HOW YOUR MIND HEALS YOU

In one of brain biology's most amazing advances,scientists have found that our brain may actually help our immune system fight diease.It took 20 years ofcareful experiments for Kevin Tracey,MD,to see it that way.It also took a very special patient-an 11 month-old girl named Janice."She changed my life," says Dr Tracey,a neurosurgeon,immunologist and director of the Feinstein Institute of Medical Researcher in New York.In the spring of 1985,Dr Tracey was a surgeon in training at New York Hospital,treating patients for such things as gunshot wounds,head injuries and infection,when Janice was admitted.She had been crawling on the kitchen floor of her grandmother's apartment when her grandmother,who was cooking pasta,tripped over her and split a large pot of boiling water onto the baby girl.Dr Tracey cared for the girl,who had suffered second-and third-degree burns over 75 percent of her body.A week after she was admitted,Janice developed severe sepsis,a condition in which the immune system massively overreacts to a bacterial infection,indiscriminatelytraining its cannons on the body's own tissues.

MEMORY GENES

Scientists are already striking gold thanks to the Allen brain Atlas.Dietrich Stephan,PhD,who directs neurogenomics research at the Translational Genomics research Institute (TGen)in phonix,has used it to learn more about a gene called Kibra,which affects our short-term memory.The Atlas revealed that the gene was activated in the hippocampus,a small sea-horse-shaped brain structure that helps store memories.tGen plans to market drugs to reduce age-related memory loss,including the common short-term sort that causes senior moments and lost car keys.

MAPPING THE BRAIN

September 2006 marked a major mile stone for our noggins,with completion of the Allen Brain Atlas,the first gene map of the brain.It all started in 2002,when billionaire philanthropist Paul Allen,co-founder of Microsoft,gathered some of the world's top scientists and charged them with finding an innovative new way to accelerate our understanding of the brain.From that he committed $100 million and established the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seatle.Uaing custom-built robotics and software,60 full time researchers teated 250,000 preserved slices of mouse brain,which resembles the human one enough that most discoveries would also hold true for us .They generated a volume of raw data that revealedwhere in the brain each of the mouse's 21,000 genes,producing a unique roster of proteins that enables each cell to do it's job- storing memory,directing movement or some other task.) The map revealed that about 80 percent of the body's genes are turned on in the brain-more than anyone had expected.That means if pharma companies are not careful,drugs targeted to other organs could have unwanted side effects in the brain.The map also uncovered evidence that could help reveal what goes wrong in complicated brain disorders such as schizophrenia and autism.the result is a 3-D virtual mouse brain atlas(brain-map.org)that does for neuroscientist what a survey map pinpointing gold deposits does for miners:It lets them quickly get to where the action is and start diging,says David Avderson,PhD,a professor of biology at California Institute and a project advisor.

GETTING MORE CREATIVE

Humour can also loosen up our minds,allowing us to play around with ideas and be more creative.That's according to years of psychological studies,many of which got people to laugh,then asked them to come up with creative things to fo with brick.After years of bricks studies,pshychologists were still skeptical,so in 1987,Alice Isen,PhD,a professor psychology and management at cornell university,began using what she say's is a better measure of creativity:she challenged undergraduates to nail a burning candle to a corkboard.More specifically,Isen and her colleagues gave subjects a candle,matches,a box of nails and ten minutes,and told them to attach the candle to the wall without dripping any wax. People who were not amused spent most of their time trying repeatedly to tack the candle to the crockboard."Thats won't work because the candle is too thick," Isen says ,"besides,the wall would catch fire."But subjects who had just watched funny outtakes from old TV shows were more than three times as likely to find the correct and creative,answer : Dump the nails from the box,nail the box to the corkboard,and use the attached box as a candle holder .

WHAT'S SO FUNNY ?

Humar is so clearly central to the human adventure that it's surprising how little attention science has paid it until recently,preferring instead to tackle weighter subjects like global warming, earth-meaning astorids and the dangers of trans fats in cookies."No one take humour seriouly," jokes Ed Dunkelblau,PhD,a psychologist,humour consultant and formaer president of the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humour. Nonetheless, Allman and a smattering of other scientists have forged bravely ahead,to the occasional consternation of their more earnest colleagues , probing minds and brains to find our funny bones.And they're finding them,burried deep in our grey matter.Humour,it turns out,is a whole brain parts-call them "humour musceles"-passing signals quickly and efficiently to help us get a joke.We need relatively few of those musceles to comprehend simple slapstick like that in The Three Stooges,which requires us only to chortle when Moe pokes curly in the eye .but more complex humour,such as the jokes,cartoons and funny stories ,puts more of our brains to work.

ADDICTED TO WATER

ARE YOU AN AQUAHOLIC?if you drink over five liters of water a day and feel irritable when you can't get a glass oh H2o,you may have a problem."Aquaholics do exits,"says Catherine Collins of the British Diietetic Association."There's a very real psychogenic polydipsia.For most,it's aparked when a lifestyle change like cutting out caffeine is made.Typically,someone will up thier intake of water in the beleif that they're 'cleaning' their body.With time,an obsession with drinking water to 'purify' or offset hunger creates potential for harm,especially if combined with a low-salt diet and excessive exercise."But surely you can't drink too much water?you can."Overhydration coupled with a low salt diet can gradually deplete blood salt levels,initially causing fatigue,"explain collons."But eventually low salt levels will impair normal cell fuction causing confusion,disorientation and even coma."Aim to drink around two litres daily,she advises."This could be via water,coffee,tea,juice or soup.The goal is to pass a pale green or yellow urine three or four times a day.If you're going to the toilet every hour you're probably drinking too much."

PROFITS AND LOSS

The investigation generated front page stories.But the terrible crime also spotlights the growing need for body parts.it's big business.Innumerable transplants are perfomed each year with tissue and related products that repair injured knees,relive bad backs,and replace damaged heart valves or burned skin.Tissue banks are regulated to identify,retrive and prepare medically suitable bone and tissue for future use.Tissue (bone,tendons,ligaments,skin,corneas,heart valves,blood vessles)can be recovered up to 24 hours after death.This differs from organ donation,such as hearts,lungs or kidneys,which requires amore immediate retrieval process because of the need for oxygen and blood flow."Tissue donation provides the last opporunity you have on earth to help someone," explains Bob Rigney,CEO of the American Association of tissue banks."We've found more and more ways to recycle the human body."But these high-tech procedures don't come cheap.Screening,procuring,storing and cleansing the tissue is expensive.It's about a billon-dollar industry with a steady growth rate.

HOW TO MAKE YOURSELF SAVE--2

4.SING UP AT WORK:- If youremployer puts money into the company pension scheme,don't just join it.contribute more than the minimumrequired.This saving creates a balance that grows tax fre with compound interest.Alternatively,keep cash aside and buy into index fund when the sensex takes dips.
5. GET AUTOMATED:- However you decide to save.the best way to make sure you do it is to set up a standing order, which puts payments straight into a pension,mortgage,stock,market,investment and savings account.
You will miss the money less-it just becomes another regular bill.The only difference is you're paying it to yourself!
6. OVERPAY:- You are already making a regular housing loan payment,so why not write a slightly larger cheque?It can be as good as saving-it means you will own your home more quickly and end up paying much less interest.But if you're paying a low fixed interest rate (say. 7.5 percent) and your monthly payments give you a tax rebate,it may be wiser not to overpay.