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Katherine Harmon writes in Scientific American that a new published study reveals substantial differences between how dyslexia impacts English and Chinese-language readers:
English speakers who have developmental dyslexia usually don’t have trouble recognizing letters visually, but rather just have a hard time connecting them to their sounds.
What about languages based on full-word characters rather than sound-carrying letters? Researchers looking at the brains of dyslexic Chinese children have discovered that the disorder in that language often stems from two separate, independent problems: sound and visual perception.
The pronunciation of detailed and complex Chinese characters must be memorized, rather than sounded out like words in alphabet-based languages. That requirement led researchers to suspect that disabilities in the visual realm might come into play in dyslexia in that language. “A fine-grained visuospatial analysis must be preformed by the visual system in order to activate the characters’ phonological and semantic information,” said lead author Wai Ting Siok of the University of Hong Kong, in a prepared statement.
Link | Image: NASA
Katherine Harmon writes in Scientific American that pharmacology researchers are developing a drug that could diminish the pleasurable effects of cocaine. Taking the drug might help addicts detoxify with greater success:
The vaccine itself does not destroy cocaine molecules, rather it induces antibodies that bind to it, making the opiate lose its ability to pass through the blood–brain barrier—and thus unable to trigger a high.
To test the vaccine’s effectiveness in humans, researchers (with some help and financial backing from Celtic Pharma) enlisted 94 subjects who had enrolled in a methadone treatment program for opiate addiction—and who also regularly used cocaine—for a placebo-controlled, double-blind study. (They decided on this group because methadone programs historically have better retention rates than programs for cocaine abuse only.) One group received a placebo, another a low dosage of vaccine, whereas a third was administered a high dosage over a series of 12 weeks with five total injections.
More than half of the subjects in the high-dosage group (53 percent) appeared to have laid off the cocaine for more than half of the trial period, the researchers report after tracking traces of the drug in urine samples collected three times a week. Just less than a quarter of subjects with the low dosage had the same track record, according to the results published online yesterday in the Archives of General Psychiatry. A drop in cocaine usage across all groups may also be attributed to a curb in opiate drug consumption from the methadone treatment.
Link | Image: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Katherine Harmon writes in Scientific American that a Mississippi woman blind for the past nine years can see 20/70 after one of her own teeth was surgically implanted in one of her eyes:
To begin the months-long process, doctors removed one of Thornton’s canine teeth—aka an eyetooth—along with part of the jaw and cut it all down to a shape small enough to replace the cornea. The doctors then drilled a hole into it to insert a lens. In order for the tooth to bind to the lens sufficiently, the implant spent a couple months in the patient’s body. In Thornton’s case, it was implanted near her shoulder.
To prep the eye to receive the tooth and lens, the doctors placed a cheek graft over the eye to promote moisture. The final tooth-lens product was removed from Thornton’s shoulder and placed in the center of the eye, in line with the retina.
The MOOKP procedure was developed in Italy in 1963, and has been more common in Europe and Asia, but only about 600 operations have been undertaken. Given the small number of treatments, its safety remains unconfirmed, and other doctors have their reservations. “It requires a sizable team and several operations,” Ivan Schwab, of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, told CNN. “It’s just an extreme variation on techniques we’re already doing.”
Image: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
