Health & Science

Breaking through to vegetative patients

Some patients deemed “brain dead’’ actually retain some form of consciousness, and now there is a promising new way of identifying them. Researchers used EEG machines to measure the electrical activity in the brains of 16 comatose patients who were unable to move or speak. When they asked the patients to imagine making a fist or wiggling their toes, three men showed the same brain activity as healthy volunteers. Identifying vegetative patients who can understand and react could have “profound implications,” University of Western Ontario neuroscientist Damian Cruse tells The Washington Post. “We can ask them what it’s like to be in this condition. What do they need?” The hope is that patients can learn to answer by imagining scenarios that activate different brain regions for “yes” and “no.” Previous studies have shown that up to 40 percent of vegetative patients may be partially aware, but testing required expensive MRI scans. Bedside EEG sensors are much cheaper to use, says study co-author Adrian Owen, making it easier for doctors to “establish how many of those patients are conscious” but effectively “buried alive” inside unresponsive bodies.

Relics of the big bang

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Astronomers have discovered two clouds of gas some 12 billion light-years away that appear to preserve the primordial conditions of the universe in the minutes after the big bang. The clouds contain just hydrogen and its isotope deuterium, making them “the first examples to fit precisely” into what scientists think the early universe was like, University of California astronomer Jason Prochaska tells DiscoveryNews.com. Astronomers have long thought that the big bang, which occurred some 14 billion years ago, created clouds made up of only the lightest elements, but until now had never found any that didn’t also contain elements like oxygen, carbon, and silicon. Those heavier elements were forged through nuclear fusion in the first stars, then spewed throughout the universe when those stars exploded as supernovas. Now that they’ve found clouds consisting solely of lighter elements, astronomers are puzzling over how they could have remained untouched by the dispersion of heavier elements. Such unsullied regions, says astronomer John O’Meara, could mean our understanding of how elements spread through the universe is “drastically wrong.”

A hearing-loss epidemic

One in five Americans has a hearing problem severe enough to interfere with daily conversations, a new study says. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University analyzed data from more than 7,000 people age 12 and older and found that 20 percent had significant hearing loss in at least one ear—roughly twice the number counted in previous studies. Doctors say the findings are especially disturbing because hearing loss is a risk factor for dementia and social isolation, which can lead to a cascade of other health problems, including depression, insomnia, and heart disease. So far it’s unclear why such a “shocking number” of people suffer impairments, study author Frank Lin tells WebMD.com. After middle age, the prevalence of hearing loss doubles every decade. And some loss seems to be genetic, with women and blacks affected less than other groups. Because hearing loss often takes years to develop, it’s not yet clear how much the rise in listening to music with earbuds will affect young people’s hearing capabilities later on. “It’s certainly not going to help,” Lin says. “We just don’t know how much it’s going to hurt.”

Kids who try drugs

Being smart may make you more likely to take recreational drugs, not less. New research from the U.K. shows that girls between the ages of 5 and 10 who score in the top third on IQ tests are more than twice as likely to try marijuana or cocaine by age 30 as their lower-scoring peers. And boys with impressive test results are almost 60 percent more likely than their classmates to sample multiple illegal drugs as teens and adults. “It’s not what we thought we’d find,” Cardiff University’s James White tells Time.com, since previous studies have shown brainy kids to be more likely to forgo cigarettes and to lead healthy, active lifestyles as adults. But experimenting with narcotics may be especially tempting to smarter kids, who are also more prone to boredom and “more willing to experiment and seek out novel experiences,” White says. Another possibility: Intelligent, health-conscious people may believe they’re too smart to become addicts, so they feel free to try drugs.