In 2011, a 66-year-old retired math teacher walked into a London neurological clinic hoping to get some answers. A few years earlier, she explained to the doctors, she had heard someone playing a piano outside her house. But then she realized there was no piano.

The phantom piano played longer and longer melodies, like passages from Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto number 2 in C minor, her doctors recount in a recent study in the journal Cortex. By the time the woman — to whom the doctors refer only by her first name, Sylvia — came to the clinic, the music had become her nearly constant companion. Sylvia hoped the doctors could explain to her what was going on.

Continue reading “Phantom Melodies Yield Real Clues to Brain’s Workings” →

Cancer is a disease of genes gone wrong. When certain genes mutate, they make cells behave in odd ways. The cells divide swiftly, they hide from the immune system that could kill them and they gain the nourishment they need to develop into tumors.

Scientists started identifying these cancer genes in the 1970s and their list slowly grew over the years. By studying them, scientists came to understand how different types of cancer develop and in some cases they were even able to develop gene-targeting drugs. Last May, for example, the Food and Drug Administration approved a drug known as Tarceva as a first-line treatment for lung cancer in which a gene called EGFR has mutated.

Continue reading “A Catalog of Cancer Genes That’s Done, or Just a Start” →

Ever since the discovery in 2010 that Neanderthals interbred with the ancestors of living humans, scientists have been trying to determine how their DNA affects people today. Now two new studies have traced the history of Neanderthal DNA, and have pinpointed a number of genes that may have medical importance today.

Among the findings, the studies have found clues to the evolution of skin and fertility, as well as susceptibility to diseases like diabetes. More broadly, they show how the legacy of Neanderthals has endured 30,000 years after their extinction.

“It’s something that everyone wanted to know,” said Laurent Excoffier, a geneticist at the University of Bern in Switzerland who was not involved in the research.

Continue reading “Neanderthals Leave Their Mark on Us” →

The term “X chromosome” has an air of mystery to it, and rightly so. It got its name in 1891 from a baffled biologist named Hermann Henking. To investigate the nature of chromosomes, Henking examined cells under a simple microscope. All the chromosomes in the cells came in pairs.

All except one.

Henking labeled this outlier chromosome the “X element.” No one knows for sure what he meant by the letter. Maybe he saw it as an extra chromosome. Or perhaps he thought it was an ex-chromosome. Maybe he used X the way mathematicians do, to refer to something unknown.

Continue reading “Seeing X Chromosomes in a New Light” →

Jeffrey Shaman, an environmental health scientist at Columbia University, hopes that he and his colleagues will someday change the nightly news. “The way you get pollution reports and pollen counts on the local weather report, you could also have a flu forecast on there,” said Dr. Shaman.

Each year, the flu season arrives like clockwork. But once it strikes, it can unfold in surprising ways. In 2012, for example, it arrived in November, four weeks ahead of the typical flu season. Some years it can be especially brutal, and in others, very mild. Infection rates may start climbing in some parts of the United States when they are already falling in others.

Continue reading “This Week’s Forecast: What Flu Season May Look Like” →