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Cognitive Neuroscientists Reveal Creative Brain Processes

Think Isaac Newton getting hit on the head with an apple or Alexander Graham Bell inventing the telephone. While these creative or “Aha!” moments often are associated with scientific discoveries and inventions, most people occasionally feel the thrill of insight when a solution that had eluded them suddenly becomes obvious.

20 Apr 2004

Researchers use MRI to capture the intricacies of speech

A team of University of Southern California researchers has brought cutting-edge imaging tools to the study of human speech, capturing the clearest moving images of the rapid vocal movements that turn sound to language.

20 Apr 2004

Pfizer donates £1 million Brighton and Sussex Medical School

Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS) is pleased to announce that it has received a £1 million donation from pharmaceutical company, Pfizer (UK).

20 Apr 2004

Study reveals brain function of poor readers can improve

A brain imaging study has shown that, after they overcome their reading disability, the brains of formerly poor readers begin to function like the brains of good readers, showing increased activity in a part of the brain that recognizes words.

19 Apr 2004

New scanning technology allows researchers to look into a kidney

Kidney disease may affect as many as one in twelve people, and causes millions of deaths each year. Currently, the diagnosis of kidney function relies mainly on blood and urine tests, an indirect means of figuring out how well they’re working.

19 Apr 2004

Researchers find drug that may suppress genetic mutation using a novel screening approach

Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital have developed a way of identifying promising new drugs that may get around a major challenge in drug discovery.

18 Apr 2004

MRI Patients in Canadian capital cities are getting the procedure sooner than regional areas

Patients in the Capital district who need an MRI are getting the procedure a lot sooner. The average wait time is now 45.2 days, almost three times less than the 148.2 days people were waiting last March. The wait time standard for elective MRI procedures is 42 days. Urgent or emergency MRIs are done immediately.

18 Apr 2004

CT colonography not presently a viable option for colorectal cancer screening

Findings of a new multicenter study by Cotton et al. published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association comparing standard colonoscopy with CT colonography for the detection of colorectal cancer reveal that this technology, in the form used most often in the United States, while of significant interest, is not presently a viable option for routine colorectal cancer screening.

14 Apr 2004

Differing views on virtual colonoscopy accuracy

Demonstrating clearly that not all virtual colonoscopies are equal, the study, published in the December 2003 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine and the American Journal of Roentgenology, found the results found using the Viatronix V3D-Colon system for primary 3D reading to be equal to or better than optical colonoscopy results.

14 Apr 2004

Researchers examine community-based drinkers rather than abstinent alcoholics

Almost all knowledge about brain damage due to chronic alcohol consumption has been gathered from alcoholics, who have generally been studied toward the end of their institutionalized treatment program (several weeks after their last drink) or many months into abstinence.

13 Apr 2004

Small uterine fibroids are associated with an increased risk of miscarriage

Early results from a pioneering study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill indicate that small uterine fibroids are associated with an increased risk of miscarriage.

13 Apr 2004

CT colonography lacks the sensitivity of conventional colonoscopy

A new study published in JAMA on CT colonography or 'virtual' colonoscopy using 2-D imaging finds that this test lacks the sensitivity and specificity of conventional colonoscopy for colorectal cancer screening. Study co-author and American College of Gastroenterology President Douglas K. Rex, M.D. is available for interviews.

13 Apr 2004

VCU Medical Center goes high definition

The startlingly clear images displayed by high definition televisions have attracted the attention of sports enthusiasts, movie fanatics, and video gamers. Now some surgeons at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center are among the first in the country to use the technology to gain extraordinary views of the human anatomy.

12 Apr 2004

New process to extract proteins from membranes by using chemicals

Proteins are complex compounds that are essential for the growth and repair of tissue. While scientists understand much about the structure and stability of water-soluble proteins that ‘float’ around in humans, they know very little about the shape and stability of proteins that are embedded, or folded, into the lipid membrane of cells. Such membrane proteins make up about 30 percent of all proteins in the body.

8 Apr 2004

Time-reversal acoustics research promises medical breakthroughs

Scientists have not yet found a way to actually make time run backward, but in the cutting-edge world of recent acoustics research, they have shown a way to make sound waves run backward in a kind of ultra-focused reverse echo. By the technology known as time-reversal acoustics, sound waves - in exact reverse order from the original sound - echo directly and very precisely back to their source point.

7 Apr 2004

Research shows giving Tourette Syndrome patients the drug levodopa normalizes brain activity

Scientists have known for years that abnormal activity involving a brain chemical called dopamine is somehow connected to the movements and vocalizations, or tics, associated with Tourette syndrome. Now neuroscience researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found brain activity in these patients is abnormal during memory tasks, as well.

5 Apr 2004

GE Healthcare is giving surgeons breakthrough digital mobile imaging system

Surgeons need to clearly see their subject. In the case of minimally invasive surgery, that can be especially challenging because of the small incision or body opening through which they must work. To combat this difficulty, GE Healthcare is giving surgeons "eyes inside the body," with the OEC® FluoroTrak 9800 Plus, a breakthrough digital mobile imaging system.

5 Apr 2004

Cordis Cardiology receives warning from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration

Cordis Cardiology, a division of Cordis Corporation, a Johnson & Johnson Company, reported today that it received a warning letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regarding FDA's observations concerning the Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) regulations.

5 Apr 2004

New MRI Liver Contrast Agent Primovist(TM) Approved in Sweden

Schering AG Group, Germany has announced that the Swedish health authority MPA has granted marketing approval for its innovative liver imaging product Primovist(TM) (gadoxetic acid disodium). Primovist(TM) is designed for the detection and characterization of liver lesions by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) including liver tumors, metastases as well as other malignant and benign lesions.

5 Apr 2004

Surgeons suggests that the development of osteoarthritis in the knee following an injury may be both predictable and preventable

A new theory of joint function presented in a symposium at the 71st annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons suggests that the development of osteoarthritis in the knee following an injury may be both predictable and preventable.

5 Apr 2004