One minute we’re being told that brain training makes you smarter, and the next minute we’re told it’s all bogus. Confused? I don’t blame you. The research literature on brain training is confusing and even sometimes contradictory. This is the way of science. I believe, however, that there is hope in making sense of things if the field and the [...]

Heart disease is the leading killer in the U.S., and more than 27 million Americans currently have a cardiac condition. But what is your risk of developing heart disease at some point in your entire life? It might be a lot higher than you think, according to a new paper published online Wednesday in The [...]

Immune cells do more than just fend off infections. When cholesterol starts building up in arteries, scavenger white blood cells known as macrophages report to the scene to start trying to digest it. These little cells, though, don’t always manage to clear the site and often end up as part of the blockade themselves. These [...]

More than one in three people in the U.S. currently have some form of heart disease, and it remains the leading cause of death in the country. Treating all of our coronary heart disease, heart failure, high blood pressure, stroke and other conditions last year cost about $272.5 billion. In 20 years, that price tag [...]

The same technology that has people swinging imaginary rackets and bowling virtual balls for entertainment at home might help people recovering from strokes, according to research presented February 25 at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference. The pilot study, carried out at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute at the University of Toronto, suggests that video [...]

How well do hospital medical technicians know their equipment? Not well enough in the case of some health care workers at Cedars–Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where 206 x-ray computed tomography (CT) scan patients were given eight times the normal dose of radiation during brain scans over an 18-month period. The Los Angeles Times [...]