Communication Disorders
PHILADELPHIA (October 09, 2009) -- According to new research from the Monell Center and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, certain common herbicides and lipid-lowering fibrate drugs act in humans to block T1R3, a nutrient-sensing taste receptor also present in intestine and pancreas.
LAWRENCE, KAN. -- A new candidate gene for Specific Language Impairment has been identified by a research team directed by Mabel Rice at the University of Kansas, in collaboration with Shelley Smith, University of Nebraska Medical Center, and Javier Gayán of Neocodex, Seville, Spain.
EVANSTON, Ill. --- Anyone with an MP3 device -- just about every man, woman and child on the planet today, it seems -- has a notion of the majesty of music, of the primal place it holds in the human imagination.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A researcher at The Florida State University has been awarded a $5 million, five-year federal grant to train doctoral students to conduct advanced research on the best ways of teaching reading, math and science to the nation's schoolchildren.
Emory University researchers have identified a surprising mechanism in the brains of mother mice that focuses their awareness on the calls of baby mice. Their study, published June 11 in Neuron, found that the high-frequency sounds of mice pups stand out in a mother's auditory cortex by inhibiting the activity of neurons more attuned to lower frequency sounds.
In 1979 Chancellor's Professor David Pisoni brought the first two postdoctoral researchers to Indiana University Bloomington when he was awarded a five-year training grant by the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders. Today, the same grant supports six postdoctoral researchers, six doctoral students and six medical students in Bloomington and Indianapolis.
In three studies, including the most comprehensive study of autism genetics to date, investigators funded in part by the National Institutes of Health have identified common and rare genetic factors that affect the risk of autism spectrum disorders. The results point to the importance of genes that are involved in forming and maintaining the connections between brain cells.
Vitamin supplements can prevent hearing loss in laboratory animals, according to two new studies, bringing investigators one step closer to the development of a pill that could stave off noise-induced and perhaps even age-related hearing loss in humans.
Otolaryngologist Dr. David Roberson has first-hand experience with medical errors. He remembers one near-miss in a patient about to receive a cochlear implant -- and says it typifies the kinds of mistakes he and his colleagues have turned up in a national survey. ''I looked at the CT scan carefully to determine if the cochlea would accept the implant,'' recalls Roberson, from the Department of Otolaryngology and Communication Disorders at Children's Hospital Boston. ''I asked a colleague to look at it also, and he commented that the auditory nerves looked small. I then ordered an MRI which showed the patient had no auditory nerves on either side. I came close to performing surgery and putting a major device in a child's head when there was no possibility of benefit, since she had no auditory nerve. I didn't look carefully enough at the entire scan.''
