Even small amounts of the illegal drug ecstasy can be harmful to the brains of first time users, researchers say. The University of Amsterdam team took brain scans and carried out memory tests on 188 people with no history of ecstasy use but at risk in the future. They repeated the tests 18 months later, and found for the 59 people who had used ecstasy there was evidence of decreased blood flow and memory loss. Long-term ecstasy use is already known to be harmful. Lead researcher Maartje de Win said: "We do not know if these effects are transient or permanent. Therefore, we cannot conclude that ecstasy, even in small doses, is safe for the brain, and people should be informed of this risk." Research has shown that long-term or heavy ecstasy use can damage neurons and cause depression, anxiety, confusion, difficulty sleeping and decrease memory. However, no previous studies have looked at the side-effects of low doses of the drug on first time users. (C)BBC

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 9676 - Posted: 11.28.2006

By SARAH SKIDMORE PORTLAND, Ore. -- Movements in Pilates exercises are controlled _ sometimes moving the body only inches _ but those small motions are making a big difference to some people with Parkinson's disease. No research has been done to prove Pilates' effectiveness in reducing Parkinson's symptoms, but a growing number of patients say they are finding some relief. "I love it, it's great," said Karen Smith, 62. "It exercises muscles that otherwise don't get exercised." Parkinson's, a degenerative disorder, inhibits a person's ability to control movement. Its most common symptoms include tremors, slowness of movement, rigidity and poor balance. Smith is part of a group that meets twice a week at the Parkinson Center of the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. The center held a Pilates pilot program earlier this year, and after it found improvement in the participants' rigidity and balance it launched a twice-weekly class open to the public. © 2006 The Associated Press

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 9675 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ANDREW C. REVKIN “I think best in foam,” Douglas Martin said as he sorted through a heap of pink violin-shaped slabs in the kitchen-cum-workshop of his snug colonial house in southern Maine. Each piece of foam was a template for an experimental instrument he had built or was preparing to build, but none used the traditional spruce and maple favored through most of the hallowed 500-year history of the violin. Mr. Martin, 63, whose day job is designing sleek rowing shells that slice through ocean surf, is consumed in spare moments by a similarly unorthodox pursuit: abandoning age-old norms of acoustic instrument design as he chases his conception of the ideal violin sound. When a violinist tried an instrument at a recent workshop and one of its blunt shoulders got in the way of his wrist, Mr. Martin summarily sawed off the corner and sealed the opening with a scrap. He might be mistaken for an eccentric dabbler, except that he is far from alone. From Australia to Germany to Maui, there is something of an explosion under way in the use of science and new materials to test the limits of instrument making. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 9674 - Posted: 06.24.2010

New results challenge the view that a good night's sleep can leave behind a dense bloom of brain cells in the morning. Prior studies had found that sleep-deprived rodents grow fewer new neurons than well-rested animals, suggesting that sleep somehow promotes the birth of brain cells, called neurogenesis. But that might not be the case: researchers report instead that lack of sleep likely cuts into neurogenesis by triggering a harmful stress response. Neurogenesis is a mysterious process that can be amplified by Prozac and other depression treatments, although its exact role in the brain is unclear. Neuroscientist Elizabeth Gould of Princeton University and other researchers have found that many types of stress inhibit neurogenesis in rodents and primates. "We were very curious to see whether the reported effect of sleep deprivation on neurogenesis was related to stress or whether this is something specific to sleep," she says. To keep rats awake, Gould and her colleagues suspended individual animals above water on a cramped platform for up to 72 hours. The platform would capsize whenever the rodents lost muscle tension, which occurs during deep REM sleep, spilling them into the water and forcing them to scramble back onto their perch. After 24 and 72 hours, the researchers measured each rodent's rate of neurogenesis and concentration of a stress hormone called corticosterone, which is produced by the adrenal gland near the kidney. As expected, the animals exhibited a decline in neurogenesis after 72 hours but not after only 24 hours. Similarly, their corticosterone levels more than tripled after 72 hours of insomnia compared with that observed after the first 24 hours, meaning hormone levels shift at the right time to influence neurogenesis. © 1996-2006 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Sleep; Neurogenesis
Link ID: 9673 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Washington, D.C.--Boys and girls tend to use different parts of their brains to process some basic aspects of grammar, according to the first study of its kind, suggesting that sex is an important factor in the acquisition and use of language. Two neuroscientists from Georgetown University Medical Center discovered that boys and girls use different brain systems when they make mistakes like “Yesterday I holded the bunny”. Girls mainly use a system that is for memorizing words and associations between them, whereas boys rely primarily on a system that governs the rules of language. “Sex has been virtually ignored in studies of the learning, representation, processing and neural bases of language. This study shows that differences between males and females may be an important factor in these cognitive processes,” said the lead author, Michael Ullman, PhD, professor of neuroscience, psychology, neurology and linguistics. He added that since the brain systems tested in this study are responsible for more than just language use, the study supports the notion that “men and women may tend to process various skills differently from one another.” One potential underlying reason, suggested by other research, is that the hormone estrogen, found primarily in females, affects brain processing, Ullman said. The study, whose co-author is Joshua Hartshorne, was published earlier this year in the journal Developmental Science.

Keyword: Language; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 9672 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ABBY ELLIN ASK Sheana Director for a detailed description of herself, and chances are the word fat will come up. It is not uttered with shame or ire or any sense of embarrassment; it’s simply one of the things she is, fat. “Why should I be ashamed?” said Ms. Director, 22, a graduate student in women’s studies at San Diego State University, who wields the word with both defiance and pride, the way the gay community uses queer. “I’m fat. So what?” During her sophomore year at Smith College, Ms. Director attended a discussion on fat discrimination: the way the super-sized are marginalized, the way excessive girth is seen as a moral failing rather than the result of complicated factors. But the academic community, she felt, didn’t really give the topic proper consideration. She decided to do something about it. In December 2004, she helped found the organization Size Matters, whose goal was to promote size acceptance and positive body image. In April, the group sponsored a conference called Fat and the Academy, a three-day event at Smith of panel discussions and performances by academics, researchers, activists and artists. Nearly 150 people attended. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 9671 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Charles Wilson INDIANAPOLIS -- Step by step: That's how people defeat depression. It's also how Joe Lawson climbs mountains. For Lawson, 36, the two are intertwined. His father, Virgil A. Lawson, committed suicide in 1986 when Joe was 16. The next year, the younger Lawson climbed his first mountain during a school trip to Big Bend National Park in Texas, igniting a lifelong passion. Now the Indianapolis man is funneling that passion into Expedition Hope, his quest to scale the seven summits -- the tallest mountain on each continent -- to focus awareness on depression. "I thought, 'If I'm going to do this . . . why not do this for a good cause?' " Lawson said in a phone interview last week from Punta Arenas, Chile, en route to his next challenge, in Antarctica. His first attempt -- on Alaska's Mount McKinley in May 2005 -- failed when he fell into a hidden crevasse and injured his knee. But Lawson resumed his quest and has since climbed two of the peaks -- Mount Kosciuszko in Australia and Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa. © 2006 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 9670 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Cetaceans, the group of marine mammals that includes whales and dolphins, have demonstrated remarkable auditory and communicative abilities, as well as complex social behaviors. A new study published online November 27, 2006 in The Anatomical Record, the official journal of the American Association of Anatomists,compared a humpback whale brain with brains from several other cetacean species and found the presence of a certain type of neuron cell that is also found in humans. This suggests that certain cetaceans and hominids may have evolved side by side. The study is available online via Wiley InterScience at http://www.interscience.wiley.com/journal/ar. One feature that stood out in the humpback whale brain was the modular organization of certain cells into "islands" in the cerebral cortex that is also seen in the fin whale and other types of mammals. The authors speculate that this structural feature may have evolved in order to promote fast and efficient communication between neurons. The other notable feature was the presence of spindle cells in the humpback cortex in areas comparable to hominids and in other areas of the whale brain as well. Although the function of spindle neurons is not well understood, they are thought to be involved in cognitive processes and are affected by Alzheimer's disease and other debilitating brain disorders such as autism and schizophrenia. Spindle neurons were also found in the same location in toothed whales with the largest brains, which suggests that they may be related to brain size. The authors note that spindle neurons probably first appeared in the common ancestor of hominids about 15 million years ago, since they are observed in great apes and humans, but not in lesser apes and other primates; in cetaceans they evolved earlier, possibly as early as 30 million years ago.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 9669 - Posted: 11.27.2006

By HARRIET BROWN On a sweltering evening in July of last year, I sat at the end of my daughter Kitty's bed, holding a milkshake made from a cup of Häagen-Dazs coffee ice cream and a cup of whole milk. Kitty (the pet name we've used since she was a baby) shivered, wrapped in a thick quilt. "Here's your milkshake," I said, aiming for a tone that was friendly but firm, a tone that would make her reach for the glass and begin drinking. Six-hundred ninety calories — that's what this milkshake represented to me. But to Kitty it was the object of her deepest fear and loathing. "You're trying to make me fat," she said in a high-pitched, distorted voice that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. She rocked, clutching her stomach, chanting over and over: "I'm a fat pig. I'm so fat." That summer, Kitty was 14. She was 4-foot-11 and weighed 71 pounds. I could see the angles and curves of each bone under her skin. Her hair, once shiny, was lank and falling out in clumps. Her breath carried the odor of ketosis, the sour smell of the starving body digesting itself. I kept my voice neutral. "You need to drink the milkshake," I repeated. She lifted her head, and for a second I saw the 2-year-old Kitty, her mouth quirked in a half-smile, her dark eyes full of humor. It was enough to keep me from shrieking: Just drink the damn milkshake! Enough to keep me sitting on the end of the bed for the next two hours, talking in a low voice, lifting the straw to her lips over and over. The milkshake had long since melted when she swallowed the last of it, curled up in bed and closed her eyes. Her gaunt face stayed tense even in sleep. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 9668 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Rachel Nowak COULD the end of sign language for deaf children be in sight? A spate of new studies has shown that profoundly deaf babies who receive cochlear implants in their first year of life develop language and speech skills remarkably close to those of hearing children. Many of the children even learn to sing passably well and function almost flawlessly in the hearing world. These findings may sound like a triumph to audiologists and the hearing parents of deaf babies. But they have done little to convince those in the deaf community who maintain that it is unethical to give deaf babies cochlear implants, which bypass damaged areas of the ear and stimulate the auditory nerve directly. "The idea of operating on a healthy baby makes us all recoil," says Harlan Lane, a psycholinguist at Northeastern University in Boston. "Deaf people argue that they use a different language, and with it comes a different culture, but there is certainly nothing wrong with them that needs fixing with a surgeon's scalpel. We should listen." Ever since cochlear implants became commercially available 20 years ago they have been seen as a threat to the culture and language of those born profoundly deaf. The fiercest opposition has been to their use in children, who could otherwise grow up proficient in sign language. Until recently there was no good evidence that implants routinely improved children's chances of developing normal speech and language, raising fears that those fitted with implants would be stuck in a no-man's land - part of neither the hearing world nor the deaf one. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Hearing; Language
Link ID: 9667 - Posted: 06.24.2010

When a faulty protein wreaks havoc in cells and causes disease, researchers are usually quick to point the finger at a wayward gene. Now scientists are learning that some neurodegenerative diseases can develop even though a gene is perfectly normal. The diseases can be caused when the genetic instructions contained in the gene are not executed properly, leading to a lethal buildup of malformed proteins in brain cells. The new studies by Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator Susan L. Ackerman and colleagues at The Jackson Laboratory point to a novel mechanism behind the buildup of the toxic sludge that accumulates in neurons. Researchers have long known that neurodegenerative disorders can be caused by the gradual yet persistent accumulation of misfolded proteins in neurons that eventually triggers cell death. But this new mechanism points to errors in executing the genetic instructions, which are distinct from known causes of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's and Huntington's diseases. HHMI investigator Susan L. Ackerman and her colleagues reported their findings in an advance online publication of the journal Nature on August 13, 2006. Ackerman's group collaborated on the studies with co-author Paul Schimmel at The Scripps Research Institute. The researchers made their discovery by studying mice with a mutation called sticky (sti). Although named for the sticky appearance of their fur, the mice harbor much more serious problems beneath their unkempt coats: poor muscle control, or ataxia, due to death of Purkinje cells in a region of the brain called the cerebellum. © 2006 Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Keyword: Movement Disorders; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 9666 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Older schizophrenia drugs may be as effective as the new generation of medications, experts have suggested. A Manchester University study shows patients respond just as well, and perhaps better, to the older ones. The Archives of General Psychiatry findings run contrary to the widely held view that newer and dearer drugs are safer and more effective. But critics say the newer drugs are better and preferred by patients because they have fewer side effects. The new UK results back similar work by US investigators who recently suggested it might be better to switch back to prescribing the older drugs to cut healthcare costs. The NHS funded the latest work to assess whether the bigger price tag of newer "atypical" antipsychotics was offset by improvements in patients' quality of life or reductions in the use of health and social care services. Atypical antipsychotics, which include risperidone, quetiapine, clozapine and olanzapine, cost at least 10 times more than their predecessors. The Manchester team, along with colleagues from the University of Cambridge, Institute of Psychiatry and Imperial College London, studied 227 schizophrenia patients for whom a change in drug treatment was being considered because of ineffectiveness or harmful side effects. Experienced doctors decided which type of antipsychotic - newer or older - would be best for each patient. The patients were assessed before and 12, 26 and 52 weeks after their drugs were switched, using measurements of quality of life, symptoms, side effects, and satisfaction with the drug. Overall, the newer atypical drugs showed no advantage in side effects or effectiveness. (C)BBC

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 9665 - Posted: 11.25.2006

"Old dogs" may really find it hard to learn new tricks, a study of how memories form has suggested. University of Oxford scientists say that adults may find learning more difficult than children because their brains store memories differently. The study, in the journal Neuron, looked at nerve cell activity - the basis of learning and memory - in rats. Experts said younger brains may learn things more easily, but older brains may store information more efficiently. The researchers, backed by the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust looked at the nerve cell processes in young and old rats. Nerve cells communicate by sending signals though synapses, junctions between the cells. But some synapses are "silent" and are not activated when chemical signals are passed between cells. The team used highly detailed laser imaging, which looked at images one micron wide - a 100th the width of a human hair, to look at how synapses behave. They focused on electrical activity and the movement of molecules called calcium ions. They found that silent synapses are more prevalent in young brains, and are called on when new memories are laid down. When this happens, key receptors - which detect stimuli - are called to the surface of the cell, transforming it into an active synapse. In older brains, there were fewer silent synapses - which the researchers believe is because they have been used up. (C)BBC

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Alzheimers
Link ID: 9664 - Posted: 11.25.2006

By GARDINER HARRIS Their rooms are a mess, their trophies line the walls, and both have profiles on MySpace.com. Stephen and Jacob Meszaros seem like typical teenagers until their mother offers a glimpse into the family’s medicine cabinet. "We always debate meds," said Billy Igafo-Te'o. Mr. Igafo-Te'O is the father of Michael Igafo-Te'O, 12, who takes four drugs and has damaged their home so often that they no longer repair it. Bottles of psychiatric medications fill the shelves. Stephen, 15, takes the antidepressants Zoloft and Desyrel for depression, the anticonvulsant Lamictal to moderate his moods and the stimulant Focalin XR to improve concentration. Jacob, 14, takes Focalin XR for concentration, the anticonvulsant Depakote to moderate his moods, the antipsychotic Risperdal to reduce anger and the antihypertensive Catapres to induce sleep. Over the last three years, each boy has been prescribed 28 different psychiatric drugs. “Sometimes, when you look at all the drugs they’ve taken, you wonder, ‘Wow, did I really do this to my kids?’ ” said their mother, Tricia Kehoe of Sharpsville, Pa. “But I’ve seen them without the meds, and there’s a major difference.” There is little doubt that some psychiatric medicines, taken by themselves, work well in children. But a growing number of children and teenagers in the United States are taking not just a single drug for discrete psychiatric difficulties but combinations of powerful and even life-threatening medications to treat a dizzying array of problems. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 9663 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Having a word stuck on the tip of the tongue is enough to activate an unusual condition in which some people perceive words as having different tastes, according to a new study. When people with the inherited condition, called synesthesia, looked at pictures of objects that come up infrequently in conversation, they perceived a taste before they could think of the word. Some researchers believe synesthesia is an extreme version of what happens in everyone's mind. If so, the result suggests that all abstract thoughts are associated with specific perceptions, says neuropsychologist Julia Simner of the University of Edinburgh, co-author of the report. "The extent to which abstract thought is truly abstract--that's really what the question is." Simner and her colleague Jamie Ward of University College London tested six synesthetes by showing them pictures of 96 uncommon objects such as a gazebo, sextant, catamaran, artichoke or castanets. Out of 550 trials in total, Simner and Ward induced 89 tip-of-the-tongue states. In 17 of these "um, um" moments, the synesthete reported perceiving a taste while still trying to conjure the word. In short, the word's meaning alone elicited the taste. To confirm that these reports were truthful the researchers called the participants out of the blue a year later and retested them. The synesthetes consistently associated the same tastes with the same words, the researchers report in the November 22 Nature. © 1996-2006 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Language
Link ID: 9662 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Why people think that rivals are better looking than they really are IF YOU have ever sat alone in a bar, depressed by how good-looking everybody else seems to be, take comfort—it may be evolution playing a trick on you. A study just published in Evolution and Human Behavior by Sarah Hill, a psychologist at the University of Texas, Austin, shows that people of both sexes reckon the sexual competition they face is stronger than it really is. She thinks that is useful: it makes people try harder to attract or keep a mate. Dr Hill showed heterosexual men and women photographs of people. She asked them to rate both how attractive those of their own sex would be to the opposite sex, and how attractive the members of the opposite sex were. She then compared the scores for the former with the scores for the latter, seen from the other side. Men thought that the men they were shown were more attractive to women than they really were, and women thought the same of the women. Dr Hill had predicted this outcome, thanks to error-management theory—the idea that when people (or, indeed, other animals) make errors of judgment, they tend to make the error that is least costly. The notion was first proposed by Martie Haselton and David Buss, two of Dr Hill's colleagues, to explain a puzzling quirk in male psychology. © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2006.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 9661 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Conventional wisdom holds that myelin, the sheet of fat that coats a neuron's axon — a long fiber that conducts the neuron's electrical impulses — is akin to the wrapping around an electrical wire, protecting and fostering efficient signaling. But the research of UCLA neurology professor George Bartzokis, M.D., has already shown that myelin problems are implicated in diseases that afflict both young and old — from schizophrenia to Alzheimer's. Now, in a report published in the journal Biological Psychiatry and available online, Bartzokis argues that the miles of myelin coating in our brain are the key "evolutionary change that defines our uniqueness as a species" and, further, may also be the cause of "our unique vulnerability to highly prevalent neuropsychiatric disorders." The paper argues that viewing the brain as a myelin-dependent "Internet" may be key to developing new and novel treatments against disease and aid in assessing the efficacy of currently available treatments, including the use of nicotine (delivered by a patch, not smoking), which may enhance the growth and maintenance of myelin. Myelin, argues Bartzokis, who directs the UCLA Memory Disorders and Alzheimer's Disease Clinic, is "a recent invention of evolution. Vertebrates have it; invertebrates don't. And humans have more than any other species." Bartzokis studied the reported effects of cholinergic treatments, using drugs that are known to improve a neuron's synaptic signaling in people who suffer diseases like Alzheimer's. Furthermore, he notes, some clinical and epidemiological data suggest that such treatments may modify or even delay these diseases.

Keyword: Alzheimers; Glia
Link ID: 9660 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Mutations in a key brain protein known to underlie a form of Parkinson's disease (PD) wreaks its damage by stunting the normal growth and branching of neurons, researchers have found. They have pinpointed the malfunction of the protein made by mutant forms of the gene called LRRK2 and how it affects neurons, ultimately leading to their death. The loss of dopamine-producing neurons is central to the pathology of PD, and loss of connections among such neurons is an early feature of the PD disease process. The researchers, Asa Abeliovich and colleagues at Columbia University, said their findings could lead to animal models for studying the form of PD and ultimately to new treatments for the disease. They reported their findings in the November 22, 2006, issue of the journal Neuron, published by Cell Press. The researchers launched their study of LRRK2 because other scientists had identified mutations in the gene in an inherited form of PD that mimics the clinical and pathological features of the common sporadic form of the disease. LRRK2 stands for "leucine-rich repeat kinase-2," which means that the LRRK2 protein is an enzyme called a kinase--a biochemical switch that activates other proteins by attaching a molecule called a phosphate to them. In their experiments, when the researchers generated mutant forms of the enzyme, they discovered that the mutants showed higher-than-normal enzymatic kinase activity compared to the normal version. When they introduced the mutant forms into cultures of neurons, they saw a reduction in the growth and branching of the neurons.

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 9659 - Posted: 11.25.2006

Rachel Crellin Until three years ago teacher Barbara Cullen was fit and healthy, spending most of her leisure time outdoors pursuing various hobbies which included a passion for surfing. Suddenly out of the blue she started getting severe headaches. As they first began around Christmas time she wondered if it was due to yuletide excess, but the headaches became more and more severe. All her husband Fred could do was to sit and watch. "To actually watch somebody holding their head in their hands and then getting down on their knees on the floor and literally shaking, you think this is not a normal headache," he said. "I initially assumed this is something that she's going to die from, she's going to have a brain haemhorrage." Barbara was getting the headaches up to eight times every day - the pain was so intense that she began to contemplate taking her own life. "It's excruciating and it's there all the time, it doesn't go away. And being in constant pain you are dragged down, it's a vicious circle, because I can't sleep, I'm constantly tired. You have to take morphine-based painkillers and you become disorientated and it would be quite easy to just take a few extra and just get rid of the pain once and for all." The National is one of Britain's leading brain hospitals where around 100 consultants treat everything from head injuries to Parkinson's disease, paralysis to epilepsy. Some doctors here are the only specialist of their kind in the country and for many patients the National is their last chance. At the National Barbara's headaches were diagnosed as cluster headaches. The pain they cause is thought to be ten times worse than childbirth - they have been nicknamed suicide headaches because of the excruciating pain - like being stabbed in the head with a needle. Barbara's only chance of getting rid of the pain was to have an operation to implant an occipital nerve stimulator into the back of her head. (C)BBC

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 9658 - Posted: 11.22.2006

By Sara Goudarzi From male killer whales that ride the dorsal fin of another male to female bonobos that rub their genitals together, the animal kingdom tolerates all kinds of lifestyles. A first-ever museum display, "Against Nature?," which opened last month at the University of Oslo's Natural History Museum in Norway, presents 51 species of animals exhibiting homosexuality. "Homosexuality has been observed in more than 1,500 species, and the phenomenon has been well described for 500 of them," said Petter Bockman, project coordinator of the exhibition. The idea, however, is rarely discussed in the scientific community and is often dismissed as unnatural because it doesn't appear to benefit the larger cause of species continuation. "I think to some extent people don't think it's important because we went through all this time period in sociobiology where everything had to be tied to reproduction and reproductive success," said Linda Wolfe, who heads the Department of Anthropology at East Carolina University. "If it doesn't have [something to do] with reproduction it's not important." © 2006 MSNBC.com

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 9657 - Posted: 06.24.2010