Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News — Can't get no satisfaction, as the Rolling Stone song goes? You're not alone. Everlasting satisfaction is a near impossibility, claims a new study, but it might be tantalizingly just within reach for many of us. The findings help explain why some individuals are not happy despite good fortune, while others remain cheerful under terrible circumstances. The study also negates a prior theory formulated by researchers David Lykken and Auke Tellegen that "trying to be happier (may be) as futile as trying to be taller" due to genetic predispositions. "There has been a widespread belief among psychologists that happiness is primarily determined by genes and inborn personality characteristics," lead author Richard Lucas, who collaborated with M. Brent Donnellan on the study, told Discovery News. "This would mean that those who are happy now will also be happy in the future, but that those who are unhappy now will inevitably be unhappy in the future," added Lucas, an associate professor of psychology at Michigan State University. © 2007 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Emotions; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 9991 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The largest search for autism genes to date, funded in part by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has implicated components of the brain’s glutamate chemical messenger system and a previously overlooked site on chromosome 11. Based on 1,168 families with at least two affected members, the genome scan also adds to evidence that tiny, rare variations in genes may heighten risk for autism spectrum disorders (ASD)*. The study is the first to emerge from the Autism Genome Project (AGP) Consortium, a public-private collaboration involving more than 120 scientists and 50 institutions in l9 countries. Their report is published online in the February 18, 2007 issue of Nature Genetics. With NIH support, the AGP is pursuing studies to identify specific genes and gene variants that contribute to vulnerability to autism. These include explorations of interactions of genes with other genes and with environmental factors, and laboratory research aimed at understanding how candidate susceptibility genes might work in the brain to produce the disorders. “This is the most ambitious effort yet to find the locations of genes that may confer vulnerability to autism,” said NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D. “The AGP is revealing clues that will likely influence the direction of autism research for years to come.”

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 9990 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Michael Hopkin When British politician David Cameron advocated affection as a solution to antisocial behaviour and petty crime, his speech was mockingly labelled 'Hug-a-Hoodie'. But no one realized that there is a precedent in the animal kingdom — spider monkeys in Mexico have been observed embracing to avoid gang violence. Hugging diffuses the tension when two bands of monkeys meet, say the British researchers who made the discovery. Without these calming embraces, the situation can escalate into aggression and even physical attacks, they report. The researchers studied wild spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi), which live in the forests of Central and South America. These monkeys live in large groups, but split into short-lived, constantly changing groups of a few individuals to travel more easily in search of food. "It's like the monkeys live in a small village where everyone knows each other," says Filippo Aureli of Liverpool John Moores University. "You wake up and eat breakfast with one group, such as a family, then move into different subgroups such as work, or school, and go to lunch with another group." The small gangs bumps into one another frequently. If the other monkeys are seen as rivals, there is a danger that fighting will erupt. Hugging seems to be a way to ease the tension — aggressive encounters such as chases are more likely to happen among monkeys that do not embrace first. ©2007 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Aggression; Emotions
Link ID: 9989 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Chronic back pain is linked to physical changes in the brain, according to researchers in Germany. A team found patients with the condition also had microstructural changes in the pain-processing areas of their brains. The scientists said the work provided evidence that the condition was real and it could aid treatment research. The research was presented at the Radiological Society of North America's annual meeting, in Chicago. To study the condition, the researchers used a technique called diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to look at the differences between sufferers' and healthy volunteers' brains. They discovered the brains of patients with chronic back pain had a more complex and active microstructure compared with the healthy volunteers' brains. The changes occurred in regions of the brain associated with pain-processing, emotion and stress response. Lead researcher Dr Jurgen Lutz, a radiologist at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany, said: "A major problem for patients with chronic pain is making their condition believable to doctors, relatives and insurance carriers. DTI could play an important role in this regard. "With these objective and reproducible correlates in brain imaging, chronic pain may no longer be a subjective experience. For pain diagnosis and treatment, the consequences could be enormous." However, the researchers said more research would be needed to determine whether the physical changes were a cause or result of the pain. (C)BBC

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 9988 - Posted: 02.18.2007

By Jonathan Fildes A bionic eye implant that could help restore the sight of millions of blind people could be available to patients within two years. US researchers have been given the go-ahead to implant the prototype device in 50 to 75 patients. The Argus II system uses a spectacle-mounted camera to feed visual information to electrodes in the eye. Patients who tested less-advanced versions of the retinal implant were able to see light, shapes and movement. "What we are trying to do is take real-time images from a camera and convert them into tiny electrical pulses that would jump-start the otherwise blind eye and allow patients to see," said Professor Mark Humayun, from the University of Southern California. Retinal implants are able to partially restore the vision of people with particular forms of blindness caused by diseases such as macular degeneration or retinitis pigmentosa. About 1.5 million people worldwide have retinitis pigmentosa, and one in 10 people over the age of 55 have age-related macular degeneration. Both diseases cause the retinal cells which process light at the back of the eye to gradually die. The new devices work by implanting an array of tiny electrodes into the back of the retina. (C)BBC

Keyword: Robotics; Vision
Link ID: 9987 - Posted: 02.18.2007

Researchers have discovered a type of brain cell that continuously regenerates in humans. A pool of "resting cells" migrate to create new nerve cells in the part of the brain which deals with smell. The system has been shown in mice and rats but it was believed it did not exist in the human brain. Experts said the findings, published in Science, opened up the potential for research into repairing brains in conditions such as Alzheimer's disease. The researchers from the University of Auckland, New Zealand and the Sahlgrenska Academy in Sweden showed stem cells rest in certain areas of the brain, just beneath large fluid-filled chambers called ventricles. But then they needed to work out how they got to the right part of the brain. In many species, it was known that a tube filled with brain fluid enabled these cells to travel to the olfactory bulb - the region of the brain that registers smells - turning into nerve cells as they went. But until now, this system had not been shown in humans. Using several techniques, including a powerful electron microscope, the team identified the tube, and showed it contained stem cells as well as cells which were gradually turning into nerve cells as they travelled along. The researchers said the addition of new nerve cells in the olfactory bulb in humans helped the system respond to different stimuli throughout a person's life. Experts said the findings could be important for future research into brain cell repair in patients with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and, importantly, that studies in mice would be applicable to humans. (C)BBC

Keyword: Neurogenesis
Link ID: 9986 - Posted: 02.18.2007

By KAREN OLSSON Tarah Perry wishes her brothers would remember to put on deodorant. Other 16-year-olds, after all, don’t need to be reminded of that by their 14-year-old sister. Other families don’t keep a stick of Degree in the glove compartment to enforce deodorant compliance on the way to school in the morning. Granted, Justin and Jason are different from other brothers — they are autistic twins — and Tarah’s family is therefore different from other families, and generally speaking she is perfectly O.K. with that. It’s all she has ever known. But lately she has been fighting more with her brothers. They irritate her, she says. They stink. She tells them as much, and they squabble about it, as any siblings might — only when you’re 14 and your brothers are disabled and you don’t know whether they’ll ever make it on their own or whether you’ll be responsible for taking care of them, then even the little things take on greater weight. Because what Tarah also wishes is that her brothers will one day manage to hold jobs and find friends and live the kind of life that regular deodorant-wearing people live, or some semblance of it. And in the meantime, it would be nice if they didn’t smell up the car. If you were to meet Tarah apart from her family, there’s plenty you might learn about her before the subject of her brothers ever came up. She is in the ninth grade and likes to clown around: one day this fall, for instance, when her biology teacher seemed to be in a bad mood, she drew a large smiley face on a sheet of notebook paper and held it up over her own face to try to coax a smile out of the teacher. (It worked.) Her own face is heart-shaped, sprayed with faint freckles and often demurely animated — lips slightly pursed, eyes knowing — by a look of private amusement on the verge of being made public. There is no mention of her brothers on her MySpace page, and she is more likely to talk about the marching band or her best friend, Alex, who sits near her in band, or the music she likes or gossip from school. Or trees. For some reason she can’t stand pine trees. The central Texas town of Bastrop, about 30 miles southeast of Austin, is overhung by tall loblolly pines, on account of which Tarah occasionally petitions her parents to move the family someplace else, like Ireland, where they could live in a castle and have free health insurance — although, she concedes, she wouldn’t really want to move away from her friends. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 9985 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Sally Squires A large study has found that children of women who ate little fish during pregnancy had lower IQs and more behavioral and social problems than youngsters whose mothers ate plenty of seafood, a finding that challenges the U.S. government's standard advice to limit seafood while pregnant. The study finds "no evidence to lend support to the warning of the U.S. advisory that pregnant women should limit their seafood consumption," concluded the team led by Joseph R. Hibbeln, a researcher at the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, writing in the Lancet. The study found that children born to women who ate about three servings of fish per week or less -- near the maximum advised by the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency -- had lower verbal IQs, more problems with fine motor skills, and higher rates of behavioral and social difficulties, compared to youngsters whose mothers consumed more seafood during pregnancy. The advice to limit seafood consumption is based on concerns that children might absorb too much methyl mercury, which builds up in fish and can cause neurological problems. "Higher maternal fish consumption results in children showing better neurological function than children whose mothers ate low amounts of or no fish during pregnancy," Gary Myers, a professor of neurology and pediatrics at the University of Rochester Medical Center, said in an editorial accompanying the study. "These results highlight the importance of including fish in the maternal diet during pregnancy and lend support to the popular opinion that fish is brain food." © 2007 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 9984 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Bruce Bower Working along a riverbank in a West African rain forest, researchers have uncovered remnants from a chimpanzee stone age that started at least 4,300 years ago. The finds constitute the only evidence yet detected of prehistoric ape behavior. Most of the more than 200 stone artifacts found at three sites in Taļ National Park, Ivory Coast, were used by prehistoric chimps to crack open nuts, say archaeologist Julio Mercader of the University of Calgary in Alberta and his colleagues. The animals placed nuts on the flat surface of one rock and smashed the tough shells with another rock. "I'd predict that this type of simple bashing technology goes back to a common ancestor of chimps and humans around 6 million years ago," Mercader says. His team presents its findings in an upcoming Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers excavated a cluster of three sites in 2001 and 2003. Most of the stone artifacts came from one location, known as Noulo. Radiocarbon measurements of burned wood in the soil produced the age estimate for the finds. ©2007 Science Service

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 9983 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Gaia Vince, San Francisco Pregnant women who suffer from diabetes are more likely to have a child with memory problems, according to a new study. The researchers believe the children’s poor memories are the result of inadequate levels of iron and oxygen reaching the brain’s memory centre during its crucial developmental phase. However, they stress that diabetics who properly control their condition during pregnancy avoid risking damage to their child’s memory. Tracy DeBoer at the University of California in San Diego, US, and colleagues followed a group of mothers beginning early on in their pregnancy. They tested the mothers’ blood sugar and iron levels regularly and then followed their infants after birth, carrying out regular blood sugar and iron tests, as well as memory exams that grew more complex as the children aged. Diabetic mothers who had widely fluctuating blood sugar levels during pregnancy had children who performed worse than children in a control group in a series of memory tests at 12 months of age – and the effects are still significant at age three-and-a-half, says DeBoer. But the loss in memory performance was only noticeable during the more difficult memory tests, she says, resulting in scores that were one-third poorer than unaffected children. In easier tests, the 20 children of diabetic mothers performed almost as well, or the same, as the 20 children in the control group. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 9982 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Bruce Bower About 40 years ago, the late psychologist Stanley Milgram tapped into the commonsense notion that "it's a small world." Milgram asked 60 people to send a folder to a certain individual whom none of them knew. Participants were given a little information about the target person and asked to mail the folder to a friend or acquaintance who, in their view, was more likely to know the stranger than they were. Each recipient of the folder was asked to do the same, until the material reached its destination. Only one-quarter of the chains were completed. In those cases, though, the folder passed through an average of six intermediaries. Milgram's project inspired the phrase "six degrees of separation" and led to, for example, people calculating movie actors' working relationships to actor Kevin Bacon. The small-world phenomenon got a big boost in 1998. Steven Strogatz of Cornell University and Duncan Watts of New York University used mathematical simulations to show that all sorts of large networks can be traversed in a small number of steps. Strogatz and Watts demonstrated how this effect applies to the more than 4,300 elements of the electric-power grid in the western United States and to the collaborative relationships of more than 225,000 professional actors. Strogatz and Watts also demonstrated the relevance of the small-world idea to the array of 282 brain cells in worms called nematodes. ©2007 Science Service

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 9981 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists from the Universities of Exeter and Glasgow today reveal how some females become sexually mature more quickly if they see attractive males. Research published today in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters shows for the first time how the sight of physical ornamentation on another member of the group determines when an individual is ready to mate. The researchers studied a captive population of green swordtail fish, a species native to Central America and popular in tropical aquariums. The green swordtail is named after the striking sword-like growth, which males develop on their tail-fin, so they appear larger and more attractive to females. The females in the group that were shown males with long 'swords' reached sexual maturity earlier than those that were not by up to four months. Young males that were shown mature males with impressive 'swords' matured later than those that saw lower quality competitors. Both sexes are unconsciously using visual cues to increase their likely mating opportunities. For females, this means maximising the quality of potential mates and for males, this means delaying maturity until there is less competition from more attractive males. 'This is the first evidence that a species adjusts its rate of sexual maturation in response to visual cues. While our study focused on green swordtail fish, it seems unlikely that this attribute is limited to this one species,' said Dr Craig Walling of the University of Exeter's School of Biosciences.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 9980 - Posted: 02.18.2007

RICHLAND, Wash. — The Allen Brain Atlas, a genome-wide map of the mouse brain on the Internet, has been hailed as “Google of the brain.” The atlas now has a companion or the brain’s working molecules, a sort of pop-up book of the proteins, or proteome map, that those genes express. The protein map is “the first to apply quantitative proteomics to imaging,” said Richard D. Smith, Battelle Fellow at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, who led the mapping effort with Desmond Smith of UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. “Proteins are the lead actors, the most important part of the picture,” PNNL’s Smith said. “They are the molecules that do the work of the cells.” Fine-tuning such proteome maps will enable comparisons of healthy brains with others whose protein portraits look different. Contrasts in location and abundance of proteins may display the earliest detectable stages of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other neurological diseases. They hope such diseases might be curbed if caught and treated early enough. The National Institutes of Health-funded study, performed at DOE’s Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory on PNNL’s campus, is published in the advance online edition of Genome Research and featured in current Nature online Neuroscience Gateway (http://www.brainatlas.org). PNNL staff scientists Vladislav A. Petyuk, Wei-Jun Qian and UCLA’s Mark Chin are co-lead authors.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 9979 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By LAURA RIVERA MORRISTOWN, N.J., — After canceling a planned romantic dinner, Dan Hajjar and Anne Marie Jarka-Hajjar, who have been married 17 years, spent Valentine’s eve in separate beds, tossing and turning amid a tangle of electrode wires and sensors stuck all over their bodies. Cathy Durkin, left, and Kerry Kelley preparing the couple for their study. In a last-ditch bid for bedtime bliss, the couple checked into the sleep disorder clinic of Morristown Memorial Hospital, hoping its medical staff would deliver a respite from nearly two decades of uninterrupted snoring. Mr. Hajjar, 42, an executive at Aon Corporation, has long been plagued by sleep apnea, which can disrupt breathing hundreds of times a night. Then, starting 18 months ago, Ms. Jarka-Hajjar, 41, a college professor and theater producer, turned their bedroom in Convent Station, N.J., into a nighttime chorus. “He would have 100 percent pushed this off until another time if he was doing it alone,” said Ms. Jarka-Hajjar, who blames sinus problems for her muffled snores. “So I’m hoping that by me being there and going through the same thing, it’s really going to help him, which will help me.” Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 9978 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The findings of one of the largest experiments in the science of attractiveness shown here challenge current thinking about the differences between men and women. Around four thousand people took part in the web experiment, launched two weeks ago on this page, to provide new insights in time for Valentine's Day tomorrow. Some revelations are obvious - in the case of men, being rich, powerful, smart and funny helps, and the more attractive the woman you are pursuing, the more these factors matter to her. Some are less obvious: women rate being good in bed as more desirable in a possible partner than men do. The woman's face deemed the most beautiful - by just over half of the men rating the five photographs - was that of the youngest, B, aged 19. Women, however, plumped for the second oldest man, A, aged 29, as the most attractive. This tallies with what one would expect from evolutionary theory: what we mean by beauty is a person who sends out signals that they are fertile, have "good" genes to pass on to our children and in so doing assist the dissemination of our own DNA - in other words all attraction is determined by the "selfish gene". © Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2007.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 9977 - Posted: 06.24.2010

David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor In an evolutionary arms race -- in which Nature decrees that it's either eat or be eaten -- snakes on a tiny Japanese island and others in California and western Oregon are winning against a group of poisonous toads and newts. On an islet off the main Japanese island of Honshu, for instance, toads carry powerful poisons in their skins, but snakes there turn it to their own advantage. They dine on the toads, sequester their meal's poison into their own bodies and use it to protect themselves against hungry predators on the prowl. Not only that, the mother snakes thus endowed by their diet of toxic toads can transmit the same poison to their babies, and when the hatchlings emerge from their eggs they, too, are protected from their enemies, at least briefly -- until they grow large enough to dine on the toads themselves. This example of the power of natural selection -- the very process that Darwin first discerned -- has been found by a team of American and Japanese evolutionary biologists and chemists led by Deborah Hutchinson of Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., who reported the findings in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. © 2007 Hearst Communications Inc

Keyword: Evolution; Neurotoxins
Link ID: 9976 - Posted: 06.24.2010

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Children exposed to cocaine in the womb exhibit behavior problems up to at least 7 years of age, according to a long-term study that enrolled 1,388 children between 1993 and 1995 at four centers. Children exposed to cocaine in the womb were matched with a group of nonexposed children. At ages 3, 5, and 7 years, a total of 1,056 children were assessed for behavior problems using the Child Behavior Checklist. After controlling for possibly confounding factors, Dr. Henrietta S. Bada, of the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Lexington and colleagues found an association between high levels of prenatal cocaine exposure and behavior problems including internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Prenatal and postnatal exposure to tobacco and alcohol were also significantly associated with behavior problems through age 7 years. Having a parent or other caregiver with a history of depression and physical or sexual abuse was independently associated with all behavior problems. "Our findings highlight not only a need for continued prevention and treatment programs that are directed toward illegal drug use but also a call for increased effort toward prevention of tobacco and alcohol use, which is a more prevalent problem and has as great an impact on childhood behavior problems as prenatal cocaine exposure," the authors write. © 1996-2007 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 9975 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By John Bohannon Take a pigeon hundreds of kilometers from its home, and it has no problem finding its way back. For years, scientists have suspected that the bird's stellar navigation has to do with its ability to read Earth's magnetic fields. Now, thanks to a geomagnetic anomaly in New Zealand, researchers have the strongest evidence yet that this is indeed the case. Until now, support for a pigeon's internal compass has been mostly anecdotal. The birds tend to fly in erratic patterns during electrical storms, for example. The first hard evidence for the geomagnetic theory came from a study showing that pigeons could detect a magnetic field in a wind tunnel (ScienceNOW, 24 November 2004), but that field was many times more intense than Earth's. Also, because the field was either completely on or off, it left the question open of how exactly pigeons might use subtle magnetic differences in the wild to correct their trajectories. Taking a more natural approach, a team led by Todd Dennis, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, released pigeons close to a place called the Auckland Junction Magnetic Anomaly. Here, a cluster of massive rock slabs deep below the surface causes a detectable spike in the geomagnetic field. Dennis reasoned that if the pigeons were released here, they would reveal how they were using geomagnetic information as they struggled to get clear of the anomaly. To keep track of their trajectories, the researchers strapped global positioning system (GPS) devices to the birds' backs. © 2007 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Animal Migration
Link ID: 9974 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News — Many fish produce sounds, such as hoots, chirps, pops and even growls, but now scientists have observed a new noise — purring — from a female fish before and during mating. The fact that female fish were observed making any sound is noteworthy since males produce most fish noises. The sound was detected in a female croaking gourami, a species known for the namesake croaking of its males. “This is the first fish species we know of where females produce sounds during courtship and spawning,” said study author Friedrich Ladich, a University of Vienna biologist and one of the authors of the recently published book, “Communication in Fishes.” For the study, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Animal Behavior, Ladich created an ideal “bedroom setting” in tanks for the fish, which consisted of 10 males and 15 females. Males blow bubble nests so, to facilitate this, he added natural and artificial floating plants to the tanks. A sensitive hydrophone mike and a video camera concealed behind a curtain recorded the male and female encounters. Sounds were then digitized and computer analyzed. It was during such analysis that Ladich determined the sounds- that he likens to the fish version of whispering- were attributed to females and linked to mating. © 2007 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hearing
Link ID: 9973 - Posted: 06.24.2010

MADISON -- Nature has outfitted us with a pair of ears for good reason: having two ears enhances hearing. University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists are now examining whether this is also true for the growing numbers of deaf children who've received not one, but two, cochlear implants to help them hear. Led by Ruth Litovsky, an investigator in the UW-Madison Waisman Center, the team's research suggests that deaf children who have a cochlear implant in each ear more accurately locate sounds when they use both implants instead of one. Children with two implants also become more skilled at localizing sound over time. The results were presented today (Feb. 13) at the Annual Midwinter Meeting of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology. Information like this can be useful, says Litovsky, when doctors and parents are deciding whether a child should get one or two of the electronic devices, which allow deaf people to hear by bypassing the damaged inner ear, or cochlea, to stimulate the auditory nerve directly. It's not a simple choice. A single implant and the required surgery can cost $50,000. The device also permanently damages the cochlea, which might prevent recipients from taking advantage of potentially superior treatments for deafness down the road.

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 9972 - Posted: 02.14.2007