That’s using your brain. For the first time in humans, a team headed by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis has placed an electronic grid atop patients’ brains to gather motor signals that enable patients to play a computer game using only the signals from their brains.
WUSTL researchers have found no convincing evidence that people can delay or hasten their own deaths through sheer will.Many of us know stories about terminally ill friends or relatives who were able to battle their illnesses in order to survive until a birthday or other important occasion. In much of medicine, it’s an accepted “truth” that people can hang on or give up and somehow influence the timing of their own deaths. But in reviewing every study on the subject of delaying death, Washington University behavioral medicine researchers have found that there’s no evidence to support the idea that terminally ill people can have an effect on when they die.
In this micrograph of a neuron, green dye highlights proteins linked to nerve cell damage and death during stroke.Brain cells in danger of exciting other nearby brain cells to death may be able to close temporarily, according to new research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Scientists simulated stroke-like conditions in cultured rat brain cells that use glutamate, an excitatory chemical messenger linked to nerve damage and death during strokes. But when they created those conditions, the researchers found that glutamate transmission was suppressed in what may be an attempt by neurons to limit the damage caused by catastrophic events such as strokes.
GrigsbyDoctors regularly use positron emission tomography (PET) scans to diagnose cervical cancer, taking advantage of the technique’s ability to highlight metabolic differences in cancerous tissues. But PET is rarely used for follow-up assessment of cervical cancer patients after treatment. A study in the June 1 issue of Journal of Clinical Oncology shows that post-treatment PET scans could help physicians better predict which patients are largely cancer-free as a result of their treatment and which patients may soon be likely to need additional treatment.
Are humans inherently good? The prevailing view in popular and scientific literature is that humans and animals are genetically driven to compete for survival, thus making all social interaction inherently selfish. According to this line of reasoning, known as sociobiology, even seemingly unselfish acts of altruism merely represent a species’ strategy to survive and preserve its genes. But Robert W. Sussman, Ph.D., a professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, argues that this is a narrow and simplistic view of evolutionary theory that fails to explain many aspects of sociality among mammals in general and primates in particular. In “The Origins and Nature of Sociality,” a new book Sussman co-edited, he and other researchers challenge the proponents of sociobiology. “The ‘selfish gene’ hypothesis is inadequate,” Sussman says.
Are altruism and morality artificial outgrowths of culture, created by humans to maintain social order? Or is there, instead, a biological foundation to ethical behavior? In other words, are we inherently good? The prevailing view in popular and scientific literature is that humans and animals are genetically driven to compete for survival, thus making all […]
Joyce and Howard Wood, both alumni of the John M. Olin School of Business, have created the Joyce and Howard Wood Distinguished Professorship in Business. Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton announced the gift of $1.7 million, which has been augmented with $300,000 from the University’s Sesquicentennial Endowed Professorship Challenge. William P. Bottom, Ph.D., will be formally installed as the first holder of this professorship at a later date.
A conference for board directors of public and private companies will be held June 25-26 at Washington University’s John M. Olin School of Business in the school’s Charles F. Knight Executive Education Center. The board of directors’ conference, “Strategies and Techniques for Improving Board Performance,” will focus on corporate governance issues.
NorthDouglass C. North, Ph.D., the Spencer T. Olin Professor in Arts & Sciences and a co-recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, joined a panel of distinguished economists in Denmark May 24-28th for an intensive forum exploring the costs and benefits of ongoing efforts to address critical global challenges, such as war, famine and disease.
BardachKenneth C. Bardach has been named associate dean and director of ExecEdge Corporate Education at the John M. Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis, announced Stuart I. Greenbaum, dean and Bank of America Professor at the Olin School. Bardach joins Olin from Case Western Reserve, where he served as associate dean of Executive Education Programs at the Weatherhead School of Management. Bardach brings more than 30 years of academic and corporate experience to his post, having twice served in executive education director positions at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University, and having directed corporate management education and development programs for numerous organizations.