Forty percent of Palestinians are clinically depressed, a rate unmatched anywhere in the word. It's more than triple that of the U.S., ten times higher than in the U.K., and four to eight times higher than in Scandinavia, where the sun doesn't shine for a good part of the year. For Palestinian neuroscientist Mohammad Herzallah, this epidemic is an opportunity, if a tragic one, because it has made his country an ideal place to do groundbreaking research into the effects of depression on the brain.

I caught up with the 27-year-old doctor at the TED Conference in Long Beach, Calif. this week. Herzallah grew up in Palestine and got his medical degree at Al-Quds University in the West Bank, just a 15-minute walk from Jerusalem but a two-hour drive once through the checkpoints. Currently a Ph.D. candidate at Rutgers University in Newark, Herzallah was awarded a coveted TED Fellowship this year for his efforts to set up the first infrastructure for neuroscience research in one of the poorest countries in the Middle East. His Palestinian Neuroscience Initiative opened its lab three and a half years ago at Al-Quds and now has 22 students, 14 medical specialists and four therapists. It has established partnerships with medical centers at Rutgers, Harvard, the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland and SISSA in Trieste, Italy.

Living in cold and frigid temperatures may be worth while as new research shows possible benefits of cold air for humans. A research study done at the University of Michigan observed the effects of cold air on the gene receptor, TRPA-1. The TRPA-1 receptor channel can be found in the nerve and fat cells of nematodes, also known as roundworms. It was discovered that roundworms live significantly longer under colder environments because the cold air seems to start a domino effect beginning with the receptor that eventually leads to the activation of the DAF-16/FOXO, the gene linked to longevity.

Previous findings concluded that the cold induced a form of hibernation in the roundworms' bodies which was the main reason why roundworms have longer lifespans under cold weather. Past findings believed that the cold triggered the roundworms to hibernate since they are cold blooded organisms, and thus, those findings could not be applied to warm blooded mammals. However, the new research refutes that idea because roundworms with nonworking TRPA-1 do not live longer in the cold, which stresses the importance of this receptor channel. The old understanding did not consider the role of the TRPA-1 in understanding the roundworms' lifespan. The new research also found that these mechanisms do not only exist in cold blood organisms like the roundworms, but also, in warm blooded bodies like humans.

Working late-night shifts or eating at the wrong time can increase the risk of metabolic syndrome, obesity, and diabetes.

New research from Vanderbilt University explains why it matters not only what you eat, but also when you eat it. Insulin action rises and falls according to a 24-hour, circadian rhythm, the researchers team led by Carl Johnson, Ph.D. found. What's more, mice unable to keep the time for one reason or another get stuck in an insulin-resistant and obesity-prone mode.

Insulin, which is made in the pancreas, plays a key role in regulating the body's fat and carbohydrate metabolism. When we eat, our digestion breaks down the carbohydrates in our food into the simple sugar glucose, which is absorbed into the blood stream.

Too much glucose in the blood is toxic, so one of insulin's roles is to stimulate transfer of glucose into our cells, thereby removing excess glucose from the blood. Specifically, insulin is required to move glucose into liver, muscle and fat cells. It also blocks the process of burning fat for energy.

Insulin action - the hormone's ability to remove glucose from the blood - can be reduced by a number of factors and is termed insulin resistance. The study found that normal "wild-type" mouse tissues are relatively resistant to insulin during the inactive/fasting phase whereas they become more sensitive to insulin (therefore better able to transfer glucose out of the blood) during the high activity/feeding phase of their 24-hour cycle. As a result, glucose is converted primarily into fat during the inactive phase and used for energy and to other tissue building during the high activity phase.

According to Research News at Vanderbilt

The pharmaceutical companies have broadened their horizon. It is not enough that they have 30% of middle and upper income white women addicted to antidepressants and that 20% of adults take some form of psychiatric medication. They now want to hook as many children as possible on psychiatric medication as well.

Big Pharma has one goal: Make profits no matter what it takes. This can only be accomplished by convincing lay people and physicians that the solution to health problems is drugs. Common sense tells you that this view cannot be true. Nobody is sick because they have low levels of pharmaceutical drugs in their bodies. In fact people that are taking multiple prescribed drugs suffer from a host of side effects which can be simply annoying, sometimes debilitating and even life threatening. Unfortunately the overwhelming majority of Americans and physicians have swallowed the pharmaceutical companies' drug bait, hook, line and sinker.

Americans make up just 5% of the world's population, yet they consume over 40% of the drugs that are produced. Do you think that the billions and billions of dollars that the drug companies spend on television and other advertising have influenced this outcome? When your children went off to high school, you probably told them "Just say 'No!' to drugs!" Yet when you watch television, the drugs companies are selling you on the proposition to "Just say 'Yes!' to drugs."

The neuroscientist who first recognised autism as a condition of the brain rather than the result of cold parenting

Uta Frith sits in her beautiful, book-lined sitting-room in Harrow, north London, looking out towards the Chilterns. She is emeritus professor in cognitive development at UCL - and last year was made a dame. She is warm, smiling, bespectacled, dressed in brown linen and a fine gold necklace.

Towards the end of our meeting, she describes a conversation she once had with an autistic person who was obsessed with light fittings in railway carriages and was trying to interest her in the minute differences between one fixture and the next. When she admitted she could not tell them apart, he laughed at her incredulously.

People with autism are known to have an uncanny eye for detail and Frith has always been quick to acknowledge this and their other "cognitive strengths". But she has also been responsible for penetrating the particular difficulty autistic people have with "theory of mind" - the intuition about what is going on in another person's head. The light-fittings enthusiast would have been unlikely, for instance, to have entertained the possibility that his listener might not share his consuming interest.

The singer of Australian punk band Frenzal Rhomb was diagnosed with a brain tumor after suffering seizures. After the tumor was removed, the doctors determined it was the result of an infection caused by a parasite. Specifically, a kind of tapeworm from Central America typically found in pork products. Which is extra weird since he's a vegetarian.

Basically: he ate a tapeworm and it grew in his brain and caused a tumor.

The singer, Jay Whalley suspects it came from someone who prepared a vegetarian burrito for him without washing their hands while he was on tour in Central America a few years ago.

One of the major differences between our post-industrial diets and the evolutionary and traditional foods of our past is in the kinds of fat we eat. One huge change has to do with the polyunsaturated fatty acids (or PUFAs), which come in several varieties, but most commonly omega 6 and omega 3. PUFAs are "essential fats," meaning we can't make them from other types of food, and we must eat them. However, never in the history of humankind have we eaten novel omega 6 fatty acids in such massive quantities.

Corn oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, cottonseed oil, peanut oil and/or soybean oil are ingredients in pretty much all processed food. Just check the list on the back of breakfast cereals, bread and other baked goods, fried items, salad dressings, margarine, mayonnaise, and sauces. Vegetable oils are used (along with canola oil) in the fryers at most restaurants. They are cheap and relatively tasteless, which make them perfect for certain industrial and restaurant food applications. They are also universally high in omega 6 fatty acids, and therefore we eat a ton of them in the Western diet, especially since throwing out butter, lard, and beef tallow 30-40 years ago.

Why does it matter if we eat lots of vegetable oil? Omega 6 PUFAs are used by the body to make certain hormones and signaling molecules. Roughly speaking, the omega 6s are the precursors for many of the molecules that make up our body's inflammatory response. As an example - the omega 6 linoleic acid (corn oil is mostly linoleic acid) is a precursor for many molecules, but among them the prostaglandins that the enzymes COX-1 and COX-2 work on. If you have ever taken ibuprofen or another NSAID painkiller, you have blocked the effects of COX-1 and COX-2, decreasing inflammation and therefore the easing experience of swelling and pain in the body. If you want the nitty gritty details, Wikipedia has a very good and understandable review of these inflammatory signaling molecules.

Here's the real problem - too much inflammation mediated by a high dietary percentage of the omega 6 fatty acid linoleic acid can be reasonably associated with coronary vascular disease, insulin resistance, cancer, hypothyroidism and other autoimmune diseases, thrombotic stroke, headaches, asthma, arthritis, depression, and psychosis. So you can see that such a massive change in our diets in the short term of the past 50-70 years could potentially have equally massive effects on our health.

Prehistoric Man Had Much Healthier Teeth and Gums than Modern Humans

Our modern stereotype is that - until recently - people were plagued with rotting teeth, cavities and gum disease.

But the truth is that prehistoric people had much better oral health than we do today.

As NPR reports:

Despite gaps in the historical record, it is believed that flu pandemics have occurred throughout human history, when especially nasty strains of influenza virus spread far and wide, sometimes affecting humanity on a global scale.

In the past 100 years, four flu pandemics have spread across the earth. It is estimated that the worst of these pandemics killed 50 million people, and the other outbreaks, while less serious, have still left millions dead.

While flu season appears to be winding down this year, it remains a serious disease that has wreaked havoc on humanity in the past century. Here is a look at each of those pandemics.

1918 - 1919, "The Spanish Flu"

According to flu.gov, the 1918 strain of the flu infected between 20 and 40 percent of the worldwide population and killed approximately 50 million people - with nearly 675,000 dying in the United States alone. The pandemic was also notable for disproportionately striking down the young and healthy - as opposed to other flu strains, which are typically most dangerous to the very old and very young.

The disease was so exceptionally deadly that there was originally, according to the CDC, debate that the disease was even the flu at all, and the disease struck in three "unprecedented" waves in 1918 and 1919, with only brief intervals between them.

A chemical widely used in plastic packaging and food containers may be toxic to the central nervous system by interfering with a key gene involved in the development of nerve cells, a study suggests.

Scientists have found that bisphenol A (BPA), which is used in a variety of consumer products ranging from fizzy-drink cans to food mixers, affects the function of a gene called Kcc2 which is involved in the growth of neurons, or nerve cells, in the brain and spinal cord.

The study, based on rats and human neurons grown in the laboratory, found female nerve cells more susceptible to BPA than male neurons. This might explain why certain neurodevelopmental disorders in humans are more common in females, such as Rett syndrome, a severe form of autism found only in girls, the scientists said.