Waves in our brain make smells stick to our memories and inner maps, scientists say.

Norwegian researchers have now discovered the process behind this phenomenon.

The brain connects smells to memories through an associative process where neural networks are linked through synchronised brain waves of 20-40 Hz, researchers said.

"The signals from your nose translate and connect to memories in an orchestrated symphony of signals in your head," researchers said.

Each of these memories connects to a location, pinpointed on your inner map. So when you feel a wave of reminiscence triggered by a fragrance, think about how waves created this connection in the first place, they said.

"We all know that smell is connected to memories," said lead author, Kei Igarashi from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

Researchers designed a maze for rats, where a rat would see a hole to poke its nose into. When poking into the hole, the rat was presented with one of two alternative smells.

One smell told the rat that food would be found in the left food cup behind the rat. The other smell told it that there was food in the right cup.

The rat would soon learn which smell would lead to a reward where. After three weeks of training, the rats chose correctly on more than 85 per cent of the trials.

In order to see what happened inside the brain during acquisition, 16 electrode pairs were inserted in the hippocampus and in different areas of the entorhinal cortex.

After the associations between smell and place were well established, the researchers could see a pattern of brain wave activity during retrieval.

"Immediately after the rat is exposed to the smell there is a burst in activity of 20 Hz waves in a specific connection between an area in the entorhinal cortex, lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC), and an area in the hippocampus, distal CA1 (dCA1), while a similar strong response was not observed in other connections," Igarashi said.

This coherence of 20 Hz activity in the LEC and dCA1 evolved in parallel with learning, with little coherence between these areas before training started.

By the time the learning period was over, cells were phase locked to the oscillation and a large portion of the cells responded specifically to one or the other of the smell-odour pairs.

The research was published in journal Nature.

A 49-year-old US woman with advanced bone marrow cancer called multiple myeloma is effectively cancer-free after receiving an experimental trial that injected her a single dose of an engineered measles vaccine, a study said.

The patient, with tumors all over her body, including a three-cm-diametre one on her forehead, experienced complete remission of myeloma and has been clear of the disease for over six months, Xinhua reported citing the study published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

A second patient, a 65-year-old woman, did not respond as well to the virus treatment that is selectively toxic to myeloma plasma cells, researchers said.

However, high-tech imaging studies "provided a clear proof" that the intravenously administered virus specifically targeted the sites of tumor growth.

The researchers said the trial is a "proof of concept" that virotherapy, destroying cancer with a virus that infects and kills cancer cells but spares normal tissues, can be effective against the deadly cancer multiple myeloma.



"This is the first study to establish the feasibility of systemic oncolytic virotherapy for disseminated cancer," Mayo Clinic hematologist Stephen Russell, first author of the paper and co-developer of the therapy, said in a statement.

"These patients were not responsive to other therapies and had experienced several recurrences of their disease."

Virotherapy has a history dating back to the 1950s, according to the Mayo Clinic, and thousands of cancer patients have been treated with a host of various viruses.

"However, this study provides the first well-documented case of a patient with disseminated cancer having a complete remission at all disease sites after virus administration."

It was noted that both patients were studied at the highest possible dose of the therapy.

Both women also had limited previous exposure to measles, and therefore fewer antibodies to the virus, and essentially had no remaining treatment options.

The researchers said their next step is to see if the measles vaccine works in a larger number of patients. They also want to test the effectiveness of the virotherapy in combination with radioactive therapy in a future study.

A new study has revealed that people who use phones excessively are highly prone to brain cancer.

The findings show that the people who used cellphones for more than 15 hours each month over five years on an average presented high risk of developing glioma and meningioma tumours in comparison with people who used their phone rarely, News24.com reported.

However, the study also recognized that it is hard to observe the effects of cell phones due to constant advancement in the field of technology.

The study appeared in the British journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

Researchers have said that several medications can help people with alcohol use disorders maintain abstinence or reduce drinking.

Daniel Jonas, lead author of the study and professor in the department of medicine and the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research, led a team from the RTI-UNC Evidence-based Practice Center to review published studies examining the use of drugs to treat alcohol use disorders.

The researchers conducted a systematic review of 122 randomized controlled trials and one cohort study. They then graded the strength of the evidence on the impact of drugs on alcohol consumption.

They found that two drugs, acamprosate (brand name Campral) and oral naltrexone (brand name Revia), have the best evidence supporting their benefits. Both drugs reduced return to drinking and improved other drinking outcomes. Among medications used off-label (i.e., those not FDA approved for alcohol use disorders), moderate evidence showed improvement in some drinking outcomes for topiramate and nalmefene.

Jonas said the health implications of preventing return to drinking and reducing alcohol consumption are substantial.

He said modeling studies have shown that such improvements would result in significant reductions in alcohol-attributable mortality, costs from health care, arrests and motor vehicle accidents.

The work has been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association ( JAMA ).

US researchers may have found a flaw with the "French Paradox," or the notion that people who drink red wine can somehow avoid the pitfalls of a high-fat diet.

A study out Monday found that resveratrol -- one of the highly touted antioxidants in red wine -- did not help people live longer.

Nor did it help people avoid cancer or heart disease, according to the research published in JAMA Internal Medicine, a journal of the American Medical Association.

"This study suggests that dietary resveratrol from Western diets in community-dwelling older adults does not have a substantial influence on inflammation, cardiovascular disease, cancer, or longevity," said the research, led by Richard Semba of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Research on animals has suggested resveratrol, a polyphenol also found in some Asiatic plant roots as well as peanuts and berries, may wield beneficial health effects.

Although not proven in human studies, those findings have contributed to a $30 million per year market for resveratrol supplements in the United States alone, researchers said.

The latest study was based on measures of resveratrol levels in the urine of nearly 800 people in two small villages in Tuscany, Italy.

Researchers measured their urine for signs of resveratrol, to see if the amounts they were getting through their diet would contribute to improved health.

The subjects were 65 or older when they joined the study in 1998.

In the nine years that followed, 34 percent of those in the study died, and researchers could find no correlation between early death and resveratrol levels.

Nor could they find any significant links between resveratrol levels and the development of cancer or heart disease.

"These data are consistent with other studies that found that the method of alcohol consumption had no effect on outcome or if there is a benefit to red wine it does not appear to be mediated by resveratrol specifically," said Blase Carabello, chair of cardiology at Mount Sinai Beth Israel.

Indeed, some previous research in humans has suggested that resveratrol may not be the cure-all some have hoped, including studies that have shown no impact on blood pressure, metabolism or lipid levels.

"Of course the only way to be certain would be through a randomized trial but the current data lend little support for performing such a trial," added Carabello, who was not involved in the study.

According to Robert Graham, an internist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, the "French Paradox" is still a mystery.

"This study is a great example of how difficult it is to examine the role of `the magic bullet` for health and longevity, in this case resveratrol," said Graham, who was not part of the research.

"As the authors mentioned in their study, studying resveratrol in humans is challenging given different rates of metabolism, utilization and excretion among different people," he added.

"The recipe for a longer, healthier life is still being developed."