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Cancer cells dupe the body's immune system
THIS WEEK
Creativity vies with language in brain Catherine de Lange
GREAT ideas can feel like they come out of nowhere. Now we’re a step closer to understanding where they do originate. The thinking is that areas for language and creativity compete in the brain, which might explain why some people with brain damage suddenly become artistic. Originality – or the ability to think up novel ideas that don’t occur to many other people – is a key aspect of creativity. But researchers are struggling to pin down where the gift comes from. “We were amazed by the conflicting results in the literature,” says Simone ShamayTsoory, from the University of Haifa, Israel. To better pinpoint the areas involved in creative thinking, Simone Shamay-Tsoory, and her team compared 40 people with damage to one of three distinct areas in the brain, and a group without any damage. As well as having their brains scanned, the two groups were shown 30 identical circles on a piece of paper and given 5 minutes to draw as many different pictures of meaningful
Cancer cells dupe the body’s immune cells CANCERS may be wounds that never heal, suggest the first live images of tumours forming. It seems individual cancer cells send out the same distress signals as wounds, tricking immune cells into helping them grow into tumours. The finding suggests that anti-inflammatory drugs could help to combat or prevent cancer. “Lifelong, if you take a small 10 | NewScientist | 18 December 2010
objects as they could, each of which had to include at least one circle (see below). The volunteers were scored on their total number of responses and also on the number of
statistically rare responses, deduced from earlier experiments on healthy volunteers. The test measures “divergent thinking” – the ability to generate new ideas that give different solutions to a particular problem. Although they were unable to check volunteers’ levels of creativity before brain damage, the results suggest that levels of originality directly relate to where in the brain the damage has
Quick on the draw If you were given 5 minutes to use the circle below to create as many meaningful drawings as possible, what would you come up with?
A smiley face was among the most unoriginal drawings while a plane window was among those labelled the most creative Researchers used this test on people with brain damage to pinpoint areas of the brain responsible for creativity
quantity of something that suppresses inflammation, such as aspirin, it could reduce the risk of cancer,” says Adam Hurlstone of the University of Manchester, UK. When tissue is wounded or infected it produces hydrogen peroxide. White blood cells called leukocytes are among the first cells to react to this trigger, homing in to kill the infectious agent, clean up the mess and rebuild damaged tissue. At first, the tissue becomes inflamed, but this subsides as the wound is cleared and rebuilding continues. Now, a study in zebra fish shows
that this process is also instigated and sustained by tumour cells. Hurlstone and colleagues genetically engineered zebra fish so that skin cells and leukocytes would glow different colours under ultraviolet light. Some zebra fish were also engineered to have cancerous skin cells. The team found that the cancerous skin cells secreted hydrogen
“Taking a small quantity of something that suppresses inflammation could reduce the risk of cancer”
happened. Those who scored significantly higher than healthy volunteers in originality had more damage to the left side of the brain, in areas responsible for processing language. Those with the lowest scores tended to have more damage to the right side of the brain, in an area involved in planning and decision-making (Neuropsychologia, in press). Shamay-Tsoory says that while creativity is likely generated in the right side of the brain it may be suppressed by language processing on the left. “[Language] regions may compete with the right hemisphere’s ability to produce creative ideas,” she says. This would explain why, when these language areas are damaged, originality seems to increase. Rex Jung from the Mind Research Network in Albuquerque, New Mexico, says this is the first time brain injuries have been used to look at the origins of creativity. However, “creativity is not one thing”, says Arne Dietrich, at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, “and is also highly distributed in the brain.” He believes pinning creativity to very specific areas is unrealistic. Shamay-Tsoory is now planning to investigate whether it might be possible to boost creativity in healthy volunteers by inhibiting language areas. n
peroxide, summoning leukocytes which helped them on their way to becoming a tumour. When the team blocked hydrogen peroxide production in the zebra fish, the leukocytes were no longer attracted to cancerous cells and the cancer colonies reduced in number. More alarmingly, the researchers found that healthy skin cells adjacent to the cancerous ones also produced hydrogen peroxide, suggesting that cancer cells somehow co-opt them into triggering inflammation (PLoS Biology, DOI: 10.1371/journal. pbio.1000562). Andy Coghlan n
Creativity vies with language in brain Catherine de Lange
GREAT ideas can feel like they come out of nowhere. Now we’re a step closer to understanding where they do originate. The thinking is that areas for language and creativity compete in the brain, which might explain why some people with brain damage suddenly become artistic. Originality – or the ability to think up novel ideas that don’t occur to many other people – is a key aspect of creativity. But researchers are struggling to pin down where the gift comes from. “We were amazed by the conflicting results in the literature,” says Simone ShamayTsoory, from the University of Haifa, Israel. To better pinpoint the areas involved in creative thinking, Simone Shamay-Tsoory, and her team compared 40 people with damage to one of three distinct areas in the brain, and a group without any damage. As well as having their brains scanned, the two groups were shown 30 identical circles on a piece of paper and given 5 minutes to draw as many different pictures of meaningful
Cancer cells dupe the body’s immune cells CANCERS may be wounds that never heal, suggest the first live images of tumours forming. It seems individual cancer cells send out the same distress signals as wounds, tricking immune cells into helping them grow into tumours. The finding suggests that anti-inflammatory drugs could help to combat or prevent cancer. “Lifelong, if you take a small 10 | NewScientist | 18 December 2010
objects as they could, each of which had to include at least one circle (see below). The volunteers were scored on their total number of responses and also on the number of
statistically rare responses, deduced from earlier experiments on healthy volunteers. The test measures “divergent thinking” – the ability to generate new ideas that give different solutions to a particular problem. Although they were unable to check volunteers’ levels of creativity before brain damage, the results suggest that levels of originality directly relate to where in the brain the damage has
Quick on the draw If you were given 5 minutes to use the circle below to create as many meaningful drawings as possible, what would you come up with?
A smiley face was among the most unoriginal drawings while a plane window was among those labelled the most creative Researchers used this test on people with brain damage to pinpoint areas of the brain responsible for creativity
quantity of something that suppresses inflammation, such as aspirin, it could reduce the risk of cancer,” says Adam Hurlstone of the University of Manchester, UK. When tissue is wounded or infected it produces hydrogen peroxide. White blood cells called leukocytes are among the first cells to react to this trigger, homing in to kill the infectious agent, clean up the mess and rebuild damaged tissue. At first, the tissue becomes inflamed, but this subsides as the wound is cleared and rebuilding continues. Now, a study in zebra fish shows
that this process is also instigated and sustained by tumour cells. Hurlstone and colleagues genetically engineered zebra fish so that skin cells and leukocytes would glow different colours under ultraviolet light. Some zebra fish were also engineered to have cancerous skin cells. The team found that the cancerous skin cells secreted hydrogen
“Taking a small quantity of something that suppresses inflammation could reduce the risk of cancer”
happened. Those who scored significantly higher than healthy volunteers in originality had more damage to the left side of the brain, in areas responsible for processing language. Those with the lowest scores tended to have more damage to the right side of the brain, in an area involved in planning and decision-making (Neuropsychologia, in press). Shamay-Tsoory says that while creativity is likely generated in the right side of the brain it may be suppressed by language processing on the left. “[Language] regions may compete with the right hemisphere’s ability to produce creative ideas,” she says. This would explain why, when these language areas are damaged, originality seems to increase. Rex Jung from the Mind Research Network in Albuquerque, New Mexico, says this is the first time brain injuries have been used to look at the origins of creativity. However, “creativity is not one thing”, says Arne Dietrich, at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, “and is also highly distributed in the brain.” He believes pinning creativity to very specific areas is unrealistic. Shamay-Tsoory is now planning to investigate whether it might be possible to boost creativity in healthy volunteers by inhibiting language areas. n
peroxide, summoning leukocytes which helped them on their way to becoming a tumour. When the team blocked hydrogen peroxide production in the zebra fish, the leukocytes were no longer attracted to cancerous cells and the cancer colonies reduced in number. More alarmingly, the researchers found that healthy skin cells adjacent to the cancerous ones also produced hydrogen peroxide, suggesting that cancer cells somehow co-opt them into triggering inflammation (PLoS Biology, DOI: 10.1371/journal. pbio.1000562). Andy Coghlan n