When cells make a meal of themselves

When cells make a meal of themselves

O ne function of prions, the Jekyll-and-Hyde proteins behind illnesses such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and mad cow disease, has been identifi ed by Khosravani et al. The proteins calm brain cells, preventing them from dying of over-excitement. Only when a prion folds incorrectly does it trigger brain-ravaging diseases like CJD. The normally shaped version, which all body cells carry, pr...

How Hallucinations Make Themselves Heard

the approach used by Ranganath and Paller is not simply the patient’s thoughts) and are usually hostile, as in the following example: in their use of separate blocked recognition conditions to encourage varied retrieval strategies. Rather, the Days later while in the Metropolis again, I was once analysis possible in their study relied both on a manipumore startled by these same pursuers, who ha...

When to Make a Type

W hen I started programming computers , I began with fairly primitive languages, such as Fortran 4 and various early flavors of Basic. One of the first things you learn using such languages—indeed, even using more up-to-date languages—is which types your language supports. Being oriented toward number crunching, Fortran supported integer and real types, with the interesting rule that any variab...

Competition for neuronal resources: how hallucinations make themselves heard.

BACKGROUND Hallucinations are perceptions in the absence of a corresponding external sensory stimulus. However, during auditory verbal hallucinations, activation of the primary auditory cortex has been described. AIMS The objective of this study was to investigate whether this activation of the auditory cortex contributes essentially to the character of hallucinations and attributes them to a...

When Two Wrongs Make a Right