Tag: muscles

  • Health

    Deconstructing motor skills

    Harvard researchers have found that the brain uses two largely independent neural circuits to learn spatial and temporal aspects of complex motor skills.

    3–5 minutes
  • Health

    Stem cells used to treat muscular dystrophy in mice

    Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center have for the first time demonstrated that transplanted muscle stem cells can both improve muscle function in mice with a form of muscular dystrophy and replenish the stem cell population for use in the repair of future muscle injuries. “I’m very excited about this,” said…

    3–4 minutes
  • Health

    Gene responsible for statin-induced muscle pain identified

    Statins, the popular class of drugs used to lower cholesterol, are among the most commonly prescribed medications in developed countries. But for some patients, accompanying side effects of muscle weakness and pain become chronic problems and, in rare cases, can escalate to debilitating and even life-threatening damage. Now a study led by investigators at Beth…

    3–5 minutes
  • Health

    Research highlights the muscle’s many motions

    New research from Harvard’s Concord Field Station has shown that the common perception of a muscle as a single functional unit is incorrect and that different sections within an individual muscle actually do different work. The finding enriches a gradually emerging picture of a single muscle as a far more complex unit than traditionally believed.…

    3–4 minutes