[January 20, 2010] Between your ears: Autism, Cell phones and Alzheimer's and more Tweet Jan 20, 2010 (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Screening for autism One of the biggest challenges in autism is being able to diagnose it in children before they reach school age. Now, doctors at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia have found that a hearing test may offer that possibility. The researchers found that when they tested children on the autism spectrum along with typically developing children, the kids with autism showed a delay of about 1/100th of a second in processing sounds. That may not sound like much, but it means that for a word like "elephant," children with autism might still be absorbing the syllable "el" while other children have heard the whole word. The test, using a cap that picks up the brain's magnetic signals, might offer an early way to see who's at risk. Cell phones and Alzheimer's Two years ago, the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute got a lot of publicity when its outgoing director warned that excessive cell phone use might put people at risk for cancer. Now, a group at the University of South Florida has come up with a very different take. A team led by researcher Gary Arendash has found that when mice were exposed to cell phone signals for prolonged periods, the signals reversed signs of dementia in a breed that had the mouse equivalent of Alzheimer's, and improved memory in normal mice. Dr. Arendash said he doesn't know for sure how the memory boost occurred, but it might stem from how the cell phone signals slightly raised brain temperatures in the mice. The power of friends Your ability to stick to a diet or exercise may depend as much on who you hang out with as your own determination. That's the bottom line of a series of studies conducted at Duke University by psychology professor Michelle vanDellen. In fact, Dr. vanDellen found, even if test subjects just thought about friends who have good self-control, it improved their own performance on a self-control test. In another experiment, she had volunteers watch videos of people either choosing to eat a carrot when cookies were available, or caving in and going for the cookies. Those who watched the carrot-eaters did better on a later self-control test. Light up your brain Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found a way to shut down brain cells by shining colored light on them. Ed Boyden and his team figured out a way to splice light-sensitive genes from bacteria and fungi into brain cells, and then found that when they shined blue or yellow light on them (depending on which color the genes were sensitive to), they could shut down neural activity. Many brain disorders are caused by overactive circuits, Dr. Boyden said, so this technique may one day offer hope of a noninvasive treatment. Mark Roth can be reached at [email protected] or at 412-263-1130. To see more of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.post-gazette.com. Copyright (c) 2010, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]