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Autism and schizophrenia may be two sides of the same coin, suggests a review of genetic data associated with the conditions. The finding could help design complementary treatments for the two disorders. Though autism was originally described as a form of schizophrenia a century ago, evidence for a link has remained equivocal. One theory puts the conditions at opposite ends of a developmental spectrum. To investigate, Bernard Crespi, an evolutionary biologist at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and colleagues gathered data on all known genetic variants associated with each condition, then looked for patterns of co-occurrence. The researchers found...

Patient Money WHEN I stock up on ibuprofen (my painkiller of choice), I typically buy a 500-count bottle of a store brand like Kirkland or Rite Aid. After all, ibuprofen is ibuprofen. Each pill costs me about 3 cents — or only one-third the cost of 9-cent Advil. Yet, when it comes to vitamins — which I take only when I feel run down — I turn to name brands like Centrum or Nature Made. My thinking has been: Why mess around with quality when it comes to the essential ABCs? But now that I’ve done some research, I might...

Reviewed by Louise Chang, MDThere is more evidence that breastfeeding benefits moms as well as their babies.Breastfeeding was shown to significantly lower a woman's risk for developing metabolic syndrome in a study reported today by researchers with Kaiser Permanente.The longer the women in the study breastfed, the more protection they seemed to derive. Is Your Type 2 Diabetes Under Control? Get Your Health Score Insulin Resistance, Belly Fat Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of risk factors linked to both diabetes and heart disease, including elevated blood pressure, insulin resistance, and belly fat.The new study is one of the most rigorously...

Seismic experiment gives best evidence yet for mantle plumes. Geologists have obtained the best image yet of a plume of hot rock that rises from Earth's deep mantle and fuels the volcanoes of the Hawaiian islands. The study, led by geophysicist Cecily Wolfe at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu, reveals the structure of the plume down to at least 1,500 kilometres. Critics have questioned in recent years whether such plumes even exist. "This is a spectacular experiment that succeeded in getting data for putting the plume theory to the test," says Wolfe. The results are published this...

Rinderpest will be only the second disease to be wiped out. Rinderpest, the world's most devastating cattle disease, will be declared eradicated within 18 months, according to world health bodies. The effort will make it only the second disease to be wiped from the globe — the first was smallpox, eradicated in 1980. "Rinderpest tops the list of killer diseases [in animals]," says Juan Lubroth, chief veterinary officer for the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome. It not only kills cattle and other wildlife, it also causes famines when people in developing countries lose the...

At A Glance A large-scale clinical trial has found that annual screening with ultrasound in addition to mammography may find more cancers in women with dense breasts who are at elevated risk for breast cancer.For some groups of women, screening with MRI in addition to mammography helps detect breast cancer at an earlier stage.Supplemental screening with ultrasound or MRI increases the risk of false-positive findings. Media Contacts: RSNA Media Relations: (630) 590-7762 Maureen Morley (630) 590-7754mmorley@rsna.org Linda Brooks1-630-590-7738lbrooks@rsna.org CHICAGO — Results of a large-scale clinical trial presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America...

At A Glance Two studies explored ultrasound as an alternative to invasive biopsies for young women with lumps or other specific, localized signs or symptoms.Targeted breast ultrasound successfully distinguished between benign and cancerous tumors in all cases across both studies.The researchers recommend ultrasound as the tool of choice for evaluating palpable lumps in the under-40 population. Media Contacts: RSNA Newsroom 1-312-949-3233 Before 11/28/09 or after 12/03/09: RSNA Media Relations: 1-630- 590-7762 Linda Brooks1-630-590-7738lbrooks@rsna.org Maureen Morley1-630-590-7754mmorley@rsna.org CHICAGO — Targeted breast ultrasound of suspicious areas of the breast, including lumps, is a safe, reliable and cost-effective alternative to invasive biopsies for...

For young women who have a high risk of breast cancer because of genetic mutations or family history, the radiation from yearly mammograms may make the risk even higher, researchers reported at a radiology conference on Monday. The report is particularly troubling because it suggests that the very women who are told they need mammograms most may also be the most vulnerable to harm from them. Doctors routinely urge high-risk women to have mammograms earlier in life and more often than women judged to be at average risk. Researchers caution that the new report is not conclusive, and that the...

Global Update A new drug-resistant strain of bacteria has emerged in the last decade in Africa and is causing unusual numbers of deaths there, British and African researchers said on Monday. The strain, a variant of Salmonella typhimurium, is named ST313. Its genome was decoded by researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and researchers in Kenya and Malawi. While most salmonella bacteria cause diarrhea and are rarely fatal, this one causes death in one of four cases among children and vulnerable adults in some African regions, the researchers said. Many of its victims have been weakened by the AIDS...

The World Health Organization tried this week to dampen fears about mutations seen in the swine flu virus in several countries, noting that both mutations had been found in very few people. A change that created Tamiflu resistance has been found in about 75 people around the world, said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, chief flu adviser to the W.H.O.’s director general. Two clusters, in cancer units at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina and a hospital in Wales, were both among patients whose immune systems had been severely suppressed by cancer treatment; some had had their bone marrow, which produces...

<p>The blueprint of a small organism's cellular machinery has been unveiled, offering the most comprehensive view yet of the molecular essentials of life. But the research also shows just how far biologists have to go before they understand the complete biochemical basis of even the simplest of creatures.</p>

Scientists in the US have discovered a new class of biological antifreeze molecules - the first that do not contain proteins. The antifreeze, extracted from an Alaskan beetle capable of surviving at -60°C, consists of linked mannopyranose and xylopyranose sugars, termed xylomannan, associated with a lipid. Large molecules that cause thermal hysteresis - a difference between the melting and freezing points of a solution - have been identified in many organisms that survive in the cold, from Antarctic fish to plants and bacteria. In all cases identified so far, thermal hysteresis appears to be caused by proteins, known as antifreeze proteins or...

Boosting the level of a brain chemical reverses learning impairments in a mouse model of Down syndrome, researchers report. The work adds to emerging evidence that cognition-enhancing drugs may one day help humans with Down syndrome lead more independent lives. Down syndrome is the most common cause of mental retardation, affecting approximately one in 800 babies at birth. People with the disorder have an extra copy of chromosome 21, giving them additional copies of hundreds of genes. This somehow alters brain development and causes mild to severe learning disabilities. To investigate what goes wrong in the brain of someone who...

Enlarge ImageGreen gold. A complex geological process produced this sample of nickel sulfide. Credit: Marco Fiorentini, Science Those spare nickels in your pocket might not be there without the help of ancient volcanoes that blasted sulfur dioxide into the sky billions of years ago. The discovery solves a mystery that has dogged researchers for decades, says geochemist Edward Ripley of Indiana University, Bloomington, who was not affiliated with the study. The nickel in ore deposits is actually nickel sulfide, a compound that is rich in sulfur. The sulfur is "critically important," says geochemist Douglas Rumble of the Carnegie Institution...

The findings led to an early halt of a small study comparing Niaspan and Zetia, two compounds commonly used along with statins to reduce heart attack risk ORLANDO, Fla. — Adding a pharmaceutical form of the B vitamin niacin — but not the drug ezetimibe — to a cholesterol-lowering statin drug appears to reduce artery plaque buildup in patients with coronary artery disease, according to much-anticipated results announced at a press conference November 15. The results were from a study that was relatively small — only 208 patients — but provided a head-to-head comparison of niacin and ezetimibe, known by...

SAN FRANCISCO — Only 21% of Massachusetts women older than age 40 years were not in mammographic screening programs. Yet unscreened women accounted for 75% of the breast cancer deaths in an analysis of data on 6,997 invasive breast cancers diagnosed in 1990-1999 and followed through 2007. “The most effective method for women to avoid death from breast cancer is to have regular mammographic screening,” Dr. Blake Cady said at a breast cancer symposium sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, where he presented the data. Extrapolation from the study's results suggests that for the projected 192,370 women nationwide...

Controversy over the benefits of screening for breast cancer and prostate cancer hit the headlines and the blogosphere when the New York Times reported that the American Cancer Society is planning to temper its proscreening message for breast and prostate cancers, and a prominent representative of the society denied it on his blog. By the end of the day, the society's chief medical officer, Dr. Otis W. Brawley, posted a firm statement that the ACS stands by its screening guidelines. “The bottom line is that mammography has helped avert deaths from breast cancer, and we can make more progress against...

Tufts University researchers have identified a gene-diet interaction that appears to influence body weight and have replicated their findings in three independent studies. Men and women carrying the CC genotype demonstrated higher body mass index (BMI) scores and a higher incidence of obesity, but only if they consumed a diet high in saturated fat. These associations were seen in the apolipoprotein A-II gene (APOA2) promoter. "We believe this is the first time a gene-diet interaction influencing BMI and obesity has been replicated in as many as three independent study populations," says corresponding and senior author Jose Ordovas, PhD, director of...

More than a decade after Congress directed the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to carry out assessments of endocrine disrupting chemicals, the agency has announced the first set of compounds to be screened under its Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program (EDSP). Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that can affect hormones produced by the endocrine system, which regulate growth, metabolism and reproduction.The EPA has requested that manufacturers screen seven compounds under this  first round, including atrazine - a widely used herbicide that may be associated with birth defects, low birth weight and menstrual problems. Although banned in Europe, atrazine remains prevalent in the US, with...

Enlarge ImageHigh anxiety. Rats "addicted" to sugary food spent less time on the open parts of this maze. Credit: Pietro Cottone If you're constantly starting new diets, then breaking them, you may have more in common with a drug addict than you know. A new study suggests that yo-yo dieters experience the same stressful pangs of withdrawal when they go on a diet that addicts experience when they go cold turkey. The idea that bad food can be addictive is not new. But previous studies have tended to focus on the positive reinforcement side of the equation--for example, the...

Move over, red wine. Make room for chocolate milk. A new study suggests that regular consumption of skim milk with flavonoid-rich cocoa may reduce inflammation, potentially slowing or preventing development of atherosclerosis. Researchers noted, however, that the effect was not as pronounced as that seen with red wine. Scientists in Barcelona, Spain, recruited 47 volunteers ages 55 and older who were at risk for heart disease. Half were given 20-gram sachets of soluble cocoa powder to drink with skim milk twice a day, while the rest drank plain skim milk. After one month, the groups were switched. Blood tests found...

Many strokes cannot be explained by known risk factors like high blood pressure and smoking, and scientists have speculated that infection could play a role. A new study is linking cumulative exposure to five common pathogens with an increased risk for stroke. The infections in order of significance are Chlamydia pneumoniae, Helicobacter pylori, cytomegalovirus and herpes simplex viruses 1 and 2, according to the study, published online on Nov. 9 in The Archives of Neurology. “Each of these common pathogens may persist after an acute infection and contribute to perpetuating a state of chronic low-level infection,” said the paper’s lead...

Scientists from Germany and Israel have caught a fleeting glimpse of carbonic acid, the simple yet elusive molecule that plays a key role in nature, from regulating the pH of blood to mediating crucial events in the global carbon cycle. And it appears that the acid is not as weak as the textbooks would have us believe.Carbonic acid, the hydrated form of carbon dioxide, is an important molecule that is involved in buffering biological fluids such as blood and is a key intermediate in the exchange of carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and the oceans. However, it is so short-lived in solution...

Forty Years' War Many Americans do not think twice about taking medicines to prevent heart disease and stroke. But cancer is different. Much of what Americans do in the name of warding off cancer has not been shown to matter, and some things are actually harmful. Yet the few medicines proved to deter cancer are widely ignored. Take prostate cancer, the second-most commonly diagnosed cancer in the United States, surpassed only by easily treated skin cancers. More than 192,000 cases of it will be diagnosed this year, and more than 27,000 men will die from it. And, it turns out,...

AP Science Writer Male factory workers in China who got very high doses of a chemical that's been widely used in hard plastic bottles had high rates of sexual problems, researchers reported Wednesday. Heavy exposure to BPA, or bisphenol A, on the job was linked to impotence and lower sexual desire and satisfaction, according to the study, which adds to concerns about BPA's effects on most consumers. The men in the study experienced BPA levels about 50 times higher than those faced by typical American men, said researcher Dr. De-Kun Li. "We don't know" whether more typical doses have similar...

Induced pluripotent stem cells could be a boon for regenerative medicine.REUTERS/Junying Yu/University of Wisconsin-Madison Given the right conditions, any adult cell can be coaxed into becoming stem-cell like, according to a team of researchers based in the United States. The team, led by Rudolf Jaenisch of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, were also able to speed up the process, cutting the time required for cells to become stem-cell like by around half. The results are good news for those battling to work out the complex biology of these cells, know as induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells...

A treatment based on HIV finds first success in humans.Researchers have halted a fatal brain disease by delivering a therapeutic gene to the stem cells that mature into blood cells. The gene was transferred using a virus derived from HIV, a technique that researchers have pursued for more than a decade but has not been successful in humans until now. Together with his colleagues, paediatric neurologist Patrick Aubourg at INSERM — France's main biomedical research agency — and at the Saint-Vincent de Paul Hospital in Paris, developed the system to treat X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD), a neurodegenerative disease that affects young...

With new studies showing the sun vitamin may slow come cancers, some physicians are eager to add it to treatment programs Responding to research indicating that vitamin D may slow the progression of breast, colon and other common cancers, some doctors have begun adding the supplement to their tool kit of cancer therapies alongside more conventional treatments such as radiation, surgery and chemotherapy. While not all physicians are convinced the evidence is strong enough to warrant taking an extra dollop of the sunshine vitamin, those recommending the course say popping the pills is a simple health strategy that has few,...

Scientists from the UK are waging war on hospital 'superbugs' with a highly effective antimicrobial organo-silver coatingToby Jenkins and colleagues at the University of Bath have used a plasma to create a simple means to deposit a silver maleimide complex onto three-dimensional objects. An added benefit is that it can be done at room temperature so can be used on plastic and fabric, such as catheters and dressings too. 'Our system is, to the best of our knowledge, the only one to use plasma to deposit an organo-silver film,' says Jenkins. And as only a small amount of the silver monomer...

Myriad of Compounds Intended to Stop the Progression of Metabolic Diseases Moves Through the PipelineThe competition to develop new therapeutics targeting metabolic disease is heating up. Here’s why: the latest estimates from the American Diabetes Association state that there are nearly 24 million Americans with diabetes. In addition, approximately 32% of American adults are medically obese. Many companies have honed in on this large and growing market, and several of them presented their latest findings at IQPC’s “Groundbreaking Advances and Key Opinions in Metabolic Diseases Drug Discovery and Development� held recently in San Francisco. “When we founded the company, we...

Tumor-Specific Antigens Could Positively Impact Diagnosis, Imaging, and TherapyThe medical literature abounds with examples of the benefits of early cancer detection. Cure rates are always dramatically higher before the tumor has spread and while surgery is still an option. For example in cervical cancer, detection at the earliest stages of the disease is associated with a 99% five-year survival rate. Similarly encouraging statistics may be found for cancers of the breast, ovaries, colon, skin, and other sites. Cancer detected through physical examination or medical imaging is usually too advanced for hope of a cure, which has led to an explosion...

High rates of premature birth are the main reason the United States has higher infant mortality than do many other rich countries, government researchers reported Tuesday in their first detailed analysis of a longstanding problem. In Sweden, for instance, 6.3 percent of births were premature, compared with 12.4 percent in the United States in 2005, the latest year for which international rankings are available. Infant mortality also... --snip-- Dr. Fleischman said the smallest, earliest and most fragile babies were often born to poor and minority women who lacked health care and social support. The highest rates of infant mortality occur...

I don’t often write about alternative remedies for serious medical conditions. Most have little more than anecdotal support, and few have been found effective in well-designed clinical trials. Such trials randomly assign patients to one of two or more treatments and, wherever possible, assess the results without telling either the patients or evaluators who received which treatment. Now, however, in describing an alternative treatment for asthma that does not yet have top clinical ratings in this country (although it is taught in Russian medical schools and covered by insurance in Australia), I am going beyond my usually stringent research criteria...

Concern over the H1N1 swine flu has inundated the airwaves and the newspapers since active swine flu was first identified in Mexico in April. And though the panic has waned slightly in recent weeks because this variant of the flu is not living down to its deadly predictions (in fact, it’s not even as deadly as the seasonal flu), for many people, if not most people, perception trumps facts and statistics, and so there have been mass mobilizations to combat the contagion.  The campaign has included classes to convince people to avoid unnecessary contact with others; a huge expenditure to...

Death from the flu is often heartrending for those who have to watch: the victim, having been weakened from the flu virus, contracts pneumonia from bacteria or viruses that have taken hold in the lungs, and he or she struggles for every breath.  The victim’s breathing is often raspy, and it is abnormally fast, like the panting of a worn-out dog. As the victim’s body fights the lung infection, the lungs fill with pus and other fluids, cutting off the flow of oxygen and causing the victim to turn colors — from shades of gray to a bluish purple. The...

The European Commission is speeding up approval of the import and processing of two genetically modified (GM) maize varieties in the European Union to prevent disruption of the oleochemical supply chain.Over 200,000 tonnes of soya bean from the US are currently stranded in EU ports after minute traces of unauthorised GM maize were found in a number of trans-Atlantic shipments. The stranded soya would have been used to make a wide range of products, including cosmetics and toiletries, plastics, resins in coatings and printing inks and lubricants. 'There's serious concern among oleochemical producers about future supplies of some raw materials,' says Klaus...

The U.S. Air Force has hired Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems to study the possibility of integrating additional Missile Defense Agency (MDA) sensors into the U.S. Space Surveillance Network that tracks orbiting satellites, a Raytheon official said Oct. 28. The Tewksbury, Mass.-based company was awarded a $3 million contract from Air Force Space Command for a program called the Enterprise Sensing Prototype Architecture for Space Situational Awareness (ESP-SSA), Joe Chapa, Raytheon’s technical director for national theater security programs, said in an interview. The Air Force’s Space Surveillance Network employs a host of optical telescopes and radars around the world. The telescopes...

THE emergence of the H1N1 swine flu has added urgency to what has become an annual ritual for millions of Americans: getting a flu shot. The good news is that scientists have developed a vaccine against the H1N1 virus. But it is taking much longer than expected to produce the hundreds of millions of doses the government had planned to distribute. And it is still too soon to know how effective the vaccine will be in preventing swine flu. In all likelihood, we’d have a better H1N1 vaccine — and more of it — if in our preparations we had...

Aerosols' complicated influence on our climate just got more threatening: they could make methane a more potent greenhouse gas than previously realized, say climate modellers.Drew Shindell, at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, and colleagues ran a range of computerized models to show that methane's global warming potential is greater when combined with aerosols — atmospheric particles such as dust, sea salt, sulphates and black carbon. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol assume methane to be, tonne-for-tonne, 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming the planet. But the...

Patients taking statin drugs were almost 50 percent less likely to die from flu, researchers reported on Thursday in a study providing more evidence the cholesterol-lowering drugs help the body cope with infection. The findings are compelling enough to justify doing controlled studies in which some patients are given the drugs deliberately and some are not, said Meredith Vandermeer of the Oregon Public Health Division, who helped lead the study. "Our preliminary study shows these cholesterol-lowering medications called statins are associated with a decrease in mortality," Vandermeer told a news conference at a meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of...

Long-standing 'canary in the coal mine' role questioned.Frogs aren't always the first to suffer from pollution.Digital Vision The health of amphibians is commonly used to give a rough assessment of pollution levels in an area, but an analysis of more than 20,000 toxicity studies now suggests that these creatures are relatively resilient and not well suited to the task.The finding could have a significant effect on the way that the environment is assessed. Conventional wisdom suggests that if an amphibian population is thriving, the area is probably clear of pollutants. But the survey shows that other species, such as shelled...

Many parents worry about a possible link between autism and mercury exposure. But most research dismisses those fears as groundless, and a new study says autistic children actually have lower blood levels of mercury than children who are developing normally. Mercury levels were closely related to fish intake, the study found, and children with autism and related disorders tend to be picky eaters who avoid fish. After researchers adjusted for the lower fish consumption of autistic children, they found no differences between their mercury levels and those in other children. Irva Hertz-Picciotto, a professor of public health sciences at the...

Drugs that alleviate severe mental disorders can also result in troubling metabolic changes. Many young children and adolescents taking drugs for severe psychiatric problems gain substantial weight and, in some cases, show increased levels of LDL cholesterol and triglycerides in their blood, researchers report in the Oct. 28 Journal of the American Medical Association. Although the data from this study need to be replicated over a longer time frame, the findings nonetheless raise worrisome questions about anti-psychotic drugs that often benefit children who have schizophrenia, autism, tics, severe bipolar disorder or aggressive behavior. “We are between a rock and a...

Supplements of the sunshine vitamin may improve insulin resistance and sensitivity, both of which are risk factors for diabetes, says a new study from New Zealand. Insulin resistance, whereby insufficient insulin is released to produce a normal glucose response from fat, muscle and liver cells, was significantly lower in women following high-dose vitamin D supplementation, according to results of a randomised, controlled, double-blind trial published in the British Journal of Nutrition. The optimal effects were observed when blood vitamin D levels were in the range 80 to 119 nanomoles per litre, said the researchers, “providing further evidence for an increase...

Enlarge ImageCancer fighter. The naked mole rat isn't much to look at, but it has an effective way of combating cancer. Credit: Trisha M. Shears With its wrinkled skin and bucked teeth, the naked mole rat isn't going to win any beauty contests. But the burrowing, desert rodent is exceptional in another way: It doesn't get cancer. The naked mole rat's cells hate to be crowded, it turns out, so they stop growing before they can form tumors. The details could someday lead to a new strategy for treating cancer in people. In search of clues to aging, cell...

Harper: Controversal Drug Will Do Little To Reduce Cervical Cancer Rates Dr. Diane Harper, lead researcher in the development of two human papilloma virus vaccines, Gardasil and Cervarix, said the controversial drugs will do little to reduce cervical cancer rates and, even though they’re being recommended for girls as young as nine, there have been no efficacy trials in children under the age of 15. Dr. Harper, director of the Gynecologic Cancer Prevention Research Group at the University of Missouri, made these remarks during an address at the 4th International Public Conference on Vaccination which took place in Reston, Virginia...

The sponsors of the largest ever HIV vaccine trial yesterday hailed a "historic" moment as they formally announced the trial's results at an international AIDS vaccine meeting in Paris. The results received rapturous applause from an audience of more than 1,000 HIV researchers. But some scientists are much more sceptical of the findings, arguing that the response of the HIV research community, long deprived of any good news from vaccine trials, is based more on hope than on rigorous science.The US$119-million phase III trial, sponsored by the health ministry of Thailand and the US Army, started in Thailand in 2003....

Frogs are suffering from a fatal fungal infection.Vance T. Vredenburg/SFSU A fungal infection that is killing amphibians around the world acts by disrupting the flow of electrolytes across their skin, ultimately causing heart failure. The discovery is helping to raise hopes that a treatment for the infection could one day be given to amphibians in the wild.Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, a kind of chytrid fungus that causes the skin disease chytridiomycosis in amphibians, was likely spread around the world by the South African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) in the 1930s and 1940s, when the frog was widely used as a pregnancy test....

Exposure to the H1N1 pandemic flu virus could protect people from H5N1 bird flu, the Emerging Health Threats Forum has reported. Research suggests that previous infection with the pandemic influenza virus strain could provide some immunity against the H5N1 virus. Experts speculate that this could protect against severe illness from bird flu. The H5N1 strain, kept under watch for its pandemic potential, has so far proved lethal in 60% of people infected with it. Kristien Van Reeth and colleagues at Ghent University infected pigs with a closely related “predecessor” to the current pandemic strain of the flu virus. Four weeks...

Red-eye flights, all-night study sessions, and extra-inning playoff games all deprive us of sleep and can leave us forgetful the next day. Now scientists have discovered that lost sleep disrupts a specific molecule in the brain's memory circuitry, possibly leading to treatments for tired brains. Neuroscientists studying rodents and humans have found that sleep deprivation interrupts the storage of episodic memories: information about who, what, when, and where. To lay down these memories, neurons in our brains form new connections with other neurons or strengthen old ones. This rewiring process, which occurs over a period of hours, requires a rat's...