NEUROSCIENCE: Probability Pegs Brain Activity
Like most things in nature, neurons are subject to a mixture of deterministic and random forces. Yet the methods used by most neuroscientists have not adequately accounted for that randomness. In the late 1990s, Emery Brown developed a mathematical filter that essentially interprets the observed behavior of individual neurons through the lens of its previous behavior. Over the past ten years, he and his colleagues have been applying this approach to a variety of problems. In the October Journal of Neurophysiology, they present a design for a mathematical filter that could help to improve brain-driven prosthetic devices to be used by people with spinal cord injuries or neurodegenerative diseases.

CELL BIOLOGY: Unsafe Harbor
Epithelial cells commit suicide if they are not anchored to the extracellular matrix. But Michael Overholtzer in Joan Brugge’s lab showed that many of them also participate in a bizarre invasion and non-apoptotic death process, which he defined in the Nov. 30 Cell. “Homeless” epithelial cells bore into their neighbors and reside in vacuoles, where they initially appear healthy. Though some exit unharmed, most of the intruders die inside their hosts.

TROPICAL DISEASE: Evidence Shows Combined Common Drugs Can KO Neglected Tropical Infections
A simple combination of inexpensive drugs can treat the most common infections spread mostly by worms in warm climates, found a systematic review of the best evidence to date. More than 1 billion people suffer from a group of 13 diseases known as the neglected tropical diseases. A group of geriatricians led by Madhuri Reddy conducted the study to contribute to global health improvement.

Copyright 2007 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College