Remembrance of things past
As a young man, he would become famous for conducting with closed eyes. This was partly to avoid visual distractions, but as he would later explain: “After I learned a score, at the end I try and forget what I've seen, because seeing and hearing are two such different things.” It would be untrue to say that Karajan had a deficient visual sense; he was obsessed with stage design and stage lighting. But as often as not, the outcome of a hundred Karajan lighting rehearsals would be what the poet Milton calls “no light but darkness visible”. Several key works which held Karajan enthralled for most of his life—Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande—inhabit closed worlds, womb like in their darkness and seclusion. (Osborne R. Herbert von Karajan, A Life in Music. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2000:7–8.)
Antibiotic inhibits brain cell death
In Huntington's chorea, a faulty gene makes brain cells commit suicide on mass. The antibiotic minocycline prevents some of this process by inhibiting key enzymes called caspases that initiate programmed cell death. The drug may also slow cell death in other conditions such as Alzheimer's disease and strokes. (Nature Medicine2000;6:797.)
Virus treatment of brain tumours
Researchers in Scotland have shown that a strain of herpes simplex virus (which causes cold sores) can be used to selectively kill tumour cells in gliomas, the most aggressive form of brain cancer. A strain called HSV1716 destroys only tumour cells, leaving healthy brain tissue unharmed. …
