WASHINGTON: A mild electrical stimulation of a specific brain area help people learn and perform a complex motor task better than those in control
groups, a new study has found.
Motor skills, which are used for activities from typing and driving to sports, require practice and learning over a prolonged period of time.

The findings could improve prospects of rehabilitation for people with traumatic brain injury, stroke and other conditions.

The study was conducted by researchers of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and Columbia University, New York City and Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.

During practice, the brain encodes information about how to perform the task, but even during periods of rest, the brain is still at work strengthening the memory of doing the task. This process is known as consolidation.

Participants were presented with a novel and challenging motor task, which involved squeezing a \"joy stick\" to play a targeting game on a computer monitor, which they practised over five consecutive days.

During practice, one group received 20 minutes of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and the other group received only a 30 second \"sham\" stimulation; tDCS involves mild electrical stimulation applied through surface electrodes on the head, and works by modulating the excitability, or activity, of cells in the brain\'s outermost layers.

In this study, NINDS\' Leonardo Cohen and his team directed tDCS to the primary motor cortex, the part of the brain that controls movement.

Over the five-day training period, the skill of the tDCS group improved significantly more that that of the control (sham) group, apparently through an effect on consolidation, said a NINDS release.

During the three month follow-up period, the two groups forgot the skill at about the same rate, but the tDCS group continued to perform better because they had learned the skill better by the end of training.

By IANS, New Delhi, Jan 9 - With only three percent cancer patients receiving pain management care in India, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences - has launched a no-pain policy to provide immediate relief to such patients.

The institute has adopted new pain relief guidelines with interventional therapies that are likely to provide relief to cancer patients from the chronic pain.

Through interventional therapies, the medication is surgically placed under the skin of the abdomen to deliver it directly to the fluid-filled area surrounding the spinal cord that carries pain signals to the brain.

\'About 75-85 percent cancer patients with chronic pain can be treated with oral morphine. However, some 10-15 percent patients react to morphine treatment and these interventional therapies can be boon for them,\' said Sushma Bhatnagar, professor for pain and palliative care at the Cancer Hospital of AIIMS.

The World Health Organisation estimates that 25 percent of cancer patients in the world die due to unrelieved pain and new guidelines are likely to acknowledge and manage chronic pain.

According to Bhatnagar, when a patient gets excessive side effects with oral morphine it is reasonable to directly target the spinal cord that carries pain signals to brain, thus providing an immediate relief.

\'The interventional therapies provide sustained pain control, less drug-related toxicity and possibly better survival for cancer patients,\' said G.K Rath, head of Cancer Hospital.

To make the medical fraternity across country aware about cancer pain management, the AIIMS is organising a three-day seminar \'Freedom from Pain\' starting Feb 13.

\'The seminar will provide opportunities to doctors, nurses and other health care professionals to have a good overview of pain management,\' Rath added.

By NIH/National Eye Institute, A compact fiber-optic probe developed for the space program has now proven valuable for patients in the clinic as the first non-invasive early detection device for cataracts, the leading cause of vision loss worldwide.

Researchers from the National Eye Institute (NEI), part of the National Institutes of Health, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) collaborated to develop a simple, safe eye test for measuring a protein related to cataract formation. If subtle protein changes can be detected before a cataract develops, people may be able to reduce their cataract risk by making simple lifestyle changes, such as decreasing sun exposure, quitting smoking, stopping certain medications and controlling diabetes.

By the time the eye\'s lens appears cloudy from a cataract, it is too late to reverse or medically treat this process, said Manuel B. Datiles III, M.D., NEI medical officer and lead author of the clinical study. This technology can detect the earliest damage to lens proteins, triggering an early warning for cataract formation and blindness.

The new device is based on a laser light technique called dynamic light scattering (DLS). It was initially developed to analyze the growth of protein crystals in a zero-gravity space environment. NASA\'s Rafat R. Ansari, Ph.D., senior scientist at the John H. Glenn Research Center and co-author of the study, brought the technology\'s possible clinical applications to the attention of NEI vision researchers when he learned that his father\'s cataracts were caused by changes in lens proteins.

Several proteins are involved in cataract formation, but one known as alpha-crystallin serves as the eye\'s own anti-cataract molecule. Alpha-crystallin binds to other proteins when they become damaged, thus preventing them from bunching together to form a cataract. However, humans are born with a fixed amount of alpha-crystallin, so if the supply becomes depleted due to radiation exposure, smoking, diabetes or other causes, a cataract can result.

We have shown that this non-invasive technology that was developed for the space program can now be used to look at the early signs of protein damage due to oxidative stress, a key process involved in many medical conditions, including age-related cataract and diabetes, as well as neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer\'s and Parkinson\'s, said NASA\'s Dr. Ansari. By understanding the role of protein changes in cataract formation, we can use the lens not just to look at eye disease, but also as a window into the whole body.

The recent NEI-NASA clinical trial, reported in the December 2008

By University of California - Los Angeles, It is well known that moderate drinking can have positive health benefits — for instance, a couple of glasses of red wine a day can be good for the heart. But if you\'re a senior in good health, light to moderate consumption of alcohol may also help prevent the development of physical disability.

That\'s the conclusion of a new UCLA study, available in the online edition of the American Journal of Epidemiology, which found that light to moderate drinking among these seniors reduced their odds of developing physical problems that would prevent them from performing common tasks such as walking, dressing and grooming.

\"If you start out in good health, alcohol consumption at light to moderate levels can be beneficial,\" said lead study author Dr. Arun Karlamangla, an associate professor of medicine in the division of geriatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. \"But if you don\'t start out healthy, alcohol will not give you a benefit.\"

The researchers based their study on data from three waves of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey\'s Epidemiologic Follow-up Study (1982��, 1987 and 1992). The sample, which included 4,276 people split evenly between male and female, was about 92 percent white, with a mean age of 60.4 years.

Drinkers were classified as light to moderate if they consumed less than 15 drinks per week and less than five drinks per drinking day (less than four per day for women). Heavy drinkers were those who consumed 15 or more drinks per week or five or more per drinking day (four or more for women). Abstainers were those who drank fewer than 12 alcoholic beverages the previous year.

Having a physical disability means having trouble performing, or being unable to perform, routine tasks such as dressing and grooming, personal hygiene, arising, eating, walking, gripping, reaching, and doing daily errands and chores. Participants were asked if they experienced no difficulty, some difficulty, much difficulty or were unable to do these activities at all when alone and without the use of aids.

At the start of the survey, 32 percent of men and 51 percent of women abstained from drinking, 51 percent of men and 45 percent of women were light to moderate drinkers, and 17 percent of men and 4 percent women were heavy drinkers.

No one had any disabilities at the outset, but 7 percent died and 15 percent became disabled over five years.

The researchers found that light to moderate drinkers in good health had a lower risk for developing new disabilities, compared with both abstainers and heavy drinkers.

In unadjusted analyses, light to moderate drinkers had a 17.7 percent chance of becoming disabled or dying in five years, compared with 26.7 percent for abstainers and 21.4 percent for heavy drinkers. Among survivors, the risk for new disability was 12.5 percent for light to moderate drinkers, compared with 20 percent for abstainers and 15.6 percent for heavy drinkers.

However, after controlling for confounding variables such as age, smoking, exercise, heart attacks and strokes, the benefits of alcohol consumption were seen only in seniors who rated their health as good or better: There was a 3 to 8 percent reduction in the odds of developing disability with each additional drink per week in older men and women in good or better health who were not heavy drinkers, but there was no such benefit seen in those who rated their health as fair or poor.

\"Light to moderate alcohol consumption appears to have disability prevention benefits only in men and women in relatively good health,\" the researchers wrote. \"It is possible that those who report poor health have progressed too far on the pathway to disability to accrue benefits from alcohol consumption and that alcohol consumption may even be deleterious for them.\"

By IANS, New Delhi, Jan 13 - Over 480,000 poultry birds have been culled in the bird flu-hit areas of West Bengal and Assam as officials further intensified their awareness campaign to prevent recurrence of the disease in new areas.

A total of 483,726 birds have been culled in West Bengal and Assam, said the animal husbandry department Tuesday. Avian influenza was reported in Assam Nov 27.

There has been no human case of avian influenza, said health ministry officials.

They also said the disease has not spread to newer areas after it was reported Jan 3 in West Bengal\'s Darjeeling district where culling is on.

\'The containment operations are on in the epicentres reported in Darjeeling district. About 290 health workers are conducting active house-to-house surveillance,\' a statement issued by the health ministry said.

About 772 health workers are deployed for surveillance in the affected areas, they said.

The officials said they have intensified measures to spread awareness about the disease on local television and radio.

Officials are also spreading awareness by interacting with the villagers and through public announcements in the affected areas.

\'This is one way of ensuring that bird flu does not spread to new areas,\' the official said.