INTERESTING TIMES

Left-handed people really do have different brains and genes from right-handed people. Yet left-handed people are almost never included as study subjects in scientific research. Therefore in an article in Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Roel Willems and his colleagues from the Donders Institute and Max Planck Institute in Nijmegen call for more research into left-handed people. The article was published online on 12 February 2014.

Left-handed people are rarely included as study subjects for brain or genetic research because the differences with right-handed people cause noise in the final results. However, left-handed people form about ten percent of the entire population and their brains and genes contain interesting information about the functioning of both halves of the brain as well as about several psychiatric disorders. 'Research into left-handed people is therefore interesting because of the noise they cause', thinks neuroscientist Roel Willems from the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour at Radboud University Nijmegen. With the opinion article he calls upon his fellow researchers to stop excluding left-handed people from studies.

Missed chance for the neurosciences

'One of our studies from 2009 clearly shows why research into left-handed people is so vital', says Willems. 'According to the textbooks, facial recognition takes place in the right half of the brain. Our research revealed that the same process takes place in both halves of the brain in the case of left-handed people, but with the same final outcome. That is a fundamental difference. And left-handed people might process other important information differently as well. The minimal amount of research into this is, in my view, a missed chance for the neurosciences.'

SOURCE
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-02-scientists-urged-excluding-left-handed-people.html

You will find me down by the river,
getting high on my mortality;
I'll be holding hands with that nameless beauty,
or whoever wants to stand next to me.
--Sinead Lohan lyric

Which condition demonstrates nonuniform joint space narrowing, osteophytes, subchondral sclerosis, & subchondral cysts?
( more )

CARPAL TUNNEL SYNDROME
--CTS-->median nerve compression neuropathy (pinkie & 1/2 ring finger not involved)
--swelling, inflam, pressure in tunnel
--ETIO: trauma, overuse (flex, ext, gripping, keyboard), constriction (tenosynovitis of flexor tendons, RA, osteoarthritis, ganglion or neuroma) systemic conditions (diabetes, pregnancy, obesity, hypothyroid, renal dz)
--S/Sx: pain in wrist and hand, burning, numnbness and tingling in fingers, weak thumb abduction (thenar atrophy), usu worse at night, mb retrograde pain to elbow/shoulder), "flick sign"=relief by flicking wrist as if shaking down thermometer, often bilateral but greater on one side
--Tx: avoid aggrav, ice/heat, ultrasound, laser, brace, anti-inflam, local injx
--Dx: nerve conduction velocity test 84% true positive, 95% true negative
--Tx: surgical release 80% success
--Dx: Phalen's test, Tinel's sign, weak thumb abduction, thenar atrophy
( more )

I fell down hard on a rock yesterday, and saved my sacrum by sacrificing my hands. I may have broken a bone in my right wrist. It is very sore and is popping in a new way. I am doing what I can to not move my right thumb and forefinger in the way that zings it. I am finding now that I can type! Great. Another reason to sit all day at the computer instead of doing other stuff. But I have a house to clean, books and periodicals to read. Shit to do. I have been spending a lot of time at the computer and the rest of my summer self-assignments are languishing. I will return to this machine from time to time to jot down a thought, but overall I will not be posting so much. I need to do other things.

From now on I'm going to read through the lecture notes and post about it instead of going to Brons lectures. What I'm doing is simply looking up each item that appears on his powerpoint slides.

Quiz Questions:
1. Which hand muscles act to clench your thumb against your index finger?
2. Name the fibrous band which arches over the carpus making the CARPAL TUNNEL
(through which the Flexor tendons of the digits and the median nerve pass).
3. Which thumb muscle is deep to the other two?
a. Abductor pollicis brevis
b. Flexor pollicis brevis
c. Opponens pollicis
4. Which two muscles work together to allow us to flex the metacarpal phalangeal joints while we extend the interphalangeal joints?
5. Between which two bones in the hand do you find a saddle joint?
6. What kind of joint is found between the metacarpals and the phalanges?
7. Which muscles connect into the dorsal extensor expansion?
8. Damage to which nerve causes you to loose your power grip?
( answers )