more alert by a surprise change to their treat. This effect lasted for four weeks after the last piece of doctored peanut butter was given to the mice.”
Read more at New Scientist
