It’s true that great advances in GPS technology have lessened shame and humiliation of getting lost that so plagued past generations.

But lost people are still out there.

Today it’s more about getting to the supermarket by a logical route than getting to distant places where the satellites can show you the way.

Our navigation skills rest in the regions of the brain responsible for maintaining memory – the hippocampus and the nearby entorhinal cortex. But it’s not about memory alone. Over the last few decades, scientists have discovered various types of neurons particularly tuned to travel.

In the hippocampus, place cells fire off electrical impulses whenever we enter a familiar location, with each bundle of active cells corresponding uniquely to an individual place. In addition, scientists have found evidence of so-called grid cells in the entorhinal cortex that fire in a repeatable pattern in relation to where we are in a location.

These grid cells are thus critical for maintaining a sense of location in an environment that may be less familiar.

Recent studies indicate that those of us with weaker signals in the entorhinal cortex have a harder time navigating a virtual environment. And it’s theorized that patients with Alzheimer’s often get lost because the entorhinal cortex and hippocampus are some of the first regions of the brain that the degenerative disease decimates.

And finally – once and for all – in spite of rumors to the contrary, there is no scientific evidence that men are better at reading maps than women are.

Sourced from: Medical Daily, Where Am I? Why Some People Have A Bad Sense Of Direction And How They Can Get Better

Maggots are back in the medical arsenal. You may be thinking, “What next – leeches?”

But actually, those rather disgusting fly larvae never really left. Maggot debridement therapy (MDT) has been an approved treatment that has shown to be cost-effective for the treatment of diabetic foot ulcers. It has also been used successfully to treat many other medical conditions.

Now researchers have genetically engineered maggots so they help wound healing by doing more than eating dead flesh and kill microbes. The modified critters also produce and release a hormone – a human growth factor – that actively stimulates cell growth and wound healing.

The study team, from North Carolina State University (NCSU) in Raleigh and Massey University in New Zealand, got the idea of creating a strain of maggot to clean and heal. They genetically engineered green bottle fly larvae to produce and secrete human platelet-derived growth factor-BB (PDGF-BB) in response to a trigger.

PDGF-BB stimulates cell growth and survival, promotes wound healing and has been investigated as a possible topical treatment for non-healing wounds. The team engineered the maggots so they only made PDGF-BB if raised on a diet that lacked the antibiotic tetracycline. The maggots then produced high levels of the growth factor, and it was also present in their excretions and secretions.

The study authors note that most people with diabetes live in less wealthy countries with little access to expensive treatments, and MDT could offer them an effective and accessible alternative.

Sourced from: MNT, Wound healing could be enhanced with modified maggots

People who “fly off the handle” at what seems like little provocation may actually be suffering from a strange disorder.

According to the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, irrational outbursts (like road rage) have been significantly linked with toxoplasmosis, a parasite commonly associated with cat feces.

Intermittent explosive disorder (IED) has been defined as “recurrent, impulsive, problematic outbursts of verbal or physical aggression that are disproportionate to the situations that trigger them.” Up to 16 million Americans are thought to have IED.

That’s a lot of anger.

Toxoplasmosis is a common and generally harmless parasitic infection that is passed on through the feces of infected cats, contaminated water or undercooked meat. It affects around 30% of all humans but is normally latent.

Researchers evaluated 358 adult Americans for IED, personality disorder, depression and other psychiatric disorders and gave them scores for traits such as anger, aggression and impulsivity. They also screened for toxoplasmosis using blood tests.

The results showed that 22% of those with IED tested positive for toxoplasmosis exposure, compared with 9% of the healthy control group and 16% of the psychiatric control group. The group with IED scored far higher for aggression and impulsivity than either of the other two groups.

The authors point out that the findings do not mean that toxoplasmosis causes IED, or that people with cats are more likely to have the condition. It simply reveals a relationship that needs further exploration.

Sourced from: MNT, People with ‘rage’ disorder twice as likely to have toxoplasmosis