JUGGLERS ARE BIGHEADS

PARIS

Juggling and probably other visual skills that take time to master increase the size of your brain. That's the conclusion of German researchers, which throws down the gauntlet to the mainstream view that the size of the adult brain does not change at all except when it is confronted by ageing or disease.

    University of Regensburg neurologist Arne May and colleagues asked 12 people in their early 20s, most of them women, to learn a classic three-ball juggling trick over three months until they could sustain a performance for at least a minute. Another 12 were a "control" group who did not juggle.

    All the volunteers were subjected to a brain scan using magnetic resonance imaging at the start of the program, and a second after three months. After this, the juggling group were told not to practice their skills at all for three months, and then a third scan was taken of all 24 volunteers.

    The scans found that learning to juggle increased by about three percent the volume of "grey matter" in the mid-temporal area and left posterior intra-parietal sulcus, which are parts of the left hemisphere of the brain that process data from visual motion. Students who had not undergone juggling training showed no such change. After the third scan, by which time many recruits had forgotten how to juggle, the increases in grey matter had partly subsided. That proves in the researchers' view that the anatomical change had been only temporary.

     "Our results contradict the traditionally held view that the anatomical structure of the adult human brain does not alter, except for changes in morphology caused by ageing or pathological conditions," their study says.

    Quite why the brain's size should grow and contract in response to the demand for learning is unclear. The change could be caused by an increase in production of neurons to cope with the data-processing burden or to changes in the connections between the cells, the authors speculate. The study is published in Nature. AFP

 

 

MUSICAL MIND

JENA, Germany

Professional musicians have more grey matter in three key areas of the brain than people who do not play instruments or are only amateur musicians, say German researchers Christian Gaser of Jena University and Gottfried Schlaug of Harvard Medical School who studied the whole brain using a computer scanner in contrast to previous studies that looked at the part of the brain involved in processing music.

    They found that professional keyboard players have significantly more grey matter in brain regions that deal with motor skills and auditory stimulation and which process visual and spatial data compared to nonmusicians or amateurs. But this does not mean they are necessarily more intelligent, they said.

    Still unclear is whether these intriguing differences are genetic or come from years of practice to gain mastery of an instrument.

    The study is published in the Journal of Neuroscience. AFP

 

 

FASTEST STOP WATCH

VIENNA

Scientists have developed a device that can measure the speed of atomic processes down to the smallest fraction of a second yet. Describing the device as "the fastest stopwatch in the world," Austro-Hungarian physicist Ferenc Krauzs said said it measures the movement of atomic particles in time units smaller than 100 attoseconds.

    An attosecond is the name given to a quintillionth, or a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a second. "This time is to a second what a minute is to the age of the universe," Krauzs explained.

    The device allows them to record changes in atomic structure that happens so fast that it could not be documented before. Said Krauzs: "Our aim is to trace the movement of electrons inside atoms in real time. We need very short bursts of time to take shots of attoseconds. This is just like taking pictures with an ordinary camera of something happening in split seconds and then put them next to each other to see the movement. We are trying to reconstruct what happens in atoms."

    He said the device works by flashing the shortest X-ray pulses yet developed in the world onto electrons, propelling them out of their atomic binding. AFP

 

 

HEALTH COUNT

1,000 Number of people who die of tuberculosis daily in the Western Pacific, including the Philippines¹

PhP 227 million What it cost the Philippine Congress to pass one lousy law from June to November (six months) last year.²

PhP 6,000 What it costs to cure one Filipino with tuberculosis over six months of therapy.³

37,833 Number of Filipino TB patients who could have been cured for PhP227 million.

70 Number of Filipinos who die of TB daily. ⁴

PhP 420,000 What six months of therapy would cost to save 70 Filipinos with TB.

PhP 18.4 million What taxpayers spent for 24 senators and 220 representatives daily from June to November, 2003. ²

200,000 Number of drug addicts in China's Guangdong province, 15 percent of them women.⁵