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A series of events, from the birth of our first grandchild to the loss of my job, kept me from writing my annual Christmas column. In its place, I humbly offer this piece written by my wife, who joins me in wishing all of you a very merry Christmas. My Christmas Story December 23, 2009 Sharon R. Powell Everyone has a personal Christmas story. That is the beauty of the season. The story often holds a mirror up to our natures allowing us to see not only ourselves, but also God’s gifts. My story has taken years to form. My...

Enlarge ImageDouble trouble. Brain neurons (green) with a faulty potassium channel. An EEG and an ECG show that epileptic seizures (top) often coincide with heart arrhythmias (bottom) in mice. Credit: A. Goldman et al., Science Translational Medicine Two medical problems caused by misfiring electrical signals, epilepsy and heart arrhythmia, probably have a common molecular cause, scientists report. The research points to treatments that could lower the chances of young people dying of seizures. The scientists, at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, were studying mice that had a mutation in the KCNQ gene, which builds potassium ion channels...

Epilepsy could be prevented from passing down through families by 'silencing' the gene which causes the condition, new research suggests. Scientists claim to have made a breakthrough in eradicating inherited epilepsy after managing to breed the defect out of epileptic mice by balancing "good" and "bad" genes. It is hoped that the research will lead to new ways of preventing the disorder in humans. Scientists at the University of Leeds studied a strain of mouse called Myshkin, which has an inherited form of severe epilepsy. The mice had a defective version of the gene Atp1a3 which led them to suffer...

RIYADH: Neurologist Fawzia Ba-Mogdam, who specializes in epilepsy and sleep disorders, disagrees with the layman’s understanding that epilepsy is caused by jinni (spirits) and should be treated with recitations from the Holy Qur’an rather than medication. Contrary to the advice given by some religious scholars, epilepsy is a physical condition that should be treated with the help of medical science. In a seminar organized by King Fahd Medical City under the title “Religious and Medical Viewpoints of Epilepsy,” Ba-Mogdam explained that epilepsy is a medical condition due to excessive neurological activity in the brain, which can cause seizures. “Believing in...

Council bans brainstorming By Nick Allen Last Updated: 2:06PM BST 20/06/2008   A council has banned the term "brainstorming" and replaced it with "thought showers". Tunbridge Wells Borough Council in Kent was accused of taking political correctness to extremes after instructing staff to make the change.The move came as council chiefs feared the word brainstorming might offend mentally ill people and those with epilepsy.The buzz term is often used by executives to generate ideas among their staff. But memos have been sent to staff asking them not to use it and some have been given training which encouraged them...

Computer attacks typically don't inflict physical pain on their victims. ADVERTISEMENT But in a rare example of an attack apparently motivated by malice rather than money, hackers recently bombarded the Epilepsy Foundation's Web site with hundreds of pictures and links to pages with rapidly flashing images. The breach triggered severe migraines and near-seizure reactions in some site visitors who viewed the images. People with photosensitive epilepsy can get seizures when they're exposed to flickering images, a response also caused by some video games and cartoons. The attack happened when hackers exploited a security hole in the foundation's publishing software that...

Despite his quick recovery from the seizure he suffered on Monday, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. faces a complex diagnosis and a difficult decision. Because the seizure was his second — he had a similar one in 1993 — he meets the criteria for epilepsy, and he and his doctors will have to decide whether he should take medication to prevent further seizures, said neurologists not involved in his care. (Neither the chief justice nor his doctors would comment yesterday.) The decision will involve weighing the risk of more seizures against the risk of side effects from the drugs....

<p>Justice Roberts had a fall, taken to hospital. NO other details as of yet.</p>

THE controversial 2012 London Olympics logo was rocked by another blow last night — after it was ruled too dangerous to view on-screen. An animated version of the symbol used on TV and the internet had to be dropped because it could trigger fits in thousands of people. The £400,000 logo, a graffiti-style spelling of 2012 in shades of pink, blue, green and orange, was branded “hideous” when it was launched on Monday. And Olympics bosses were left squirming with embarrassment after an epilepsy group reported 12 cases of people collapsing through looking at it. Epilepsy Action warned that 23,000...

Nov. 23, 2006 — - Roughly 3 million Americans live with epilepsy. And a surprising number of them go to jail for it. Why? Around the country, police officers and bystanders who see someone having a seizure mistake it for disorderly, criminal behavior. That's what happened to Daniel Beloungea of Pontiac, Mich. On most days Daniel lives the normal life of a 48-year-old single man. But roughly once a week, he loses total control of his body and mind to an epileptic seizure. A seizure took over Beloungea's body while walking through his suburban Detroit neighborhood last April. When an...

Newswise — University of Florida researchers have shown ordinary human brain cells may share the prized qualities of self-renewal and adaptability normally associated with stem cells. Writing in an upcoming edition of Development, scientists from UF’s McKnight Brain Institute describe how they used mature human brain cells taken from epilepsy patients to generate new brain tissue in mice. Furthermore, they can coax these pedestrian human cells to produce large amounts of new brain cells in culture, with one cell theoretically able to begin a cycle of cell division that does not stop until the cells number about 10 to the...

Developed by Pfizer, pregabalin, marketed under the brand name Lyrica, is a 3-substituted analogue of gamma-amino butyric acid (GABA) and a compound related to Pfizer's hugely successful antiepileptic drug gabapentin (Neurontin). In July 2004, Pfizer secured Europe-wide approval for Lyrica (pregabalin) for use in the management of peripheral neuropathic pain as well as an adjunctive therapy in the treatment of partial epileptic seizures. Subsequently in December 2004 the company gained FDA approval for use of Lyrica (pregabalin) in neuropathic pain associated with diabetic peripheral neuropathy and postherpetic neuralgia; making it the first FDA-approved treatment for both of these neuropathic pain...

THE chaotic swirls of Vincent van Gogh’s later paintings may owe as much to science as they do to art. Physicists believe that some of his works are uncannily accurate pictures of the complex mathematics of turbulence, the phenomenon behind bumpy aircraft rides, cloud formations and the flow of ocean currents. Van Gogh painted three of his most agitated paintings, A Starry Night, Road with Cypress and Star and Wheat Field with Crows, towards the end of his life when he was suffering prolonged bouts of epilepsy. José Luis Aragón, a physicist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, believes...

GAINESVILLE, Fla., June 14 (SPX) -- Regenerative medicine scientists at the University of Florida's McKnight Brain Institute have created a system in rodent models that for the first time duplicates neurogenesis - the process of generating new brain cells - in a dish. Writing in today's (June 13) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers describe a cell culture method that holds the promise of producing a limitless supply of a person's own brain cells to potentially heal disorders such as Parkinson's disease or epilepsy. "It's like an assembly line to manufacture and increase the number of brain cells,"...

Cpl. Kendall D. McKibben was prepared to sacrifice his life for the Army. He says he almost did repeatedly over a year of patrols dodging bullets in Baghdad and dealing with a grape-size brain tumor. So the 33-year-old says he can't understand why the military is refusing a routine subpoena that he believes could help him avoid a 13-year prison sentence. -snip- McKibben feels doubly wronged because he believes the tumor itself was caused by exposure to depleted uranium in Iraq. Depleted uranium is a heavy metal that is slightly radioactive and is used in some armor-piercing munitions. In Baghdad,...

Scientists Discover What You Are Thinking PASADENA, Calif. - By decoding signals coming from neurons, scientists at the California Institute of Technology have confirmed that an area of the brain known as the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vPF) is involved in the planning stages of movement, that instantaneous flicker of time when we contemplate moving a hand or other limb. The work has implications for the development of a neural prosthesis, a brain-machine interface that will give paralyzed people the ability to move and communicate simply by thinking. By piggybacking on therapeutic work being conducted on epileptic patients, Daniel Rizzuto, a...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Memory blanks, losing train of thought, temporary confusion -- all are often chalked up to "senioritis" once people reach a certain age. But these symptoms can also be a warning sign of the seizure disorder epilepsy, experts said Friday. Although most people's image of epilepsy involves convulsions and other obvious symptoms, in older adults, seizures can take a quieter form, Dr. Eugene Ramsay of the University of Miami School of Medicine in Florida told Reuters Health. Instead, older adults can develop "staring spells," often mistaken for senior moments, in which they lose awareness of what's...

Warning signs of an ischemic stroke may be evident as early as seven days before an attack and require urgent treatment to prevent serious damage to the brain, according to a study of stroke patients. Warning signs of an ischemic stroke may be evident as early as seven days before an attack and require urgent treatment to prevent serious damage to the brain, according to a study of stroke patients published in the March 8, 2005 issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Eighty percent of strokes are ischemic, caused by the narrowing of the...

On 7-year-old Cheyenne Gilliam's first day at Mount Vernon Elementary yesterday, her new principal, Leon Davidson, explained to her classmates that the dog she brought to school isn't a pet: It's a working dog trained to respond to Cheyenne's epileptic seizures. But the pair's first day in second grade ended abruptly when Rockcastle County Schools Superintendent Larry Hammond notified Cheyenne's parents, Jennifer and Anthony Gilliam, that the dog was, in a manner of speaking, being suspended. Two hours after the day began, the family took the dog, and their daughter, home. Hammond said in an interview that he wants to...

LAST RESORTS Squeeze my hand, Stephen," the surgeon called. "Wiggle your feet." In an operating room at New York Weill Cornell Medical Center, doctors watched intently as Stephen R. Neiley III, roused from general anesthesia, gave a squeeze and a wiggle and went back to sleep. Reassured that the electrodes they had just implanted in his brain had done no harm, they went back to work. The next step was to tunnel wires from the electrodes through Mr. Neiley's scalp and neck to a pacemaker-like gadget that would be implanted in his chest. The operation was an experiment, with a...