By Emily Singer New research is fundamentally changing our understanding of both addiction and recovery. Dozens of new alcoholism medications are in preclinical or clinical testing; many of them target novel pathways, such as the exaggerated stress response that both humans and animals develop under the influence of alcohol addiction, an amped up version of the typical release of adrenaline and other chemicals when we perceive a threat. But neither new treatments nor existing drugs are making their way to enough patients, says Mark Willenbring, director of the Division of Treatment and Recovery Research at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. An antirelapse drug called naltrexone, for example, was approved in the 1990s but is prescribed for only about four percent of those with alcohol dependence. It blocks the brain's reward mechanisms, which are often triggered by drinking. Willenbring is promoting a new system, in which patients are treated by their primary-care doctors in office visits. He says this model will appeal to people who either don't want or don't need lengthy counseling or inpatient programs. Willenbring spoke with Technology Review about what works in treating alcohol addiction. TR: What's the biggest problem with the treatments for alcohol dependence available today? MW: The number-one problem is that so few people with alcohol dependence actually get treatment. Over the lifetime, it's probably fewer than 10 percent.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 9548 - Posted: 10.31.2006

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Depression can lead to brittle bones, Israeli scientists found in a new study released on Monday that also suggested anti-depressant drugs could be used to treat osteoporosis. The scientists, at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, said mice that were given drugs to induce behavior similar to human depression suffered from a loss of mass in their bones, mainly their hips and vertebrae. After being given anti-depressants, the bone density of the mice increased, along with their level of activity and social interaction, the scientists said. "The new findings ... point for the first time to depression as an important element in causing bone mass loss and osteoporosis," Hebrew University professor Raz Yirmiya, who took part in the study, said in a statement. Depression activates the "sympathetic nervous system," which responds to impending danger or stress, causing the release of a chemical compound called noradrenaline that harms bone-building cells, the study showed. Anti-depressant drugs block noradrenaline and reverse its negative effects, according to the findings, which will be published this week in the American journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences). © 1996-2006 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 9547 - Posted: 06.24.2010

EVANSTON, Ill. -- A new study that takes a rare look at the physiological, social and emotional dynamics of day-to-day experiences in real-life settings shows that when older adults go to bed lonely, sad or overwhelmed, they have elevated levels of cortisol shortly after waking the next morning. Elevated levels of cortisol -- a stress hormone linked to depression, obesity and other health problems when chronic -- actually cue the body on a day-to-day basis that it is time to rev up to deal with loneliness and other negative experiences, according to Northwestern University's Emma K. Adam, the lead investigator of the study. The study, "Day-to-day experience-cortisol dynamics," will be published online the week of Oct. 30 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). "You've gone to bed with loneliness, sadness, feelings of being overwhelmed, then along comes a boost of hormones in the morning to give you the energy you need to meet the demands of the day," said Adam, assistant professor of education and social policy and faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research. The morning cortisol boost could help adults who went to bed with troubled or overwhelming feelings go out in the world the next day and have the types of positive social experiences that help regulate hormone levels, she said.

Keyword: Stress; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 9546 - Posted: 10.31.2006

Amanda Leigh Haag Elephants possess the highly cerebral ability to recognize their own jumbo reflections in mirrors, scientists have found. Traditionally, only an elite group of animals including humans, chimpanzees and orangutans have been proved to be capable of self-recognition in a mirror. A lone study several years ago also reported that dolphins could recognize their own gaze in a glass1. Researchers have suspected that elephants might possess the capacity for self-recognition and self-awareness because of their highly developed social behaviour. A study reported this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science documents the evidence for three clever elephants2. "All three showed self-directed behavior in front of the mirror, and thus we were convinced that all three recognized that the mirror image was themselves," says Joshua Plotnik, a doctoral student from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and the lead author on the paper. To study the elephants' behavior, the researchers placed an "elephant-proof, jumbo-sized" mirror, 2.5 metres high by 2.5 metres wide, inside the enclosure of three female Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) at the Bronx Zoo in New York City. The team used a still camera on a roof to observe the animals over a period of five months. ©2006 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Intelligence
Link ID: 9545 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A gene mutation which affects brain development increases the risk of autism, scientists have suggested. US researchers looked at 1,200 children with the condition. Mutations were more common in children with autism and having the altered gene increased the risk of autism by more than double. Experts said the findings, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were interesting, but needed to be reproduced in other studies. Autism is a developmental disability that affects the way a person communicates and interacts with other people. The MET gene is known to be involved in brain development, regulation of the immune system, and repair of the gastrointestinal system. All of these parts of the body can be affected in children with autism. The researchers, from the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development, found that the mutation did not stop the gene working, but made it less active. The mutation was common in children with autism, and appeared more frequently in families that had more than one child with autism. Overall, this mutation raised the risk of autism by 2.27 times. Writing in PNAS, the researchers said: "Although yet to be identified environmental factors likely contribute to the development of autism, heritability studies suggest that the impact of those factors must be imposed upon individuals genetically predisposed to the disorder. Given the MET gene's known involvement in the development of the higher brain regions, the researchers say their findings could provide leads in pursuing the brain abnormalities that cause autism. (C)BBC

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 9544 - Posted: 10.30.2006

A genetic link to the symptoms of schizophrenia has been found, according to researchers. An Edinburgh University team found people carrying a variant of a gene called neuregulin had a higher chance of developing psychotic symptoms. The findings, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, could possibly point to new treatments. The study followed 200 young people, all at a high risk of developing schizophrenia, for 10 years. Schizophrenia is known to run in families, and all of the volunteers had two or more relatives with the condition. And being aged between 16 and 25 at the start of the study, they were on the cusp of the period when symptoms were most likely to develop. To investigate why some people go on to develop the condition and why others do not, the researchers carried out interviews, brain scans, psychological tests and genetic analysis. They discovered participants who carried a variation of the neuregulin gene were much more likely to develop psychotic symptoms associated with schizophrenia, such as paranoia or hearing voices, than those without the gene variant. Brain scans also revealed those carrying the variant gene were more likely to show abnormal brain activity in the frontal and temporal regions - areas often associated with schizophrenia. Other studies have found the gene variant is involved with switching on and off a gene associated with brain development. Dr Jeremy Hall, lead researcher on the paper, based at the division of psychiatry, Edinburgh University, said: "These major mental illnesses have really been for a very long time a big black box in terms of what is causing them - it is not that long ago that people thought you got schizophrenia because you had a bad mother. And treatments have not advanced a lot over the last 50 years. (C)BBC

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 9543 - Posted: 10.30.2006

DALLAS –- A test using cultured cells provides an effective way to screen drugs against Huntington's disease and shows that two compounds – memantine and riluzole – are most effective at keeping cells alive under conditions that mimic the disorder, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers report. "These drugs have been tested in a variety of Huntington's disease models and some HD human trials and results are very difficult to interpret," said Dr. Ilya Bezprozvanny, associate professor of physiology and senior author of the study, available online and published in today's issue of Neuroscience Letters. "For some of these drugs conflicting results were obtained by different research groups, but it is impossible to figure out where the differences came from because studies were not conducted in parallel. "We systematically and quantititatively tested the clinically relevant drugs side-by-side in the same HD model. That has never been done before," said Dr. Bezprozvanny. Huntington's disease is a fatal genetic disorder, manifesting in adulthood, in which certain brain cells die. The disease results in uncontrolled movements, emotional disturbance and loss of mental ability. The offspring of a person with Huntington's have a 50 percent chance of inheriting it. More than 250,000 people in the United States have the disorder or are at risk for it. There is no cure, but several drugs are used or are being tested to relieve symptoms or slow Huntington's progression.

Keyword: Huntingtons
Link ID: 9542 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times Shikari is listening -- listening to tones being generated by a computer. Her small, rounded ears perk up as each tone is sounded. When the 12-year-old, 550-pound polar bear hears a tone, she has been trained to press her nose on a pad. Through the bars, researcher JoAnne Simerson gives her a tasty, brownish morsel called "omnivore chow." It's all for science -- and for oil and gas drilling. Shikari and her twin sister, Chinook, are part of the first study of polar bear hearing. The project began in September at San Diego Zoo, in cooperation with SeaWorld. With the oil and gas industries looking to explore and expand drilling activity in Alaska, researchers want to discover what the noise from such exploration would do to polar bears, particularly females who are pregnant or nursing cubs. Funding for the study, up to $60,000, comes from BP, formerly known as British Petroleum. The Louisiana conservation group Polar Bears International acted as middleman for the grant. Although the hearing study is being underwritten by the oil industry, researchers say they are not taking sides in the hot issue of expanding oil drilling in Alaska. The findings will be printed in a scientific journal late next year. ©2006 San Francisco Chronicle

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 9541 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Susan Milius Gary Gerald studies animal movement, so when two female brown snakes in the lab had babies, he wanted to see them in motion. He watched them crawling on a solid surface, then moved the youngsters to water in a modified gutter. But the system didn't work as planned for the newborn snakes. "I would pick the little guys up and drop them right in the water, and right when I dropped them, they flipped upside down. They stayed motionless. Their bodies were rigid so if you touched one part, they'd spin like if you touch a stick floating on the water," says Gerald. He concluded that this was a new example of an animal feigning death. Baby brown snakes (Storeria dekayi) are the latest addition to the long list of animals that practice some form of the strategy scientists call extreme immobility. Gerald, a physiological ecologist at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, described his findings in August at the annual meeting of the Animal Behavior Society. The list of animals that play possum includes not only the Virginia opossum, of course, but also some 21 snake species and plenty of other creatures as different as bison on the prairies and brittle stars in the oceans. Many of these animals freeze when a predator appears, and standard wisdom maintains that predators lose interest in prey that doesn't move. Yet some biologists now question that truism and are looking for a fuller explanation for the roles that feigned death might play in animal interactions. ©2006 Science Service.

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 9540 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Susan Milius Scientists have officially unveiled the DNA code of the western honeybee, the first genome to be sequenced for an animal with ultrastratified societies. The bees are among the select species in which a few individuals reproduce while others in the colony raise the young and do the chores. The honeybee genome, the whole sequence of its DNA building blocks, shows some patterns that fit old ideas of social living plus some patterns that demand new thinking, reports the consortium of bee-genome researchers. The scientists report the genome's highlights in the Oct. 26 Nature. More than 40 other analyses also appeared in journals including Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Genome Research. "The sequencing of the honeybee genome is unquestionably a historic event," comments Ben Oldroyd, a bee specialist at the University of Sydney in Australia. The honeybee's genome is the fifth to be sequenced among insects, says Gene Robinson of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a founding member of the bee consortium. Geneticists first did the lab fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, and have since published reports on another fruit fly species, the malaria mosquito, and the silkworm. ©2006 Science Service.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Animal Communication
Link ID: 9539 - Posted: 06.24.2010

DAVIS—It’s all about “the birds and the bees.” And now, “the silkworm moths and the fruit flies.” A chemical ecologist and a genetics researcher at the University of California, Davis, have joined forces to trick fruit flies into thinking that silkworm moths are potential mates. Groundbreaking research in the labs of chemical ecologist Walter Leal and genetics researcher Deborah Kimbrell shows that genetically engineered fruit flies responded to the silkworm moth scent of a female. The practical implications of the findings could be widespread. Methods that can attract or repel insects have important applications for agricultural pests and medical entomology. The research could lead to designing better chemicals to attract insects and designing better chemicals to suppress insect communication. That is because insects communicate or smell through their antennae. Many insect species, including silkworm moths, release sex pheromones or chemical signals to attract a mate. “Silkworm moths utilize smell more strongly than any other senses,” said Leal, professor and chair of the Department of Entomology. “Moths keep on the trail of a scent until they find a female.” “We got a very clear response,” he said. “Our electrophysiological recordings and direct stimulation testing showed that the transgenic fruit flies definitely responded to the moth pheromone.” © 2006, The Regents of the University of California.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 9538 - Posted: 06.24.2010

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—What makes a bee a he or a she? Three years ago, scientists pinpointed a gene called csd that determines gender in honey bees, and now a research team led by University of Michigan evolutionary biologist Jianzhi "George" Zhang has unraveled details of how the gene evolved. The new insights could prove useful in designing strategies for breeding honey bees, which are major pollinators of economically important crops—and notoriously tricky to breed. The findings of Zhang and collaborators appear in a special issue of Genome Research devoted to the biology of the honey bee. The issue will be published online and in print Oct. 26, coinciding with the publication of the honey bee genome sequence in the journal Nature. Scientists have long known that in bees—as well as wasps, ants, ticks, mites and some 20 percent of all animals—unfertilized eggs develop into males, while females typically result from fertilized eggs. But that's not the whole story, and the discovery in 2003 of csd (the complementary sex determination gene) helped fill in the blanks. The gene has many versions, or alleles. Males inherit a single copy of the gene; bees that inherit two copies, each a different version, become female. Bees that have the misfortune of inheriting two identical copies of csd develop into sterile males but are quickly eaten at the larval stage by female worker bees. © 2005 The Regents of the University of Michigan

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 9537 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Couples with fertility problems are three times more likely to have a child with serious conditions like autism and cerebral palsy, research suggests. The extra risk is likely to be caused by health problems that make it difficult for these couples to conceive in the first place, scientists believe. Fertility treatments, such as IVF, may contribute too, an American Society for Reproductive Medicine meeting heard. But the experts stressed the overall risk was still relatively low. They said couples should be counselled about the risks and encouraged to improve their health before undergoing fertility treatment. Professor Mary Croughan, who led the University of California research on 4,000 women and their children aged up to six years, explained those with fertility problems were also more likely to have other health problems, such as heart disease and diabetes, and were more at risk of pregnancy and labour complications. She said: "What has caused them to be unable to conceive goes on to cause problems. It is as if a brick wall has stopped you becoming pregnant. Treatment allows you to climb over the wall, but it is still there and it goes on to cause problems." Her team found the risk of five conditions - autism, mental retardation, cerebral palsy, seizures and cancer - was 2.7 times higher among the children born to 2,000 women who experienced fertility problems than among those born to the 2,000 women who did not have difficult conceiving. For autism alone, the risk was four times higher. Moderate developmental problems such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, learning disabilities or serious sight or hearing disorders were also 40% more common in the children born to the couples who struggled to start a family.

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 9536 - Posted: 10.26.2006

COLUMBUS , Ohio – In the long run, a drink or two a day may be good for the brain. Researchers found that moderate amounts of alcohol – amounts equivalent to a couple of drinks a day for a human – improved the memories of laboratory rats. Such a finding may have implications for serious neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, said Matthew During, the study's senior author and a professor of molecular virology, immunology and cancer genetics at Ohio State University . “There is some evidence suggesting that mild to moderate alcohol consumption can protect against diseases like Alzheimer's in humans,” said During. “But it's not apparent how this happens.” He and his colleague, Margaret Kalev-Zylinska, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Auckland, in New Zealand, uncovered a neuronal mechanism that may help explain the link between alcohol and improved memory. “We saw a noticeable change on the surface of certain neurons in rats that were given alcohol,” During said. “This change may have something to do with the positive effects of alcohol on memory.” The researchers presented their findings at the annual Society for Neuroscience conference in Atlanta.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 9535 - Posted: 06.24.2010

CLEVELAND -- Having a child with bottled up emotions isn't a good thing. Psychologists from Case Western Reserve University have found that the range of emotions that children use in play can be used as an indicator of how emotionally charged their memories will be. Emotions--whether positive or negative--in play offer important information to people working with children about how able they will be at expressing the emotional side of their memories. Accessing emotional memories is important for adjusting to traumas experienced. Many children are unable to start talking about their emotions or memories with someone new, but watching children play can help child therapists and others working with children gauge how open children might be to talking about the emotions associated with past memories, according to Sandra Russ, Case professor of psychology. She has been studying the emotional side of play and how play benefits children for more than 20 years. Russ, with Ethan D. Schafer, discusses this discovery in the Creativity Research Journal article, "Affect in Fantasy Play, Emotion in Memories, and Divergent Thinking." In the past, this link between emotions in play therapy and emotions in memories was observed but had not been formally studied in children.

Keyword: Emotions; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 9534 - Posted: 10.26.2006

Combining data from years of laboratory work with the power of bioinformatics, researchers have created a map that helps explain how the brain generates the assortment of specialized proteins it needs to process information. The map, created by Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator Robert B. Darnell and colleagues at The Rockefeller University, describes the rules that govern the activity of a protein called Nova. By regulating a process called alternative splicing, Nova helps brain cells produce a set of proteins involved in communication at synapses, or the junctions between neurons. The new study, published October 25, 2006, in an advance online publication of the journal Nature, furthers understanding of a process that, when not properly regulated, can lead to cancer, neurologic diseases, or other ailments. Limited to the same set of genes that encode the instructions for all cells in the body, brain cells rely heavily on alternative splicing to generate the protein diversity they need to function properly. The process, at work in all cells in organisms ranging from fruit flies to humans, chooses bits and pieces of an RNA copy of a gene, piecing segments together to form a blueprint for the precise protein that is needed. Using alternative splicing to assemble different patterns, a single gene can give rise to multiple — sometimes thousands — of proteins. Scientific interest in alternative splicing has grown in recent years, in part because the phenomenon helps explain how humans can be so complex despite having a genome that is surprisingly similar in size to that of simpler organisms, like flies and worms. © 2006 Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 9533 - Posted: 06.24.2010

An hour from now, will you remember reading this? It all depends on proteins in your brain called NMDA receptors, which allow your neurons to communicate with each other. Jon W. Johnson, University of Pittsburgh associate professor of neuroscience, and former Pitt graduate student Anqi Qian, now of Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, have discovered how different types of NMDA (N-methyl-d-aspartate) receptors perform varied functions. Their findings are published in the current issue of the Journal of Neuroscience in a paper titled "Permeant Ion Effects on External Mg2+ Block of NR1/2D NMDA Receptors." Communication between cells in the brain depends on specialized molecular receptors that conduct charged particles, or ions, between the outside and inside of cells. Ions also modify how receptors work. In this paper, Johnson and Qian studied the effects of ions on receptors and found them to vary between different types of receptor molecules. They used computer modeling to show that variation in how ions interact with receptors combined with variation in the structure of receptors is responsible for specialization of receptor function. "This research helps explain how evolution accomplished a critical goal: producing receptor proteins with finely tuned properties that help optimize brain function," said Johnson.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 9532 - Posted: 10.25.2006

By Faye Flam, Inquirer Staff Writer When scientists pooled dozens of studies of sex differences last year, they found that while we're quite different on the playground and somewhat different in the bedroom, we're surprisingly similar in the classroom and the boardroom. Those results showed men, on average, can throw a baseball farther, are more open to one-night stands, and masturbate more often, says University of Wisconsin psychologist Janet Hyde, who led the project. She says the notion that women are more emotional and men more logical and mathematical is mostly stereotype. And now a new study released in Friday's issue of the journal Science shows how stereotypes can be self-reinforcing. Psychologists from the University of British Columbia found that the mere suggestion of genetic inferiority, true or not, can make you perform worse on tests. The researchers gave several hundred women a math test made up of SAT and GRE-type problems. They also included a fake verbal test in which they embedded two different messages. Half the subjects got the message that men outperform women by 5 points because there are genes on the Y chromosome that facilitate math. The other half read that men perform better because teachers favor boys in math classes. Both messages were fabrications, says Steven Heine, co-author of the study. When they tallied the scores, the women who got the genetic message scored significantly worse than the ones who got the environment message.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 9531 - Posted: 10.25.2006

Sometimes hunting down the best mate can backfire. The theory of sexual selection posits that choosy females seek out mates with elaborate antlers or splashy plumage, for example, because these traits might signify good genes that will lead to hearty offspring. But researchers report that top-breeding fruit flies of both sexes produced worse-breeding descendents, primarily because the mating prowess of each parent did not translate to offspring of the opposite sex. The result supports the idea that some genes can be good for one gender but bad for the other, which may limit the power of sexual selection. In theory, sexual selection should weed out the less useful genes over time, but animals are nonetheless extremely variable in their genes, notes evolutionary geneticist Adam Chippindale of Queens University in Kingston, Ontario. One reason could be that the same genes are beneficial to one sex but harmful to the other, resulting in a genetic tug-of-war. If true, males or females that have high "fitness" (generate lots of offspring) compared with their counterparts would produce relatively unfit offspring of the other sex. "There could be kind of a dark side to 'good' genes," Chippindale says. Despite some experimental signs of such fitness reversals, researchers had not tested the effect thoroughly in the lab. To identify a reversal, Chippindale and his colleague Alison Pischedda raised multiple lines of male and female Drosophila melanogaster, some of high fitness and others of low fitness. The researchers then mated the flies in all possible combinations and measured their progeny’s reproductive success. As predicted, flies that found fit mates got a bum deal: Sons of fit mothers were 11 percent less fit than those of unfit moms, and daughters of fit dads were 7 percent less fit than their counterparts. © 1996-2006 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 9530 - Posted: 06.24.2010

We all know pollution can affect our health, but now scientists say the toxins we're exposed to could also affect our children and even our grandchildren. Washington State University researchers found that exposing pregnant rats to certain pesticides caused a big increase in numerous diseases for at least the next four generations. Michael Skinner and his colleagues first reported in 2005 that giving high doses of vinclozolin to pregnant rats caused male infertility that was passed down to subsequent generations. But that study only looked at effects in relatively young offspring. But as they report in two new papers in the journal Endocrinology, when Skinner's team followed the generations of rats for much longer, they saw plenty of other effects, including breast tumors, prostate disease, kidney disease, immune abnormalities and premature aging. All of these changes took place without any changes in the rats' DNA code. Chemical tags can attach to DNA and act like "stop signs" to turn genes off. Instead, these rapid and dramatic changes are "epigenetic"-- the result of chemical stop signs turning certain genes on or off due to environmental factors. "This is one of the first transgenerational effects of an environmental toxicant identified," Skinner wrote, "and the first indication that epigenetic mechanisms can permanently alter the germ-line and genetic traits of all subsequent generations and progeny of an exposed individual." © ScienCentral, 2000-2006.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Neurotoxins
Link ID: 9529 - Posted: 06.24.2010