Juggling increases brain power

BBC News

Complex tasks such as juggling produce significant changes to the structure of the brain, according to scientists at Oxford University.

The volunteers were taught to juggle with three balls

In the journal, Nature Neuroscience, the scientists say they saw a 5% increase in white matter - the cabling network of the brain.

The people who took part in the study were trained for six weeks and had brain scans before and after.

Long term it could aid treatments for diseases like multiple sclerosis.

Diffusion MRI

The team from Oxford's Department of Clinical Neurology used a diffusion MRI which is able to measure the movement of water molecules in the tissues of the brain.

The signal changes according to how many bundles of nerve fibres there are and how tightly packed they are.

Changes in grey matter, where the processing and computation in the brain happens, have been shown before, but enhancements in the white matter have not previously been demonstrated.

Three ball cascade

The scientists studied a group of 24 healthy young adults, none of whom could juggle.

They divided them into two groups.

One of the groups was given weekly training sessions in juggling for six weeks and was asked to practice 30 minutes every day the other 12 continued as normal.

After training, the 12 jugglers could perform at least two continuous cycles of the classic three ball cascade.

Both groups were scanned using diffusion MRI before and after the training.

At the six week point, a 5% increase in white matter was shown in a rear section of the brain called the intraparietal sulcus for the jugglers.

This area has been shown to contain nerves that react to us reaching and grasping for objects in our peripheral vision.

There was a great variation in the ability of the volunteers to juggle but all of them showed changes in white matter.

The Oxford team said this must be down to the time spent training and practising rather than the level of skill attained.

Dr Heidi Johansen-Berg, who led the team, said: "MRI is an indirect way to measure brain structure and so we cannot be sure exactly what is changing when these people learn.

"Future work should test whether these results reflect changes in the shape or number of nerve fibres, or growth of the insulating myelin sheath surrounding the fibres.

"Of course, this doesn't mean that everyone should go out and start juggling to improve their brains.

"We chose juggling purely as a complex new skill for people to learn."

Clinical Applications

Dr Johansen-Berg said there were clinical applications for this work but there were a long way off.

She said: "Knowing that pathways in the brain can be enhanced may be significant in the long run in coming up with new treatments for neurological diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, where these pathways become degraded."

Professor Cathy Price, of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, said: "It's extremely exciting to see evidence that training changes human white matter connections.

"This complements other work showing grey matter changes with training and motivates further work to understand the cellular mechanisms underlying these effects."

Warning on liquorice in pregnancy

BBC News

Pregnant women who eat large amounts of liquorice could negatively affect their child's intelligence and behaviour, according to research.

Eating 100g of pure liquorice a week could affect a child's development

Experts from Edinburgh and Helsinki universities studied eight-year-olds born in Finland, where consumption of liquorice among young women is common.

The children of women who ate a lot of liquorice when pregnant did not perform as well as other youngsters in tests.

Researchers said a component in liquorice may impair the placenta.

They said the component - glycyrrhizin - may allow stress hormones to cross from the mother to the baby.

High levels of such hormones, known as glucocorticoids, are thought to affect foetal brain development and have been linked to behavioural disorders in children in previous studies.

Of the children who took part in the Finnish study, 64 were exposed to high levels of glycyrrhizin in liquorice, 46 to moderate levels and 211 to low levels.

They were tested on a range of cognitive functions including vocabulary, memory and spatial awareness.

Behaviour was assessed using an in-depth questionnaire completed by the mother.

Shorter pregnancies

The results suggested that women who ate more than 500mg of glycyrrhizin per week - found in the equivalent of 100g of pure liquorice - were more likely to have children with lower intelligence levels and more behavioural problems.

The eight-year-olds were more likely to have poor attention spans and show disruptive behaviour such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), the researchers said.

Professor Jonathan Seckl, from Edinburgh University's centre for cardiovascular science, said: "This shows that eating liquorice during pregnancy may affect a child's behaviour or IQ and suggests the importance of the placenta in preventing stress hormones that may affect cognitive development getting through to the baby."

The research comes after a study which suggested that liquorice consumption was also linked to shorter pregnancies.

The results of the study are published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Experts map the body's bacteria

BBC News

Scientists have developed an atlas of the bacteria that live in different regions of the human body.

The armpit showed less variation in bacteria than many areas

Some of the microbes help keep us healthy by playing a key role in physiological functions.

The University of Colorado at Boulder team found unexpectedly wide variations in bacterial communities from person to person.

The researchers hope their work, published in Science Express, will eventually aid clinical research.

They say that it might one day be possible to identify sites on the human body where transplants of specific microbes could benefit health.

The study was based on an intensive analysis of the bacteria found at 27 separate sites on the bodies of nine healthy volunteers.

Not only did the bacterial communities vary from person to person, they also varied considerably from one site on the body to another, and from test to test - but some patterns did emerge.

What is healthy?

Lead researcher Dr Rob Knight said: "This is the most complete view we have yet of the microbial side of ourselves, one that our group and others will be adding to over the coming years.

"The goal is to find out what is normal for a healthy person, which will provide a baseline for further studies to look at people with diseased states."

There are an estimated 100 trillion microbes living on or inside the human body.

They are thought to play a key role in many physiological functions, including the development of the immune system, digestion of key foods and helping to deter potentially disease-causing pathogens.

The researchers took four samples from each volunteer over a three-month period - usually one to two hours after they had showered.

They used the latest gene sequencing and computer techniques to draw up a profile of the microbes found at each specific site.

Most sites showed big variations in the bacteria they harboured from test to test even within the same individual.

However, there was less variation in the bacteria found in the armpits and soles of the feet - possibly because they provide a dark, moist environment.

The least variation of all was found in the mouth cavity.

Skin sites in the head area, including the forehead, nose, ear and hair, were dominated by one specific type of bacteria.

Sites on the trunk and legs were dominated by a different group.

Researcher Dr Noah Fierer said: "We have an immense number of questions to answer.

"Why do healthy people have such different microbial communities?

"Do we each have distinct microbial signatures at birth, or do they evolve as we age? And how much do they matter?"

Transplant test

The researchers disinfected the forearms and foreheads of some volunteers, and "inoculated" both sides with bacterial communities from the tongue.

The tongue bacteria lasted longer on the forearms than foreheads.

Dr Elizabeth Costello, who also worked on the study, said: "It may be that drier areas of the skin like forearms make generally more hospitable landing pads for bacteria."

A previous study by the same examined the bacteria on 102 human hands.

In total, they identified more than 4,200 species of bacteria, but only about five were shared by all 51 participants.

Dr Knight said understanding the variation in human microbial communities held promise for future clinical research.

"If we can better understand this variation, we may be able to begin searching for genetic biomarkers for disease," he said.

"Because our human genomes vary so little but our repertoire of microbial genes vary so much, it makes sense to look for variations that correlate with disease at specific locations."

Smoking mums have 'problem kids'

BBC News

Smoking during pregnancy significantly increases the risk of having a child with behavioural problems, according to UK and US researchers.

Smoke toxins can pass to the foetus

Writing in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, they say the problems can be evident in children as young as three years old.

They believe smoking in pregnancy may damage the developing structure of the baby's brain.

One expert said it was another strong reason for mothers to give up smoking.

The researchers from the universities of York, Hull and Illinois looked at more than 14,000 mother and child pairs who were taking part in the Millennium Cohort Study.

This covers UK children born between 2000 and 2001.

The mothers were categorised as light or heavy smokers depending on how many cigarettes they smoked every day during pregnancy.

They were asked to score their three-year-old children's behaviour using a questionnaire called Strengths and Difficulties, which focuses on behaviour problems and hyperactivity, or attention deficit disorders.

Findings

They took into account factors likely to influence the results, including the mother's age at the child's birth, her level of education and socioeconomic status, family stability and problematic parenting.

Mothers who were light smokers were 44% more likely to have boys who had problems with their conduct.

Heavy smokers were 80% more likely to have boys with these problems.

Both heavy and light smokers were also significantly more likely to have boys who were hyperactive or had attention deficit disorders.

For three-year-old girls, light and heavy smoking in pregnancy were significantly associated with conduct problems but not with hyperactivity and attention deficit behaviours.

Foetal development

Professor Kate Pickett, who lead the research, said their findings were consistent with previous research in older age groups.

She said: "Smoking in pregnancy may have direct effects on the foetal development of brain structure and functioning which has been shown in studies of rats.

"Or it may be a marker for the transmission of processes between the generations that are associated with both smoking in pregnancy and behaviour problems in children."

Professor Alan Maryon-Davis, president of the Faculty of Public Health, said: "This is another reason why mothers should make every effort to give up smoking - ideally before they get pregnant.

"There are four thousand toxic substances in cigarette smoke and many of these will pass into the brain of the foetus and it is possible that they could have an effect on how the brain chemistry works."

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Lung cancer care 'inadequate'

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Key areas of lung cancer care are still "woefully inadequate", a report by leading lung cancer experts says.

Lung cancer is a major killer

The UK Lung Cancer Care Coalition, an umbrella group composed of doctors, charities and private health firms, says UK care lags behind Europe.

It says too few patients are receiving treatment, such as chemotherapy or surgery, because of staff shortages.

The government says it already recognises that more needs to be done to improve lung cancer services.

Lung cancer kills about 34,000 people a year - more than breast, prostate, bladder and leukaemia versions of the disease combined.

Despite being labelled a "smoker's disease", one in eight people with lung cancer have never smoked.

The coalition draws on data from this year's official national audit as well as feedback from leading doctors.

The report says in some parts of the UK, as few as 10% of patients are receiving any form of treatment and nationally the figure is only 51%.

The coalition is calling for a target of 70% - recognising that for some patients further treatment is not advisable because the cancer has already spread too far.

It estimates this would save an extra 3,000 lives a year.

One of the major problems is a lack of access to surgeons - there are only 44 full-time positions for more than 240 separate teams.

The shortfall means that some patients who would be eligible for treatment are being turned down, the report adds. Read more...