Brain

Rat-powered robotics are taking central stage at UC Irvine — not Disneyland — because of a robot powered by rodent brain impulses that is teaching researchers about uncertainty in the face of change. The robot is being used in a $1.6-million joint study between UCI and UC San Diego; researchers hope to learn about the brain’s role in decision making and attention at the neuron level. “Little is known about the areas of the brain involved in making decisions when faced with uncertainty,” Jeffrey Krichmar, a UCI cognitive scientist and one of the study’s lead researchers, said in a release.

TV or not TV? Public television, such as our own KOCE-TV, isn't worth the trouble, you say? The children's shows on public television are chock-full of ads, you say? We can find better viewing material on cable channels, such as the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, or A&E, you say? Seeing that the price of local cable services ranges from $50 to more than $110 a month, I seriously doubt that many folks, especially families with lots of kids, actually watch those channels.

A study by UC Irvine researchers could prove that stress is even more harmful to the human body than previously thought — specifically to the brain. The researchers, led by Frank LaFerla, discovered a hormonal connection between stress and Alzheimer's disease. The study shows that increased levels of stress increases acceleration of the disease through the brain. UCI researchers Kim Green and Lauren Billings worked to solve the connection between stress and Alzheimer's using a crew of genetically altered mice.

UCI scientists say they have found a gene in charge of creating higher functioning brain cells that could lead to stem cell therapies for patients with brain injuries or who have suffered from a stroke or have Alzheimer’s. The gene, Lhx2, generates cells in the cerebral cortex, the area of the brain responsible for language, decision-making and vision. UCI researcher Edwin Monuki, doctoral student Karla Hirokawa, and their colleagues were responsible for the breakthrough, school officials said.

The National Institutes of Health have awarded two UCI neuroscientists a $2-million grant to study an area of the brain associated with language, university officials announced Tuesday. Cognitive sciences professors Gregory Hickock and Kourish Saberi will use the five-year grant to study the overall function of the planum temporale, a part of the brain in the left and right hemispheres in the auditory cortex. The scientists hope their study could lead to clinical research and treatment of developmental and psychiatric disorders such as autism and schizophrenia.

A new study from UC Irvine suggests that human embryonic stem cells could improve healthy tissue damaged during radiation treatment for brain tumors. Researchers treated rats with radiation, then transplanted stem cells into some of them. They found that the rats that received the stem cells had their learning and memory restored to normal levels within four months after receiving radiotherapy. The rats that didn?t receive stem cells saw a greater than 50% drop in brain function.

Is the brain the No. 1 food source for zombies? Does it taste like chicken? Who knows? Well, maybe Weird Al Yankovic. In a 15-minute window to what learning might be like if Weird Al were a professor, kids and adults at the Orange County Fair have been bombarded with 3-D images and facts of the brain through the celebrity’s trademark-styled songs. The tent housing Weird Al’s manic lesson on the brain and all it can do looks more like the entrance to a haunted house or maze than a doorway into a science lesson.

Some four months after finishing his last round of chemotherapy, 6-year-old Julian Dunn has almost an inch of newly grown hair on his head. A year and a half after doctors found a golf-ball sized tumor in Julian’s brain, his parents say life is finally returning to normal at their Newport Beach household. The hearth in the Dunn’s living room is lined with Julian’s extensive collection of LEGO spaceships and cars. Julian would spend hours building with LEGOS while undergoing 55 weeks of radiation and chemotherapy treatments that left him weak and nauseous.

Costa Mesa police and medical personnel are responsible for the death of a Huntington Beach man who died days after collapsing while in custody last year, according to a lawsuit to be served to city officials in the coming days, the lawyer representing the man’s mother said Tuesday. At about 3:20 p.m., Sept. 1, 2007, Costa Mesa police pulled over 45-year-old Donald Kurtz because he was driving erratically and failed a field sobriety test, authorities said days after the arrest.

Adult stem cells live in a different part of the brain than previously thought, and knowing where they are allows scientists to produce new cells, a new study by UCI researchers shows. The results will appear in this month’s online journal of Neuroscience. The early school of thought believed stem cells were in the subventricular zone, but new evidence puts them in the ependymal cells that line the ventricles in the brain with the spinal chord. Ventricles transport fluids that support the brain tissue.

There wasn't a big match to be played on Tuesday, but a member of the UC Irvine men's volleyball team remained nervous for an important event dealing with the Anteaters. If you were at the celebration ceremony to honor the UCI team's national championship you wouldn't notice he was a bit anxious. But you could understand his excitement. There he was, Kevin Freeman, in his No. 1 gold jersey standing with his teammates at UCI. It was a big day for him. "I was happy to be with everybody," Kevin said a day later.

When the Newport Beach and Orange County volleyball communities learned of Liz Lord's harsh diagnosis of brain cancer, they came together to help and support the former Newport Harbor High standout. Now those people are mourning for her. Lord died Wednesday morning. She learned of her diagnosis on April 1, 2011, when doctors told her they found an inoperable and incurable tumor. She was told the type of brain cancer she had carried an average life expectancy of 12-14 months.

Sage Hill School, in partnership with the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, is hosting "The Teenage Mind: What Every Parent Needs to Know" at 7 p.m. Feb. 9 on campus, 20402 Newport Coast Drive. "Sage Hill School is pleased to welcome the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation to our campus to provide cutting edge information on the important issue of teenage mental health," Jason Gregory, Sage Hill director of community life and public purpose, said in a statement. "As an educational institution, we are committed to providing purposeful opportunities to educate and empower our students, our families and our community.

During the last years of my father's life, he slowly, agonizingly slipped away from me. A proud and stoic man who had survived a heartbreakingly unhappy childhood, economic depression and a world war fell at last to the ravages of dementia. Helpless and childlike, his memory shattered along with his dignity — the personal quality he prized above all others — he was no longer the father I knew. All I could do was watch until the day when the inevitable phone call came, letting me know that Dad was gone.

Orange County has more good causes per capita than just about any community in the nation. Recently, an athlete named Brian Hutchison decided to create a non-profit foundation to help others, based on his own personal experience with traumatic brain injury, known as TBI. Two years ago, Hutchison suffered a traumatic brain injury while playing softball. The team's most valuable player, Hutchison made an extended reach for a fly ball that resulted in a life threatening injury to his head.

Paintings can do more than decorate a home. They can also save your brain. Studies show that exposure to a diverse range of arts and other educational stimuli over long periods of time can decrease memory loss by up to 50%, said Dr. William Shankle, program director of Memory & Cognitive Disorders at the Hoag Neurosciences Institute. "The use of artistic or creative activity activates many brain areas," he said. "By activating those brain areas, it induces changes in brain activity that protect the brain from disease and aging.

Tony Horvath, a Newport Harbor High alumnus who was on the Sailors' 1970 league championship football team, has been battling cancer since April. He endured chemotherapy from prostate cancer. He also recently went through brain surgery to have a benign tumor removed and has since been recovering. Horvath was featured in the Daily Pilot in April, as he and his friend, Randy Hamilton, are producing a documentary on the 1970 Sailors' football team, which won Newport Harbor's first league title in 28 years.

Kelly Mitchell has plenty to celebrate this Mother's Day. Last year, as she celebrated her first Mother's Day as a mom, the Daily Pilot published her first-person account of a health scare that she endured during and after that pregnancy. Mitchell, 40, a former Newport-Mesa schoolteacher, was seven months pregnant in 2009 when headaches brought on by what she thought was "pregnancy brain" became unbearable. They got so bad that she could barely see or remember anything.

Throughout Liz Lord's life, the values learned while playing sports in Newport Beach have been used many times. Now, as she fights in the biggest battle of her life, she clings to those values. Lord was known for being competitive when she played volleyball for Newport Harbor High before graduating in 2002 with a full-ride scholarship to the University of Portland. Not much has changed. She still wants to win. When she was diagnosed with brain cancer and was told that the tumor found was inoperable and incurable, Lord didn't back down.

One of the true embarrassments of our times is that there is no facility in the western United States where brain-injured adults can live, receive appropriate medical care, engage in meaningful employment, and thrive up to the limits of their abilities. There are some facilities for mentally disabled people, but their needs are almost always quite different than the brain-injured. This situation is not known by many of us, but it is drastically known by people who have brain-injured family members and friends.