Scientists warn that new experiments could create monkeys with brains more human than animal, according to ananova.com.
In cutting-edge experiments, scientists have injected human brain cells into monkey fetuses to study the effects.
An eminent committee of American scientists is calling for restrictions into the research.
It says the outcome of such studies cannot be predicted and could produce subjects with ’super-animal’ intelligence.
The high-powered committee of animal behaviorists, lawyers, philosophers, bio-ethicists and neuro-scientists was established four years ago to examine the growing numbers of human/monkey experiments.
These procedures, known as human-primate chimeras, involve the combination of human and monkey cells, tissue and DNA.
This team will soon publish its conclusions in leading journal Science.
“What we were trying to do was anticipate--recognizing that if science were to take that path there might be some different kinds of moral challenges.“ said committee’s co-chairman Dr Ruth Faden.

In TMS doctors place an electric coil on the patient's forehead. The patient remains completely conscious throughout therapy, which is pain-free.

For severe depression, electro-shock therapy is nowadays the last hope. However, it can impair memory for weeks after therapy.
According to Science Daily online, a less aggressive alternative seems to be provided by what is known as “transcranial magnetic stimulation“.
This is the conclusion arrived at by doctors and psychologists of the Bonn University Clinic in an article.
Nowadays depression is seen as amenable to treatment: with psychotherapy or medication most patients affected can be assisted out of their depressive phase.
About five per cent of all patients, however, fall into such profound depression that they do not respond to these methods.
Because depression is one of the most frequent psychological diseases--every sixth person suffers from it at least once in their lives--this affects a large number of people.
In these cases electro-shock therapy is one option.
This involves the patient being anaesthetized.
Then the doctors pass electrical impulses through the patient’s head via two electrodes, thereby triggering an epileptic spasm.
This changes the cerebral chemistry in the area of the forehead, a region which, among other things, regulates the emotions and steers the psycho-motor reflexes.

Popular cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins did not protect elderly people from Alzheimer’s or other kinds of dementia, a study reports today.
According to USA Today, statins are a group of drugs widely prescribed to reduce the risk of heart disease. Recent scientific evidence suggested these drugs also might protect the brain from Alzheimer’s.
The new findings don’t support that hope as yet, but Sam Gandy, an Alzheimer’s researcher at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, says they represent just one piece of evidence in a line of studies that suggested a role for statins in the prevention or treatment of Alzheimer’s.
Statins might work as a shield only if given early in life, before the disease has a chance to take hold in the brain, says Gandy, who is also a spokesman for the Chicago-based Alzheimer’s Association.
The people in the study averaged 75 years old and had been taking statins for an average of five years, says lead researcher Thomas Rea of the University of Washington in Seattle. Their age could explain the negative findings, he says.
Rea and his colleagues studied 2,798 older people who had no sign of cognitive problems at the study’s start. The team also kept track of those who developed dementia, including Alzheimer’s, over a six-year period. They also noted whether participants were taking statin drugs such as Lipitor or Zocor.
Participants took cognitive and memory tests throughout the study. The researchers found that those who took statins developed dementia or Alzheimer’s at about the same rate as those who were not taking the drugs. The findings are reported in the Archives of Neurology.