Your brain lies to you

False beliefs are everywhere. Eighteen percent of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth, one poll has found. Thus it seems slightly less egregious that, according to another poll, 10 percent of us think that Senator Barack Obama, a Christian, is instead a Muslim. The Obama campaign has created a Web site to dispel misinformation. But this effort may be more difficult than it seems, thanks to the quirky way in which our brains store memories - and mislead us along the way.

The brain does not simply gather and stockpile information as a computer's hard drive does. Facts are stored first in the hippocampus, a structure deep in the brain about the size and shape of a fat man's curled pinkie finger. But the information does not rest there. Every time we recall it, our brain writes it down again, and during this re-storage, it is also reprocessed. In time, the fact is gradually transferred to the cerebral cortex and is separated from the context in which it was originally learned. For example, you know that the capital of California is Sacramento, but you probably don't remember how you learned it.

This phenomenon, known as source amnesia, can also lead people to forget whether a statement is true. Even when a lie is presented with a disclaimer, people often later remember it as true.

With time, this misremembering gets worse. A false statement from a noncredible source that is at first not believed can gain credibility during the months it takes to reprocess memories from short-term hippocampal storage to longer-term cortical storage. As the source is forgotten, the message and its implications gain strength. This could explain why, during the 2004 presidential campaign, it took weeks for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Senator John Kerry to have an effect on his standing in the polls.

Even if they do not understand the neuroscience behind source amnesia, campaign strategists can exploit it to spread misinformation.

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BEsts!!!

Judges back Alzheimer's drug review

Plans to restrict certain Alzheimer's drugs on the NHS are to be reviewed after a landmark ruling by the Court of Appeal.

Three judges found that the process by which the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) decided to restrict the anti-dementia medicines for newly diagnosed patients with mild Alzheimer's was procedurally unfair.

Eisai, licence holder of Aricept, and Pfizer, which challenged the Nice decision, said the ruling brought renewed hope for Alzheimer's patients.

The judges said procedural fairness demanded that Nice should release a full version of the cost-effectiveness model it used to produce guidance for the form of treatment.

They invited Nice to make a new determination after the drugs companies make representations when they have studied the guidance model.

Nick Burgin, managing director of Eisai, commenting on the judgment, said: "We believe that this decision represents a victory for common sense. As soon as we have reviewed their cost-effectiveness calculations we will submit any new findings to Nice.

"We hope that this action will ultimately restore access to anti-dementia medicines for those patients at the mild stages of Alzheimer's disease."

David Pannick QC, representing Eisai, told the Court of Appeal at a hearing last month that the guidance ruling by Nice would have "a very substantial effect upon the availability and the potential duration of treatment" with the drugs.

Nice had ruled that the drugs are not cost-effective for patients in the early stages of Alzheimer's - a decision upheld by the High Court last year.

Nice had decided in 2004 that the drugs, which cost about £2.50 a day, did not make enough of a difference to recommend them for all patients.

'Pixie dust' makes man's severed finger regrow

A man who lost the tip of his finger in an accident claims that it has regrown after he sprinkled it with a powder created from a pig’s bladder.

Lee Spievak, from Ohio, lost part of his middle finger three years ago after it was hit by the propeller of a model airplane at the toy shop where he worked.

He said that doctors told him that it would never grow back. Yet Mr Spievak, 69, once again has all of his finger thanks, he claims, to a magic “pixie dust”.

The powder was produced by the company owned by Mr Spievak’s brother, Alan. It is technically known as extra cellular matrix and was pioneered by Dr Stephen Badylak at the University of Pittsburgh.

For ten days, Mr Spievak applied the powder to the gaping hole on his finger. “The second time I put it on I already could see growth,” he said. “Each day it was up further. Finally it closed up and was a finger.

It took about four weeks before it was sealed.”

His finger now has “complete feeling, complete movement” as well as a fingernail and fingerprint.

“Except for a tiny scar, it’s just like the finger I always had,” he said.

While even Dr Badylak is not entirely sure how the powder works, it is believed that it kick-starts the body’s healing process.

Made from dried pig’s bladder, it is packed with collagen, the protein that gives skin its strength and elasticity, and was originally developed to heal damaged ligaments in horses.

Dr Badylak believes that the extra cellular matrix stimulates cells in a wound to grow rather than scar.

“There are all sorts of signals in the body,” Dr Badylak said. “We have got signals that are good for forming scar, and others that are good for regenerating tissues. One way to think about these matrices is that we have taken out many of the stimuli for scar tissue formation and left those signals that were always there anyway for constructive remodelling.”

Dr Badylak said that he hoped that within ten years the powder, which also comes in sheet form, would be able to “regrow the bones, and promote the growth of functional tissue around those bones”.

He said that eventually it might help to regrow an entire limb.

Dr Badylak is now preparing to continue testing the powder on a woman in Buenos Aires who has cancer of the oesophagus. The US military is due to start trials of the powder to regrow parts of the fingers of injured soldiers.

However, Dr Badylak said that the powder “isn’t ready for prime time” yet. “This is a real shot in the dark,” he said. “But there’s literally nothing else these individuals have to try. They have nothing to lose.”

In a bid to more fully understand the powers of the powder, Dr Badylak is also researching animals such as the salamander, whose limbs can grow back unaided within a matter of weeks.

Dr Badylak does not know when scientists will be able to apply this research to people and it seems that Mr Spievak is unwilling to be a human guinea-pig for much longer.

“I don't plan on cutting anything more off to find out if I can grow that back,” Mr Spievak insisted.