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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  4419 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Cage life may drive lab animals so insane that experiments are invalid
I remember reading a more in-depth discussion of this in Scientific American maybe ten years ago. It's kind of disturbing that not a lot has been said since. The article you link is 11 years old.




mk  ·  4418 days ago  ·  link  ·  
I did some looking. Apparently, quite a bit has been done. Here are the results of a quick search:

Social contact influences histological and behavioral outcomes following cerebral ischemia:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19733169

Social isolation alters neuroinflammatory response to stroke:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19307557

Environmental enrichment enhances cellular plasticity in transgenic mice with Alzheimer-like pathology:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19118549

Long-term assessment of enriched housing and subventricular zone derived cell transplantation after focal ischemia in rats:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18675262

Environmental enrichment counteracts Alzheimer's neurovascular dysfunction in TgCRND8 mice:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17924982

Environmental enrichment augments the efficacy of idiotype vaccination for B-cell lymphoma:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17589292

Social interaction improves experimental stroke outcome:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16100018

Loss of Environmental Enrichment Increases Vulnerability to Cocaine Addiction:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22334125

Everything from Stroke recovery, to vaccination, to cocaine addiction.

And here's the one I was looking for!:

Environmental and genetic activation of a brain-adipocyte BDNF/leptin axis causes cancer remission and inhibition:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20603014

Cancer is influenced by its microenvironment, yet broader, environmental effects also play a role but remain poorly defined. We report here that mice living in an enriched housing environment show reduced tumor growth and increased remission. We found this effect in melanoma and colon cancer models, and that it was not caused by physical activity alone.

-That's an environmental affect (namely, one that stimulates mental activity) upon tumor progression. Cell is a very difficult journal to get into, so it's very likely that there is something behind this study.

kleinbl00  ·  4418 days ago  ·  link  ·  
Interesting. How many people are doing the research? And why hasn't any science populism shown it to the public recently? That Sciam article was pretty profound and then... nothing.
mk  ·  4418 days ago  ·  link  ·  
The correlation between science populism and actual research is abysmal. If I could have the ears of the NSF and the NIH, I would chew them the fuck out. Every day incredible insights are made public, and what we get is "Maybe eating chocolate is good/bad for you again!"

It's a fucking travesty. Science funding and support for it could be twice its current rate with a solid 10-year campaign of getting results to the people.

As as far as these particular findings? My guess is some bloke at the AP hasn't yet heard from a science-type pal that this stuff is really neat. It's a damn shame too. "Could crosswords cure colon cancer?" is a fucking clickthru goldmine.

Sorry this stuff gets me going.

EDIT: Holy shit, did you see that alliteration?! 5 c's! I swear that was unintentional.

kleinbl00  ·  4418 days ago  ·  link  ·  
One of these days, when I'm rich and powerful, I'm going to bid $100m for the rights to NASA TV.

And I'm going to fucking make space interesting rather than excruciating simply by pointing the camera in the right places and getting people who know how to talk to the public.

And I'm going to be rich.

mk  ·  4418 days ago  ·  link  ·  
I will watch this channel. Godspeed.