Rowan Hooper A drug currently used to treat Alzheimer’s disease has shown promise in clinical trials as a treatment for patients with traumatic brain injuries. The drug, rivastigmine, works by boosting the levels of a chemical messenger in the brain involved in memory and learning. Jonathan Silver at New York University School of Medicine, US, and colleagues recruited 134 patients with brain injuries at 19 centres around the country and divided them into a treatment group and a placebo group. Patients in the treatment group took a minimum dose of 1.5 milligrams of rivastigmine per day, which was increased to 6 milligrams per day if patients could tolerate it – side effects included nausea, cold symptoms and headaches. After 12 weeks, researchers assessed learning, memory, recognition, attention, problem solving and long-term recall. Severely or moderately impaired patients taking rivastigmine showed significantly improved scores compared to those on placebo. In practical terms, this meant that patients felt that things were "clearer" and they were less forgetful. They also said that the drug made them feel less bothered by many things going on around them at once. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Alzheimers; Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 9334 - Posted: 06.24.2010

WASHINGTON, DC – Limited access to services for children and adolescents with behavioral problems or mental illness often leads to inadequate care and treatment based on insufficient scientific evidence of safety and effectiveness, concludes a report by the American Psychological Association (APA) released today. According to the report, a product of the APA Working Group on Psychotropic Medications for Children and Adolescents, gaps in the scientific knowledge concerning which treatments work best for specific diagnoses and patients, a dearth of clinicians specifically trained to work with children, cuts in Medicaid funding, and poor reimbursement for mental health services leads to many children being treated with medication despite limited efficacy and safety for their use particularly with children. Research published earlier this year showed a five-fold increase in the use of antipsychotic drugs to treat behavioral and emotional problems in children and adolescents from 1993 to 2002. "This entire state of affairs is in part related to our health care system's failure to provide sufficiently for children, particularly in the area of pediatric mental health care," states Ronald T. Brown, PhD, chair of the APA Working Group and Professor of Public Health and Dean at Temple University. "As a result, much of the care provided to children for mental health issues has been limited to medication even though many psychosocial treatments have been found to be effective and some with better risk profiles. Psychosocial treatments, however, can be more labor intensive and more expensive." © 2006 American Psychological Association

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 9333 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists have pinpointed a unlikely potential weapon in the war against obesity - seaweed. They found rats given fucoxanthin - a pigment in brown kelp - lost up to 10% of their body weight, mainly from around the gut. They hope fucoxanthin can be developed into a slimming supplement or a drug that targets harmful fat. The Hokkaido University research was presented to an American Chemical Society meeting in San Francisco. Brown kelp, Undaria pinnatifida, is a key ingredient of Japanese miso soup. But the researchers said drinking large quantities of the soup in an effort to lose weight would have little effect. Fucoxanthin is tightly bound to proteins in the seaweed and not easily absorbed in its natural form. The researchers, led by Dr Kazuo Miyashita, said it might take another three to five years before a slimming pill based on fucoxanthin was available to the public. The compound is found at high levels in several different types of brown seaweed. But it is absent from green and red seaweeds, which are also used in Asian cooking. Dr Miyashita's team studied the effects of fucoxanthin on more than 200 rats and mice. They found it fought flab on two fronts. In obese animals, the compound appeared to stimulate a protein called UCP1 which causes fat to be broken down. The protein is found in a type of fat called white adipose tissue, which is responsible for the thickening of the girth dubbed "middle-age spread". (C)BBC

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 9332 - Posted: 09.12.2006

By Ranit Mishori The sales pitch for the See Clearly Method (SCM) is ubiquitous: An optometrist-created system of eye exercises is so effective at improving vision, according to promotions on local radio stations and across the Internet, that you may be able to throw away your glasses for good. In fact, the ads claim, regular eyeglasses may actually be making your eyesight worse . The SCM kit costs $350. Iowa's attorney general, Tom Miller, is not buying it. His office filed a consumer fraud lawsuit last summer against Vision Improvement Technologies (VIT), the Iowa company that developed and markets the See Clearly Method. Among other things, the suit says assertions that SCM users can "quickly and easily free themselves of having to wear glasses or contact lenses" are false and misleading. In addition, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) for northeastern Indiana has put SCM on its watch list. A year ago, Wisconsin's Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection issued a warning to consumers after finding that of the more than 1,850 Wisconsin customers who bought the kit, half attempted to return it for a refund. Also last year, VIT agreed to make a minor modification to its advertising, according to the Electronic Retailing Self-Regulation Program. This BBB-affiliated review group found that almost all the the company's promotional claims had been presented legitimately as opinion. However, it also concluded that one statement -- that the See Clearly Method could "eliminate . . . poor vision due to aging" -- "was not entirely consistent with the opinions espoused by the authors and should be modified accordingly." © 2006 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 9331 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ANDREW POLLACK As a child who stuttered badly, Gerald Maguire learned the tricks of coping. When called upon in class, he would sometimes answer in the voice of Elmer Fudd or Donald Duck because he didn’t stutter when imitating someone. He found easier-to-say synonyms for words that stymied him. And he almost never made phone calls because he stumbled over a phrase for which there was no substitute: his own name. Now Dr. Maguire, a psychiatrist at the University of California, Irvine, wants to cure the ailment that afflicts him and an estimated three million Americans. He is searching for a drug to treat stuttering, organizing clinical trials and even testing treatments on himself. He could be getting closer. In May, Indevus Pharmaceuticals announced what it called encouraging results from the largest clinical trial ever of a drug for stuttering. Even larger trials are still needed, which could take two or three years. But if they succeed, the drug, pagoclone, could become the first medical treatment approved for stuttering. That is just part of a transformation of stuttering — in the medical view — from what was once widely considered a nervous or emotional condition to a neurological one that is at least partly genetic. Using brain scans, DNA studies and other modern techniques, scientists — many of whom stutter themselves — are slowly shedding light on a condition that has flustered its victims as far back as Moses, who some scholars believe was a stutterer because he told the Lord that he was “slow of speech and of a slow tongue” and had his brother Aaron speak for him. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 9330 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Sherry Seethaler A study led by University of California, San Diego biologists suggests that, contrary to the prevailing view, the process in early development that partitions the nervous system in fruit flies and vertebrates, like humans, evolved from a common ancestor. In the September 12 issue of the journal Public Library of Science Biology, the researchers report that in both fruit fly and chick embryos proteins called BMPs play similar roles in telling cells in the early embryo to switch certain genes on and off, specifying the identity of the cells making up the three primary subdivisions of the central nervous system. The findings suggest a unified model of early neural development in which at least part of the mechanism for creating neural patterning has been preserved from a shared ancestral organism that lived over 500 million years ago. “We have provided the first evidence for a common role of BMPs in establishing the pattern of gene expression along the dorsal-ventral axis of the nervous system of vertebrates and invertebrates,” said Ethan Bier, a professor of biology at UCSD and senior author on the study. “Our results suggest that this process has been conserved from a common ancestor rather than evolving separately as had been previously believed.” ©2001 Regents of the University of California

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Evolution
Link ID: 9329 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Rhitu Chatterjee Parasites are renowned for their deceptive dealings with their hosts, but the blister beetle takes its subterfuge to a carnal extreme. According to a new study, the beetle's larvae attract the males of a solitary desert bee using chemicals that mimic a female's pheromones. The ruse allows the parasites to hitch a ride on the males and ultimately reach a treasure-trove of pollen and nectar that surrounds the female bee's egg. The blister beetle (Meloe franciscanus) lays its egg at the base of the Borrego milkvetch plant. Once the larvae hatch, thousands clamber to the tips of branches. The reasons behind these swarms were unknown until 2000, when ecologists John Hafernik and Leslie Saul-Gershenz of the Center for Ecosystem Survival in San Francisco, California, noticed that the aggregation of larvae resembled a female bee. When male bees approached, the tiny larvae grabbed onto their bellies. Hafernik and Saul-Gershenz hypothesized that chemical cues from the larvae could play a role in the males' initial attraction. Indeed, these chemicals do the trick. In the current study, Saul-Gershenz and Jocelyn Millar, a chemist at the University of California, Riverside, show that mimicking a female bee's appearance is not enough to lure the males: Models of female bees, made of painted aluminum foil, failed to get the guys' attention unless they were smothered with extracts from either the beetle larvae or female bee heads. © 2006 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 9328 - Posted: 06.24.2010

ST. PAUL, MN – Traumatic brain injury patients with moderate to severe memory loss improved their memories while taking the drug rivastigmine, according to a study published in the September 12, 2006, issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Researchers, who examined 134 men and women with traumatic brain injury at 19 centers across the United States, found attention and verbal memory test scores significantly improved among severely impaired patients who took rivastigmine for 12 weeks compared to placebo-treated patients. In one test, 30-percent of patients taking rivastigmine remembered five or more additional words, compared to 10-percent in the group receiving placebo. Rivastigmine is thought to enhance the function of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter involved in memory and learning. “With an estimated 1.5 million people suffering from traumatic brain injury each year in the United States, rivastigmine shows promising results for these patients with moderate to severe memory loss,” said the study’s lead author Jonathan M. Silver, MD, with the New York School of Medicine in New York. While rivastigmine improved memory loss for patients with moderate to severe memory impairment, the study found the drug wasn’t as helpful for patients with less severe memory loss. “The beneficial effect of rivastigmine may not become apparent unless there is significant depletion of cholinergic activity in relevant brain regions causing a more profound impairment in memory or attention,” said Silver.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 9327 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Chemical cues from fathers may be delaying the onset of sexual maturity in daughters, as part of an evolutionary strategy to prevent inbreeding, according to researchers at Penn State. "Biological fathers send out inhibitory chemical signals to their daughters," said Robert Matchock, assistant professor of psychology at Penn State's Altoona Campus. "In the absence of these signals, girls tend to sexually mature earlier." The effect of chemical cues on sexual maturity is common in the animal world, Matchock explained. If the biological father is removed from rodent families, the daughters tend to mature faster, he said. "Recently, experts elsewhere discovered a little-known pheromone receptor gene in the human olfactory system, linking the role of pheromones on menarche, or the first occurrence of menstruation," said Matchock, whose findings are published in the recent issue of the American Journal of Human Biology. "Our results indicate that girls without fathers matured approximately three months before girls whose fathers were present," Matchock said, adding that the data seem to suggest a relationship between length of the father's absence and age of menarche – the earlier the absence, the earlier the menarche.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 9326 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Phil McKenna Older people who complain of memory loss – but who still do well on standard memory tests – may genuinely be losing brain tissue, perhaps in advance of the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, researchers have warned. The team examined the brain scans of adults over 60 who said they suffered significant memory deficits, yet scored normal on cognitive tests. The scans revealed a reduction in grey matter density when compared with the scans from people of similar age who did not report memory problems. The finding could lead to earlier detection of Alzheimer’s – something the researchers say is a prerequisite to an effective treatment for the elusive disease. “We are trying to push the window back to earlier diagnosis,” says Andrew Saykin, a psychiatrist and radiologist at Dartmouth Medical School in Lebanon, New Hampshire, US. “There is extensive damage to the brain by the time people meet diagnostics criteria for Alzheimer’s disease. We would like to identify individuals at high risk a decade or two before they develop Alzheimer’s.” Saykin notes that elderly patients who complain of memory loss but do fine on cognitive tests are often dismissed as the “worried well": “These are not people who have occasional trouble remembering a name or word, but whose memory is seriously declining,” Saykin says. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Alzheimers
Link ID: 9325 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers believe that they have found how the body protects itself against diseases like Alzheimer's. International experts found a brain enzyme that "snips apart" tangles of a protein linked to a decline in mental abilities and brain cell death. The scientists said that, in the future, drugs could be used to enhance this natural defence mechanism. The research is published in the journal Neuron. A hallmark of Alzheimer's and related diseases are bundles of fibre that are found in the brain's nerve cells. These "tangles", mainly made up of a protein called tau, are thought to be associated with brain cell death. The team of scientists found that an enzyme called puromycin-sensitive aminopeptidase, or PSA, was snipping apart tau proteins in human brain tissue. They also discovered, looking at fruit flies, that higher levels of PSA protected against brain cell death - neurodegeneration, while lower levels speeded up the brain's demise. The researchers concluded that PSA may play a "pivotal" protective role. They said their findings were an "important step forward" in the bid to understand the mechanisms involved in neurodegenerative diseases. In the future, they said, drugs could be used to boost levels of PSA, which in essence would enhance the body's natural defence mechanism. (C)BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 9324 - Posted: 09.11.2006

By Jonathan Amos Evidence is emerging from Africa that colours were being used in a symbolic way perhaps 200,000 years ago, a UK scientist working in the region claims. Lawrence Barham has been studying tools and other artefacts left by ancient humans at a site in Zambia. He says the range of mineral pigments, or ochres, found there hints at the use of paint, perhaps to mark the body. If correct, it would push back the earliest known example of abstract thinking by at least 100,000 years. Being able to conceptualise - the ability to let one thing represent another - was a giant leap in human evolution. It was the mental activity that would eventually permit the development of sophisticated language and maths. Shells from Israel that were strung as beads into a necklace or bracelet are widely accepted to be the oldest unequivocal evidence for such behaviour in humans. But Dr Barham said it would be hard to accept that humans were not engaged in such activity much earlier in the archaeological record. "As an archaeologist I am interested to find out where colour symbolism first appears because for colour symbolism to work it must be attached to language," the Liverpool University researcher said. "Colour symbolism is an abstraction and we cannot work this abstraction without language; so this is a proxy for trying to find in the archaeological record real echoes for the emergence of language," Dr Barham told the British Association's Science Festival. (C)BBC

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 9323 - Posted: 09.11.2006

By BARNABY J. FEDER TAMARA KNIGHT remembers little of the summer of 2004 beyond a numbing despair that resisted 16 different antidepressant drugs. She dreaded a return to electroshock therapy, which she had tried periodically for years, because it brightened her mood for only a few weeks, at best, while progressively destroying her memory. “She was in as dark and low a place as you can ever imagine a person living,” said Don Knight, her husband. So Ms. Knight drove to a drugstore in her hometown of Columbus, Ga., bought two large bottles of extra-strength Excedrin and two boxes of sleeping pills. She said she swallowed as many of the pills as she could before she passed out. Katherine V. Coram, another depression sufferer with a history of attempted suicide, was in relatively better shape that same summer. She had managed to cling to a job at the National Archives in Washington, where an understanding boss gave her a light workload. But Ms. Coram felt defeated. Her three years in a clinical trial to see if an implanted nerve stimulator could control her illness had ended with hellish results. “I was hospitalized three times in the year after I got it for anxiety, panic and other problems — after having gone 15 years without hospitalization,” said Ms. Coram, who lives alone in Silver Spring, Md. “Once I even hit a stranger in a restaurant after I got mad. It was totally out of character for me.” Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 9322 - Posted: 06.24.2010

When you eat chicken, does it feel pointy or round? Is a week shaped like a tipped-over D with the days arranged counterclockwise? Does the note B taste like horseradish? Do you get confused about appointments because Tuesday and Thursday have the same color? Do you go to the wrong train station in New York City because Grand Central has the same color as the 42nd Street address of Penn Station? When you read a newspaper or listen to someone speaking do you see a rainbow of colors? If so, you might have synesthesia. Synesthesia is an anomalous blending of the senses in which the stimulation of one modality simultaneously produces sensation in a different modality. Synesthetes hear colors, feel sounds and taste shapes. What makes synesthesia different from drug-induced hallucinations is that synesthetic sensations are highly consistent: for particular synesthetes, the note F is always a reddish shade of rust, a 3 is always pink or truck is always blue. The estimated occurrence of synesthesia ranges from rarer than one in 20,000 to as prevalent as one in 200. Of the various manifestations of synesthesia, the most common involves seeing monochromatic letters, digits and words in unique colors—this is called grapheme-color synesthesia. One rather striking observation is that such synesthetes all seem to experience very different colors for the same graphemic cues. Different synesthetes may see 3 in yellow, pink or red. Such synesthetic colors are not elicited by meaning, because 2 may be orange but two is blue and 7 may be red but seven is green. Even more perplexing is that synesthetes typically report seeing both the color the character is printed in as well as their synesthetic color. For example, is both blue (real color) and light green (synesthetic color). © 1996-2006 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 9321 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Anticipating a gruesome or traumatic event makes it more vivid and deeply imprinted in the memory, a study says. Researchers found if people were aware something was going to happen, a key memory-forming part of the brain fired. The University of Wisconsin-Madison said the findings may have implications in the treatment of conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder. The study, based on 36 people, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. Researchers showed the volunteers symbols before exposing them to a series of gruesome images, such as pictures of mutilated bodies, while linked up to MRI scanners. The symbols were either neutral or signified that they were about to be shown something gruesome. Half an hour after being shown the images, the volunteers were quizzed about how well they remember them. Two weeks later, the volunteers were asked again. On both occasions, those who had previously been given an indication that gruesome pictures were going to be shown were more likely to remember them. After studying the MRI scans, researchers found two parts of the brain - the amygdala and hippocampus - were activated during the anticipation stage. Scientists think the amygdala is associated with the formation of emotional memories, while the hippocampus helps the brain form long-term recollections. (C)BBC

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Emotions
Link ID: 9320 - Posted: 09.09.2006

Bruce Bower Scientists for the first time have established that for a brief period after birth, baby monkeys imitate facial movements made by people and adult monkeys. This copycat capacity, until now observed only in human and chimpanzee infants, seems to have evolved in all these primates as a way to jump-start newborns' face-to-face communication with adults, say evolutionary biologist Pier F. Ferrari of the University of Parma in Italy and his colleagues. Between 3 and 7 days after birth, macaque babies smacked their lips and stuck out their tongues just as an experimenter did, the researchers report in the September PLoS Biology. Adult macaques make these facial gestures during friendly or cooperative interactions, such as mutual grooming. The baby monkeys stared impassively when experimenters opened and closed their mouths or right hands. A rotating, colored disk about the size of a face also elicited no reaction. Preliminary observations of free-ranging macaques by Ferrari's group further suggest that newborns mimic their mothers' lip smacking and tongue protrusion. "I think that [infant] imitation developed in species in which face-to-face communication predominates over other channels of communication," Ferrari says. Researchers have generally held that imitation in the service of social learning occurs only in people and apes. Ferrari's team questioned that assumption after the recent discovery in macaque brains of mirror neurons. ©2006 Science Service.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Emotions
Link ID: 9319 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Helen Thomson Teenagers are more selfish than adults because they use a different part of their brain to make decisions compared to adults, new research suggests. Previous work has shown that when children reach puberty, there is an increase in connections between nerves in the brain. This occurs particularly in the area involved in decision-making and awareness of other people’s feelings, called the "mentalising network". Now Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, a cognitive neuroscientist from University College London, UK, has used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of 19 adolescents (aged 11 to 17) and 11 adults (aged 21 to 37) whilst they were asked questions relating to decision-making. Questions such as: “You’re going to the cinema, where do you look for film times?” Blakemore found that teenagers rely on the rear part of the mentalising network to make their decisions, an area of the brain called the superior temporal sulcus. In contrast, adults use the front part, called the prefrontal cortex. The superior temporal sulcus is involved in processing very basic behavioural actions, whereas the prefrontal cortex is involved in more complex functions such as processing how decisions affect others. So the research implies that "teenagers are less able to understand the consequences of their actions", says Blakemore. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 9318 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Elli Leadbeater Although many people might not draw a duck very well, few would include four legs and eyebrows in their picture. But those who suffer from a common type of dementia confuse concepts such as "bird" and "dog", and will produce the strangest drawings. The area of the brain that stores meaning is damaged in these people. Researchers from the University of Manchester may have finally solved a 150-year-old debate by pinpointing where that area actually is. They think that a brain sector just underneath the ears, called the temporal pole, is responsible. Professor Matthew Lambon Ralph, of Manchester University said: "At the heart of communication is me getting a meaning from me to you. If you don't understand that meaning, then the middle part of all communication falls away." The researcher and his team had previously suspected the temporal pole was involved. Their suspicions were based on images which had shown that people with semantic dementia, who can struggle with even simple concepts such as "car" and "fork", have lost tissue from that area. But until now it was impossible to be sure, because these patients might also have other brain damage, too. By artificially slowing down the temporal pole's activities in volunteers with normal brains, the researchers have been able to show that it does play a part in storing meanings. The research team used a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS. This involves placing a magnetic coil on the side of the head, just above the temporal pole. The magnetic pulses exhaust the part of the brain underneath, so that for about 10 minutes it is too tired to work properly. (C)BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 9317 - Posted: 09.08.2006

By Marc Kaufman The Drug Enforcement Administration yesterday overturned a two-year-old policy that many pain specialists said was limiting their ability to properly treat chronically ill patients in need of powerful, morphine-based painkillers. While defending its efforts to aggressively investigate doctors who officials conclude are writing painkiller prescriptions for no "legitimate medical purpose," the agency agreed with the protesting experts that it had gone too far in limiting how doctors prescribe the widely used medications. The unusual turnaround was welcomed by relieved doctors, who said it will help restore "balance" in government policy between the needs of pain patients and the effort to control prescription drug abuse and diversion. Specifically, the DEA proposed a formal rule that would allow doctors with patients who need a constant supply of morphine-based painkillers to write multiple prescriptions in a single office visit. Under the new rule, a doctor can write three 30-day prescriptions at a time -- two of them future-dated -- to be filled a month apart. Two years ago, the agency clamped down on the common practice of writing such multi-month prescriptions, which it said were probably illegal and were contributing to the growing abuse of prescription painkillers. © 2006 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 9316 - Posted: 06.24.2010

How did our evolutionary ancestors make sense of their world? What strategies did they use, for example, to find food? Fossils do not preserve thoughts, so we have so far been unable to glean any insights into the cognitive structure of our ancestors. However, in a study recently published in Current Biology (September 5, 2006), researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and their colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology were able to find answers to these questions using an alternative research method: comparative psychological research. In this way, they discovered that some of the strategies shaped by evolution are evidently masked very early on by the cognitive development process unique to humans. Being able to remember and relocate particular places where there is food is an asset to any species. There are two basic strategies for remembering the location of something: either remembering the features of the item (it was a tree, a stone, etc.), or knowing the spatial placement (left, right, middle, etc.). All animal species tested so far - from goldfish, pigeons and rats though to humans - seem to employ both strategies. However, if the type of recall task is designed so that the two strategies are in opposition, then some species (e.g. fish, rats and dogs) have a preference for locational strategies, while others (e.g. toads, chickens and children) favor those which use distinctive features. Until now, no studies had systematically investigated these preferences along the phylogenetic tree. Recently, however, Daniel Haun and his colleagues have carried out the first research of its kind into the cognitive preferences of a whole biological family, the hominids. They compared the five species of great apes - orangutans, gorillas, bonobos, chimpanzees and humans - to establish which cognitive strategies they prefer in order to uncover hidden characteristics.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Evolution
Link ID: 9315 - Posted: 09.08.2006