2 interesting articles

[Barry]

Came across these today thanks to Wired and Popular Science.

Scientists Discover How Brains Keep Clean

We all need to clear our heads, sometimes literally — and now scientists have learned how our neurological plumbing system works.

Every organ produces waste, and the brain is no exception. But unlike the rest of our body, it doesn’t have a lymphatic system, a network of vessels that filter out junk. Now, a new study of mouse brains suggests how ours handle waste: by rapidly pumping fluid along the outside of blood vessels, literally flushing waste away. The finding, reported Aug. 15 in Science Translational Medicine, could hint at how diseases like Alzheimer’s develop and might be treated.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/ ... -cleaning/

Diagnostic Eyedrops Could Make Patients' Eyes Light Up With Signs of Neurological Disease

Neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, or Creutzfeld-Jacobs are tough to diagnose. Outward symptoms can obviously be an indicator, but symptoms for many neuro-disorders overlap while protein biomarkers for each illness, called amyloids, are difficult to distinguish between. But researchers at UCSD are developing a new diagnostic tool that could soon let doctors diagnose a patient’s neuro-degenerative condition simply by gazing into his or her eyes.

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2 ... al-disease

[coltgirl]

The first article is very interesting but the study it references only dealt with mice brains. If more conclusive studies show a similar process going on in human brains, then hopefully we can get research started on improving the function of these protein channels so that they may be more effective in clearing waste into the CSF.

I do hope that this study's findings aren't going to be misinterpreted by bad social media science. It doesn't support the current fad theory of MS.