Ben Harder This time of year, the wilds of North America are relatively quiet. The black bears that usually patrol the woods seem to have vanished. Many bat species are nowhere to be found, at least not by the causal observer. The same is true of ground squirrels and chipmunks. They are hidden away—hibernating. Biologists have been intrigued for decades about how animals go dormant during the winter and survive physiological conditions that would kill them at other times of the year. Hibernators spend most of the winter in torpor, a state of self-induced reduction in body temperature and metabolic rate. Even some species that don't contend with harsh winters by hunkering down for months at a stretch, such as mice, enter torpor daily when food is in limited supply and temperatures are chilly. Many small birds spend nights year-round in torpor. In mammals, hibernation is so widespread that researchers reason that the ancestor of all mammals must have been a hibernator. People may be physiologically capable of tapping this dram of evolutionary heritage, says molecular biologist Sandra Martin of the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora. If people could mimic certain aspects of hibernation, they might benefit greatly. For instance, inducing a torporlike state in a wounded soldier or a bleeding-accident victim might give doctors precious extra time to stop and reverse the damage. Other patients would benefit if donated organs could be put in cold storage for prolonged shelf lives. And for astronauts, torpor, which some people call suspended animation, might facilitate travel to distant planets. ©2007 Science Service.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Sleep
Link ID: 9891 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Christen Brownlee Scientists have identified an area of the brain where damage seems to quickly halt a person's desire to smoke. The region could form a target for novel therapies to help people quit smoking, the researchers say. Led by neuroscientist Antoine Bechara of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, the team homed in on this brain area after learning about an unusual stroke patient whom they identify only as N. From age 14, N. had been a heavy smoker. But after his stroke at age 28, he never lit up again. Smokers typically undergo well-characterized emotional and physical withdrawal symptoms that make quitting extremely difficult. However, N. effortlessly quit smoking immediately after his stroke and never relapsed. He told doctors, "My body forgot the urge to smoke." Bechara says, "What is striking is that it was as if a switch had been turned off—he quit just like that, without any effort at all." To see whether brain damage caused by N.'s stroke played a role in his smoking cessation, Bechara and his colleagues scanned N.'s brain to identify the stroke-affected area. They spotted damage in the insula, a region deep inside the cerebral cortex. The insula had previously been associated with monitoring the body's internal conditions and controlling conscious urges, such as the desire to eat. ©2007 Science Service.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 9890 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Should you leave your comfortable job for one that pays better but is less secure? Should you have a surgery that is likely to extend your life but poses some risk that you will not survive the operation? Should you invest in a risky startup company whose stock may soar even though you could lose your entire investment? In the Jan. 26 issue of the journal Science, UCLA psychologists present the first neuroscience research comparing how our brains evaluate the possibility of gaining versus losing when making risky decisions. Participants in the study, mostly UCLA students in their 20s, were given $30 and then asked whether they would agree to each of more than 250 gambles in which they had a 50-50 chance of winning an amount of money or losing another amount of money. Would they, for example, agree to a coin toss in which they could win $30 but lose $20? While the 16 participants were considering the possible wagers, they were in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner at UCLA's Ahmanson–Lovelace Brain Mapping Center, where researchers studied their brain activity; the technique uses magnetic fields to spot active brain areas by telltale increases in blood oxygen. For each question, the participants answered whether they would strongly agree to the gamble, weakly accept it, weakly refuse it or strongly reject it. Participants were not told whether they had won or lost until after they left the scanner; afterwards, the researchers randomly selected three of the gambles, and if the participants had previously agreed to accept those, the researchers flipped a coin and the participants either won or lost the money. What interested the researchers, however, was the activity of the brain's regions during the decision-making process, not the subject's reaction to winning or losing.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 9889 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Results from the most comprehensive study to compare two imaging techniques for the emergency diagnosis of suspected acute stroke show that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can provide a more sensitive diagnosis than computed tomography (CT) for acute ischemic stroke. The difference between MRI and CT was attributable to MRI’s superiority for detection of acute ischemic stroke — the most common form of stroke, caused by a blood clot. The study was conducted by physicians at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Findings appear in the January 27, 2007 edition of The Lancet[1]. “These NIH research findings on acute stroke imaging are directly applicable to real-world clinical practice,” said NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D. “The patients involved in this study were the typical cross-section of suspected stroke patients that come into emergency rooms on a daily basis.” Furthermore, the study has good news for patients, according to Walter J. Koroshetz, M.D., NINDS Deputy Director. “This study shows that approximately 25 percent of stroke patients who come to the hospital within three hours of onset, the time frame for approved clot-busting therapy, have no detectable signs of damage. In other words, brain injury may be completely avoided in some stroke victims by quick re-opening of the blocked blood vessel,” said Dr. Koroshetz. The researchers conducted the study to determine whether MRI was superior to CT for emergency diagnosis of acute ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke (caused by bleeding into the brain).

Keyword: Stroke; Brain imaging
Link ID: 9888 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Roxanne Khamsi In a novel experiment, moderate doses of carbon monoxide protected against the symptoms of multiple sclerosis in mice. Researchers believe that the poisonous gas prevents the development of symptoms, such as paralysis, by stopping harmful molecules called free radicals from forming in the nervous symptom. Miguel Soares at the Gulbenkian Science Institute in Oeiras, Portugal, and colleagues injected the animals with a protein mixture known to cause experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, a mouse model of multiple sclerosis (MS). Ten days later some of the mice were placed in a chamber where they breathed carbon monoxide (CO) at a concentration of about 500 parts per million for 20 days. Soares notes that while the mice functioned normally at this level of CO exposure, a similar concentration of the gas can cause headaches and fainting in humans. At the end of the trial, the mice that had breathed CO showed much greater mobility than their control counterparts. While the experimental mice had limp tails, the control mice suffered complete hind limb paralysis. Soares suspects that CO works in this fashion because it promotes the binding of iron to heme molecules within the nervous system. Heme molecules that lack iron can increase the production of free radicals, which damage cells. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis
Link ID: 9887 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press — What puts that sexy twinkle in a spider's eye? A mate aglow. Take away the ultraviolet portion of light, and what seemed like the arachnid version of Scarlett Johansson or Matthew McConaughey attracts no more lust than plain Jane or dumpy Dan. While people can't see ultraviolet light, spiders can, and it turns out to be important to their mating, researchers report in this week's online edition of the journal Science. It seems that both male and female jumping spiders, Cosmophasis umbratica, have markings on their faces and legs that glow in ultraviolet light, researchers led by Daiqin Li at the National University of Singapore reported. Many animals possess UV vision and use it for foraging, navigation and sexual selection, Li explained. Jumping spiders are known to have good eyesight, he said, adding that many of these spiders are colorful, with the males generally more colorful than females. That suggests a possible role of UV vision in jumping spiders, he said, so the researchers decided to explore the possibility. "But we discovered UV-induced fluorescence communication in jumping spiders by chance," Li said. © 2007 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Vision; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 9886 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Children whose mothers were stressed out during pregnancy are vulnerable to mental and behavioural problems like ADHD, mounting evidence suggests. Latest UK research by Professor Vivette Glover of Imperial College London found stress caused by rows with or violence by a partner was particularly damaging. Experts blame high levels of the stress hormone cortisol crossing the placenta. Professor Glover found high cortisol in the amniotic fluid bathing the baby in the womb tallied with the damage. The babies exposed to the highest levels of cortisol during their development had lower IQs at 18 months. The same infants were also more likely to be anxious and fearful, she told a conference of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. About a million children in the UK have neurodevelopmental problems - ADHD, cognitive delay, anxiety and so on. Professor Glover said: "We looked at what stresses were most harmful. We found that if the woman had a partner who was being emotionally cruel to them while they were pregnant it had a really significant effect on their baby's future development. It really shows that the partner has a big role to play." The work suggests maternal stress is a true risk factor in its own right, although Professor Glover acknowledged that genetic factors and home environment after birth would also have an impact on a child's development. She said most babies grow up unaffected by a stressful womb environment. (C)BBC

Keyword: Stress; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 9885 - Posted: 01.27.2007

by Hilary Jones ADELAIDE: Our minds may wander during boring tasks because daydreaming is actually the brain's normal state, rather than a pointless distraction, according to a new U.S. study. The researchers, reporting their findings today in the U.S. journal, Science, found that daydreaming could be the result of the brain mulling over important - but not immediately relevant - issues when the external environment ceases to pose interesting and engaging problems. "For the most part psychologists have sort of assumed that we spend most of our time engaged in goal-directed thought and that, every so often, we have blips of irrelevant thoughts that pop up on the radar," said lead author Malia Mason of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "It could very well be the case, however, that most of the time we are engaged in less directed, unintended thought and that this state is routinely interrupted by periods of goal-directed thought." Daydreaming or mind-wandering - familiar to one and all - is more precisely defined as a state of mind where thoughts that are experienced by an individual are unrelated to what is going on in the environment around them, according to Mason. When wandering, the brain flits from one thought to the next, generating images, voices, thoughts and feelings. ©2006 Luna Media Pty Ltd,

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 9884 - Posted: 06.24.2010

What if quitting smoking was as easy as flipping off a switch? Brain researchers report they've discovered such a switch in the brains of long-term smokers who suddenly lost the urge to light up after suffering stroke damage to a specific brain region. "The patients wake up from the stroke and they no longer want to smoke at all. There's no longer any urge or any desire or any craving for smoking, as if a switch was turned off," says Antoine Bechara, professor of neurology at the University of Iowa who led the research. That's very different from most smokers' struggles to quit, Bechara points out. "There is quitting after you have for example a heart attack or stroke so you get scared and you try to quit smoking," he says. "But you have to exert an effort, it's very tough and people find it very difficult to quit, but they may manage eventually." Bechara says the scientists discovered the effortless quitting they call "disruption of smoking addiction" in one stroke patient who had smoked heavily since the age of 14. "And one day he had a stroke, it was at age 28, and just the next day, he just stopped smoking completely." © ScienCentral, 2000-2007.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 9883 - Posted: 06.24.2010

New research may provide insight as to why, despite progress over the last few decades, women remain underrepresented in math-heavy majors and professions. In an article published in the January issue of Psychological Science, psychologists Amy Kiefer of the University of California, San Francisco and Denise Sekaquaptewa of the University of Michigan point to an interaction between women's own underlying "implicit" stereotypes and their gender identification as a source for their underperformance and lowered perseverance in mathematical fields. Studying undergraduates enrolled in an introductory calculus course, the researchers discovered that women who possessed strong implicit gender stereotypes, (for example, automatically associating "male" more than "female" with math ability and math professions) and were likely to identify themselves as feminine performed worse relative to their female counterparts who did not possess such stereotypes and who were less likely to identify with traditionally female characteristics. The same underperforming females were also the least inclined to pursue a math-based career. The findings were demonstrated independently of prior course performance and performance on the math portion of the SAT. Strikingly, a majority of the women participating in the study explicitly expressed disagreement with the idea that men have superior math ability.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 9882 - Posted: 01.26.2007

Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News — It appears that some fish are surprisingly good at figuring out their place in the pecking order, according to new research. So good, in fact, that they may possess a certain reasoning capability that even humans don't show until age four. In an experiment, male cichlid fish (Astatotilapia burtoni) were allowed to watch five of their vigorously territorial brethren challenge each other from the safety of a separate small aquarium. In the staged battles, fish 1 beats fish 2, which beats fish 3, and so on to fish 5, the last loser. To guarantee the outcome of each battle, the researchers deliberately tired the intended losing fish before the confrontation by holding them out of the water, which basically makes them out of breath. "Then (the winning fish) just pummels him," said Logan Grosenick, a student at Stanford University in California and lead author of a paper on the experiment in the Jan. 25 issue of the journal Nature. The researchers then placed the "observer" fish between two of the fish that had participated in the battles. In nearly every insatnce, the observer fish swam away from the fish it judged as the more formidable adversary — the one with more battle victories. To make that decision, the observer fish may have used a kind of reasoning known as "transitive inference." © 2007 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Aggression; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 9881 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News — Speaking more than one language can delay the onset of dementia by four years, according to a research on bilingualism and cognitive impairment in old age. The mental agility required to manage two or more language systems every day throughout one's life, appears to enhance neural plasticity and enrich brain vasculature, staving off cognitive decline, Canadian researchers report in the February issue of the journal Neuropsychologia. Ellen Bialystok, professor of psychology at Toronto's York University, examined the diagnostic records of 184 elderly patients with cognitive complaints who attended a Toronto memory clinic between 2002 and 2005. Of the group, 132 patients met criteria for probable Alzheimer's. The disease, for which there is no known cure, is the leading cause of dementia among the elderly. Dementia is associated to a gradual onset and continuing decline of higher cognitive functioning, including impairment in memory, language, visual-spatial function, judgment and abstraction. After analyzing various data, including the patients' academic background and occupation, the researchers determined that 93 people in the group were bilingual who had been using two languages since they were young. The bilingual group included speakers of 25 different languages, including Polish, Yiddish, German, Romanian and Hungarian. © 2007 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Language; Alzheimers
Link ID: 9880 - Posted: 06.24.2010

In a new study from The American Journal of Human Genetics, a research team lead by Xinzhi Zhao and Ruqi Tang (Shanghai Jiao Tong University) present evidence that genetic variation may indicate predisposition to schizophrenia. Specifically, their findings identify the chitinase 3-like 1 gene as a potential schizophrenia-susceptibility gene and suggest that the genes involved in biological response to adverse conditions are likely linked to schizophrenia. Analyzing two separate cohorts of Chinese patients with schizophrenia, the researchers observed a positive association between schizophrenia and genetic variations in the promoter region of the chitinase 3-like 1 (CHI3L1) gene, an association that was significant in both population-based and family-based investigations. The CHI3L1 gene acts as a survival factor in response to adverse environments, countering various types of physiological stress, such as inflammation, nutrient deprivation, and oxygen deficiency, all of which may induce high expression of CHI3L1. The gene is located on chromosome 1q32.1, a region that has been previously shown to have a weak correlation to schizophrenia. ©2007 The University of Chicago Press

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 9879 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Roxanne Khamsi Strokes which damage a specific part of the brain can cause cigarette addicts to lose the urge to smoke overnight, researchers report. The discovery of a brain region linked to the urge to smoke supports the idea that distraction techniques may be important for those trying to quit. It also points the way to possible new drug treatments or even brain implants. Currently, nicotine replacement therapy can help with withdrawal symptoms, but nothing exists to beat the conscious urge to light up. The researchers found that damage to the insula – a brain region that promotes conscious feelings of hunger, pain and cravings – allowed some heavy smokers to quit with ease. Commenting on the work, Paul Matthews, a clinical neuroscientist at Imperial College in London, UK, said: “The problem people have in 'kicking' smoking is cigarette craving – the urge to smoke. The most remarkable finding in this study is that damage to a particular brain area may block this urge. Now we can ask: could a functional neurosurgeon implant stimulation electrodes to do the same thing? Could there be a surgical 'cure' for smoking?” The study was inspired by a patient who lost the urge to smoke immediately after a stroke damaged his insula. He had smoked about 40 cigarettes a day. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 9878 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JOHN SCHWARTZ Charles Roselli set out to discover what makes some sheep gay. Then the news media and the blogosphere got hold of the story. Dr. Roselli, a researcher at the Oregon Health and Science University, has searched for the past five years for physiological factors that might explain why about 8 percent of rams seek sex exclusively with other rams instead of ewes. The goal, he says, is to understand the fundamental mechanisms of sexual orientation in sheep. Other researchers might some day build on his findings to seek ways to determine which rams are likeliest to breed, he said. But since last fall, when People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals started a campaign against the research, it has drawn a torrent of outrage from animal rights activists, gay advocates and ordinary citizens around the world — all of it based, Dr. Roselli and colleagues say, on a bizarre misinterpretation of what the work is about. The story of the gay sheep became a textbook example of the distortion and vituperation that can result when science meets the global news cycle. The news media storm reached its zenith last month, when The Sunday Times in London published an article under the headline “Science Told: Hands Off Gay Sheep.” It asserted, incorrectly, that Dr. Roselli had worked successfully to “cure” homosexual rams with hormone treatments, and added that “critics fear” that the research “could pave the way for breeding out homosexuality in humans.” Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 9877 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A 10-minute screening test to identify pre-school children who might be dyslexic has been developed by language experts at University College London. The test will be used by children from the age of three and a half upwards, says Professor Heather van der Lely. But Dr John Rack of Dyslexia Action urged caution about the risk of "false alarms" from short screening tests. Dyslexia is a condition that can cause difficulty with reading, writing and spelling. The test has been developed by Professor van der Lely, who is director of the UCL Centre for Developmental Language Disorders and Cognitive Neuroscience. What makes this test different is that it can be carried out in only 10 minutes - and that it can be used before children are usually able to read, picking up any potential concerns before children have started full-time education. Professor van der Lely, speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, said that the test, which asks a child to repeat sentences and re-tell a story, can help with early intervention. (C)BBC

Keyword: Dyslexia
Link ID: 9876 - Posted: 01.24.2007

By STEVEN PINKER The young women had survived the car crash, after a fashion. In the five months since parts of her brain had been crushed, she could open her eyes but didn't respond to sights, sounds or jabs. In the jargon of neurology, she was judged to be in a persistent vegetative state. In crueler everyday language, she was a vegetable. So picture the astonishment of British and Belgian scientists as they scanned her brain using a kind of MRI that detects blood flow to active parts of the brain. When they recited sentences, the parts involved in language lit up. When they asked her to imagine visiting the rooms of her house, the parts involved in navigating space and recognizing places ramped up. And when they asked her to imagine playing tennis, the regions that trigger motion joined in. Indeed, her scans were barely different from those of healthy volunteers. The woman, it appears, had glimmerings of consciousness. Try to comprehend what it is like to be that woman. Do you appreciate the words and caresses of your distraught family while racked with frustration at your inability to reassure them that they are getting through? Or do you drift in a haze, springing to life with a concrete thought when a voice prods you, only to slip back into blankness? If we could experience this existence, would we prefer it to death? And if these questions have answers, would they change our policies toward unresponsive patients--making the Terri Schiavo case look like child's play? The report of this unusual case last September was just the latest shock from a bracing new field, the science of consciousness. © 2007 Time Inc

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 9875 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Theodore Dalrymple IT is not only those who take heroin who are blinded by illusions, but almost the entire population, including - or especially - the experts. Every problem in contemporary society calls forth its equal and supposedly opposite bureaucracy. The ostensible purpose of this bureaucracy is to solve that problem. But the bureaucracy quickly develops a survival instinct and so no more wishes the problem to disappear altogether than the lion wishes to kill all the gazelle in the bush and leave itself with no food for the future. In short, the bureaucracy of drug addiction needs drug addicts far more than drug addicts need the bureaucracy of drug addiction. Thanks to propaganda assiduously spread for many years by everyone who has concerned himself with the subject, there is now a standard or received view of heroin addiction that is almost universally accepted by the general public, by the addicts and by the bureaucracy. This view serves the interests of the addicts who wish to continue their habit while placing the blame elsewhere, as well as the bureaucracy that wishes to continue in employment, preferably forever and at higher rates of pay. This standard or received view conceives opiate addiction as an illness and therefore implies that there is a bona fide medical solution to it. When all the proposed "cures" fail to work, as they usually do, and when the extension of quasi-medical services to addicts is accompanied not by a decline in the prevalence of the problem but, on the contrary, by an increase, who can blame addicts if, in continuing their habit, they blame not themselves but the incompetence of those who have set themselves up as their medical saviours and offered them solutions that do not work? © The Australian

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 9874 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By MICHAEL BRUNTON As Daniel Haworth is settled into a high chair and wheeled behind a black screen, a sudden look of worry furrows his 9-month-old brow. His dark blue eyes dart left and right in search of the familiar reassurance of his mother's face. She calls his name and makes soothing noises, but Daniel senses something unusual is happening. He sucks his fingers for comfort, but, finding no solace, his mouth crumples, his body stiffens, and he lets rip an almighty shriek of distress. Mom picks him up, reassures him, and two minutes later, a chortling and alert Daniel returns to the darkened booth behind the screen and submits himself to Babylab, a unit set up in 2005 at the University of Manchester in northwest England to investigate how babies think. Watching infants piece life together, seeing their senses, emotions and motor skills take shape, is a source of mystery and endless fascination--at least to parents and developmental psychologists. We can decode their signals of distress or read a million messages into their first smile. But how much do we really know about what's going on behind those wide, innocent eyes? How much of their understanding of and response to the world comes preloaded at birth? How much is built from scratch by experience? Such are the questions being explored at Babylab. Though the facility is just 18 months old and has tested only 100 infants, it's already challenging current thinking on what babies know and how they come to know it. © 2007 Time Inc.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 9873 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JEFFREY KLUGER Trying to map the brain has always been cartography for fools. Most of the other parts of the body reveal their workings with little more than a glance. The heart is self-evidently a pump; the lungs are clearly bellows. But the brain, which does more than any organ, reveals least of all. The 3-lb. lump of wrinkled tissue--with no moving parts, no joints or valves--not only serves as the motherboard for all the body's other systems but also is the seat of your mind, your thoughts, your sense that you exist at all. You have a liver; you have your limbs. You are your brain. The struggle of the mind to fathom the brain it inhabits is the most circular kind of search--the cognitive equivalent of M.C. Escher's lithograph of two hands drawing one another. But that has not stopped us from trying. In the 19th century, German physician Franz Joseph Gall claimed to have licked the problem with his system of phrenology, which divided the brain into dozens of personality organs to which the skull was said to conform. Learn to read those bony bumps, and you could know the mind within. The artificial--and, ultimately, racist--field of craniometry made similar claims, relying on the overall size and shape of the skull to try to determine intelligence and moral capacity. Modern scientists have done a far better job of things, dividing the brain into multiple, discrete regions with satisfyingly technical names--hypothalamus, caudate nucleus, neocortex--and mapping particular functions to particular sites. Here lives abstract thought; here lives creativity; here is emotion; here is speech. But what about here and here and here and here--all the countless places and ways the brain continues to baffle us? Here still be dragons. © 2007 Time Inc.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 9872 - Posted: 06.24.2010