The five most-read posts on Scope this week were:
Addiction: All in the mind?: Stanford Professor Keith Humphreys, PhD, discusses the American Society of Addiction Medicine's revised definition of addiction as a chronic brain disorder rather than a behavioral problem involving too much alcohol, drugs, gambling or sex.
Good-bye cancer, good-bye stomach: A survivor shares her tale: In this New York Times piece, writer and Anna Stoessinger discusses how surviving stomach cancer forced her to change her love affair with food.
Cheap data! Stanford scientists' "opposites attract" algorithm plunders public databases, scores surprising drug-disease hook-ups: In a pair of studies, Stanford scientists led by Atul Butte, MD, PhD, combed public databases with a sophisticated computer algorithm and identified numerous drug-and-disease pairs that may have a therapeutic future together.
Stanford researchers uncover the neural process behind reaction time: A team led by Krishna Shenoy, PhD, and Maneesh Sahani, PhD, have successfully used a new technology to monitor individual neurons' activity in real-time, allowing them to take a much more in-depth look at reaction times. Their findings contradict the "rise-to-threshold" hypothesis, offering for the first time a look into why individuals' reaction times vary.
New leukemia study making waves: Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania use gene therapy to successfully treat three patients with chronic lymphoblastic leukemia. In an MSNBC.com piece, Stanford immunologist Edgar Engleman, MD, discusses the work saying it showcases an exciting way to harness the power of the immune cells to fight cancers.
