Brain

For a problem that has no doubt been around as long as humans have been falling on hard objects and bashing one another's skulls with clubs, brain injuries are still surprisingly mysterious. Scientists, including a cadre at the University of Pennsylvania, are lifting the veil, though, and what they're seeing is already "dramatically" changing American sports, said Douglas Smith, who heads Penn's Center for Brain Injury and Repair. Everyone from parents to pro athletes to military leaders is suddenly paying more attention to "mild" brain injuries, or concussions, and their long-term consequences.

THIS IS YOUR ..brain on sugar - for real. Scientists have used imaging tests to show for the first time that fructose, a sugar that saturates the American diet, can trigger brain changes that may lead to overeating. After drinking a fructose beverage, the brain doesn't register the feeling of being full as it does when simple glucose is consumed, researchers found. It's a small study and does not prove that fructose or its relative, high-fructose corn syrup, can cause obesity, but experts say that it adds evidence that they may play a role.

This is your brain on sugar - for real. Scientists have used imaging tests to show for the first time that fructose, a sugar that saturates the American diet, can trigger brain changes that may lead to overeating. After one drinks a fructose beverage, the brain doesn't register the feeling of being full as it does when simple glucose is consumed, researchers found. It's a small study and does not prove that fructose or its relative, high-fructose corn syrup, can cause obesity, but experts say it adds evidence they may play a role.

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton developed a blood clot in her head but did not suffer a stroke or neurological damage, her doctors said Monday. They say they are confident that she will make a full recovery. In a statement that revealed the location of the clot, Clinton's doctors said it is in the vein in the space between the brain and the skull behind the right ear. She is being treated with blood thinners to help dissolve the clot, the doctors said, and she will be released once the medication dose has been established.

A team led by a New Jersey researcher has been able to slow the course of a rare childhood brain disease by injecting patients with corrective genes, according to a study published Wednesday. Children often die of complications from Canavan disease by age 3, and almost always by 10. But 10 of the 13 study participants have passed age 10, with three in their late teens. None can walk or talk, but all can respond to their environment to some degree, and lab tests show that the degeneration of their brains has slowed or leveled off. Ordinarily, such patients become nonresponsive by 5 if they make it that far, researchers said.

Hallucinations By Oliver Sacks Alfred A. Knopf. 352 pp. $26.95 --- Popular science becomes more intense, more engaging, and more profound when provided by a true expert. It is rare, indeed, when such an expert is also a talented writer. Psychiatrist and neurologist Oliver Sacks is that unique scientific raconteur, with a spellbinding gift for recording the experiences of his own patients and collecting remarkable personal anecdotes from colleagues, correspondents, and the literature.

On more than one occasion, 76ers coach Doug Collins has said that backup guard-forward Damien Wilkins will make an excellent coach in the NBA. That's exactly what Wilkins wants to do when his playing career ends. "I don't want to have a transition period when my career is over," said Wilkins, in his ninth NBA season. "I just want to go right into coaching. I have always felt that I have something to offer people. I love talking the game and learning the game from other people.

If you're curious about what goes on in the brain of an individual who claims to be writing words at the direction of a dead person (and who isn't?), then you'll appreciate Andrew Newberg's latest study, published this month in PLOS ONE. Newberg directs integrative medicine research at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. He specializes in "neurotheology," the study of the relationship between the brain and religious beliefs. The study involved high-tech brain scans of 10 Brazilian "psychographers" - imagine stenographers for the dear departed - as they did normal writing, and then while they took paranormal dictation during trances.

More than seven months since he was nearly killed by a hit-and-run driver, 17-year-old David Silva lay Wednesday in a hospital bed set up in his family's dining room in Tacony, where a nurse makes sure he doesn't rip out the tube that helps him breathe. He reached his left arm over his head and pulled open his right eyelid, watching as a reporter entered the room. At his mother's instruction, he waved. "I know my son's still there," Dorothy Robbins said. But "with brain injuries, there's really nothing they can tell you. " Though David is making progress, Robbins doesn't know how long it could take her son, who is semiconscious and cannot speak, to recover.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Famed Puerto Rican boxer Hector "Macho" Camacho is clinically brain dead, doctors said Thursday. They said family members were disagreeing on whether to take him off life support. Dr. Ernesto Torres said doctors have finished performing all medical tests on Camacho, who was shot in the face Tuesday night. "We have done everything we could," said Torres, who is the director of the Centro Medico trauma center. "We have to tell the people of Puerto Rico and the entire world that Macho Camacho has died, he is brain dead.