BENEDICT CAREY Pets, homeowners and exterminators show little sympathy toward rodents, but that does not mean the little scavengers lack feelings for one another. Last week, scientists studying the experience of pain in mice found strong evidence of empathy in those who saw a fellow creature suffering. In a series of experiments, reported in the journal Science, neuroscientists demonstrated that mice suffered significantly more distress when they saw a familiar mouse suffering than when they saw the same kind of pain in a stranger. Researchers call this shared suffering "emotional contagion" and consider it a primitive and necessary precursor to human empathy. Apes, including orangutans and chimps, show clear understanding for the suffering of others in their clans and act to help them; elephants and dolphins also show some of the same instincts. But the new study is the first clear demonstration of sensations of shared suffering in mice, experts say. "This is a highly significant finding and should open the eyes of people who think empathy is limited to our species," said Frans B. M. de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University and the author of "Our Inner Ape." Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Animal Communication
Link ID: 9094 - Posted: 07.05.2006

James Jean Teenagers have been drinking alcohol for centuries. In pre-Revolutionary America, young apprentices were handed buckets of ale. In the 1890's, at the age of 15, the writer Jack London regularly drank grown sailors under the table. For almost as long, concerned adults have tried to limit teenage alcohol consumption. In the 1830's, temperance societies administered lifelong abstinence pledges to schoolchildren. Today, public health experts regularly warn that teenage drinkers run greatly increased risks of involvement in car accidents, fights and messy scenes in Cancún. But what was once a social and moral debate may soon become a neurobiological one. The costs of early heavy drinking, experts say, appear to extend far beyond the time that drinking takes away from doing homework, dating, acquiring social skills, and the related tasks of growing up. Mounting research suggests that alcohol causes more damage to the developing brains of teenagers than was previously thought, injuring them significantly more than it does adult brains. The findings, though preliminary, have demolished the assumption that people can drink heavily for years before causing themselves significant neurological injury. And the research even suggests that early heavy drinking may undermine the precise neurological capacities needed to protect oneself from alcoholism. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 9093 - Posted: 07.05.2006

In preliminary results, researchers have shown that a drug which mimics the effects of the nerve-signaling chemical dopamine causes new neurons to develop in the part of the brain where cells are lost in Parkinson's disease (PD). The drug also led to long-lasting recovery of function in an animal model of PD. The findings may lead to new ways of treating PD and other neurodegenerative diseases. The study was funded in part by the NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). The study suggests that drugs that affect dopamine D3 receptors might trigger new neurons to grow in humans with the disease. Some of these drugs are commonly used to treat PD. The finding also suggests a way to develop new treatments for PD. The results appear in the July 5, 2006, issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.* Parkinson's disease, a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that causes tremors, stiffness, slow movements, and impaired balance and coordination, results from the loss of dopamine-producing neurons in part of the brain called the substantia nigra. While many drugs are available to treat these symptoms during the early stages of the disease, the treatments become less effective with time. There are no treatments proven to slow or halt the course of PD. However, many researchers have been trying to find ways of replacing the lost neurons. One possible way to do this would be to transplant new neurons that are grown from embryonic stem cells or neural progenitor cells. However, this type of treatment is very difficult for technical reasons.

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 9092 - Posted: 07.05.2006

Data from a survey of 43,000 U.S. adults heighten concerns that early alcohol use, independent of other risk factors, may contribute to the risk of developing future alcohol problems. Those who began drinking in their early teens were not only at greater risk of developing alcohol dependence at some point in their lives, they were also at greater risk of developing dependence more quickly and at younger ages, and of developing chronic, relapsing dependence. Among all respondents who developed alcoholism at some point, almost half (47 percent) met the diagnostic criteria for alcohol dependence (alcoholism) by age 21. The associations between early drinking and later problems held even after investigators controlled for other risk factors for dependence, adding to concerns that drinking at a young age might raise the risk of future alcohol problems rather than being an identifying feature of young people predisposed to risky behavior. The study appears in the July issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine (volume 160, pages 739-746). Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., director of the NIH, said, “This is a very good example of how insights gained from health research can inform public policy. Converging research suggests that youthful drinking is associated with an increased risk of long-term, not just acute, health consequences.” Scientists at the Boston University School of Public Health and Youth Alcohol Prevention Center, led by Dr. Ralph Hingson*, carried out the analysis using data from the 2001-2002 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC), a representative survey of the U.S. civilian noninstitutionalized population aged 18 years and older.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 9091 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The first gene known to control the internal clock of humans and other mammals works much differently than previously believed, according to a study by Utah and Michigan researchers. The surprising discovery means scientists must change their approach to designing new drugs to treat jet lag, insomnia, some forms of depression, sleep problems in shift workers and other circadian rhythm disorders, according to researchers at the University of Utah's Huntsman Cancer Institute and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The study – which involved the so-called tau mutation that causes hamsters to have a 20-hour day instead of a 24-hour day – will be published online the week of July 3 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers discovered that what was previously believed about the tau mutation – that a decrease in gene activity sped up a mammal's internal clock – was incorrect. Instead, the mutation caused an increase in gene activity to speed up the clock, making the day two to four hours shorter for affected animals. Previous work had indicated that the tau mutation occurred in a gene called casein kinase 1 epsilon (CK1) and that the mutation caused an 85 percent loss of gene activity. This, it was thought, explained why the hamster had a short day. But as it turns out, this idea was wrong.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 9090 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Helen Phillips A study of the "miraculous" recovery of a man who spent 19 years in a minimally conscious state has revealed the likely cause of his regained consciousness. The findings suggest the human brain shows far greater potential for recovery and regeneration then ever suspected. It may also help doctors predict their patients’ chances of improvement. But the studies also highlight gross inadequacies in the system for diagnosing and caring for patients in vegetative or minimally conscious states. In 1984, 19-year-old Terry Wallis was thrown from his pick-up truck during an accident near his home in Massachusetts, US. He was found 24 hours later in a coma with massive brain injuries. Within a few weeks he had stabilised in a minimally conscious state, which his doctors thought would last indefinitely. It did indeed persist for 19 years. Then, in 2003, he started to speak. Over a three day period, Wallis regained the ability to move and communicate, and started getting to know his now 20 year old daughter – a difficult process considering he believed himself to be 19, and that Ronald Reagan was still president. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Regeneration
Link ID: 9089 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Review by Ben Lovett I began reading The Little Monster after dinner on a recent evening, intending to finish the first few chapters and then turn to other projects, but the book moves so quickly that I couldn't stop reading, and I finished it that night. Robert Jergen is an engaging writer and, as an autobiographer should, he knows his subject very well. When he recounts anecdotes from his childhood revealing the extent of the impairment caused by his ADHD symptoms, and when he writes about how even today, as a university professor, his symptoms get him into trouble, his book makes for fascinating reading. However, readers should be warned that it is not always a reliable source of scientific information about ADHD. Jergen begins with an introductory chapter, "The Power of ADHD," in which he describes general features of the disorder, including the three classes of symptoms (inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity). Many of his points about the difficulty of diagnosing ADHD and the high incidence of misdiagnosis will be useful for readers. Unfortunately, he also claims in this chapter that "people with ADHD tend to be very smart or even cognitively gifted." This is a claim that he repeats elsewhere in the book, despite evidence to the contrary; although there are certainly people who have ADHD and a very high IQ, research has consistently shown that the average intelligence level is not higher in individuals with ADHD. Several following chapters focus on Jergen's childhood and adolescence. One important theme in this section is the author's transition from a generally happy child to a frustrated and upset young man. Copyright © CenterSite, LLC, 1995-2006

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 9088 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Michael Shermer The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion ... draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises ... in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate. --Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, 1620 Pace Will Rogers, I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a libertarian. As a fiscal conservative and social liberal, I have found at least something to like about each Republican or Democrat I have met. I have close friends in both camps, in which I have observed the following: no matter the issue under discussion, both sides are equally convinced that the evidence overwhelmingly supports their position. This surety is called the confirmation bias, whereby we seek and find confirmatory evidence in support of already existing beliefs and ignore or reinterpret disconfirmatory evidence. Now a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study shows where in the brain the confirmation bias arises and how it is unconscious and driven by emotions. Psychologist Drew Westen led the study, conducted at Emory University, and the team presented the results at the 2006 annual conference of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. © 1996-2006 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Brain imaging; Emotions
Link ID: 9087 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Patients who take clozapine, the most effective antipsychotic drug, have significantly higher rates of metabolic syndrome, according to a first-of-a-kind study by University of Rochester Medical Center researchers. Metabolic syndrome is a group of conditions that increase the risk for heart disease, stroke and diabetes. The conditions include high blood pressure, excess body fat around the waist, abnormal levels of cholesterol and triglycerides and insulin resistance. Any one of the conditions increases the risk of serious disease. In combination, the risk grows greater. More than half the clozapine patients studied had metabolic syndrome while only about 20 percent of those in a comparison group did, researchers report in the July issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry. Patients with metabolic syndrome in this study would be expected to have a two-to-threefold increase in cardiovascular disease mortality, the Medical Center Department of Psychiatry researchers state. "Clozapine is the last hope for many people," said J. Steven Lamberti, M.D., associate professor of psychiatry and lead author of the journal article. "But there are long-term health implications. This study suggests that patients who need the most effective medication are between a rock and a hard place."

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 9086 - Posted: 07.01.2006

Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News — People generally define intelligence in terms that place our own species at the apex, but recent studies on other animals suggest skills such as abstract thinking, problem solving, reasoning, and language — once thought unique to us — may not be so uncommon after all. "The closer we examine animals, the more they surprise us with their intelligence and awareness," said Jonathan Balcombe, a research scientist at Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in Washington, DC. "Chickens practice deception, pigeons can categorize images in photographs as quickly as we can, a gorilla plays a joke on a human teacher, and a tiny fish leaps from one tide pool to another using a mental map formed during high tide." Balcombe did admit that in the evolutionary lottery, humans got lucky. Factors such as climate, the need for socialization, and challenges associated with foraging for intermittently available food may have contributed to our unique skill set. Taken individually or in other combinations, though, these skills are being increasingly noticed in other creatures. © 2006 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Intelligence; Evolution
Link ID: 9085 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Eric Jaffe In the 1993 movie Jurassic Park, one human character tells another that a Tyrannosaurus rex can't see them if they don't move, even though the beast is right in front of them. Now, a scientist reports that T. rex had some of the best vision in animal history. This sensory prowess strengthens arguments for T. rex's role as predator instead of scavenger. Scientists had some evidence from measurements of T. rex skulls that the animal could see well. Recently, Kent A. Stevens of the University of Oregon in Eugene went further. He used facial models of seven types of dinosaurs to reconstruct their binocular range, the area viewed simultaneously by both eyes. The wider an animal's binocular range, the better its depth perception and capacity to distinguish objects—even those that are motionless or camouflaged. T. rex had a binocular range of 55°, which is wider than that of modern hawks, Stevens reports in the summer Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Moreover, over the millennia, T. rex evolved features that improved its vision: Its snout grew lower and narrower, cheek grooves cleared its sight lines, and its eyeballs enlarged. "It was a selective advantage for this animal to see three-dimensionally ahead of it," Stevens says. ©2006 Science Service.

Keyword: Vision; Evolution
Link ID: 9084 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Bruce Bower Birth order may steer some men toward homosexuality in a process that perhaps begins before birth. A new study finds that homosexuality grows more likely with the greater number of biological older brothers—those sharing both father and mother—that a male has. Men display this tendency toward homosexuality even if they weren't raised with biological older brothers, finds psychologist Anthony F. Bogaert of Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario. No gay connection appears in men raised with half-brothers, stepbrothers, or adoptive brothers, all deemed non-biological by Bogaert. "The mechanism underlying this fraternal birth-order effect remains unknown," Bogaert says. It's possible that succeeding pregnancies with male fetuses trigger a maternal immune response. A mother's immune system may treat male fetuses as foreign bodies, attacking them with antibodies that alter sex-related brain development, the Canadian psychologist suggests. Scientists haven't yet looked for any specific immune reaction during pregnancy that targets later-born boys who become homosexual. ©2006 Science Service.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 9083 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Marcus Wraight Patients are being recruited for a trial to determine whether chemicals in cannabis can slow the impact of multiple sclerosis. Evidence suggests the drug may relieve symptoms but the three-year national trial is also to determine whether it slows the disease's progress. It is estimated that 85,000 people in the UK have multiple sclerosis (MS). Prof John Zajicek, of the Peninsula Medical School and Derriford Hospital in Plymouth, will lead the research. One component of cannabis, called THC, is now being tested in a trial, funded by a £2m grant from the Medical Research Council, along with charities the MS Society and MS Trust. "This trial will build on our previous study which, coupled with our work in the laboratory, suggested that THC could have a protective effect on nerves," said Prof Zajicek. "Multiple Sclerosis is a very unpredictable disease. Currently there are few medicines which are effective in treating MS and none have been shown to have any effect in the progressive stages of the disease." MS is caused when the patient's own body damages the protective covering of the nerves - affecting signals from the brain. Progressive MS is thought to be caused by damage to the nerves themselves. (C)BBC

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 9082 - Posted: 06.30.2006

by Mary-Russell Roberson In the animal world, a song is a specific type of vocalization. Many animals vocalize in one way or another, by grunting, snorting, or barking, for example. Some vocalizations have a communication function: Alarm calls alert others to the presence of a predator, agonistic calls communicate aggression, begging calls solicit food from parents, and mating calls advertise availability. Songs are also used for communication, but typically are much more elaborate than calls. The difference between a song and a call, while fairly easy to recognize intuitively, is difficult to explain, perhaps because "song" is such a well-worn word in everyday English. When asked to define song, scientists who study it usually give a disclaimer first. Richard Mooney, a neurobiologist at Duke University Medical Center, who studies how birds learn and produce song, says, "Song is a loaded word. It has many meanings to humans and most of those relate to special human behaviors." And Timothy Holy, assistant professor of neurobiology at Washington University in St. Louis, says, "I don't think there is a single definition that everyone subscribes to." Those caveats notwithstanding, most scientists agree that a song is longer and more complex than a call, and has a melodic and rhythmic structure, often involving repeated patterns over both short time periods (tens of milliseconds) and longer time periods (seconds). Songs typically also include more variation in frequency (pitch) and intensity (volume) than calls do. Call and song are really two ends of a continuum, and different people draw the dividing line at different places. Copyright 2006 Friends of the National Zoo.

Keyword: Language; Animal Communication
Link ID: 9081 - Posted: 06.30.2006

A study published today is providing the first peer-reviewed scientific evidence that driving and talking on a cell phone could be just as bad as drinking and driving. "If you do a carefully controlled study where you equate for the amount of time that people are driving and the driving conditions, you're actually worse off when you are using a cell phone than when you're legally drunk," says David Strayer, a psychologist at the University of Utah. Strayer had done several previous studies showing that talking on a cell phone significantly impaired driving, so he wanted to know how talking compared to the ultimate driving impairment. "So we had people come in one day and we got them legally drunk, with a blood alcohol level of .08," says Strayer. "And then we measured how they drive in our driving simulator." The simulator is a $100,000 virtual reality driving machine in which volunteers follow a pace car. The simulator measures how fast, accurately and aggressively the driver follows the route. At the same time an eye tracking device measures where the driver is looking the whole time. Forty volunteers drove the car on four different mornings: once while legally intoxicated, once while talking on a hands-free cell phone, once while talking on a hand-held cell phone, and once with no distractions. © ScienCentral, 2000-2006.

Keyword: Attention; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 9080 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Three Florida teenagers recently pleaded not guilty to the brutal beatings and in one case, death, of homeless men. One of the beatings was caught on surveillance video and in a most chilling way illustrates how people can degrade socially outcast individuals, enough to engage in mockery, physical abuse, and even murder. According to new research, the brain processes social outsiders as less than human; brain imaging provides accurate depictions of this prejudice at an unconscious level. A new study by Princeton University psychology researchers Lasana Harris and Susan Fiske shows that when viewing photographs of social out-groups, people respond to them with disgust, not a feeling of fellow humanity. The findings are reported in the article "Dehumanizing the Lowest of the Low: Neuro-imaging responses to Extreme Outgroups" in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science (previously the American Psychological Society). Twenty four Princeton University undergraduates viewed a large number of color photographs of different social groups (including Olympic athletes, business professionals, elderly people, and drug addicts), and images of objects (including the Space Shuttle, a sports car, a cemetery, and an overflowing toilet) that elicited the emotions of pride, envy, pity, or disgust. The four emotions were derived from the Stereotype Content Model (SCM), which predicts differentiated prejudices based on warmth and competence. Warmth was determined by friendliness, competence by capability. The two emotional extremes were pride and disgust; pride elicited high warmth and high perception of competence, and disgust elicited low warmth and low perception of competence.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 9079 - Posted: 06.30.2006

By ANDREW POLLACK A drug that can restore eyesight to some elderly people, even allowing them to read or drive again, is expected to win federal approval this week. But for patients, doctors, Medicare and other insurers, the drug's arrival will pose a conundrum. That is because the medicine, Lucentis, is expected to be 10 to 100 times as expensive as a similar drug that many ophthalmologists say is every bit as good. Lucentis, made by Genentech, is the first drug demonstrated in clinical trials to improve vision in people with so-called wet macular degeneration, a form of bleeding behind the retina that is the leading cause of blindness in people over 65. The condition afflicts an estimated 1.2 million people in this country, with an 200,000 new cases each year. While the drug is not a cure and does not help everyone, specialists say it represents a breakthrough against a disease that once almost inexorably led to an incapacitating loss of eyesight. "I have people who are reading the paper every morning who would have been totally legally blind two years ago," said Dr. Julia A. Haller, a professor of ophthalmology at Johns Hopkins University, who has had patients testing Lucentis. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 9078 - Posted: 06.29.2006

Around one in four readers of this column has their brain infected with a potentially lethal parasite. The single-celled creature, Toxoplasma gondii, a relative of the agent of malaria, attacks not just Daily Telegraph readers but those of Le Monde (the incidence in France is more than twice that in Britain), together with many other mammals. There is no cure but for nearly all its victims no symptoms either. Only people already weakened by disease, surgery or age are under threat; and for them the effects may be fatal. Pregnant women, too, are at risk, as their baby's eyesight or hearing may be affected by the invader. Fortunately, only one in 1,000 infants is born with any signs of damage, although more are at risk of eye infections later in life. Toxoplasma is a cunning little beast. It enters certain cells in the immune system and directs them to move to the brain. There, it is safe from antibodies and even uses human immune signals to put itself to sleep and out of harm's way. Like many parasites it needs a third party to complete its life cycle, for our friend the Toxoplasma needs our companion the cat in order to have sex (a tiger or lion also does the job, if one is available). © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2006.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 9077 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Brittleness is often seen as a sign of fragility. But in the case of infectious proteins called prions, brittleness makes for a tougher, more menacing pathogen. Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher have discovered that brittle prion particles break more readily into new "seeds," which spread infection much more quickly. The discovery boosts basic understanding of prion infections, and could provide scientists with new ideas for designing drugs that discourage or prevent prion seeding, said the study's senior author Jonathan Weissman, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Weissman and colleagues from UCSF reported their findings on June 28, 2006, in an advance online publication in Nature. The scientists studied yeast prions, which are similar to mammalian prions in that they act as infectious proteins. In recent years, mammalian prions have gained increasing notoriety for their roles in such fatal brain-destroying human diseases as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and kuru, and in the animal diseases, bovine spongiform encephalopathy ("mad cow" disease) and scrapie.

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 9076 - Posted: 06.29.2006

A man's sexual orientation may be determined by conditions in the womb, according to a study. Previous research had revealed the more older brothers a boy has, the more likely he is to be gay, but the reason for this phenomenon was unknown. But a Canadian study has shown that the effect is most likely down to biological rather than social factors. The research is published in the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Professor Anthony Bogaert from Brock University in Ontario, Canada, studied 944 heterosexual and homosexual men with either "biological" brothers, in this case those who share the same mother, or "non-biological" brothers, that is, adopted, step or half siblings. He found the link between the number of older brothers and homosexuality only existed when the siblings shared the same mother. The amount of time the individual spent being raised with older brothers did not affect their sexual orientation. Writing in the journal, Professor Bogaert said: "If rearing or social factors associated with older male siblings underlies the fraternal birth-order effect [the link between the number of older brothers and male homosexuality], then the number of non-biological older brothers should predict men's sexual orientation, but they do not. "These results support a prenatal origin to sexual orientation development in men." He suggests the effect is probably the result of a "maternal memory" in the womb for male births. (C) BBC

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 9075 - Posted: 06.28.2006